Global Pharmaceutical Company Modernizes Critical Infrastructure

Challenge

A global pharmaceutical company enlisted WWT to develop an infrastructure modernization strategy and program spanning enterprise, manufacturing and supply chain operations. The organization required this modernization in order to reduce operational risk and improve operational visibility. 

Pharmaceutical supply chains have become increasingly complex with a global reach that has expanded substantially in the past several years. With the growth of outsourced contract manufacturing, the maturity of new modalities such as gene therapy, and innovative ways to reach consumers, this organization needed the modern technology infrastructure that would support an evolving business and manufacturing model and allow the company to maintain their position of market leadership. 

Building on a previous engagement in which WWT developed an Enterprise and Operations Segmentation Strategy, this current project would execute that strategy as part of a more comprehensive modernization effort. To be successful, the strategy had to be:

• Aligned: It had to clearly map global business needs to technology and encompass governance, architectures, standards and operating models.
• Flexible: Key areas of the business, including R&D, manufacturing and logistics, required flexibility for their unique operations.
• Standardized: Central and local IT required a more standardized technology infrastructure to improve levels of care and support.
• Secure: Executives communicated a high priority on the security of critical infrastructure and systems.
• Efficient: This transformation needed to be accomplished with minimal downtime for the business.

Solution

Aligning Technology Decisions to Business Needs

The success of global modernization programs requires an in-depth understanding of both information technology as well as the needs of the key business areas that will ultimately leverage and depend on the technologies for success. WWT helped bridge this gap by connecting our industry and technology teams with our customer across enterprise IT, cybersecurity, R&D, manufacturing and distribution to:

• Identify non-technical business needs and measures of success.
• Foster collaboration between business units and IT to develop tech-enabled innovation and operating models.
• Organize and optimize strategy and technology requirements in support of the business.
• Accelerate technology decision-making by making it "about the business".
• Develop an overall modernization strategy that defined specific technology requirements and standards, how it should be implemented, and how it would be supported.

Enabling Great Decisions, Faster

After developing the overall modernization strategy and technology requirements, the WWT team leveraged our state-of-the-art  Advanced Technology Center (ATC, a $500M virtual lab ecosystem used to educate teams and assist in the design and build of innovative technology solutions that drive business outcomes for our customers. 

Together, WWT and our customer leveraged the ATC to develop an approved architecture design and migration plan to power the organization's ability to provision new services faster, leverage automation and orchestration to reduce the cost of ownership, empower development teams, and better secure critical infrastructure and assets. All of these initiatives were aligned to the needs of the business.

The technology decisions resulting from the ATC engagement directly impacted:

• IT and OT network architecture.
• Wireless network infrastructure.
• Software-defined WAN infrastructure.
• Firewalls & Continuous Threat Detection for both IT and OT.
• Data visibility.

Execution at a Global Scale

WWT has a proven track record in executing large, global programs, enabling our customers to realize business benefits much more quickly than either going it alone or managing multiple partners to implement the strategy.

As part of this engagement, WWT ordered, configured, stored and staged hardware within our Global Integration Centers, ensuring 100% failure-free, on-time solutions delivery for 40 manufacturing, R&D and commercial sites across 20 countries within seven months.

Business & Technology Outcomes 

By modernizing their Enterprise and Operations Infrastructure, the pharmaceutical company now has: 

• Security of critical infrastructure, operations and assets.
• Flexibility to execute on critical business needs.
• Increased visibility and predictability of key industrial operations.
• Greater operational resilience, driving increased production yield and quality.
• Optimized logistics and supply chain operations.
• Faster Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR) for their technology support team.

WWT's scale to execute global programs, our proven project management office (PMO) and our governance models ensured the successful execution of 500+ changes with zero business disruptions.