‘Richter: It at Hungary’s Largest Pharma’ Case Questions

‘Richter: IT at Hungary’s Largest Pharma’ Case Questions

1. What do we know about Richter’s business strategy? How would you define Richter’s IT in the past and present?

a. Richter’s business strategy is very generic. The company make up is hierarchical and segmented and the strategy was to maximize growth and profit.

b. Richter’s IT in the past was archaic. Financial tracking was done on a spreadsheet with macros, all documentation was paper/hardcopy and was reviewed by the medical staff and legal team manually. Computer sharing between 6,000 people with only 500 PCs; evenly shared, which is 12 people per computer!

c. Richter’s IT presently is mainly digital. Most, if not all, documents are now stored electronically and in a centralized location for review between department. Operations, inventory, and finance data is housed in a centralized location accessible to all privy users.

2. What is the value of IT to Richter? Is IT important to Richter’s business strategy?

d. The value of IT to Richter prior to Szűcs’ involvement was not very high. However, with simple definitions of financial data varying across the organization, and no centralized method of recording the metrics of the company, the value of IT to Richter is the same price as standardized data- Priceless.

e. As mentioned, without standardizations in the metrics, especially in financial metrics measuring profit and growth per Richter’s business strategy is unreliable and difficult to measure. By using IT to standardize the metrics, Richter’s ability to see the company as a whole, as well as identify individual sectors of the company and compare them against others is extremely important to Richter’s business strategy.

3. How would you evaluate Richter’s current IT governance?

f. I believe that the current IT governance is very business focused and leadership driven. By involving each division leader to drive IT decisions affecting their...