The People Behind the Products: Brian Mundy

My role is to help our products go from concept to delivery by setting a strategy and vision for that product. I then work with my team of product managers and our development teams to execute on that strategy and build the products to meet the needs of our clients and help address problems in the industry. I bring together all the different stakeholders throughout the process to ensure successful delivery.

My favorite part is absolutely meeting with clients. Whether it's attending a trade show or conference and getting to meet them there, joining a sales call, conducting client interviews during the development process — any time I can talk to a client, hear what they like about what we do, hear where they're struggling with, and come up with ideas together of ways we can improve. That's by far my favorite thing.

In order to be successful in my job, I gotta get out there, in the market or in front of clients.

Two of my favorite sayings are “Nothing Interesting Happens in the Office”, and “Your opinion, although interesting, is irrelevant”, meaning it does not matter what I think we should do and what I think the system should do. It's what our clients need to do. It's what our users need to do.

My background and experience have always been working in clinical systems. I've been in product management now just about 12 years or so, evolving from an individual product owner role early on. Over the intervening years, I took on additional responsibilities for products, eventually moving to more strategic roles where I'm setting strategy across a portfolio of products.

I’ve worked in clinical systems ranging from document management systems (SOPs, training, regulatory document management, quality management, etc.) to electronic trial master file (eTMF) systems, clinical trial management systems (CTMS systems), safety document management, feasibility applications, and patient recruitment — all over the spectrum.

Before joining the product management world, I spent time as a solutions consultant, so a lot of my responsibilities were to help the sales process by demonstrating new products and helping clients understand how products could meet their needs. So, a large part of my background throughout my career has always been: What will it look like to demo this? How would a client use it?

It's a complex process. Initially, we do a market analysis to see what new problems the industry is trying to solve. After we look at the competitive landscape, we distill all the different inputs down to a set of priorities and features that we want to help address the problems of our end users.

It's up to our engineering teams to estimate the complexity and size of what’s needed. Throughout the development cycle, it’s an iterative process. Every two weeks, we evaluate and reevaluate with internal stakeholders as well as end users to ensure that what we thought we needed is in fact what should be built.

We use agile development and what that means is we take these big features and bodies of work and we break them down into smaller components. At the end of every development cycle, which is called a sprint, we're able to actually deliver functioning software. Now it may take us many sprints to get to the end product, but at least we can have these iterative development deliverables that we can then pressure test for whether they meet the acceptance criteria that we set forth.

We have a couple of different ways that we do it. Especially within the context of our new Trialtrove+ and Sitetrove+ products, we started with initial market interviews. We set up phone interviews with clients, prospective clients, industry colleagues, and experts to get external feedback on the ideas and the approaches.

As it got a little further along, we used internal QA processes to test functionally. We worked with experts within the organization to try it and make sure it is doing what it should be doing and that the data look right. We also conducted a beta program where we invited a subset of end users who want to be on the leading edge. We wanted to give them unfettered access to what we've built — all while it's still in development. So, they knew what they were using was not the final product.

We monitored what screens they went to, how they used the product, and we conducted interviews and surveys to collect feedback on what they liked, what they didn't like. And then that went right back into our development cycle.

We're continuing to build on that early feedback, as well as the feedback from early demos and client usage. I am always looking at how do we continue to get more of that input and get it earlier on in the process? It's also about establishing connections within the industry. I think this is a huge piece of the puzzle, because then, when I need input or I'm ready to do a beta in the future, I can reach out to these individuals for their insights.

We may include a different person from an organization, but if I've made the connection then they can help me find more contacts to participate. I may not always have a big project, but if there's one small thing that I want to get quick feedback on, I'm building this network of people that we can go out to and say, “Do you have 30 minutes? Take a look at this. Give me your feedback.” You know, trusted colleagues.

This also strengthens our relationships with clients. It gives them the feeling that they're a part of this process. Every initiative is different. So, as I look to the next one, I can't assume I know the answers because I talked to somebody previously.

We are constantly collaborating, whether it's internal subject matter experts reviewing algorithms and how we think we need the data to look, or our data engineering colleagues helping us to structure and organize that data and content, or the data science team. We're infusing a lot of AI into our products now. We have to work very closely with the data science colleagues to make sure that the models they build are ones we can create user experiences around. We work collectively to troubleshoot and solve problems.

We work with product marketing and marketing in general. They ask the hard questions. They challenge us, help us see the gaps. That's been invaluable and not something I've had the luxury of before.

I have a team of product managers who work with me, so we triangulate on all the different features and capabilities we need to deliver across our products. We have one vision, one strategy. Then we split up the execution, working with our development teams. It's all about prioritization.

We have these core products of Trialtrove, Sitetrove, and Pharmaprojects that are the gold standard in the industry. But we've always been hesitant to change what's there in big broad strokes because it's so well known and so well used throughout the industry.

The Trialtrove+ and Sitetrove+ products now deliver innovative ways of looking at the data and new algorithms that give new insights into that data. But it's also about bringing in new datasets and new data sources as well. It's also how can we leverage AI to give new insights, to ease the workflow of our users, either in understanding data or finding data.

That’s the way I've always looked at the Plus products: new ways to answer old questions, answers to new questions we've never been able to answer, or easier ways to answer questions that you've always asked.

One way is Ella, our chatbot. We found through user testing and early feedback was that users could utilize AI to pressure test their own ideas. But then for new users it may be they don't know where to start and this helps them get two steps down the road a little quicker.

One is the AI component. We've had to pivot a couple of times. We had to make a lot of decisions on what's more important, the speed of the system or the accuracy of the system. Even though the data behind it is very well known and described, to teach that to an AI model has proven challenging.

The other piece of learning for us was how do you marry new technology and a new platform with a long-established platform? And how do you make it a seamless user experience when we're really talking about very different technologies? I think where we wound up has ended up looking pretty elegant.

In the past it was a lot of API usage, just consuming raw data, or using the end user interface to export Excel spreadsheets with tables of data to perform analysis outside the system. Where we're really trying to go with these products is introducing more visuals and ways to analyze the data inside the application. While we've always had dashboards and maps and other great visuals, it's now introducing the next generation.

Alongside that, it’s the behind-the-scenes algorithms that really transform the data in ways they weren't able to do before. So, it's a lot of new analytics, new insights. On top of that existing data are new data assets, performance data we've never had before. So basically, there’s new data, new visualizations, and new ways to assess the data.

The industry has come to trust our data as the source of truth. The infusion of the AI brings our expert insights into the application instead of asking our users to just find the data and come up with their own insights. I think that will really set us apart; it moves us from just being a data provider to a robust insights platform.

When we talk about Trialrove+ and Sitetrove+, it took us about a year’s worth of development. But what we found was the first few months involved putting together the architecture, the building blocks of what we’d need. Then another three to four months of development to really build out. But each product is a little different.

Nowadays it's mostly filled with chaperoning my children. I have a 9-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter. So, taking them to sports practices and all their activities. But when we're not doing that, just getting outside with them, going for hikes, going for bike rides.

I'm originally from New York, so I support New York teams. My family is all Philadelphia people supporting the local teams. I'm a Giants and Mets fan, but my wife is Eagles and Phillies. However, we have all become fans of the Philadelphia Union, the soccer team. So, we love getting down to Subaru Park to watch games and bring the kids.

After Trialrove+ and Sitetrove+, we're going to focus on Pharmaprojects+. It’s constant evolution, with new products, more capabilities, more insights. We also want to see how the market reacts to what we put out there with Trialtrove+ and Sitetrove+. What we learn there may change our approach.