Pharmaceuticals
From Fragmented Collaboration to Unified M365
Primary Area
Enterprise Architecture
Service Area
RFP Support
Products Used
SharePoint
Roles Impacted
All Information and Laboratory Workers
Impact Highlight
$5m annual IT run-rate saving from hardware, software, contract services
Opportunity
A Fortune 100 pharmaceutical company’s global growth produced isolated, on‑premises directories and collaboration products that accumulated technical debt and blocked secure cross‑team work. Leaders saw an opportunity to modernize, reduce duplication, and enable regulated collaboration at scale by moving to Microsoft 365.
Pain Points:
Multiple, unconnected identity directories across R&D, manufacturing, and commercial divisions.
Redundant email, chat, document management, and meeting platforms purchased independently by business units.
Heavy on‑prem infrastructure with high maintenance cost and slow upgrade cycles.
Inconsistent access controls creating compliance and audit risk in a regulated industry.
Fragmented data retention and eDiscovery processes complicating legal holds and inspections.
Poor user experience for global project teams; external partner access required manual workarounds.
Rising support spend and unresolved tickets tied to identity conflicts and tool overlap.
Solution
Our consultant partnered across IT, compliance, security, and business stakeholders to turn the executive vision of unified collaboration into a rigorous, testable requirements baseline—"Advancing Visions, Realizing Requirements" in practice. The team structured a people‑process‑technology program that guided vendor evaluation, informed sourcing strategy, and de‑risked the transition to Microsoft 365.
What We Did:
Ran stakeholder alignment workshops to capture current‑state pain points, regulatory needs, and future collaboration scenarios.
Authored a comprehensive requirements document covering identity, security, data residency, GxP/21 CFR Part 11 considerations, and adoption metrics.
Prepared RFP materials and supplier scorecards; coached client teams for structured outsourcing partner interviews.
Facilitated and documented vendor interviews; applied weighted scoring across functionality, compliance, integration effort, and TCO.
Analyzed RFP responses, validated assumptions, and modeled migration sequencing options tied to business milestones.
Produced an executive recommendation identifying Microsoft 365 as the target platform and outlining phased directory consolidation and coexistence strategy.
Impact
The client adopted the our final recommendation, executed a phased migration to a single Microsoft 365 tenant, and retired the majority of legacy on‑prem collaboration systems. Standardized identity, policy, and lifecycle management improved how R&D, manufacturing, and commercial teams collaborate internally and with external partners.
Results:
Company‑wide migration to Microsoft 365 completed across core business units.
Consolidation of multiple legacy directories into unified cloud identity with conditional access and standardized MFA.
Decommissioned redundant email, file share, and messaging platforms, reducing license overlap and infrastructure spend.
Annual IT run‑rate savings exceeding $5M from retired hardware, software maintenance, and support contracts.
Faster project startup: automated workspace provisioning replaced manual, ticket‑driven processes.
Improved audit readiness: consistent retention, eDiscovery, and compliance logging across regions.
Lower support volume tied to identity conflicts and tool sprawl; support teams reallocated to higher‑value services.