After sitting through a week’s worth of presentations and case studies related to digital transformation, I can’t help but think about the deep changes AstraZeneca has gone through in recent years. It’s been a massive feat with extraordinary outcomes, and they’re still not done making positive changes throughout their operations.
AstraZeneca’s goal was to simplify and improve existing processes through the implementation of new cloud and mobile solutions. Over the past few years, they have begun to leverage Box, Workday, Salesforce, and Microsoft‘s Office 365. According to AstraZeneca’s CIO David Smoley, the company reduced total IT cost by $150 million, in 2014 alone, which helped free up more funding for clinical research and development.
Equally important, AstraZeneca was able to improve employee satisfaction and system stability, as well as their incident resolution and program delivery processes.
While the life sciences industry has traditionally been more skeptical of the cloud and slower to adopt – I recently heard someone say five years behind most other industries – AstraZeneca is a good example of the clear benefits that pharmaceutical, medical device, and contract research organizations can realize in just a short period of time by embracing cutting edge technologies.
