Harnessing the Power of Digitalization at AstraZeneca

ARC Advisory Group has been tracking the digital transformation initiatives of companies by conducting surveys and analyses for the last 5-7 years. All this information has been collated, and the Top 25 global industrial digital transformation leaders, across multiple industries and geographies, have been identified. ARC’s Industrial Digital Transformation Top 25 report highlights companies that are successfully integrating digital technology into all areas of business, fundamentally changing the way they operate and deliver value to their customers. They share a common thread of leveraging digital technologies to transform business capabilities and outcomes, giving them a competitive advantage during challenging global circumstances. Harnessing the power of digitalization has given AstraZeneca a place in the Top 25.

The global business landscape has gone through immense turbulence and uncertainty in the last two years. The pandemic catalyzed companies to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives and adapt to the constantly changing demands with agility. It is evident that only companies that deployed digital transformation initiatives were able to thrive and survive. Today, digital transformation has emerged as the focal point of all business-related conversations and is expediting the ability for physical and organizational boundaries to be broken to engage a real-time workforce, connect teams, and drive collaboration.  While some shifted their digital transformation efforts during the pandemic, all had some level of prior preparation and have an eye toward the future.

For this research, digital transformation has been defined as: “The integration of digital technology into all areas of business, fundamentally changing the way companies operate and deliver value to customers. The organization is typically charged to innovate and improve across multiple dimensions such as: digital/disruptive technologies, culture and leadership, operational agility, workforce engagement, customer experience, environmental, social and governance, and competitive performance.”

This is the sixteenth in a series of blogs on the leaders in the digital transformation space.

Harnessing the Power of Digitalization at AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca moved from doing digital to being digital. Its digital factory is enabled by artificial intelligence, image recognition, IoT, robotics, automation, and digital twins. The company built a connected infrastructure of digital and innovative tools to transform, streamline and optimize how they work internally. Some examples include an insight platform or what is called a “control tower” that uses visual analytics to guide decision-making, giving leaders and colleagues real-time access of any study including AI predictive timelines. Data and analytics optimizes and automates study design, planning and management of clinical trials.

Next Step

ARC will continue its research in all areas related to digital transformation to learn more about what is working – and what isn’t – as companies pursue their unique digital transformation activities. The Industrial Digital Transformation Top 25 report will be published annually. With this being the first issue, your feedback is very important to investigate new approaches and measures to adjust our methodology, identify successful digital transformation initiatives, and help the industry as a whole digitally transform. This report is the fruition of an idea that matured over several years, spurred on by the many experiences with end users, their challenges, and research by ARC team members. To download the final report, please click here.