EDGE 3 launched in South Africa — EDGE Research Management

We are thrilled to share with you that EDGE 3 Production (LIVE) was launched in South Africa last month to all sites including University of Cape Town and UCT Clinical Research. South Africa are the first country to receive the new version of software and have acted as our pilot before we rollout to other countries from across the globe. These include England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, Belgium and India.

We recently spoke with Annemie Stewart, Operations Manager and South Africa’s Regional Support Lead for the rollout of EDGE 3, to see how the launch has gone. Annemie spoke very positively and explained how her end-users have been very excited about the change and have adapted very quickly, taking it in their stride:

“For us, the launch has gone really smoothly, and our users have found it easy to adapt to EDGE 3. They are really taking it in their stride and have been quite excited about the change. The EDGE team have been very responsive to any queries I have had. So we are very happy.”

Annemie also shared some feedback on how EDGE 3 now looks, which is beneficial to users accessing EDGE 3 for the first time:

“It looks a bit different. So the first time you open it, it's like OK, whoa, it looks different, but then you realise it's exactly the same functionality. I feel like the interface has been transposed basically, so if you just make that switch in your head then it's easy to find stuff again. The added bonus is it now looks better on mobile phones so it's really helpful to have the new fresh look.”

We also asked Annemie to share a useful tip for other Regional Support Leads who are yet to go through the EDGE 3 rollout:

“I think the tip would just be, you know, communicate as early as you can to your users about when exactly this is going to happen. Ask them to make sure they log in on the first day after the upgrade to check for themselves and to ensure all their projects are still the same. Advise them to check that they can add new users, that sort of thing so that you know any minor hiccups can be can be sorted out right away.”

Annemie highlighted to us that EDGE 3 brings some great improvement on workflows, including functionality to tag staff and set reminders. This is something that Annemie believes will really improve their turn around time for studies starting up and shared how this change from EDGE 2 will really drive things forward for South Africa:

“Well, for us EDGE 3 has really great improvement on the workflows as we can tag people and set reminders. I think that's really going to help us improve our turnaround time for the startup of new projects. We're also really excited to start using the new calendar. Whereas before, we didn’t really use the calendar that much.”

The South Africa launch is a huge milestone for us and we continue to support Annemie as well as firm up our release plan for our global userbase. More information on this will be shared with our users as soon as possible.