Large Global Pharmaceutical Company: IT Governance

Accenture helped this leading global pharmaceutical corporation transform its IT governance structures to enable the quicker integration of new acquisitions and better align its IT investments with its business goals.

• The client is a leading global pharmaceutical corporation based in Europe. Its portfolio focuses on innovation-driven pharmaceuticals, high-quality low-cost generics and over-the-counter products. With over 90,000 employees in 140 countries, the company generated sales of over $32 billion in 2005.
  
  
• Due to recent acquisitions, the client needed to accommodate new organizational entities rapidly. In addition, a decentralized business governance structure, combined with an extensive matrix organization, required more transparent and efficient decision-making within the company's IT community.
  
  
• The client faced several challenges in IT governance:
  • Unclear roles and responsibilities in decision-making processes.
  • Dispersed IT spending outside the review and control of the IT community.
  • Widespread misalignment of service mandates with reporting structure.
  • Fragmented infrastructure organization.
    
    
• The company needed to strengthen its IT governance to more closely align IT investments with business priorities and harness the full strategic value and potential of IT.

• As a proactive partner, Accenture worked closely with key members of the client's IT Board to assess IT governance capabilities.
  
  
• The team applied its deep skills and innovative methodologies in IT governance and strategy, including the IT Governance Maturity Model, as well as extensive experience in the pharmaceutical industry, to benchmark the client's capabilities against comparable companies.
  
  
• Collaborating closely with client executives, the Accenture team facilitated the joint development of detailed responsibilities of key decision-makers.

• Key project deliverables included:
  • IT Governance Handbook defining principles and distribution of decision-making responsibilities within the new IT governance model.
  • Implementation plan for the new IT governance model.
  • Decision paper for the CFO about the company's future global IT infrastructure organization.
    
    
• Armed with new and enhanced IT governance capabilities along with new guidelines, principles and tools, the client is poised to optimize its IT investments and more closely align them with its strategic goals.