David Briskman
VP & CIO
Ranbaxy Laboratories
“Our CEO has the vision to drive business transformation through IT”
What are the priorities and challenges of the technology head of India’s best-known and most-globalized pharma company? David Briskman, VP & CIO, Ranbaxy Laboratories shares his perspectives in this exclusive interview with Sanjay Gupta, Sr. Associate Editor, Network Computing. Excerpts:
How would you describe your current role and how does the management view IT at Ranbaxy?
My current role is very much leading and helping grow – transform – the business. Our tagline says, we deliver value every day. I don’t have a conversation with our CEO without the word value [value of IT investment] in it.
Our CEO, Malvinder, has a very good understanding of IT. He really is a visionary when it comes to investing in IT to get to the next level and to drive business transformation through IT.
Ranbaxy is one of the top users of SAP’s solutions in India. What won you the ACE award from SAP?
We have a single global instance of SAP and we run over 75% our business transactions by value through SAP’s applications. We also have a large in-house development team that does everything from installation to enhancement to application deployment.
As an organization our world runs on SAP and we are moving from running to managing SAP. We do it at certain levels, but we are not fully there yet – and that’s the transformation we are undergoing. We constantly look at our return on investment from SAP…SAP as a technology or a backbone never, ever comes into question
Your company achieved 50% submissions of ANDA (Abbreviated New Drug Application) electronically last year. What significance does it have for Ranbaxy?
We have our electronic submission backbone that is linked to Documentum, which essentially allows us to prepare dossiers in an online fashion and then electronically submit it to the FDA [Food and Drug Administration]. After some time, FDA will only accept electronic submissions. Foreseeing that, we started this process four years back. While last year we achieved 50% submissions, this year will have all submissions done electronically. We are right now upgrading that system and will be using the platform of a company called ISI. For us, electronic submissions are a great way of speeding up the process and improving productivity.
Which tools or applications do you use for R&D?
We use several small tools as well as some custom-developed tools that are used by different R&D teams. These include analytics software, clinical apps and tools for registering new chemicals. There’s no overarching technology for all of our R&D but we might consider using Documentum as a backbone.
What are your top priorities as a CIO?
As a pharmaceutical company, we make cost-effective products that save and enhance lives. As an enabling function, IT needs to do three things. We need to help R&D to get products fast to market. We need to enable supply chain excellence. And we need to deliver business intelligence. Those are really the priorities that we have. Then we do a lot of other things like compliance management, keeping the lights on, enhancing productivity, etc. But in terms of making a big difference, it’s going to be in those three areas.
What are the key projects you are currently undertaking?
We are doing a lot in terms of deployment of SAP BI Suite, development of dashboards and roll out of strategic management of SAP in terms of streamlining of financial systems and processes. That’s really the business intelligence area we are focusing on. In supply chain, we are continuing our development and implementation of SAP APO (Advanced Planner and Optimizer). In the R&D space, we’ll be rolling out a global regulatory database, besides upgrading our e-submission platform and looking at a document management backbone.
Any immediate challenges?
An area where we haven’t done enough is the front-end automation, especially that of our sales force. The challenge here is that market by market, it’s a very specific area to work on. Even the existence of different regulations in different regions in the world means the SFA solution needs to cater to the specific needs of individual markets.
How do you keep yourself updated? Do you read books as well?
I’m part of many industry associations and attend several CIO gatherings. I read what some analysts write on our industry. I’m not as good in capturing things online as I do through events and face-to-face discussions. I don’t find too many good books on current technologies, but I do occasionally read management and philosophy books. I’m currently reading Winning by Jack Welch.
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