Preparing a Large Complex Organisation for Growth

A pharmaceutical and biotech company had grown quickly — but organically, without a common architecture underneath it. Each brand team and function had built its own systems and processes along the way, and the result was a commercial organisation full of niche tools, duplicated data, and almost no integration across brands. With several new drug launches on the horizon and no shared infrastructure to support them, the organisation commissioned a three-year, multi-million dollar initiative to deploy standardised processes and systems across the commercial enterprise — including SFA, case management, marketing resource management, and an employee portal.

We worked closely with the client team leading the rollout, providing change management, training, post-deployment support, and programme management oversight across the initiative. We developed robust deployment and change management plans, designed and delivered training for all teams, and actively assessed and managed stakeholders throughout.

The programme was delivered on time and on budget, with a high rate of user adoption — a combination that is far less common than it should be for programmes of this scale. The harder lesson it reinforced is that technology investments alone rarely deliver the efficiencies they promise. The real work of scalability is not the systems — it is changing the behaviour of the people who use them. That requires leadership to be visible and committed throughout, and change management to be designed in from day one rather than bolted on at go-live.