Vertex

The Client

Vertex is a global biotechnology company that invests in scientific innovation to create transformative medicines for people with serious diseases. The company has multiple approved medicines that treat the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis (CF) — a rare, life-threatening genetic disease — and has several ongoing clinical and research programs in CF. Beyond CF, Vertex has a robust clinical pipeline of investigational small molecule, mRNA, cell, and genetic therapies (including gene editing) in other serious diseases where it has deep insight into causal human biology, including sickle cell disease, beta thalassemia, APOL1-mediated kidney disease, acute and neuropathic pain, type 1 diabetes, and alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency.

The Situation

Biotechnology leader Vertex’s primary objective was to enhance patient awareness, engage healthcare professionals (HCPs), and optimize operational efficiency. The company wanted to reduce the life cycle cost to support content updates, code development, and platform support, while simultaneously generating incremental topline growth and the expectation for profit contribution. Vertex needed to provide its local markets with easy-to-adapt websites that could be maintained with content supplied by local agencies. 

Time was also of the essence. Vertex needed to ensure that important safety information or label changes for the brand websites could be turned around quickly — in less than a week. As the company developed or migrated 25+ websites yearly, they also needed to reduce overall development time and effort by 30 to 40% and increase the speed to market for new websites by 50%. Lastly, they needed to be able to launch a new website within 24 hours of FDA approval of a new brand. 

The Challenge

Vertex faced numerous challenges while updating its web platforms and practices. On the business side, the company wanted to maximize the value of its platform investments, reducing time to market with a faster iterative delivery of websites through the use (and reuse) of a flexible design and components.

From a technology point of view, the company needed a flexible, extendable solution for Vertex Digital Delivery that would allow the company to utilize an open framework capable of integrating various healthcare professional (HCP) login mechanisms.

The Solution

Working with transformational technology partner Cognizant, Vertex embarked on a reconstruction project focused on functionality, consistency, scalability, accuracy, user flow definition, customization, accessibility, and overall performance. 

In collaboration with Vertex, Cognizant developed and migrated 50+ patient and HCP websites using Acquia Site Factory and Site Studio, with Code Studio chosen for DevOps purposes.

Site Factory facilitated the delivery of a more robust and scalable architecture and design. The centralized management of UI components, templates, and CMS features contributed to enhanced reusability. Additionally, the teams found that Site Factory’s single codebase empowers users to make and test updates in one place and then apply them to all the sites on the platform. This streamlines the update process and enables new and existing sites to benefit immediately from updates while reducing the cost of maintenance and downtime. This also allows content editors to focus on creating new content and frees up budget for new site features and enhancements.

Using Site Studio for component development, the teams markedly reduced the time to market for content changes and design variations, streamlining the process compared to the extended durations previously required for updates and approvals. Cognizant built a reusable component library of 60+ unique components that are customized and used in every website build. Using Site Studio components and templates, Vertex’s marketing team can leverage existing component libraries, minimizing development efforts when creating new websites while adhering to established designs.

The Results

Cognizant helped Vertex develop 60+ unique and reusable components used across sites and delivered 50+ sites. Additionally, the reusable components they developed reduced component development time and effort by 30 to 40%. These efforts created a more than 50% increase in speed to market for cloned sites.

The new platform delivers numerous benefits for different stakeholders: 

• Healthcare professionals and patients can now enjoy digital experiences that contribute to the improved longevity and well-being of individuals affected by various diseases.
• Vertex teams across local markets can achieve enhanced effectiveness and operational efficiency with Cognizant's newly established digital strategies, cultures, and ecosystems.
• Vertex’s brand marketing team has identified a valuable advantage by incorporating additional websites into Acquia Site Factory. This integration, coupled with the use of Site Studio, enables expedited turnaround times for website development and deployment.
• Vertex’s in-house IT team now has a more streamlined and effective approach to managing hosting services. Previously, Drupal websites were hosted on AWS and managed by the company’s in-house IT team. Moving to Acquia Cloud has reduced the workload for the IT team.