A pharmaceutical company wants to define a digital agenda or road map for their digital transformation. Axians redtoo, a consulting company, has given this task to the FHNW as request for a bachelor thesis. With the use of the ABILI-methodology from the FHNW spin-off abiliCor, enhanced with strategy tools and methodologies from Axians redtoo, this thesis should provide part of a digital agenda. This project aims to connect a digital native with a professional environment to gain a blunt point of view over the company and develop new and innovative approaches to problems. This to keep the company existent and attractive for future digital natives.

This thesis is based on a literature review and several workshops and interviews on-site with the pharmaceutical company. To gain an overview of internal and external factors influencing the organization, a five forces analysis and a SWOT analysis were executed in form of a workshop. To lay the focus more on the aspect of information technology, a follow-up interview was done to the SWOT. The heads of all departments and the board of directors were questioned to the role and performance of the IT department, infrastructure and applications. Furthermore, an adapted digital backpack assessment, a trend analysis, a visioning and a business model canvas were evaluated respectively developed in workshops. Furthermore, a transformation compass, which defines the next transformation steps and purposes multiple transformation focus for the company, has been developed in internal workshops together with Axians redtoo and abiliCor.

To create a roadmap or direction in which the organization can steer in the digital transformation, internal and external analysis were done for the company. The results of the five forces analysis showed that the biggest threat is coming from new entrants in the market as well as substitute products. These results influenced the new defined business model as well. The main conclusion of the SWOT analysis were the defined chances resulting from strengths and opportunities of the organization. The new defined business model was heavily influenced by these defined chances. To get a self-perception and an impression of how the rest of the organization perceives and witnesses the IT department, follow-up interviews to the SWOT analysis were conducted. The results show, that generally the self and public image are in line with each other. In a visioning workshop, the pharmaceutical company defined a new vision, mission and core values for their organization together with strategic guidelines for dedicated topics (organization and cooperation, business processes, technology (IT and production), IT systems, security etc. Based on the visioning a business model canvas was created in a workshop and the new business model and strategy for the company was defined. Additional to the existing operations, the pharmaceutical company decided to add pharmaceutical services to their value proposition. This includes pharmaceutical services such as stability analytics, process validation, method optimization and analysis services for regulatory nonconformance reports, consulting services for other organizations in the industry and supply chain management services including the logistics for other pharmaceutical companies. With the transformation compass, each of the four building blocks with its sub categories were evaluated with the results from the previous analyses and the digital backpack assessment. This to provide the pharmaceutical company a direction to go for each sub category of the compass. After the end of this thesis, there will be further workshops with the company and Axians redtoo to evaluate and discuss the fact sheets of the transformation compass. This to define the transformation focus for the company. To conclude, the instruments used in this thesis to analyse the as is situation of the pharmaceutical company revealed that there is a strong unclarity of roles within the company regarding the IT. Furthermore, knowledge and data islands seem to be a problem and there is few or no structured/institutionalized innovation management. Also, a lot of data is generated but not really used within the operative business. With the development of the new business model and strategy, the pharmaceutical company now has a clear direction to go. With the help of Axians redtoo and the fact sheets of the transformation compass provided in this thesis, the next steps for the digital transformation have to be decided by the pharmaceutical company.