Johnson & Johnson's Intelligent Automation Journey

Johnson & Johnson’s “Intelligent Automation” (IA) initiative emphasizes that intelligence is a core concept in its rethinking of the way the company operates, and must be implemented through machine learning and robotic process automation (RPA). Intelligent digital solutions represented by tools. Johnson & Johnson’s exploration is undoubtedly a good inspiration and practice for other organizations looking to extract maximum value from automation tools. Johnson & Johnson hopes to re-establish end-to-end business processes through a digital-first approach and shift employees' focus from manual operations to more engaging, creative and targeted work.

From a small trial to an enterprise-wide priority

Like other companies, Johnson & Johnson’s automation transformation also started with preliminary testing. At that time, many employees did not believe how practical intelligent automation could be. value. But the company's Global Services group had pushed ahead with several projects (involving finance, human resources, and procurement) and found that the cost was twice as much as the value achieved. To further improve efficiency, Johnson & Johnson executives encouraged Global Services to serve as a digital hub in the business, saying "we need to reimagine the way we work and practice."

Since then, several senior leaders from Johnson & Johnson, including Ajay Anand, Senior Vice President of Global Services, and Steve Sorensen, Senior Vice President of Johnson & Johnson Technical Services, have worked together to develop a new smart approach. In the initial pilot, a total of five financial use cases were introduced, all of which were successful. This also gives Johnson & Johnson reason to believe that intelligent automation can create value, and also allows further promotion to gain unanimous support among the Johnson & Johnson executive team. At the time, the executive team concluded that intelligent automation could bring significant improvements to J&J’s end-to-end processes and that it should proceed on an aggressive timeline. To this end, Johnson & Johnson has established a corporate council with members from various functions and business units, while providing it with 11 important authorizations. Strong cooperation between IT and business departments is a prerequisite for the ultimate success of the plan. As co-chairs of the Corporate Council, Anand and Sorensen have proven their close cooperative relationship with practical actions.

How Intelligent Automation Works

Jim Swanson, chief information officer of Johnson & Johnson, said that the goal of each intelligent automation project "is not to automate, but to reimagine." It's like redesigning business processes. Likewise, Johnson & Johnson's intelligent automation approach encourages business units to transform large-scale end-to-end processes, from order to cash to inter-enterprise partner pricing. Likewise, brainstorming in process design now requires full consideration of the impact of new technologies and processes. Johnson & Johnson uses functional heat maps based on external benchmarking to identify high-value opportunity areas, understand the type of intelligent automation technology required, and assess the technology's quantified impact on end-to-end functional processes. Johnson & Johnson's goal is also simple: Don't rebuild unless necessary.

Each intelligent automation project is evaluated through a certification process, such as whether the execution process is standardized, whether there is a clear plan owner or team, whether the improvement will have an impact on the business, and whether there is an urgency to start execution immediately. wait. In the early days of intelligent automation, Johnson & Johnson focused on redesigning and automating global functional processes. Starting in 2020, intelligent automation projects in R&D and supply chains will be officially introduced into corporate planning. R&D, in particular, has become the focus of redesign and automation transformation efforts due to its significant unstructured nature.

Jitendra Sinha, Head of Technology R&D, commented:

Although R&D departments have been facing challenges in the application of automation and new technologies due to the impact of industry regulations, intelligent automation has inspired and promoted new insights. Improved and simplified app experience to help us make better decisions in drug development. Intelligent automation also increases efficiency, reduces the company's routine burdens on medical safety and regulatory oversight, improves return cycles, and lowers the cost of serving our patients.

For customer-facing processes, the goal of intelligent automation is often to raise the ceiling. Taking Johnson & Johnson's pharmaceutical technology business in Europe/Middle East/Africa as an example, the intelligent automation initiative identified three directions that need improvement: bidding process, business supply chain, and omni-channel access to customers. Intelligent automation teams composed of internal subject matter experts work with external consultants to solve problems in current business processes from an external perspective. The team focuses on improvement opportunities within each sub-process, emphasizing being more responsive to customers and incorporating intelligence into processes to increase bid success rates. This has also ushered in a series of intelligent automation solutions in business processes, helping the medical technology business show a positive development trend. In addition, Johnson & Johnson is also trying to apply machine learning to sales work to help sales representatives find the "next best action."

Another key element of adopting intelligent automation is engaging employees at all levels through thoughtful change management methods, inspiring everyone’s confidence in embracing intelligent automation and eliminating worries about change. Through storytelling, sharing of best practices, leadership engagement, and intelligent automation advocacy training, transformation efforts begin to move from reality to reality, allowing more employees to support the change and take action. This is also the goal of change management at Johnson & Johnson. The faster this transformation occurs, the greater the positive impact on stakeholder business solutions.

Intelligent automation brings tangible value to Johnson & Johnson

Under the guidance of intelligent automation, Johnson & Johnson has established a 3E (ie, experience, effect and efficiency) value framework. Automation projects at other companies often emphasize reducing headcount, but Johnson & Johnson has never made this a transformation focus. Chris Gruber, senior director of global service strategy and transformation, explained:

The goal of our intelligent automation plan is always to enhance the experience of employees/customers/patients, improve process effects, and look for possibilities to improve efficiency. From the beginning, we have emphasized helping employees become friends of time, freeing up their energy and investing it in more meaningful and targeted work, including spending more time with customers, optimizing daily work processes, etc.

But this pursuit of efficient processes also has clear value goals. The Enterprise Intelligent Automation Council has promised to bring $500 million in returns to Johnson & Johnson within three years (by 2023) relying on the 3E framework. Each board member will report value through scorecards every quarter. As of the end of 2022, Johnson & Johnson has successfully completed its value commitment within two years. Later, the executive sponsor of the Intelligent Automation Council proposed a new goal to create more than US$1 billion in returns through the 3E framework by the end of 2025. The focus of the next work will be on promoting the personal development of employees, promoting conversational AI and advanced intelligent automation use cases, especially the combination of automation and AI applications.

The above is the detailed content of Johnson & Johnson's Intelligent Automation Journey. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!