It’s a fact that IT is revolutionising and kickstarting every molecule under development and what more, it is integrating from lab to market at a faster pace. Business intelligence software and services can create true enterprise intelligence, especially when the R&D costs in the pharma sector is scaling upwards despite competition.

Here comes the need for a technology, which can reduce ‘time to intelligence’ and ‘time to market’. Being provided by the North Carolina-based SAS Inc, the software helps in ‘time to discovery’ thus making all the difference. The $1.5-billion SAS Inc, claimed to be the world’s largest privately-held company, caters to more than 90% of the Fortune 500 companies.

SAS India, the wholly-owned subsidiary of SAS Inc, is being used over 40,000 sites in the country. Right from the discovery stage to sales and marketing, SAS has evolved a solution, which can optimise the flow of valuable scientific and operational data within pharma and biotech firms.

Says Sudipta K Sen, CEO of SAS India Pvt Ltd, “We are the only company that offers an end-to-end solution to drive efficiencies throughout every stage of a drug’s lifecycle.”

Above all, it is interesting to note that for e-submission for US FDA approval, the whole application has to be in SAS format, adds George Verghese, head of marketing. Adding to this credit, the company hopes to add three to six customers per month.

According to the Frost & Sullivan Report on Business Intelligence in India, SAS India led the business intelligence market in the country with a share of 22.5%. “We are bullish about the growth as the R&D trends in the industry seems to be expanding. We are planning to post a growth higher than the industry average of 25%,” he said. The company has launched SAS Drug Development 3.0, in a bid to tap the $100 million-Indian clinical research market through data integration and analysis. It allows lifescience firms to analyse the clinical research for regulatory submission and explore new market opportunities, product line extensions and safety issues - all through a centralised repository.

For instance, the discovery stage is taken care by a drug discovery solution, which contains an Extract Transform Load wherein unified information is extracted from different databases in a single organisation.