China Executive Briefings

Industry: Pharmaceutical

A multinational drug manufacturer had a globally diverse and globally-dispersed management team responsible for different product categories within Emerging Markets. The company wanted to align activities of these various business units within China, in order to better coordinate schedules, share local resources and optimize the corporation's overall impact there. The overall goal of our engagement was to provide a better understanding of the Chinese business environment and to help the corporation identify ways to coordinate internally to increase effectiveness in China.

Our approach:

• Seek to understand the goals, priorities, and activities of the different business units active in China
• Gain insight into the company resources and organizational structure of the corporation in China
• Facilitate strategic planning discussion on current and future business in China
• Find out challenges faced by the business units with focus on those that are environmentally or contextually driven
• Provide framework and lead discussion on impact of different business practices and culture on China operations
• Address operational issues in the context of some of these differences
• Create action plans for handling priorities and aligning activities, with emphasis on what would work best based on how things are done in China
• Get individual and collective commitments on follow up

Results:

• An expected reduction of overlapping and sometimes conflicting activities with the China market.
• Based on the strategic guidelines settled upon during the facilitation, tactical plans and activities would be coordinated so as not to "max out" the capacity of the local teams.
• Activities would be coordinated so that the corporation appeared in the local market as a single entity as opposed to disparate business units.
• A reduction in redundancy, wasted activity and poor communication was expected, resulting in overall time and money savings.

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