Douglas Pharmaceuticals brings structure and accountability to its matrix environment

Douglas Pharmaceuticals began in 1967 behind the counter of a West Auckland pharmacy, with a chemist who believed he could do more. Since then, it has turned into New Zealand’s largest family-owned healthcare company. With a team of 500, Douglas develops and manufactures high-potency medicines for over 50 countries. 

“We’re committed to improving lives through delivering innovative and affordable healthcare, which is a purpose everyone at Douglas is passionate about,” shares Michael Ishak, Chief Transformation Officer at Douglas Pharmaceuticals.

Managing scale and complexity

At Douglas, complexity is a given. The company juggles over 400 active projects every year, ranging from product launches to construction initiatives, some valued at up to NZD50 million, and most span more than a year. These projects run in a matrix environment, where contributors come from departments like manufacturing, quality, and finance, but still report to their functional managers. That means project managers don’t have direct authority over the people doing the work—making it harder to coordinate tasks, track progress, and ensure accountability.

In addition to internal projects, Douglas also provides contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) services—offering end-to-end pharmaceutical development and manufacturing for global partners. These CDMO projects often involve external stakeholders, strict timelines, and varying compliance standards depending on the target market.

The pharmaceutical industry itself introduces further challenges. “With different regulations across markets and long development timelines, global political or economic shifts can suddenly affect projects approved years ago,” explains Ishak. “We have to be both robust and agile to succeed.”

Bringing structure across the board

To address these issues, Douglas needed a system that could bring structure and visibility across the portfolio, keep external stakeholders informed, and align business and technical teams that often work on different delivery rhythms. The company chose Smartsheet as the backbone of its project management—bringing people, processes, and data into one place. 

“Smartsheet’s ease of use, flexibility, cloud-based setup, and cost-effectiveness made it the right choice to replace the scattered tools we were using,” says Ishak.

The first step was to put a clear governance model in place across the company. “Once we agreed on shared definitions for things like projects and programs, everyone started speaking the same language—and that was a game changer for scaling,” Ishak explains.

Setting up for success

Next, Douglas focused on building buzz across the team—driving a bottom-up change management effort that showed people how Smartsheet could help with everyday headaches like juggling resources and planning ahead. Having strong support from leadership made a big difference. “Our executives saw how Smartsheet could improve visibility, accountability, and decision-making, and they helped make it part of how we work,” says Ishak. “The Smartsheet team was also a huge help—they not only helped overcome technical challenges but also truly focused on our success.”

Soon, the entire team adopted Smartsheet as its central hub for project work—tracking incidents, changes, and tasks in one place. To bring more structure and consistency, Douglas introduced Control Center, which automatically creates new projects and enforces governance standards across teams. Douglas-specific templates and toolkits help the company maintain order across hundreds of projects, while rolling up data into real-time portfolio dashboards. The company also implemented shared collaboration spaces, allowing cross-functional teams and external stakeholders, such as vendors and partners, to coordinate in real time, exchange updates, and contribute directly to project documents.

Making full use of Smartsheet

To take planning a step further, Douglas uses Smartsheet data in conjunction with resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. The ERP link ensures actual timesheet data from Smartsheet correctly updates project and product maintenance financials, so teams can see actuals alongside budgets—all in one place. The CRM connection adds foresight—by showing which sales opportunities are likely to close. All of this flows into internal dashboards, helping teams make faster, more informed decisions with a real-time view of what’s happening now and what’s coming down the pipeline.

Douglas staff soon began building their own solutions in Smartsheet to solve everyday challenges. For example, the health and safety team built an internal incident management portal through Smartsheet. 

“Smartsheet is easy for first-time users and surprisingly flexible,” says Andrei Veloso, Project Manager at Douglas Pharmaceuticals. “With a bit of creativity, it turns into a really useful business tool—and the fact that it’s now used widely on our manufacturing floor shows how valuable it’s become.”

Bringing order to the matrix project setup

Finally, Douglas introduced Resource Management by Smartsheet. “Our employees picked it up quickly, which shows you how user-friendly the platform is,” says Veloso. “Now, 80% of our teams are using the solution.” Resource managers—who coordinate team members across multiple projects—have gained a clearer view of workloads. They can now see at a glance who’s available, what people are working on, plan ahead with more confidence, and balance competing demands more smoothly. “Resource Management enables us to unlock multidimensional reporting,” adds Veloso. “We can now compare planned work with what’s actually happening—across both our project portfolio and our product lifecycle activities. That helps us plan future work more realistically, based on real data, not assumptions.” This also makes employee roles clearer, creating a sense of ownership and accountability.

With Smartsheet, visibility has improved across the board. “Smartsheet unites people, data, and technology into one system,” says Ishak. “Real-time dashboards and portfolio roll-ups provide a single source of truth, enabling proactive decisions and strong governance.” The platform helps Douglas manage risks, flag delays, detect resource conflicts early, and track performance against baselines.

More security, less effort

That visibility extends to external stakeholders, who can securely access shared workspaces and stay up to date with relevant project information—helping everyone stay aligned, while maintaining an audit trail, which is essential in a highly regulated industry where clarity, control, and compliance are non-negotiable. “Smartsheet’s built-in security features—like single sign-on (SSO), domain restrictions, and permission settings—make it much easier to manage who has access to what,” says Ishak. “We’re careful about the data we store in the platform, and we back that up with our own internal processes, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and regular staff training.”

Control Center has also saved a lot of time by handling the setup and management of projects at scale. 

“I used to spend half my day helping teams configure their projects,” says Veloso. “Now, I save about two hours daily. I can focus more on delivering impactful change. It has helped me become a more efficient communicator and project manager.”

Improving continuously

Looking ahead, Douglas is working to digitise change management processes, particularly in areas governed by strict quality and compliance protocols. The team is also exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) could help improve workflows. “We’re excited about what AI-powered execution could bring to the table,” says Ishak. “The idea of Smartsheet using generative AI to help build schedules and flag risks based on real data—that’s a game changer.”

Ishak is confident that Smartsheet’s role at Douglas will continue to expand. “More employees are now asking to use Smartsheet for additional use cases, and we see it becoming a unifying tool across the entire organisation—one that supports smarter decisions, better collaboration, and continuous growth,” he says.