**You asked and the Lead Team Answered!
We may have ran out of time to answer all the questions during the last Townhall, but as promised we put together your questions and got answers.
Below are the submitted, unanswered questions from the live IT Townhall on September 17th, 2019**
You can also watch the recording from this Townhall here.
Q1: Is a more centralized IT organization in parallel with how the businesses will be organized?
A1: Our IT organization will continue to have direct alignment to the Elanco business functions. Our structure will evolve in parallel with our business, especially in terms of enterprise prioritization, with a focus on implementing capabilities and products that will bring the highest value to Elanco. This will require both IT and our business partners to partner to align on and establish a new governance model for prioritization.
Q2: Elanco IT seems to be becoming more and more US-centric and becoming harder and harder to feel included when OUS. How can we address that?
A2: Our future organization will require OUS expansion and is moving beyond what Lilly had planned for their OUS IT organization. In past few months, we have hired 15+ OUS employees. As we stand up Elanco IT and plan for the Bayer Animal Health acquisition, we have temporarily centralized more work and decision making in Greenfield. This will rebalance in the coming months, in keeping with our commitment to being geographically inclusive.
Q3: Besides town halls, how do we plan to communicate more broadly? Will we continue the OCM update meetings that Bryce held earlier month?
A3: We will provide updates similarly, to how we communicated this first round of IT strategy updates. We will leverage our UNITE communications channel and will also leverage our corporate communication channels, as needed.
Q4: To what I understand, teams will be divided more on products and IT capabilities as opposed to functions, which will mean that people are focused on one area of technology/IT only. I am assuming that there will need to be more subject matter experts (SMEs), which will probably mean external hiring and people specializing in a certain type of IT/products. What does this mean in terms of early talent and schemes such as the student program and grad schemes? How will people be given the place to grow and develop and experience different areas of IT or skill sets in this model? Will people be forced to only experience certain type of roles? How will we ensure our talent pipeline has an “all round” view of our IT organization and a flexible skill set? It seems the new org will cater for shorter term employees, rather than people having a longer IT career at Elanco.
A4: There are a series of questions grouped here, which we will answer in sequence. We didn’t share much related to organizational design yet, as we are still working through it, but we can share initial thoughts. Similarly, some of these questions are very detailed around “how,” where we don’t have all answers defined yet. When we talk about digital products, they can be grouped around product affinity and individual technologies; similarly, individual products can be consumed by many or all functions (workplace products, for example). We’re not convinced that we will need many more subject matter experts (SMEs) than we have today. Similar to today, we are focused on ensuring the right mix of skills, experiences, capabilities, and perspectives to meet the current and future needs of our business. This mix is made up from a variety of sources; one of which being our early career professionals and we are committed to maintaining this flow of talent; right-sized for the teams we have and the capabilities we need. We run intern programs in two geographies today.
In terms of future career paths, the new model will provide at least the same number of opportunities for cross-functional moves within IT that we have today. It will also allow for more balanced career paths in technical and business-facing roles, as well as expanded opportunities in individual contributor and manager roles. There will be a number of role placements and a number of roles open for interview in the future, following the standard HR processes. Obviously, cross-function moves within IT require managers to accept some risk, and individuals to demonstrate willingness and ability to rapidly learn new spaces. The new organization will should help individuals build “T-shape skills” – very deep in one or two areas and very broad in a high number of other areas.
Q5. We heard a lot about “transformation” in Matt’s video covering the elements of Elanco’s IT strategy. In past experience, “transformation” has often been used to describe a scenario involving head-count reduction. Can you speak to this?
A5: Elanco IT headcount is growing, and the new Elanco IT strategy will not change this direction. With that said, roles and responsibilities will evolve, including the skills and capabilities required, as will our function’s geographical footprint. The IT strategy will be implemented incrementally over time and include the appropriate training and support to ensure employees have the opportunity to learn.
Q6: What’s the balance between enterprise prioritization and what each individual will “own”? Aren’t those in conflict?
A6: Enterprise prioritization means we will focus on the key areas of work that will deliver the most value to Elanco. This is a group-based “own” to ensure we do what is right for OneElanco and not just for an individual function. For example, we could decide that our company focus and priority is on R&D, which would require us to shift resources there and away from lower value activities. Once priorities and work are established, the “how” we do this and ownership and accountability for it will be each employee’s responsibility.
Q7: Regarding Project Bison (Bayer AH Acquisition), do we have any insight into the feeling on the Bayer AH side? Are their employees pleased? Do they have an understanding of the disruption ahead?
A7: Bayer leaders have shared with us their team appreciates our shared passion for animal well-being and the customer. They are particularly interested in being part of a dedicated animal health company and the focus and investment that comes with that. Bayer has done multiple carve outs in other business units and has the experience and expertise we need.
Q8: Given we shifting to an IPP focus and have to prioritize our portfolio, Elanco IT and some portions of Elanco are beginning to adopt the new portfolio tool but we do not have a process. Can we expect to see more discipline in this area?
A8: We launched the foundations of our portfolio process with the implementation of the Cora tool focusing on project information, status tracking and project milestones. This supports project reviews with functional and holistic views. We are continuing to add to the process, as we add to Elanco’s IT framework. Our focus is to drive one source of truth for our portfolio. As we move to our new organization and work to further maximize our value, we will build our business portfolio management to align even more directly to IPP and financial targets through full portfolio governance. This governance will bring the product-oriented closeness to the business.
Q9: A BRM model will be critical to our future state (focus shift to enterprise as opposed to functional). Is that on the table from an org design perspective?
A9: Business Relationship Management (BRM) will be a critical part of our future. This will help support the shift to a “product-mindset” and a more agile way of working. The BRM model will also help enable enterprise prioritization, supported by a new cross-functional portfolio and governance.
Q10: Shadow IT will pop up. I don’t believe in today’s world of consumerized IT we can stop it nor should we. But we do have to put a structure/processes in place to ensure it considers our architecture and standards where applicable. A BRM model plays a part in this as well.
A10: As we move forward, our Elanco IT intent will be to enable “Community IT” that works within our Elanco IT ecosystem (platforms, process, and architecture) to allow effective and efficient insights and decisions. This structure/ process will enable a transition from an organization of “no” to an organization with a “know” mindset, with Elanco IT providing the framework to drive greater value from our IT investments. As we move forward, we will look for input from our broader IT community and business partners in how we continue to refine and improve this structure/process. A Business Relationship Management (BRM) model will be a part of our future state Elanco IT organization and will play a key role in identifying the unmet needs of our business partners to help determine the right path forward.