How can the organisational consequences of Galapagos’organic growth on its its-departement be managed through BPM?

Abstract

How can the organisational consequences of Galapagos’organic growth on its its-departement be managed through BPM? Galapagos is a true pioneer for its patients. As a commercial-stage biotechnology company, their first aim is to improve the life of people with unmet medical needs. They are experts in the discovery and development of small molecule medicines and want to deliver their innovations to the world. Although Galapagos acts in a volatile and complex market environment, they focus on the opportunities to create value through their scientific knowledge and expertise. In this chaos, it is the company’s Information Technology & Services (ITS) department that should create order and structure. However, due to the tremendous organic growth since 2018, keeping up this role became more challenging than ever. The increase in the number of employees in the ITS department was faster than the supporting change in supporting infrastructure and underlying organizational structure. In order to catch up, the ITS department has launched a new project called ‘ITS 2.0’. Besides redesigning the organizational framework, this project aims to identify and improve all ITS business processes. By engaging in the discipline of business process management, they want to transform towards a more agile and lean department. Our In-Company-Project is situated within the context of ‘ITS 2.0’ and more specifically, within the first phase towards becoming a ‘process-based’ department. At the beginning of our project, an initial list of identified ITS business processes had already been made. From this Process Inventory List, two, specific business processes were selected to further investigate and optimize: Communication Coordination & Governance (CC&G) and Training Coordination & Governance (TC&G). For both processes, the current as-is situation was revealed through insights of key stakeholders. Opportunities for improvement were identified and subsequently, an optimized to-be situation was recommended. The CC&G-process describes the coordination and governance of formal communication coming from the ITS department. This Formal ITS Communication was defined through eight types of communication that each target a specific topic: Planned Downtimes, Unplanned Downtime, System Releases & Go-Lives, Leadership Team Decisions, ITS Training, Official ITS Events, ITS Visibility and General Announcements. Semi-structured interviews with focus groups allowed to sketch out how these types are currently being communicated. The as-is situation varied between the different ITS units, as many different communications tools are being used. Microsoft Outlook is the only tool used for every type of Formal ITS Communication, but the employees seemed to be flooded by the high number of daily emails. The overall overload of virtual communication, which is dispersed across multiple channels, results in information being missed out and not easily retrievable. The lack of uniformity in Formal ITS Communication is likely caused by the absence of instructions and clear responsibilities. Therefore, the suggested to-be situation focused on creating guidelines for each type of Formal ITS Communication. These guidelines define how and by whom each type should be communicated. The main characteristics of the guidelines are simplification and centralization. On the one hand, one or multiple tools have been selected for each type of communication, of which the usage has also been standardized. On the other hand, we suggest centralizing all information on system releases and downtimes and making this accessible to all Galapagos employees. Similarly, information destined only for ITS employees should be communicated in a centralized place. The guidelines also advise to send out emails with standardized subjects and content. This way, Formal ITS Communication can be easily filtered from all other incoming messages. The second business process under investigation, the TC&G-process, describes how trainings on processes and procedures within the ITS department should be coordinated and governed. The as-is situation was obtained through multiple conversations with the training coordinator and consultation of existing internal sources. Currently, training documentation is stored at different locations. Besides this inconvenience, it is often unclear for an employee which role-based trainings he/she should follow. The to-be situation focuses on the allocation of training documentation to the designated process, and of the employees to the correct role(s). The to-be situation for the TC&G-process was based on the Process Inventory Framework (PIF), which outlines the mutual relationships between processes, procedures, roles and training documentation. More specifically, the TC&G-process should allocate an employee to its correct role, which is inherently linked to a process- or procedure-based training. This way, training curricula can be created on the level of individual employees, roles and the entire ITS department. To facilitate the retrieval of training documentation, the development of the ITS Process Inventory Tool was initiated. This tool shall serve as a one-stop shop for end users towards ITS process related information, where all processes can be linked to their procedures and training documentation. Because of this centralization, the ambiguity surrounding ITS documentation can be reduced. The process discovery, analysis and redesign of CC&G and TC&G were the main points of focus of this project. The next step is to implement the suggested to-be situation and verify whether the processes have been improved. Since the ITS 2.0 project is the first BPM initiative within the ITS department, and even within Galapagos, the future will hold many more optimization cycles of the CC&G- and TC&G-processes, as well as all other processes in the Process Inventory List. After all, BPM is all about continuous improvement of business processes, and according to literature, this seems to be the key towards a successful organization.