Daiichi Sankyo Company, Limited is a global pharmaceutical company with corporate origins in Japan. With more than 120 years of scientific expertise and 17,000+ employees worldwide, the company provides innovative products and services in 29 countries and regions.
Medical pharmaceutical development is a globally competitive industry. The company is currently on a transformation journey to maximize the use of data and advanced digital technology to drive business agility and enable faster decision making.
Daiichi Sankyo, which claims the number one market share in the Japanese medical pharmaceutical market, is also expanding and strengthening its presence as a global pharma innovator with competitive advantage in oncology. The Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC) medication for cancer treatment is the key factor behind the company’s swift global expansion.
Transforming into an innovative global healthcare company
Yasuo Uesugi, who leads Daiichi Sankyo’s digital transformation strategy as vice president of the digital transformation planning department, explains the mission: Daiichi Sankyo has stated its 2030 vision is to become an innovative global healthcare company contributing to the sustainable development of society. The new digital transformation planning department, consisting of specialists from inside and outside the company, was established in 2020 to achieve this vision.
“One of our key missions is to maintain a common global digital transformation platform. Making full use of data and digital technology, this platform will speed up the decision making process and provide agility to the business, accelerating the global growth strategy for the company," says Uesugi.
Daiichi Sankyo’s challenge to achieve data-driven corporate management and business transformation with innovative digital technology, and to reinforce global management operations will advance its vision of becoming an innovative global healthcare company.
“Under the direction of the chief digital transformation officer (CDXO), in 2020 we consolidated the data and digital functions for the projects in Japan, the US and Europe. In 2023, we established a new function to promote healthcare as a service, working together as one global DX (digital transformation) organization. The digital transformation planning department takes responsibility not only in the planning and execution of our strategy, but also in providing various measures through which Daiichi Sankyo can globally leverage data and digital technology,” says Uesugi.
“DXC also provided specific suggestions on how we could improve the system in the next three years. I was impressed by their attitude to proactively and consistently improve, rather than to just maintain the current ServiceNow environment.”
Yasuo Uesugi
Vice President, Digital Transformation Planning department
Daiichi Sankyo Company, Limited
Providing advanced ServiceNow operations
To remain competitive in the pharmaceutical industry, Daiichi Sankyo strengthened its research and development operation, shifting to a global across-the-board process with globalized applications.
Yuka Yamamitsu, director of the DX Planning Group, digital transformation planning department, says, “In 2016, we introduced ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM) as a global one instance to improve the service quality of global applications. The goal was to provide a common operation platform to standardize the business process for IT service management and help-desk services. Currently, approximately 1,200 IT staff take advantage of ServiceNow ITSM for managing 450 applications and services, including environments for specific regions.”
With ServiceNow ITSM evolving into a common global platform, more countries began deployment and the number of managed applications began to rise — resulting in an increased operation and maintenance workload for IT employees.
“We needed to adapt to the growing role of ServiceNow ITSM, and improve the management and operations with a new support team for a better global outcome. So, in 2020, we selected DXC Technology as our ServiceNow ITSM global maintenance partner,” noted Yamamitsu.
The goal was to provide a common operation platform to standardize the business process for IT service management and help-desk services. Currently, approximately 1,200 IT staff take advantage of ServiceNow ITSM for managing 450 applications and services, including environments for specific regions.”
Yuka Yamamitsu
Director, DX Planning Group, Digital Transformation Planning department
Daiichi Sankyo Company, Limited
DXC’s global elite partner support
With more than 1,000 global ServiceNow customers, DXC is a ServiceNow Global Elite Partner capable of providing advisory services, system development and managed service solutions. DXC’s unique operation model for ServiceNow global Application Management Services, provides systematic standard processes for incident response, change management, upgrades and more, based on best practice.
Toshiaki Tachibana, director of the ServiceNow Practice, Enterprise Applications and SaaS, DXC Technology Japan, explains, “Our proposal involved DXC Technology Japan providing the core support for Daiichi Sankyo’s Japan headquarters, while DXC teams in the US, Germany, Vietnam and South Africa worked in concert with the company’s three global regions (Japan, the US, and Europe) providing support. The key benefit of this was that the Japan headquarters set the global quality standard, while independent issues within the three regions were handled without delay by local service managers.”
DXC’s global workforce delivered the right skillsets and resources to the right location with the right costs to manage and operate ServiceNow ITSM globally.
Akihiro Ueno, group manager, DX Planning Group, digital transformation planning department says, "the goal was that each region function in a coordinated way to support the global digital transformation program. Our requirements for the global maintenance partner were to provide appropriate quality assurance and governance for a 16,500-user IT environment, based on standardized rules and processes for ServiceNow ITSM deployment and operation. The proposal to assign local DXC experts in each region, and support the local teams based on global Application Management Services standards, felt very close to our ideal image. Most importantly, we highly valued their rich global maintenance experience and ability to execute.”
Uesugi added, “DXC also provided specific suggestions on how we could improve the system in the next three years. I was impressed by their attitude to proactively and consistently improve, rather than to just maintain the current ServiceNow environment.”
Daiichi Sankyo’s objective in deploying ServiceNow ITSM as a global one instance was to reinforce IT governance. Each region, however, had policies regarding specific regional needs, such as local applications and workflow development.
“The fundamental rule is to fit-to-standard — fit the requirement into the available standard features. No matter how strong the request from the region is, we must avoid negative consequences where the standard operation as a common global platform is held back. The three regions must carefully discuss the matter, with the common goal of digital transformation acceleration in sight. To prevent technical issues that arise from customization, we anticipate that the DXC team will act as our last resort in guarding governance,” Yamamitsu replied.
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IT investment management to operational excellence
Daiichi Sankyo’s digital transformation planning department is responsible for aligning IT investments to business strategy. “Budget requests from each region are evaluated against their mid- and long-term strategies and the management of IT projects, a process previously managed in spreadsheets,” said Ueno. “The deployment of ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) improved the process and made it more efficient. SPM enabled global DX members to summarize requests and work together to examine them. Furthermore, we immediately had visibility into the projects running simultaneously across regions.”
Originally planned for a single year deployment, after confirming the effectiveness of ServiceNow SPM, a new project was begun to promote it to the common global digital transformation platform.
“Knowing precisely how many IT assets are available now, and their lifecycle, is indispensable to accurately plan for future IT investment. With the launch of the Operational Excellence (OE) program, we started enhancing the ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB) which interoperates with SPM and other systems, with future Application Portfolio Management (APM) deployment in scope, so we can integrate multiple projects into one OE program and run a data-driven management process,” added Ueno.
Jansen Alexander, director of the DX Planning Group, digital transformation planning department, who leads the OE program, says, “This program establishes a consistent global process across budget management, asset management, business strategy and investment planning, with the goal of managing strategic IT investments that deliver competitive business outcomes. Maintaining and enhancing the CMDB data platform provides the foundation for driving digital transformation activities. Our goal is to establish suitable application portfolios and provide worldwide users with a better experience from these consistent activities.”
Yamamitsu continues, “Since it is a data platform which aggregates various asset information, we have paid special attention to transparency of information from the onset of the SPM deployment.”
Tachibana adds, “Experts from our global DXC ServiceNow Strategic Business Group were assigned to strengthen the team taking part in the OE program. Our world-class expertise in ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management, Application Portfolio Management and Configuration Management Database, has proved useful in aligning various business requests with IT governance and driving fit-to-standard needs.”
"DX for DX" for data-driven management
Daiichi Sankyo is taking a two-axis approach in spreading the adoption of its global digital transformation platform. The vertical axis is expanding the global use of ServiceNow, while the horizontal axis focuses on more advanced operation through operational excellence.
Ueno explains further, “The OE program is a big step forward towards accomplishing a data-driven management process for the digital transformation planning department. Our challenge, "DX for DX” is only made possible by the fact that ServiceNow is always readily available, with DXC supporting us to harness the full value of the platform. DXC has become an indispensable partner in our pursuit of global data-driven business processes.”
After the project was put into operation, DXC teams from India and Australia joined to support the expansion of demands. Recently, the DXC China team also joined to expand ServiceNow deployments to China and Brazil — bringing the total to eight countries with DXC teams taking part in the project.
“Regional demand for ServiceNow deployments will continue to grow, and we anticipate more global support from DXC in the future,” says Yamamitsu.
As Daiichi Sankyo’s digital transformation project will transform the entire company globally, the role of the common platform is significant.
“Data-driven decision making and business processes are a requisite for Daiichi Sankyo to pursue its growth strategy,” says Uesugi. “In order to maximize the performance of our common global digital transformation platform, we expect a lot from DXC’s global capabilities as a ServiceNow expert. We are looking forward to their continued support as a valued Daiichi Sankyo partner.”
