Read the case study below and answer the following four questions

AbbVie Builds a Global Systems Infrastructure AbbVie, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, is a global AbbVie business process teams hammered out research-based biopharmaceutical company that standard definitions for end-to-end processes such as was spun off from Abbott Laboratories in January procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, record-to-report, and 2013. As a separate entity, AbbVie is still a very large warehouse management. AbbVie made the template company, with more than 29,000 employees in over usable globally by extending the functionality for 70 countries and 19 research and manufacturing multiple currencies and languages and updating it on sites across the globe. In 2017, AbbVie produced a country-by-country basis depending on local regu- $28.2 billion in revenue. Humira for treating rheu lations or legal requirements. matoid arthritis and Crohn's disease is among its top Each time an affiliate requested a customiza- selling global products. tion, the AbbVie project team reviewed it against When AbbVie separated from Abbott Laboratories, the list of local legal requirements it had collected. the company had inherited 50 or 60 disparate legacy AbbVie then determined if the customization was systems that were supporting mission-critical pro required by other countries or was for only one, and cesses in over 100 worldwide locations. The legacy it pushed back on one-of-a-kind requests. Testing systems were supported by Abbott under a transi and confirming with several affiliates helped ensure tional services agreement (TSA) and were due to be that the template met the requirements of most terminated at the end of 2015. AbbVie's management countries, so the need for future customization was had to make a choice: Should the company continue minimal. to run these legacy systems on its own or should it Abb Vie tested the effectiveness of its global invest in a more up-to-date platform for supporting template during development, capturing metrics business processes across all of its global affiliates around adoption-number of adoptions, adapta- and manufacturing locations? tions, additions, and abstentions. The project team Complicating the decision were time pressures: compared the percentages of those metrics from AbbVie had only until the end of 2015 (three years) country to country and reported the results to to implement a solution and slightly over two years Abbvie's business unit leaders. If, for instance, the to establish an infrastructure stipulated by the TSA. metrics showed that Germany had adopted 82 per- AbbVie decided to create standard business processes cent of the template and France 99 percent, busi- for all its affiliates and manufacturing facilities and ness support could investigate to see if there was a to support these processes with a single instance process that needed to be changed in France. This of SAP ERP across the globe. The project was very was key to deploying the entire global instance of ambitious: The new system had to be globally op SAP ERP in 18 months. erational in more than 150 countries within 3 years. The project team was also tasked with migrating AbbVie designed a new operating model that in data from different legacy applications to the data cluded many organizational changes, including busi structure for the global SAP ERP system. For each ness process outsourcing, centers of excellence, and stand-alone legacy system, the team extracted raw regional shared services. data, stored them in a secure data warehouse, and AbbVie didn't waste any time. It selected IBM then identified any missing or inaccurate fields and Global Business Services consultants to guide the other data cleansing requirements. While the team global SAP deployment. Starting in August 2013, was consolidating and cleansing the data, it taught Abb Vie rolled out SAP ERP to 110 affiliates and business users about SAP-specific data fields, how manufacturing sites within 18 months. The com- the fields were used, and how they changed previ- pany standardized end-to-end processes using a ous business processes. The team would obtain data global SAP template, and allowed the software to be from the business, put it in a data mapping template, customized only for country-specific requirements. and load the data in various test environments. Once These requirements were identified in advance by business users verified the accuracy of data, it would teams creating local implementation guides. be ready to go live in production. These activities facilitated change management by every country, measure results, find the root cause placing a high value on both system transparency and of problems, and take corrective action more easily. training. About six months before rolling out a new Reporting from the system is more accurate. location, country-specific transition leaders would AbbVie was able to pull off a major global system train users on the template and familiarize them with implementation because it was far-sighted and well any process changes. The transition leaders were liai organized and did the difficult work of streamlining sons between AbbVie's technology team and its busi processes on a global scale at the project outset. The ness process team, helping the company to quickly global SAP project team questioned existing pro- address change management issues as they arose. cesses and found it could streamline many of them, AbbVie also took the time during implementa making the enterprise much more agile. AbbVie's tion to verify it was in compliance with all local business efficiency also improved because correc- data privacy regulations. In May 2015, the company tive actions often led to additional process improve- completed the global rollout of SAP ERP. The com ments. By looking at the metrics, the project team pany was thus able to successfully standardize global can suggest measures to improve a process to get processes and meet the TSA. Other major benefits of more out of the company's investment. AbbVie can the new global system were unprecedented levels of now operate as a single business across countries. agility and transparency. AbbVie now has a set of key metrics that are mea- sured at the end of every month, such as the length.

CASE STUDY QUESTIONS

1. What management problems typical of global systems was AbbVie experiencing?

What management, organization, and technology factors were responsible for those problems?

2. What elements of the global systems strategy de- scribed in this chapter did AbbVie pursue?

3. How did AbbVie's new SAP ERP system support its global business strategy?

4. How did AbbVie's new system improve operations and management decision making?