Challenge

The Vice President IT in a $20B global pharmaceutical company sought to transform the organization from a reactive, order-taking organization to a strategic business partner. The company’s use of IT was lagging behind industry standards. Gaining a broad view of all existing and planned efforts was virtually impossible. Decision-making and governance of projects was decentralized and only focused on “bottom up” execution. It was also clear that IT investment levels needed to increase to support business growth. The selection of these investments became a strategic issue for the business division leaders within R&D, manufacturing, and sales. Once initiated, a critical need for consistent management of investments emerged.

The VP faced several challenges related to the transformation of his organization, including a parochial view of IT support organizations, no tracking of business benefits, no basis for IT to participate in discussions for selection or prioritization of projects, and a project execution focused organization.

Solution

UMT was asked to support the transformation of the organization by introducing the Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server (formerly known as “UMT Portfolio Manager”) and a project portfolio management process which included delivering value through 2 major dimensions:

1. Governance: Provide an enterprise view of the portfolios within and across divisions.

2. Communication: Improve the dialog between IT and Business leaders.

And, position the organization to evolve portfolio management in an additional three dimensions:

3. Alignment: Align IT projects with business strategy.

4. Prioritization: Prioritize investment based on strategic value.

5. Optimization: Apply portfolio analysis to optimize the utilization of resources and investments.

Big Pharma: IT Project Portfolio Management

Improves Business Alignment and Transforms Organization

A UMT Case Study

Create

Portfolio

Select

Portfolio

Plan

Portfolio

Manage

Portfolio

Contributors: Business Division and Functional Leaders, Sen-ior Management, UMT Consultant, 1 UMT Account Manager

Time to Success: 8 Months Deliverables: 5 dimension portfolio management process Benefits: Visibility, IT Business Alignment, better communication

The introduction of new project portfolio process was a major shift within the IT organization and the business divisions.

A phased approach was required to allow the process, IT organization, and business divisions to all mature and evolve together. The first step was to gain visibility into the existing inventory of IT projects. The creation of this

inventory enabled IT to engage business divisions in broader discussions of not just system requirements, but also business needs. Gaining control of demand management and the ability to consistently track all IT projects was a critical first step in transforming the IT organization. With the VP of IT and his senior management team, UMT designed, communicated, and supported the processes and workflow for demand management and portfolio tracking. These initial processes were designed with a vision for future expansion of the IT Project Portfolio capabilities to support project selection, prioritization, and portfolio optimization.

Results

A robust process was implemented and supported first within a few critical IT divisions (R&D Informatics, Sales and Marketing, and Manufacturing). Over time, the process was adopted across the whole organization and a new organizational unit was developed to support the process.

The IT organization has achieved a new level of participation with their business partners. IT projects are viewed as business projects with an IT component.

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