The customer of the project is a world-famous pharmaceutical manufacturer, Sanofi - one of the first international companies to localize the production of pharmaceuticals in Russia.
As one of the leaders of the Russian pharmaceutical market, the company has been taking care of Russian patients since the 1970s, turning scientific innovations into specific solutions in the field of healthcare.In 2014, Sanofi announced a competition for IT infrastructure support in Russia, inviting the country's largest IT companies. The company was looking for a long-term partner who could provide multifunctional omnichannel Service Desk services, local user support on-site, IT warehouse management, and remote infrastructure support.
The partner not only had to provide these services, but also implement projects based on additional requests from the customer, manage services in accordance with global standards within the framework of Sanofi policies and procedures.
This should have been done given that local specifics, and standardize services not only in its area of responsibility, but also in the work of other teams - support services and business application support teams.Key Challenges
- Bring the quality and standards of support to the level of world standards and global Sanofi standards
- Increase the transparency of the work of support services, implement continuous improvement processes.
- Increase the level of user satisfaction to 4.9 out of 5.
- Ensure prompt implementation of additional projects and tasks and minimize overhead costs for their implementation.
- Organize a one-stop shop for all support services; standardize approaches to user support for all support services.
- Organize user support, IT infrastructure and local IT warehouse management, service quality management, project management, and continuous service improvement processes.
In 2015, ICL Services was recognized as the winner of the competition, and this became the beginning of a very long and reliable partnership between the companies. Thus, the first major block of work was IT infrastructure support.
IT infrastructure support
From May to June 2015, the ICL Services team carried out a project to transfer knowledge and tasks from current suppliers. Services were launched in August: and only within a month they were brought into the green zone for all indicators.
With the support of the customer, the team built effective interaction with other support services, and users received a convenient and understandable way to receive support on daily issues.
Design, coordination and management of the quality of services and project work, as well as their results became an important part of regular transparent reporting for the customer at three levels:
• Operational - weekly
• Tactical - monthly
• Strategic - quarterly
In parallel, the team organized a knowledge base and document storage at Sanofi facilities, fully accessible to employees. This work significantly reduced the workload of the company's internal IT department.
Thus, by providing high-quality support services for several years, ICL Services has implemented several strategically important projects for the customer:
1. On-site support for annual mass cyclical meetings of Sanofi Russia;
2. Modernization of all meeting rooms of the Moscow office using advanced technologies
3. Modernization and transfer of the local data center to significantly reduce the cost of ownership;
4. Development of software with augmented reality technology AR to promote one of the customer's drugs on the market;
5. Conducting informative roadshows of the IT department for other employees of the company;
6. Regular Q&A sessions on the company's services and products for employees;
7. Regular onboarding sessions for new employees;
8. Support for the annual process of updating the user equipment fleet.
In addition, as part of the work, the team expanded the geography of support to Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia and Armenia.
The next block of work was comprehensive support for more than a hundred corporate applications of Sanofi Russia.
Application Support
In 2019, Sanofi announced a competition to support a significant landscape of enterprise applications built on various technologies and products:
• SAP
• 1C
• QlikView / Qlik Sense
• IBM Cognos Analytics
• Self-developed software
Considering the successful experience of partnership with ICL Services for 5 years and full synergy with other company support teams, Sanofi decided to cooperate with them.
Having carried out a project to transfer knowledge and tasks from a dozen current service providers over 4 months, already in the first month of providing services, specialists ensured high quality of service in accordance with contractual obligations.
Since the start of support for enterprise applications, the teams have carried out several large projects together with the customer:
• Development of an analytical platform and data warehouse from scratch, replacing many legacy applications;
• Optimization of the application portfolio to reduce support costs;
• Numerous improvements to current applications to improve their functionality.
Engineering projects
The companies continue to develop their relationship to this day. In 2023, after a number of Western manufacturers and vendors left Russia, the customer needed help in quickly migrating a number of systems to domestic facilities.
Thus, the ICL Services team launched a project to modernize the process control system equipment and SCADA software at the Sanofi plant in Orel.
As part of the project, experts studied the current state of affairs, proposed alternative solutions to replace Siemens, designed the architecture and replaced the process control system equipment, implemented a domestic SCADA solution, ensuring continuous operation of the production.
Perspectives
As of today, ICL Services and Sanofi continue their strategic partnership with a focus on supporting critical services aimed at business continuity in conditions of increased risks and instability - as well as on new initiatives that are designed to improve the efficiency and comfort of both companies.
The partners regularly exchange experiences with a focus on continuously improving the quality of services.
Results
- Sanofi has a reliable and flexible strategic partner.
- Successful and reliable achievement of annual IT department goals for many years.
- IT costs reduced by >50%.
- Ambitious large projects and initiatives implemented, ensuring the implementation of Sanofi's business strategy for more than 10 years.
- The Russian division of Sanofi entered the TOP-3 among other countries in terms of quality of IT services provided and user satisfaction.