PDI, Inc.

Pharmaceutical Services – IT Transformation

The Challenge

The Company completed an IT Risk Assessment with TBI to review and assess their technology and application portfolios. The major goal of this study was to ensure that IT risk was minimized and the appropriate IT investments are made to create the highest benefit for the company.

Several key areas of risk were identified with corresponding recommendations. These included:

  • The need to improve the IT operational maturity model from Reactionary Management (Limited processes & tools are utilized; IT reacts rather than manages change effectively) to Operational Stability (Base-line processes and tools are in place to ensure execution and support stability).
  • The need to establish a formal IT governance structure including rules of engagement and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with the business units.
  • The need to rebuild the IT organization to ensure that appropriate staff, skills, and competencies are in place and are being allocated properly across.
  • The need to institutionalize project management, reporting, IT metrics, and IT delivery execution.
  • The need to standardize and document key systems, processes, procedures, and functions.
  • The need to consolidate the IT organizations, technologies, and competencies while ensuring that critical functions such as IT Security, Data Management/DBA, and Program Management are represented and those roles/functions clearly defined.

The TBI Solution

TBI proposed a six month project to help the company staff an interim Chief Information Officer position with responsibility for the strategic development of the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure, organization, and associated functions in support of the Information Technology groups. While the overall goal of this project was to reduce business risk by improving IT operational capabilities, it also focused on advising and mentoring the IT leadership and staff to be more self-sufficient and capable in delivery of IT services. Several specific objectives of this project were:

The Results

  • Reduction of business and IT risk while improving IT operational maturity from Reactive Management to Operational Stability.
  • Improve IT’s alignment and interaction with the business units by establishing an IT Governance framework including roles, responsibilities, rules of engagement, and SLAs.
  • Created a more strategic, communicative, and transparent IT function encouraging business partnership and project sponsorship while developing and reporting appropriate IT performance metrics.
  • Consolidate the IT function including organizations, technologies, application portfolios, support, core competencies, and staff. This included reviewing and staffing critical IT functions such as Security, Data Management, DBAs, Support Services, and Vendor/supplier Management.
  • Established and aligned the IT Strategy and Architecture to appropriately reflect the long range Business Strategy while considering the short term tactical business requirements and needs
  • Institutionalized Project Management throughout the IT organization to ensure seamless IT project execution and delivery while improving scarce resource allocation, expectation management, and overall execution communication.

We advised and mentored the current senior IT management team and provide strategic guidance and recommendations to the Executive Team. We also assist in the identification, selection, and hiring of key IT staff members including the permanent Chief Information Officer.

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