Astellas Pharma is an worldwide pharmaceutical company headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois. Like most pharmaceutical companies, Astellas collects and analyzes a lot of data. Astellas contracts with Aspiritech to do several of the important jobs that require intense focus and attention to detail. Aspiritech is a non-profit tech company that hires people with autism and trains them in Quality Assurance, Data Integrity and Accessibility Testing. Aspiritech has over 120 employees, 90% are autistic, including most of our managers and project leads.
Recently Astellas’ Abilities EIG invited Aspiritech to present a webinar about diversity in the workplace. Aspiritech Quality Assurance Lead Samantha Sayer described the projects that Aspiritech does for Astellas. Senior Data Governance & Master Data Management Analyst Rachel Mather discussed the data integrity work Aspiritech does with Astellas. Kourtney McGrew, Oncology Regional Account Director at Astellas, hosted the EIG webinar and opened the floor for questions about working with neurodiverse teams and Aspiritech’s capabilities.
Quality Assurance Testing
All of Astellas’ HCP (healthcare professional) websites need to be regularly updated and tested to ensure that the site is compliant, functional, and accessible. Aspiritech regularly tests the HCP websites and provides detailed reports of any errors or UX encumbrances. Aspiritech communicates very clearly and in detail so our team can easily locate, replicate, and then fix any bugs.
Aspiritech’s team, led by Samantha Sayres, makes sure that all of Astellas’ QA needs are met. Sayers told the crowd, “We use UAT (user acceptance testing) scripts directly from Astellas to update and maintain their HCP websites and applications. Also before Apple releases a new IOS update, Aspiritech tests the beta software with each Astellas affiliated site to make sure all functions run smoothly.”
Data Integrity, CRM Cleanup
Aspiritech also works with Astellas on data integrity. Aspiritech reviews all of the newly created HCP records in our CRM for data integrity and updates the records. We need company data for sales reports and for customer service.
Oftentimes the data that our team works with changes. For example, in Astellas’s CRM, the name of a HCP, address, or contact’s title might be out of date. It’s Aspiritech’s job to enrich the data, verify the accuracy and ensure no duplicate records occur while doing so.
Aspiritech’s team organizes and compiles the information into easily accessible formats, and creates detailed data analysis on inbound tickets. They organize the material so we can sort by topic, keyword, and numerical value for seamless searching. The clean data must be accessible and comprehensive so we can create reports for quarterly and annual meetings.
The work they do for us, “It’s time-consuming and detailed,” said Rachel Mather. “[Working with Aspiritech] really frees our data support team here at Astellas, it’s very helpful.”
The Astellas and Aspiritech partnership confirms the advantages of leveraging outsourced QA Testing. It also confirms the value that diversity, and specifically neurodiversity, brings to the table in our workforce. Mather said, “A diverse team is a stronger, more powerful team.”
