Case Studies > Streamlining IT Request Processes: A Case Study on GlaxoSmithKline's Use of Integrify

Streamlining IT Request Processes: A Case Study on GlaxoSmithKline's Use of Integrify

Technology Category

Automation & Control - Human Machine Interface (HMI)
Sensors - GPS

Applicable Industries

Cement
Equipment & Machinery

Applicable Functions

Human Resources
Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Inventory Management
Time Sensitive Networking

Services

System Integration
Training

About The Customer

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is a leading research-based pharmaceutical company headquartered in the U.K. with operations based in the United States. The company was formed in 2000 through a merger between Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham, two organizations with histories reaching back to the early 1800s. GSK holds an estimated seven percent of the world’s pharmaceutical market and has more than 100,000 employees worldwide. Of these, more than 40,000 are in sales and marketing, making it the largest sales force in the industry. Around 35,000 employees work at 82 manufacturing sites in 37 countries. Every hour, GSK spends more than $560,000 on researching new medicines.

The Challenge

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a leading research-based pharmaceutical company, faced a significant challenge in managing its IT request processing methods. With a workforce of over 100,000 employees worldwide, the company's IT departments had developed their own methods and interfaces for processing users’ requests for IT equipment and services. This resulted in a lack of standardization, redundancy of some processes, and confusion among users about where to go for service and how to make their requests. GSK needed a solution that could be implemented across all IT departments worldwide, providing a single, user-friendly interface. The company also aimed to reduce costs incurred by individual IT groups who were financing the development of their request processes through the use of outside consultants. The solution needed to work across a multinational company with numerous business units and legacy systems, and build on existing systems without having to start from scratch.

The Solution

GSK chose to expand and enhance its existing Integrify solution to address this challenge. Integrify, a flexible business process management tool, allowed GSK to build on its existing systems rather than start over with something entirely new. It connected with the GSK directory, enabling many fields in the online request forms to be pre-populated, saving end users time and effort during the request process. Integrify also provided form creation, routing definition, and tracking tools to those responsible for processing requests, minimizing data entry and simplifying requests for approval and fulfillment. The solution eliminated problems typically related to labor-intensive processes such as manual paper handling and email requests, and reduced costs per transaction by 60 to 90 percent as opposed to paper-based processes. GSK now uses Integrify to handle more than 600 different types of requests, processing almost 16,000 requests each month.

Operational Impact

The implementation of Integrify brought about significant operational improvements for GSK. One of the most immediate benefits was providing a simple, universal interface to users, vastly improving the user experience. The system also enabled GSK to handle requests more efficiently, with automatic routing of requests to locations where IT team members were available. This eliminated the need for dispatchers who previously determined which IT team or approvers should be notified. The time savings were significant, with a notable reduction in request fulfillment time. GSK was also able to more effectively assign staff, re-purposing eight employees to more productive roles within the company. Once the daily user experience had been improved, the IT team was able to focus on long-term issues such as service management and more analytics on the back end.

Quantitative Benefit

Development time for service dropped by 77 percent and costs were cut 96 percent, reducing the average interface development time from three weeks to four days.
Number of requests processed increased from 2,000 in April 2004 to almost 16,000 each month.
90 percent of a particular request type were fulfilled in just eight days, compared to 13 days previously.