IMS Health/Egon Zehnder Study Finds Significant Shifts in Skill Sets for Top IT Roles in Life Sciences
03 February 2016 - 5:30AM
Business Wire
CIO Competencies Are Evolving to Capture
Innovation Opportunities of Digital Revolution
More than 80 percent of leading life sciences companies have
created new digital and innovation leadership roles to capitalize
on the information technology transformation in healthcare, with
nearly half hiring new chief information officers during the past
three years, according to new research issued today by the IMS
Institute for Healthcare Informatics. The rise of mobile, cloud,
predictive analytics and other digital innovations offers new
opportunities for advancing patient care as companies launch
innovative products at a more rapid pace and in more therapy areas.
These dynamics, along with spending and operational constraints,
require life sciences CIOs to expand specialized IT knowledge and
skills within their organizations, and to play a more strategic
role in driving commercial success through digital
transformation.
The study, New Strategic Information and Technology Roles in
Life Sciences Companies, includes a proprietary Information and
Technology Transformation Scoring framework (ITTS) to assess
progress among the top 50 global life sciences companies. ITTS
tracks five areas of technology conversion: Innovation/Disruption,
Organizational Transformation, Big Data/Analytics, Infrastructure,
and Future of Work. The study was produced independently in
collaboration with Egon Zehnder, a leading global executive search
and talent management firm.
“While most life sciences companies have centralized their IT
functions to drive operational gains, they have been slow to
achieve the breakthrough transformation that’s possible by
capitalizing on today’s technologies,” said Murray Aitken, IMS
Health senior vice president and executive director of the IMS
Institute for Healthcare Informatics. “Of the companies we assessed
using our ITTS framework, just 15 percent are fully capturing the
value of the digital revolution.”
Opportunities exist for CIOs to play a more strategic role in
advancing the technology transformation within life sciences
companies.
“Tech and digital innovations are becoming a core part of the
value proposition for life sciences. And yet, unlike many other
industries, the skills required to fully deliver on those
innovations are not native within this sector. There is a unique
opportunity for CIOs to fill the missing skill gap and become core
enablers of their respective companies’ strategies,” said Alain
Serhan, co-leader of Egon Zehnder’s global Digital Health
Initiative.
Highlights of the study include:
- Technology transformation is
underway within all life sciences companies, across varying
strategic and operational areas, and at different rates. Large
companies outperform their medium-sized competitors on average
across all elements of the ITTS assessment. Of the companies
surveyed, 15 percent are considered market leaders, demonstrating
significant progress on both strategic and operational dimensions.
On average, 85 percent of companies with centralized IT functions
have achieved a higher level of technology transformation—as have
companies that use cloud-based technologies for more than 25
percent of their software needs.
- While IT departments are embracing
analytic tools that reduce complexity, advanced predictive and
prescriptive capabilities remain underused. Within sales and
marketing functions, 80 percent of companies assessed now have
systems in place that leverage visualization tools, and more than
half have a multichannel marketing strategy in place for their
North America and Europe operations. However, fewer than 10 percent
of life sciences companies deploy systems that apply both
predictive and prescriptive capabilities to guide decisions.
- As leadership in new IT functional
areas is recognized as increasingly critical to success, CEOs are
hiring new CIOs and establishing digital and innovation roles.
Nearly half of the life sciences companies assessed have CIOs who
have been in place less than three years, and 70 percent in place
fewer than five years. In small companies, more than 40 percent of
all CIOs were hired within the past year. Companies with CIOs
having a tenure of less than five years outperform on the ITTS
framework overall, especially in the key areas of
Innovation/Disruption and Big Data/Analytics. More than two-thirds
of today’s CIOs were hired from outside the company, with external
hires ranging from 82 percent for small companies to 52 percent for
larger organizations. Despite the critical role of the CIO in
business transformation, fewer than one in four are part of their
company’s executive team. Within large life sciences companies,
just one in seven CIOs serves on the executive team.
- CIOs remain in the best position to
lead technological innovation, but require new digital
competencies. The CIO role has narrowed in scope in most life
sciences companies as responsibility for areas such as R&D
bioinformatics, genomics and Real-World Evidence have moved to
other parts of the organization. And, more than 80 percent of
companies have established new digital data and innovation
positions that challenge the traditional CIO role. With new
“digital” competencies viewed as key for success, assessments by
CEOs of CIO candidates focus on a combination of both core and
digital competencies. The core competencies of strategic
orientation, results orientation, team leadership and
collaboration/ influence remain essential. In pursuit of future
digital leaders, CEOs also are seeking candidates with strengths in
consumer centricity, digital fluency, data orientation,
adaptability and change leadership.
The full report, including a detailed description of the
methodology, is available at www.theimsinstitute.org. It also can
be downloaded as an app via iTunes at
https://itunes.apple.com/app/ims-institute/id625347542. The study
was produced independently as a public service, without industry or
government funding.
About the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics
The IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics provides key policy
setters and decision makers in the global health sector with unique
and transformational insights into healthcare dynamics derived from
granular analysis of information. It is a research-driven entity
with a worldwide reach that collaborates with external healthcare
experts from across academia and the public and private sectors to
objectively apply IMS Health’s proprietary global information and
analytical assets. More information about the IMS Institute can be
found at: http://www.theimsinstitute.org.
About Egon Zehnder
Since 1964, Egon Zehnder has been at the forefront of defining
great leadership in the face of changing economic conditions,
emerging opportunities and evolving business goals. With more than
400 consultants in 69 offices and 41 countries around the globe, we
work closely with public and private corporations, family-owned
enterprises and nonprofit and government agencies to provide board
advisory services, CEO and leadership succession planning,
executive search and assessment, and leadership development. For
more information visit www.egonzehnder.com and follow us on
LinkedIn and Twitter.
About IMS Health
IMS Health (NYSE:IMS) is a leading global information and
technology services company providing clients in the healthcare
industry with end-to-end solutions to measure and improve their
performance. Our 7,500 services experts connect configurable SaaS
applications to 10+ petabytes of complex healthcare data in the IMS
One™ cloud platform, delivering unique insights into diseases,
treatments, costs and outcomes. The company’s 15,000 employees
blend global consistency and local market knowledge across 100
countries to help clients run their operations more efficiently.
Customers include pharmaceutical, consumer health and medical
device manufacturers and distributors, providers, payers,
government agencies, policymakers, researchers and the financial
community.
As a global leader in protecting individual patient privacy, IMS
Health uses anonymous healthcare data to deliver critical,
real-world disease and treatment insights. These insights help
biotech and pharmaceutical companies, medical researchers,
government agencies, payers and other healthcare stakeholders to
identify unmet treatment needs and understand the effectiveness and
value of pharmaceutical products in improving overall health
outcomes. Additional information is available at
www.imshealth.com.
View source
version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160202006434/en/
IMS HealthTor Constantino,
+1-484-567-6732tconstantino@us.imshealth.com
IMS HEALTH HOLDINGS, INC. (NYSE:IMS)
Historical Stock Chart
From Jun 2024 to Jul 2024
IMS HEALTH HOLDINGS, INC. (NYSE:IMS)
Historical Stock Chart
From Jul 2023 to Jul 2024