Background The global pharmaceutical and biotech industry, valued at over $1.2 trillion, demands high performance, regulatory precision, and efficient collaboration across geographies. Yet many life sciences companies still rely on fragmented systems and outdated, document-heavy processes. Our client, a leading PLM provider, and a partner to several of the Top 5 global pharmaceutical and biotech leaders, recognized the mounting pressure. As life sciences companies expand internationally and outsource more of their manufacturing, the gaps between development, production, and compliance become increasingly difficult to manage. Information remains siloed, quality processes vary across sites, and the burden of regulatory documentation continues to grow. This complexity deepens as products shift between facilities and teams operate on disconnected systems, making consistency and visibility even harder to maintain. To stay competitive, Neo PLM set out to pursue app modernization—designing a platform that could support global operations, standardize compliance workflows, and accelerate product delivery. They partnered with Symphony Solutions to assist in the transformation. Client Founded in 2011, Neo PLM is a long-standing provider of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions tailored to the needs of life sciences and process manufacturing organizations. It introduced the industry’s first integrated process PLM platform—built to connect stakeholders across the entire product lifecycle. Their solution supports pharmaceutical and biotech firms in managing complex workflows, maintaining full control over product data and documentation, and ensuring regulatory compliance at every stage. By uniting cross-functional teams—from R&D and quality to manufacturing and regulatory affairs, they help life sciences organizations reduce risk, improve audit readiness, and accelerate delivery at scale. Challenges In 2016, Neo PLM engaged Symphony Solutions to enhance the quality of its platform and build a stronger, more scalable approach to Software Testing & QA. As their customer base expanded and regulatory complexity grew, their internal delivery processes needed greater structure, speed, and transparency. Several key areas required immediate attention: Supporting delivery of the application Improving requirements gathering and documentation practices Building a structured test case database and QA cycles Reconfiguring the testing toolset to improve visibility and traceability Establishing a flexible mixed methodology, combining Agile Project Management and Waterfall best practices At the same time, Neo PLM faced a pressing need to modernize its digital infrastructure. This included: Migrating from Google Gmail to Microsoft Office 365 Moving file storage and communication platforms to Microsoft solutions, including Teams Upgrading hardware and software across the organization Establishing site-to-site and client VPN connectivity Automating infrastructure provisioning to improve scalability and reduce manual overhead These challenges reflected deeper structural needs—better collaboration across teams, higher confidence in release quality, and scalable infrastructure that could evolve with the platform and meet the growing demands of life sciences compliance. Ensure Quality at Speed with Proven QA LEARN MORE Solution Symphony Solutions helped Neo PLM establish a thorough QA system tailored to the complexities of the life sciences industry and continuously improved the solution’s quality over time. The main responsibilities of the Symphony Solutions team included: Requirements analysis Documentation creation Test case (TC) execution Defects tracking Reporting results Software development activities DevOps support Project management activities Additionally, Symphony Solutions: Supported the app development team with project management and software delivery activities for the application. Migrated existing documentation to the new system. Provided DevOps support across the organization. Added additional specialists for the new application’s development. Expanded QA efforts to improve overall quality. Enhanced communication by establishing multiple channels and incorporating elements of Agile Project Management, including on-site and local meetings, planning sessions, retrospectives, and daily status updates with customers. Implemented proper toolset configuration for testing and reporting. Introduced new metrics for process reporting. Assisted with on-site audits, providing test evidence and aligning QA processes with existing procedures. Added new testing types: Smoke, Functional, Regression, and expanded release cycles. Improved ad-hoc testing for web and desktop components, introducing new testing and estimation techniques. Organized test cases into test suites and created a centralized test case database. Improved requirements gathering, planning, and bug triage processes. Created detailed knowledge transfer plans, training materials, and functionality presentations for onboarding new QA team members. Customized bug tracking processes and updated related documentation. Evaluated automation testing tools suited to project needs. DevOps activities: Migrated on-premises and cloud resources to AWS. Imported all cloud resources into Terraform/Terragrunt. Improved networking and access by implementing client and site-to-site VPN connections. Migrated various communication and storage solutions to Microsoft tools. Supported application demos with an almost fully automated solution. Automated application testing, including automated installations for testing. Configured backups for essential components like the web server and MS SQL database. Rewrote the package generation logic and associated pipelines. Configured the solution for better pre-merge reviews and testing. Enforced best practices and improve code quality. Results Featured Numbers 3 major software releases tested by the Symphony QA team in 2024 1 enterprise system integration fully covered with QA support Multiple new QA workflows introduced: Smoke, Functional, Regression, and ad-hoc Our collaboration with Neo PLM led to clear improvements across quality assurance, DevOps, project coordination, and long-term platform scalability. Key outcomes: Improved knowledge flow across stakeholders and processes through a structured QA system. Achieved audit readiness, aligning testing practices with compliance standards. Enhanced product quality, particularly in verifying new features and updates. Attracted new customers, including leading life sciences organizations.
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