AstraZeneca

They asked us to help them:

• Reduce spending on IT from 5% to 3% of total revenue so they could invest more in research,
• Make it easier for the salesforce to do their jobs and bring business growth, and
• Create a great place to work by simplifying processes and boosting collaboration

AstraZeneca cut the number of IT staff overall and re-skilled some staff, creating 250 new roles. They established a Global Technology Centre in India, bringing capability and control back in-house, cutting the number of external suppliers and simplifying IT operations. This meant the company outsourced only 40% of services to suppliers in 2016, compared to 70% at the start of the programme.

We helped AstraZeneca re-design their operating model to bring IT closer to the business. Business-facing IT teams now have end-to-end accountability for IT solutions and software applications that support their staff and new, local IT teams to provide a single point of accountability at every company site.

We helped them introduce cloud-based software for the sales force, finance and HR to make systems easier to use and save money. In parallel, they launched a programme to replace out of date, legacy IT infrastructure with industry leading new technology. This decommissioned or migrated over 50% of servers, and cut major service outages by 30%.

With our help, AstraZeneca have exceeded their original target. They’ve cut their IT costs by 30% a year compared to equivalent spending in 2013. Crucially, staff perception of the IT department has improved year-on-year from a low of 56% to 75% in 2016.