Creating a business‐focused IT function
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| Pages | 28-31 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14754390580000834 |
| Author | Michael Riermeier,Tim Zimmermann |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
OMPANIES IN FAST-CHANGING sectors
need to restructure their organizations to
meet new demands placed upon them by
globalization’s steady advance. This is
especially true for pharmaceutical companies. One of
the world’s leading research-based healthcare companies
asked Roland Berger Strategy Consultants to help
redesign its informatics career development path. The
pharmaceutical company, with 65,000 staff active in
more than 150 countries, had recently introduced a
new IT organizational structure and now faced the
challenge of ensuring that the right people were
working in the right areas to bring the new structure to
life. This article describes how the company’s
competency model was perfected and the HR
development approach harmonized.
Creating a global outlook
There were several drivers for bringing in the new
system. The company had recently introduced a new
organizational structure in the IT department on a
global scale. Ambitious goals were tied to this new
framework: ideally the structure should create global
processes, maximize synergies to ensure cost savings,
increase performance, pool data and help establish
more clearly defined centers of expertise.
Although the pharmaceutical company was active
throughout the world, its organizational focus was not
always global. Without wishing to neglect local factors,
the company understood that it needed to tend more
carefully to the international marketplace. It wanted to
shift emphasis from the local to the global throughout
all its functions, from marketing and supply chain to
IT and communication.
Rebuilding informatics
The company also wanted the informatics function to
widen its focus. Ideally, employees working in informatics
should be conversant with standard business practice,
better enabling them to imagine business demands.
Traditionally, IT people have been viewed as “technical
people” who are primarily driven by technology and not
by business. But because IT is becoming more and more
of a commodity, it needs to reposition itself and sharpen
its profile. People working in IT need to create
innovative products spurred by workplace requirements
and deliver their services at low cost.
What was to change?
In light of the shake-up within the organization, the
company had to adjust its existing competency model.
Competencies help individuals and organizations to
improve their performance and deliver results, but in
successful companies, competency models aren’t
stagnant. They evolve to meet changing needs.
We wanted to ensure that adjustments made to the
competency model would have impact, leading to real
C
28 Volume 4 Issue 6 September/October 2005
Creating a
business-
focused IT
function
Introducing new career paths at a
global pharmaceutical company
Pressure is on IT functions around the world to be
driven by business rather than technology. But
implementing new global career paths and
competencies is no easy task. Michael Riermeier and
Tim Zimmermann describe how their company
realigned the competency model and introduced
alternative career paths to a global pharmaceutical
company’s IT function.
by Michael Riermeier and Tim Zimmermann
Roland Berger Strategy Consultants
© Melcrum Publishing Ltd. 2005 For more information visit www.melcrum.com or e-mail info@melcrum.com
To continue reading
Request your trial