Case Study: Boehringer Ingelheim achieves unified global research funding and streamlined grants management with SmartSimple Cloud

How the world’s largest private pharmaceutical company built a unified platform for its research funding process and scaled it across the globe

Boehringer Ingelheim, a global research-driven pharmaceutical company with about 51,000 employees across 18 countries, faced a fragmented, manual grants and funding process handled by siloed affiliates. To standardize intake, improve transparency and compliance, and support diverse funding types, BI selected SmartSimple Cloud (SmartSimple Cloud for Research Grants Management) in 2019 to replace decentralized procedures with a single, flexible platform.

Working with Gen3 to tailor the solution, SmartSimple Cloud was implemented as a centralized platform branded Lectrona that unified grants, sponsorships, investigator-initiated studies and collaborative research workflows. The deployment automated reviewer assignments and reporting, enabled standardized debarment checks, supported translations for local markets, and accelerated reviewer turnaround—allowing BI to respond rapidly to COVID‑19 funding requests—and has been scaled across BI’s 18-country footprint with plans to expand to additional programs.

Boehringer Ingelheim

Stanislav Kischner

Global Data & Platform Owner