Cost Advantages of the SaaS LMS for Complying with FDA Regulations
Reducing Total Cost of Ownership and Streamlining the Validation Effort
The current economic downturn, as well as an emphasis on leaner production overall, have encouraged FDA-regulated companies to explore the Software-as a-Service (SaaS) model to help manage some of their critical business processes, including compliance and learning management.
Based on our own experiences with deploying a SaaS learning management system (LMS) to more than 80 pharmaceutical, biologic and medical device companies, we have been able to compare the cost efficiencies associated with such a deployment, versus a “server-based” or internally hosted application, while in many cases increasing business performance and achieving compliance goals.
The cost savings are realized in three key areas: 1) faster deployment time, saving IT resource costs; 2) the elimination of hardware and datacenter investment; and 3) significantly reduced validation effort.
This paper explores Total Cost of Ownership issues in greater detail, to help those in Quality, Manufacturing, Human Resources, and Clinical when evaluating technologies that will improve the learning management, qualification tracking, and electronic record-keeping processes within their organizations. The cost savings of the SaaS LMS are realized well after the initial deployment, as compared to a server-based application.