PfizerWorks: New Outsourcing Model to Improve Employee Productivity

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Case Details:

Case Code : OPER081
Case Length : 13 Pages
Period : 2005-2009
Organization : Pfizer, Inc.
Pub Date : 2009
Teaching Note :Not Available
Countries : US
Industry : Pharmaceuticals

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This case study was compiled from published sources, and is intended to be used as a basis for class discussion. It is not intended to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a management situation. Nor is it a primary information source.

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Excerpts

Background Note

Pfizer was set up as the Charles Pfizer & Company in Brooklyn, New York, in 1849 by cousins Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart (Erhart), two young entrepreneurs from Germany. Santonin, a palatable anti-parasitic was the company's first product. In 1862, during the American Civil War, Pfizer increased production of its chemicals and drugs, which doctors of the Union Army used, to treat wounded and sick soldiers...

The Problem

In 2005, Pfizer faced a financial crisis with many of its leading drugs nearing patent expiry (Refer to Exhibit I for a brief note on Pfizer's problems in 2005).

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The company announced cost-cutting initiatives and reduced its annual budget by US$4 billion. However, it realized that cost-cutting measures wouldn't be enough to ensure Pfizer's competitiveness...

Outsourcing Tasks

Around this time, Cohen came across Thomas L. Friedman's The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005) and realized that outsourcing of tasks was a possible solution to the problem at Pfizer. In the book, Friedman profiled several of India's virtual-assistant companies (Refer to Exhibit for a note on the book)...

How it Works

The program worked something like this. When an employee wanted to send a task to the virtual assistant, he/she would click an OOF button in Microsoft Outlook specifying what was needed, and the deadline for the job. This immediately sent a request to a virtual assistant company in India...

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