By Katherine Yang-Iott and Steve Gens

The results from our 2020 World Class RIM^℠ Survey, “Is Industry at a Performance Tipping Point?” was released this May with 66 companies participating in the study.

The good news is overall performance has increased in four out of five World Class categories unlike 2018 where no overall improvement was realized from our 2016 study. Beginning in 2014, there was a substantial focus and investment in global RIM programs with common objectives to simplify end to end processes, reduce system complexity, and incorporate new organizational strategies to improve data quality, continuous improvement and key performance metrics.

A milestone was reached in our 2020 study where two organization crossed over the “World Class” measurement standard. We also had nine organizations fall in our “Strong Performance” band which is also a high achievement. As a growing number of companies continue to improve their World Class RIM status, our data suggests industry is at a performance tipping point. What does that mean and how do companies get to the other side?

The tipping point image represents the current status of industry, based on data from our 2020 survey. The majority of industry are somewhere on the uphill journey, experiencing the Sisyphus effect. Sisyphus was a Greek king punished by Zeus and forced to roll a heavy boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down every time it neared the top, for all of eternity. At times, this Sisyphus Effect may be a familiar feeling for companies that continue to put in tremendous focus and investments with their RIM program while struggling to realize the significant potential of a robust program. It was great to discover 18% of the survey participants have rounded the top of the hill and are now experiencing the snowball effect, where they are realizing the key investment benefits of reduced operational complexity, improved time to report key regulatory information, better process integration, reduced time to health authority submission, and realizing real-time information for decision making. We call this cohort the “top performers”.

Our goal is not only to use our benchmark data to measure current industry experience and trends, but also to understand the indicators and motivations of organizations that continue to progress and improve their RIM capabilities and share these learnings broadly. Our “top performers” have pushed the boulder pass the tipping point and we took the opportunity to compare them to “everybody else” in most of our survey questions. The contrast to these organizations and everybody else was substantial.

We believe there are multiple paths to high performance and this was confirmed with our “top performers”. Through the survey data and follow-up discussions with the top three performers, we confirmed our belief and learnings from over 100 organizations that the primary focus of performance is the degree of the right organizational strategies and process maturity. In five large RIM industry studies since 2014, there was no correlation of top performers to any one software provider. Top performers excel at the organizational and process layers, therefore gain more “value” from their transactional software systems and other technology investments to improve performance and increase speed.

This study was extensive and we are in the process of debriefing the results to most of the study participants. We learned a considerable amount from our two new sections that explored the upcoming structured data submission requirements where industry view of regulatory information is shifting from an “administrative burden” to a strategic asset and the connectivity of RIM to the enterprise. Future blog posts this summer and fall will investigate these findings in greater detail.

Next month, the blog will focus on updated RIM Performance Framework and how your organization can use it in your Global RIM Journey. Our team will continue to develop a deeper understanding of the data collected and share our insights with our benchmark program goal of, “everybody gets better”.

We have reopened the survey for new participants based on the COVID-19 pandemic impact as several organizations wanted additional time to participate. Please contact us to share your ideas for upcoming posts or if interested in participating in the World Class RIM survey.