Tiffany Wolfe Bus 550 December 7,

 Established in 1920 in Brussels, Belgium  Expanded to the U.S. in 1930  2009 total global revenue € 3.1 billion  Net sales  51% Europe  35% North America  14% other  Originally three sectors  Film ( )  Pharmaceuticals  Chemicals 2

 Films  BOPP (biaxially-oriented polypropylene) and cellulose films for specialty packaging, labeling, graphic arts and industrial products.  Food and beverages, labels, security products, industrial membranes, health, and pharmaceutical industries  € 396 million in sales in 2001  Chemicals  Polyester resins (molding and toner)  Acrylic resins (hard plastics)  € 677 million in sales in 2003  Pharma  € 1.4 billion in global sales Majority of sales are from Zyrtec 3

 Job Titles  1991-Corporate Auditor  1993-Management Controller of Pharma Operations and business groups depend upon IT  1996-Responsible for Pharma MIS  1997-Responsible for central services across Belgium HR, IT infrastructure  1998-Administrative and group IT Director  2000-Administrative and IT/IS Director  End of Member of the Senior management Team 4

 Information technology/information system (IT/IS)  Organization  Redundancy  Inconsistency  Inefficiency 5

 Role of IT/IS:  Information Technology Operations Establish an “efficient, robust, and strong motorway” of information that would help support business processes, and improve the end users’ productivity.  Information Systems Development Understand business requirements and priorities Develop, implement, maintain, and support IS to meet these requirements. 6

 This global vision concerned:  Infrastructure  Hardware/software  Communication  Created Global IT/IS Standards:  To share experience and develop synergies across the group  To reduce heterogeneity, inconsistencies, and hidden costs  To improve communication and cost effectiveness 7

 Single system  Standardized hardware and software systems  Oracle for database application  Microsoft Office for desktop productivity  Compaq desktop PCs  NT 4 Operating System  Contract negotiations  Group Contract IT/IS Manager  Group vs. each sector; individually Cost savings of € 2.7 million by

 1996  IT/IS activities were independently initiated within each sector and location. Inconsistency Redundancy Higher cost  2001  Wanted to establish global IT/IS standards Develop synergy across groups All report to Damien Improve communication across groups Reduce inconsistency 9

 1 st step in improving operational support system  Hub of the UCB global network  Upgraded their computers  Created a central computer room  Underground  300 servers ran production applications  From all sectors and geographies  Back-ups were handled automatically by a new robot-driven system  Server operations and monitoring were outsourced  Several miles away from the nearest UCB facility  Back-up: original computer room 10

 In 1993, first began  No computers  One person covering the call center  Only spoke one language  In 1998  Six people  Staff spoke two languages  In 2002  Centralized database  Supported 200 applications  Call center staff spoke 7-10 languages  High turnover 11

 Regional Operations  America, Asia, and Europe  Report directly to Damien  Use corporate standards when appropriate  Local needs of various business groups  Variations in technology  Global Operations  Concentrated on infrastructure that applied to all sectors and regions Such as WAN and corporate network standards 12

 Global Development  Developing and delivering technological solutions in use by all sectors and regions, such as PeopleSoft  Sectorial Development  Developing and delivering applications for specific sectors, such as knowledge management for Pharma  Major Is Projects:  Knowledge Management  3R Portal Project 13

 Past  60% of all documents were in foreign languages  All on paper  Present  Now all written in English  All critical documents are digital  They have staff dedicated to indexing and translating documents:  Notes from physicians  Published scientific papers related to drug development- competitors  UCB docs- research analysis and in house research reports 14

 They had robust security  Easy-to-use folder organization for storing and retrieving their 90,000 documents  Pharmaceutical industry  More money was spent on the creation of knowledge than on the equipment used to produce the products developed from that knowledge  Important because pharmaceutics is a knowledge- building process  Laws related to pharmaceutics, which vary by country, require companies to keep documents associated with the drugs for the life of the product plus five years 15

 Designed to provide access to key information through a customizable/personalized Web portal.  Two key layers:  Corporate level of information Everyone in the company had access to the same information Single user name/password is needed for access to all network applications  Sectorial and functional layer Including site specific information relevant to specific job responsibilities; individually tailored to the person’s job Personalized Web portal to deliver appropriate information based on the identity of each person Access could be denied to inappropriate information 16

 Improved and changed IT/IS  Now have the foundational building blocks for a next generation knowledge management system 17

1. What does UCB stand for? a. United Company of Belgium b. Universal Company of Belgium c. University of California, Berkley d. None of the above 2. Which one was NOT one of the issues UCB faced? a. Inefficiency b. Organization c. Redundancy d. None of the above 3. Vincent Damien was…. a. the great, great grandson of one of the founders of UCB. b. president of UCB. c. mostly responsible for reorganizing and restructuring UCB’s IT/IS departments from d. All of the above 18

DDCDDC 19

 UCB: Managing Information for Globalization and Innovation article    guidelines guidelines 

 Union Chimique Belge 21