Outsourcing company example

A. Example I Role and Use of Outsourcing Companies during the Development of a Process... 

It should come as no surprise that in recent years biotech and pharma have been quick to embrace global outsourcing. Eor example, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) says it now outsources about 90% of its chemical scaffold synthesis. Right now this is an extreme example other companies and other areas of drug discovery have been affected to less of an extent. But that extent keeps increasing. 

In larger companies many of these disciplines still exist as separate departments or functions though increasingly aligned with individual business units. In smaller companies this is not possible and several of these jobs or responsibilities will often be rolled together under one manager, or outsourced to another company or consultant. As an example, in a smaller company it is unlikely that an individual will be employed to deal solely with the intellectual property issues of patents, copyright etc. 

Web apphcations are increasingly used for all types of businesses including healthcare. Two main applications are the World Wide Web for all types of on-line transactions and e-mails for exchanging messages with and without attachments. An example where the Internet can play an important role is shown in Figure 39.1. A pharmaceutical company outsources part of its clinical studies or laboratory analyses to a contract laboratory. The sample is sent by FedEx to the contract laboratory, analyzed, and the data sent back to the sponsor by e-mail with reports attached. 

When this project organization has been set up, chemical companies have to ensure that a consistent corporate IT platform is developed which can then be leveraged. This is particularly critical for e-businesses close to the core business, in order to capitalize on the synergies between existing business units. Here, the corporate IT department should serve as an internal e-commerce application service provider, although the development and hosting of the e-commerce solutions may be partly outsourced to a third party provider. Examples of such corporate IT platforms are solutions such as MyAccount Dow, My Account solution at BASF, etc. E-com-merce businesses that are not related to the core business of the chemical company can be set up as an independent company with no constraints on the IT side. 

Corporate human resources should ensure conformity in standards across the businesses - for example, in employee evaluation processes, incentive plans, benefit plans, and training pohcies. As in other functions, aU operational tasks should be outsourced or operated as shared services at SBU level - for example, payroll, human resources information systems, a database on internal job opportunities, or the administration of benefit plans. The center should be active in developing top talent across the businesses, and it should run the goldfish pool for internal top talent and the company s program for recmiting experienced persoimel. This responsibility also includes the early identification of skills needed by the entire organization, for example, e-commerce skills to kick-start new businesses. The center must also act as a repository of expertise on internal and external best practices in talent management... 

Outsourcing is now a common practice of almost all pharmaceutical companies. For example, the use of CSOs to support some aspect of clinical trial research has grown from approximately 30% of the clinical studies conducted in 1993 to over 60% in 1997. The processes that a client uses to select a CSO and how a client interacts with the CSO ensure contracted research studies are monitored appropriately and completed on time and within budget. 

Example 3. For illustration purposes, consider the case study from Sect. 2, We now describe a scenario, which we dub semantic shift, according to which a relation in a database, which was intended for one semantic use, changes its semantic role in the organization database over the years. For example, the relation HotelCardlnforma-tion was initially designed to hold information of RoomsRUs credit cards. Over the years, the hotel chain has outsourced the management of its credit cards to an external company, and as a result, the differentiation between hotel credit cards and other credit cards became vague, and new credit cards may be inserted in some arbitrary way to the two relations Card Information and HotelCardlnformation. 

Biotech and pharma companies outsource a number of different functions. In the discovery phase, the syntheses of building blocks, intermediates, and especially libraries are frequently outsourced, often to India or Eastern Europe. Offshoring of chemistry is frequent, that of biology less so. But ADME Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, and Excretion) studies and animal models for preclinical development are now sometimes done in China, for example, at Shanghai s WuXi Pharmatech, whose customers currently include nearly all of big pharma and big biotech. ... 

Factors impossible to predict will affect future outsource utilization. For example, should a sustained drop in biotech and pharma profitability occur, the pressure to put this particular shoe on whether it fits or not will increase. The situation will obviously vary from company to company and project to project as well. Although the extent to which it s used may vary, global outsourcing will be a fact of life in drug discovery for the foreseeable future. 

The automotive industry is another vivid example of where success or failure is strongly influenced by the company s ability to proactively manage product lifecycles (Korth 2003). Increased product complexity, greater reliance on outsourcing and a growing need for collaboration with a rapidly expanding list of business partners are the specific PLM challenges the industry faces (Teresko... 

Operations strategy refers to the decisions on how the company will produce its goods and services. Examples of decisions are which production strategy will be used (e.g., make to stock, make to order or some combination), what is the best balance between in source and outsource, will the company pursue a low cost offshore manufacturing strategy, just to enumerate some examples. 

A second barrier to integrating the Internet into a company is the need for services in addition to products. This is an opportunity as well as a challenge. Firms will have the opportunity to sell services as well as a product to customers on the Net. The challenge is that many of the services will not be provided by the firm selling the product. Instead, the service may be outsourced to a partner. For example, one service provided by the Home Depot chain of building supply stores is that contractors can be given account numbers. The contractor can use that account number to log onto Home Depot s Website. The Website will provide services such as material estimates and work schedules for jobs. It will also allow the contractor to schedule deliveries. 

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