Business Planning at Roche
The customer
With its head office in Basel, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd is a leading global company in the pharmaceutical and diagnostics sector and a leader among research companies in the health sector. The company’s innovative products and services cover prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases, and contribute to the improvement of health and the quality of life.
The objectives
The strategic business plan provides the general terms and conditions for numerous departments in the company such as Research & Development or Marketing. Information from different departments and applications needed to be identified, consolidated and analysed. The initial data entry took place locally all over the world with the help of product and country managers. These starting figures are then checked and adjusted in a multiple level process. Analyses, reports and presentations are eventually created that serve the group’s management as the basis for decision-making. The objectives of introducing the new business planning system were quick implementation, integration with several SAP systems, the option to introduce new performance indicators and the flexible implementation of new requirements.
The solution
With the start of the project in Autumn 2005, the existing planning system based on Excel and Access databases was intended to be phased out and implemented on the new IBM Cognos* TM1 platform. Three months were planned for the full migration of the existing applications and the creation of a uniform reporting framework. The business planning process could then be implemented towards the beginning of 2006 with the help of the new system.
Numerous new modules and model calculations were simultaneously added to the applications while they were in operation. The team accomplished, among other things, the conversion of all performance indicators into different currencies. Thanks to the modular structure of the applications, these enhancements could be implemented live, without imposing any restrictions on the continuous planning process.
* Cognos, an IBM company, is the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and performance management solutions.
