Pharmaceutical Company: Workstation Transformation

Accenture helped a large pharmaceutical company create a single, unified desktop platform for its more than 75,000 workstations across 40 countries as part of an overarching drive to reduce costs and fit the organization for high performance.

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In 2004, one of the world’s largest research-based biomedical and pharmaceutical companies set an overarching goal to reduce operating costs. Within the IT organization, executive leadership examined ways to improve IT efficiency and effectiveness, while also reducing variances across diverse locations. Accenture’s most recent research into High Performance IT reinforces this objective, indicating that high performers show highly developed capabilities in IT execution and consistently invest in IT innovation, especially to supply technology that meets employee demands for functionality.

In a deliberate stride toward high performance, the pharmaceutical company decided to standardize workstation technology across all of its sites.

The company turned to Accenture for guidance on this effort—leveraging a business relationship shared by the two organizations for many years. Specifically, Accenture offered unmatched experience in the pharmaceutical industry, a track record of successful projects with the company, and a clear understanding of its clients’ culture and organization.

Most of all, the pharmaceutical company valued Accenture’s pragmatic approach to the workstation transformation project, which emphasized both process and technology. Indeed, Accenture’s holistic solution combined a strategic viewpoint with procedurally correct desktop management processes and advanced workstation technology.

To staff the project, Accenture stepped forward with a team from Accenture Technology Consulting, including deeply skilled technologists from the Workplace, Technology & Collaboration organization. Working closely with the pharmaceutical company, Accenture defined a standard operating model for how desktop support services would be delivered globally.

A pioneering aspect of the newly defined model was Accenture’s approach to desktop support at the 200 sites. Using the Accenture Service Events offering, the team identified the most requested support services and diagrammed process flows for these service events. Accenture then devised a straightforward way to address common problems on-site and escalate exception cases to more highly skilled resources. This solution not only expedited resolutions for workstation issues but also helped reduce operating costs.

When the pharmaceutical company approved the new desktop management services model, Accenture’s role evolved to that of a project manager.

Accenture assembled its own team of change management professionals to conduct on-site meetings in Asia, Europe and the United States with the pharmaceutical company’s business and IT employees. The meetings helped educate people about the impending change and how it would impact specific work processes, including several new workstation features designed to improve employee efficiency.

With Accenture’s help, the pharmaceutical company implemented one global standardized desktop environment for 75,000 workstations in more than 40 countries and in 20 different languages. Overall, the effort reduced the company’s IT operating costs by $15 million, which can be directed into critical pharmaceutical research and development.

A majority of the cost savings resulted from standardizing the managed desktop environments of more than 90 percent of the employees and from improving the way in which corporate IT provides desktop management services. To date, the pharmaceutical company has reduced desk side support visits by 25 percent and decreased help desk calls by 30 percent globally.

Based on the results of the desktop management services project, the pharmaceutical company began working with Accenture to outline requirements for outsourcing infrastructure support services. This ensuing project, part of the pharmaceutical company’s overall effort with Accenture to trim a total of US$100 million out of the IT budget, puts the pharmaceutical company directly within sight of its goal: to become a high-performance business.

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