Tiffany Wolfe
Bus 550
December 7, 2010
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 Established
in 1920 in Brussels, Belgium
 Expanded to the U.S. in 1930
 2009 total global revenue € 3.1 billion
 Net sales



51% Europe
35% North America
14% other
 Originally



three sectors
Film (1930-2004)
Pharmaceuticals
Chemicals
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
Films
BOPP (biaxially-oriented polypropylene) and cellulose films
for specialty packaging, labeling, graphic arts and industrial
products.
 Food and beverages, labels, security products, industrial
membranes, health, and pharmaceutical industries
 € 396 million in sales in 2001


Chemicals
Polyester resins (molding and toner)
 Acrylic resins (hard plastics)
 € 677 million in sales in 2003


Pharma

€ 1.4 billion in global sales

Majority of sales are from Zyrtec
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 Job


1991-Corporate Auditor
1993-Management Controller of Pharma





Operations and business groups depend upon IT
1996-Responsible for Pharma MIS
1997-Responsible for central services across
Belgium


Titles
HR, IT infrastructure
1998-Administrative and group IT Director
2000-Administrative and IT/IS Director
End of 2000- Member of the Senior management
Team
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 Information
technology/information system
(IT/IS)




Organization
Redundancy
Inconsistency
Inefficiency
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 Role

Information Technology Operations


of IT/IS:
Establish an “efficient, robust, and strong motorway”
of information that would help support business
processes, and improve the end users’ productivity.
Information Systems Development


Understand business requirements and priorities
Develop, implement, maintain, and support IS to meet
these requirements.
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 This



global vision concerned:
Infrastructure
Hardware/software
Communication
Created Global IT/IS Standards:




To share experience and develop synergies
across the group
To reduce heterogeneity, inconsistencies, and
hidden costs
To improve communication and cost
effectiveness
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 Single
email system
 Standardized hardware and software systems




Oracle for database application
Microsoft Office for desktop productivity
Compaq desktop PCs
NT 4 Operating System
 Contract


negotiations
Group Contract IT/IS Manager
Group vs. each sector; individually

Cost savings of € 2.7 million by 1999
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 1996

IT/IS activities were independently initiated
within each sector and location.



Inconsistency
Redundancy
Higher cost
 2001

Wanted to establish global IT/IS standards



Develop synergy across groups
 All report to Damien
Improve communication across groups
Reduce inconsistency
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1st step in improving operational support system
 Hub of the UCB global network
 Upgraded their computers
 Created a central computer room



Underground
300 servers ran production applications

From all sectors and geographies
Back-ups were handled automatically by a new
robot-driven system
 Server operations and monitoring were
outsourced



Several miles away from the nearest UCB facility
Back-up: original computer room
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 In



No computers
One person covering the call center
Only spoke one language
 In




1998
Six people
Staff spoke two languages
 In

1993, first began
2002
Centralized database
Supported 200 applications
Call center staff spoke 7-10 languages
 High
turnover
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 Regional





America, Asia, and Europe
Report directly to Damien
Use corporate standards when appropriate
Local needs of various business groups
Variations in technology
 Global

Operations
Operations
Concentrated on infrastructure that applied to all
sectors and regions

Such as WAN and corporate network standards
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 Global

Development
Developing and delivering technological solutions in
use by all sectors and regions, such as PeopleSoft
 Sectorial

Developing and delivering applications for specific
sectors, such as knowledge management for Pharma
 Major


Development
Is Projects:
Knowledge Management
3R Portal Project
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 Past


60% of all documents were in foreign languages
All on paper
 Present


Now all written in English
All critical documents are digital
 They
have staff dedicated to indexing and
translating documents:



Notes from physicians
Published scientific papers related to drug
development- competitors
UCB docs- research analysis and in house research
reports
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 They
had robust security
 Easy-to-use folder organization for storing and
retrieving their 90,000 documents
 Pharmaceutical industry



More money was spent on the creation of knowledge
than on the equipment used to produce the
products developed from that knowledge
Important because pharmaceutics is a knowledgebuilding process
Laws related to pharmaceutics, which vary by
country, require companies to keep documents
associated with the drugs for the life of the product
plus five years
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 Designed
to provide access to key information
through a customizable/personalized Web portal.
 Two key layers:

Corporate level of information



Everyone in the company had access to the same
information
Single user name/password is needed for access to all
network applications
Sectorial and functional layer



Including site specific information relevant to specific job
responsibilities; individually tailored to the person’s job
Personalized Web portal to deliver appropriate information
based on the identity of each person
Access could be denied to inappropriate information
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 Improved
and changed IT/IS
 Now have the foundational building blocks
for a next generation knowledge
management system
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1.
2.
3.
What does UCB stand for?
a. United Company of Belgium
b. Universal Company of Belgium
c. University of California, Berkley
d. None of the above
Which one was NOT one of the issues UCB faced?
a. Inefficiency
b. Organization
c. Redundancy
d. None of the above
Vincent Damien was….
a. the great, great grandson of one of the founders of UCB.
b. president of UCB.
c. mostly responsible for reorganizing and restructuring
UCB’s IT/IS departments from 1996-2002.
d. All of the above
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D
D
C
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 UCB:
Managing Information for Globalization
and Innovation article
 http://www.ucb.com/about-ucb/
 http://www.ucb.com/about-ucb/history
 http://www.ucb.com/media-room/editorialguidelines
 http://www.ucb.com/rd/
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 Union
Chimique Belge
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