New technologies and digital capabilities are changing how life sciences companies interact with their patients, doctors, researchers, healthcare regulators, and business partners. This places the IT operations’ performance in the spotlight, as a key enabler of digital transformation.
Our client, a leading healthcare company, realized that its highly complex and heterogeneous digital operating model was preventing them to perform efficiently at a global scale. With established operations in more than one hundred countries, the company’s IT department needed to have more flexible and consistent approaches to keep up with the company’s pace of transformation. Siloed and rigid IT processes, incompatible systems and applications, and sourcing strategies managed locally with unclear boundaries between responsibilities were all highly impacting IT costs and service quality. In this context, repetitive and time-consuming tasks were impeding the company’s IT staff to focus on higher-value activities that would make a difference to the business.
BearingPoint leveraged a cross-country team of experts in technology transformation, HR and business strategies, and digital change management to support the client across all its locations in Europe, the US, and Asia. They analyzed the company’s current IT operating model, which supported the definition of a comprehensive transformation strategy, including a new make-or-buy policy, a target organization program, a technological roadmap, and a three-year performance plan.
This approach involved streamlining and consolidating all operations globally, while splitting the IT landscape into three service areas: application; infrastructure; and end-to-end user support management. For each area, a global strategic partner was selected to replace more than a hundred legacy local providers. BearingPoint assisted the client during the entire infrastructure and user-support management sourcing process, from vendor selection through to contractual governance and smooth transition of services. Each partner was granted full accountability and incentives to significantly transform their service areas, as a joint financial goal in line with the company’s strategy. This resulted in an ambitious digital transformation portfolio including automating operations tasks, implementing new digital channels and self-service solutions, enacting massive cloud migration, creating a digital workplace, and leveraging artificial intelligence and chatbots.
BearingPoint also steered these initiatives through an efficient and proactive project management structure, supported with business and IT change management activities.
The new digital transformation strategy has enabled the healthcare company to operate at a global scale with consistent and seamless IT service response efficiency. This positions the client’s IT function as a strategic operation, having the technical and cultural foundation to support business growth and to foster innovation.
The client is now better prepared to handle merger, acquisition, and divestiture activities, as well as quickly engage and collaborate with other biotech companies. The company is now engaged in an ambitious savings roadmap to reduce operating costs over a multi-year digital transformation effort to fuel future digital investments.