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Xenomorph Clocks Up Client Implementation at RA Capital

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Xenomorph has clocked up a new client implementation with RA Capital, and is working with existing clients on business efficiencies including the hard and soft costs of vendor data. Data Management Insight caught up with Xenomorph president of the Americas, Naj Alavi, to talk about RA Capital and the company’s ongoing work.

RA Capital, a multi-stage investment manager dedicated to company formation and investment in healthcare and life science companies, selected Xenomorph’s enterprise data management platform after an extensive selection process and proof of concept whittled down to two vendors and designed to see how quickly each vendor could build a data model and how it could be extended without the need to update the software – the latter a sweet spot for Xenomorph.

RA Capital selected Xenomorph on the basis of its future-proof data model and its support for all data vendors and ability to match companies and drugs from multiple data vendors. The companies worked together to deliver implementation within budget and on time late last year, with RA Capital going on to ‘own the product’ through knowledge transfer of the Xenomorph solution.

“We were diligent in the selection of RA Capital’s data platform. We wanted more than a standard security master, we wanted a true data platform product that can handle all types of data across industries, and providers,” says, Chris Caliri, CIO at RA Capital “We ran a rigorous RFP process and a detailed POC before finally selecting Xenomorph.”

RA Capital previously used internal systems and manual workarounds, but wanted a robust enterprise solution that would grow with the firm. It needed to store biotechnology-related data, such as drugs, catalysts, events and clinical trial data, as well as security and price data.

“Xenomorph’s ability to support complex hierarchical data structures with multiple relationships, across a variety of entities, was critical to the success of our project. Customisable data management rules allowed us to merge and enrich company, person and drug data across several internal and external data providers,” says Ernesto Gonzalez, business analysis manager at  RA Capital.

Cost efficiencies

Xenomorph is working with existing sell-side and buy-side clients to help them understand whether the data they license is providing value for money and how business efficiencies can be achieved, perhaps enhancing business while ensuring budgets are in line, or spending efficiently to achieve cost savings.

Alavi says: “We are working with a number of clients that are looking at costs around data.” This includes getting to grips with data vendor licences, understanding volumes of data flowing through systems, and identifying data that is received, unnecessarily, multiple times. “These are some of the hard costs of data,” says Alavi. “We also look at related soft costs in terms of person power used to source, validate and make data fit for purpose.”

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