Submitted by: Submitted by xcl081030
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Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 04/17/2012 03:18 PM
C ASE STU DY
Merck Case Study
Background
Merck & Co. Inc. is a global research-driven pharmaceutical company dedicated to
putting patients first. Since its founding in 1891, Merck has grown to more than 50,000
employees in more than 120 countries today. The company discovers, develops,
manufactures and markets vaccines and medicines in more than 20 therapeutic
categories.
Merck has embarked on a growth strategy based on internal innovation combined with
aggressive pursuit of business partnerships ranging from research, discovery and clinical
trials, through manufacturing, marketing and sales. While 10 new partnerships were
created in 2001, more than 80 were created in 2004. The size and complexity of the
business partnerships range from the joint development and marketing of Zetia with
Schering-Plough, another large pharmaceutical company, to basic research and licensing
agreements with small biotech firms. No matter what the size, these partnerships
require close collaboration and frequent exchange of time-sensitive, proprietary
information.
To improve its existing business, Merck is driving toward a more seamless customer
experience, paying close attention to data quality and transparency to ensure
accuracy, timeliness and consistency in key customer-facing business processes.
Data quality and transparency also play a pivotal role in initiatives to drive down internal
costs through operational efficiencies.
Challenge
As Merck’s external alliances and business processes have extended the reach of the
company in all directions, the complexity and importance of electronic communication
has also increased. The pace of new alliances has been so fast and mission critical
that the Merck IT staff often have very little lead time to set up secure exchanges with
a diverse set of partners. On one hand, they must manage data exchanges to the
technical specifications of large partners such as Wal-Mart; on the other, they must
work with small...