How Pharmascience used Adobe Sign to accelerate digital transformation and eliminate paper-based approvals

Pharmascience's growth met a changing workplace

Pharmascience has built its reputation on collaboration, innovation, and operational excellence. As one of Canada's largest pharmaceutical companies, with more than 2,000 products distributed across over 60 countries, maintaining efficient and compliant processes has always been critical to supporting growth.

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced nearly 1,500 employees into remote work, existing approval processes were suddenly put under pressure. What had previously been an inconvenience quickly became a significant operational challenge.

When paper became the bottleneck

Before adopting Adobe Sign, many approval workflows still relied on paper-based signatures.

While some GxP processes were managed through an existing electronic signature system, the majority required employees to print, sign, scan, and circulate documents manually. For documents requiring multiple approvals, the process often involved several rounds of printing and scanning before work could move forward.

As teams became fully distributed, these workflows created delays, bottlenecks, and unnecessary administrative burden across the organization.

At the same time, Pharmascience needed a solution that would support FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliance while meeting an aggressive implementation timeline.

Finding a faster path to validation

The challenge wasn't selecting an e-signature platform. It was validating and deploying it quickly enough to support business continuity.

With limited internal bandwidth available for validation activities, Pharmascience sought external expertise to accelerate the process whilemaintaining compliance requirements.

The company partnered with Montrium and leveraged the Adobe Sign Fast Track Validation Toolkit to simplify what would otherwise have been a lengthy validation effort.

Moving from paper approvals to digital workflows

Over the course of two weeks, Montrium provided the validation deliverables required to support Adobe Sign implementation using a risk-based validation approach.

Rather than building and executing validation activities from scratch, Pharmascience was able to leverage pre-existing validation scripts and expert guidance to accelerate deployment significantly.

Once implemented, Adobe Sign provided a compliant, centralized approach for managing both GxP and non-GxP approvals. Employees could securely review and sign documents from anywhere, while maintaining the controls required in a regulated environment.

The result was a faster, more streamlined approval process that fit the realities of a distributed workforce.

Building a more connected and efficient organization

The impact extended well beyond replacing handwritten signatures.

Within months of implementation, Adobe Sign had been adopted across all 40 GxP processes throughout the organization. Teams in legal, finance, IT, validation, and other departments also established structured non-GxP workflows using the platform.

The company reduced its dependence on paper, eliminated delays associated with physical approvals, and created a more collaborative environment where compliance and convenience could coexist.

For an organization operating at global scale, the ability to complete approvals quickly and consistently helped support ongoing research, development, and quality operations without interruption.

Impact summary

By implementing Adobe Sign with Montrium's Fast Track Validation Toolkit, Pharmascience accelerated its transition to compliant digital approvals while avoiding months of internal validation work. The organization eliminated paper-based bottlenecks, expanded electronic signatures across all GxP processes, and created a more efficient, collaborative foundation for both regulated and business-critical workflows.