Global Life Sciences Leader Accelerates BI Architecture Design

When one of the world’s largest manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and consumer healthcare products needed to modernize its business intelligence (BI) environment, it turned to DXC Technology for help.

To keep pace with its industry, the company had launched a BI modernization initiative that involved updating its enterprise data warehouse to support a hybrid data management environment. This meant the company’s BI and analytics teams would also need to develop and own the IT architecture and processes that worked best for the company. Collaborating with DXC, the company’s technology teams defined the reference architecture, set the guidelines and outlined design principles for future solutions.

The BI project’s foundation involved integrating scattered services into a global, in-house competence center for business support. This would empower the company to propel the development and implementation of its IT-based solutions and operations across the organization.

“We needed a new philosophy about how to combine our various business intelligence agencies into a single entity so we could become a more agile organization,” recalls the company’s global head of business intelligence. “We had a lot of technology at our disposal, but our portfolios were isolated and siloed. Our terminology was all related to specific solution sets, so often our teams would talk past each other.”

DXC presented a clear plan that the company’s management team instantly understood. “It wasn’t abstract,” says the company’s domain management leader. “It was like, ‘Here’s what we’ll give you, this is what it will look like and this is what you’ll get.’”

The company was familiar with DXC, having worked with it in the past on projects involving data center infrastructure, software and ticketing solutions. “We knew we wanted to get something done quickly, not spend years theorizing and experimenting,” says the company’s head of BI and analytics. “We came away from our first meeting feeling enabled by DXC’s statements on our new reference architecture. And we knew it wasn’t just talk.”

Groundwork for change

The company’s team also knew it needed to think about its BI group in a new way. But the question was how? To get started, DXC conducted a series of workshops for the company, beginning with a session on methodology. “It was important to lay out how we were going to work together,” says the company’s head of domain management. “And that first day got us all on the same page with the same level of understanding.”

Next, to begin the organizational process, DXC introduced a foundational document that would act as the starting point for the company’s process document. Then the company and DXC together considered all of the company’s existing technology solutions, services, operating model and data model. The exercise involved asking questions about the company’s processes, challenging its operations and shaping its architecture.

“By the end of the engagement, that foundational document looked like us and became us,” says the domain management leader. “DXC brought a methodology to the process, allowing us to quickly reach a common consensus and produce a living document that represented our philosophies, attitudes, solutions and goals.”

But it was to be more than a point-A-to-B project. “We needed a new philosophy about how to combine our various business intelligence agencies into a single entity so we could become a more agile organization,” recalls the company’s global head of BI.

Living the difference

After the workshops led to a new reference architecture, the company began turning the guidelines into a functional architecture. “When we actually started living this, we could see the first benefits of the new architecture,” says the head of BI and analytics. “Before [we had] the new reference architecture, developing new solutions was fraught with delays. We had no common architecture, so different teams with a preference for certain technologies would suggest what they knew best instead of viewing the project holistically.”

Today the process of approaching a new project is drastically simplified. “Now that first step is about 30 times faster,” the BI and analytics leader says. “We used to spend months discussing solutions. Now that we have a common understanding and a common reference architecture, we can do that same assessment in days.”

A partner for the journey

Currently, the company has begun to live with the new architecture, with its usage patterns, functional capabilities and data-ingestion flows. Now it can begin to take the next steps in its BI modernization project.

“We now realize that for us, this is a journey of continuous improvement,” says the company’s head of BI and analytics. “And this initial phase is just the first part.”

As the company continues that improvement journey, DXC will be there to help at every step.