CARA Product Review from fme

1. With a strong track record of delivering highly regarded solu-
tions over many years, Generis recently introduced their »New
CARA« platform. With interest in flexible, user-focused and plat-
form independent offerings increasing, we took a deep dive into
the product to see what was creating such a buzz with clients.
Our ProductPulse team took some time out of its busy
schedule to review the latest offering from Generis, specifi-
cally the much awaited »New CARA« solution. As many of
you will know, Generis have established themselves as one
of the leading vendors in the ECM software space and have
­continued to remain competitive in the market over many
years. Historically they have leveraged the OpenText Docu-
mentum platform along with several of their competitors, but
their strategy has continued to evolve with market needs and
the emergence of cloud-based offerings.
The CARA product has been synonymous with an attractive
and user-friendly interface and that certainly continues in the
new release. The ability to leverage the product across several
different content platforms provides some attractive flexibility
for companies wishing to provide an improved user experience
while maximizing investments in current platforms.
For those considering a move to CARA, it should be noted that
fme Life Sciences will be releasing a CARA Connector as part of
our migration-center product roadmap offering during 2020.
While the »New CARA« is certainly new, it does offer a comfort-
able mix of features in the current CARA solution, being used
by many notable Life Sciences clients, and many new features
that will impress.
If you are looking for greater exposure to the Generis team
and their solutions, we recommend you check out the Generis
Generate conferences held in several global locations.
About The Product
CARA originated as a user interface and business
rules layer for Documentum more than 20 years ago.
But over the last few years we’ve seen a shift away
from this approach. The company is investing in
building out a much broader content services plat-
form entirely separate from Documentum. This has
been an important transition as industry is ­looking
for more solution options that keep pace with
­evolving buiness needs across clinical, regulatory
and quality and manufacturing areas.
Vendor Snapshot
Company: Generis
Product: CARA
Headquarters: Sarasota, Florida
Global Locations: UK, Poland, Japan. Other
­consultants ­based in the US, UK and Germany.
Number of employees: 50-100
Focus: In life sciences, CARA is well established
among Tier 1 pharma companies with increasing
­presence among small and mid-sized companies.
They have a customer presence across North
­America, Europe, Asia-Pac and Latin America.
Contact: James Kelleher | CEO
james.kelleher@generiscorp.com
PRODUCT REVIEW
CARA by Generis
fme Life Sciences is a leading provider of business and technology services supporting the deployment of Content Services and ECM solutions to its clients
in the Life Sciences Industry. We act as a trusted advisor and systems integration specialist across the Clinical, Regulatory and Quality and Manufacturing
domains in Europe and North America. We do not exclusively recommend or promote any platform or vendor, but rather we focus on providing our clients
with an independent perspective of the solutions available in the market.

2. #404240
fme group | Germany · Romania · USA | T +49 531 238540 · info@fme.de | T +40 264 443533 · info@fme.ro | T +1 475 3292398 · info@fme-us.com
CARA by Generis
What’s coming?
Generis will be releasing its IDMP package now the standard has finally been released. They have developed to the existing ISO
standards and SPOR, etc. Their Regulatory Information Management (RIM) module provides everything except publishing in CARA
(for publishing, they have a preferred partnership with Lorenz). LIMS and PV modules are also on the horizon. The roadmap has a
healthy mix of enhancements to current functionality and also a number of new, client driven developments.
We’re looking forward to experiencing the growth of the continuing evolution of the CARA platform and should you wish to discuss
any aspects of the solution, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
Leading
Client-centric
Generis is known to adapt its product to accommodate client
processes – not the other way around. This is crucial during
any large-scale enterprise implementation. But while the
company is adaptable, they also recognize that companies
are typically short on time and resources. So, they’ve de-
veloped pre-configured packages that provide deployment
accelerators. We think this balance gives them an edge.
In-house or cloud? Either
The default for cloud implementations is private cloud since
multi-tenant models offered by other vendors really seem
to benefit the vendor. They also offer a hybrid solution for
­customers that are transitioning but may not have fully moved
toward the cloud.
A central source of truth
A real plus is Generis’ centralized workspace for users to
access and manage all their regulated content. We like that
there is a true flow of information from end to end of the
enterprise, helping to reduce data duplication and increase
workplace efficiency.
Strong usability
The product gets high grades for its performance (1 ­million
search results in less than 0.5 seconds) and ergonomic
user interface (UI) that is tailored to different user profiles
­(basically, just enough functionality for the user to do their
job). It has a sleek modern UI, which is appealing and often
clears the typical hurdle of many systems that users reject
due to usability.
Lagging
Commercial-class annotation tool
CARA’s current annotation tool is fit for basic annotation func-
tionality; however, we are aware that clients are increasingly
expecting a commercial-class tool as part of their­content
services platform. The good news, however, is that a new tool
is on the company’s product roadmap.
Structured Content Authoring
CARA has a strong initial structured content authoring con-
figuration that Generis has shared with some select clients,
however they really need to develop this configuration to be
at the forefront of the structured content authoring game in
order to be competitive.
Advanced BPM
Still early on, Generis is just beginning to shift its focus toward
implementing advanced BPM into its modules to enhance its
existing preconfigured packages in line with industry trends
and needs.
Artificial Intelligence
Currently, CARA does not leverage the power of AI to enhance
the user experience. It’s on the product road map, but AI
­solutions up until this point have been difficult to implement.
We’ll track developments here for progress.
Calendar Integration
As Generis have been recognized as leader in the development
of intuitive UX in CARA, we’d like to see better calendar integra-
tion as this is highly valued feature that is often underestimated
and slow to evolve. The good news is that such an enhance-
ment is on the roadmap and should be available in 2020.