Information Systems Support Bayer's Mission and Goals

A2-1 Information Systems to Support Bayer’s Mission and Goals

Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the fields of health care, nutrition and high-tech materials. Bayer’s stated mission is “to create products and services designed to benefit people and improve their quality of life.” This mission statement underscores its willingness as an inventor company to help shape the future and to come up with innovations that benefit humankind. Bayer’s goals are to create an enterprise that is keenly focused on its customers, its strengths, its potential and the markets of the future.
Strategic Activities: Bayer has carried out a strategic realignment, placing its businesses into three subgroups that operate virtually independently and are fully aligned to their respective markets. Each group is supported by competent service companies. The company intends to focus on the areas of health care, nutrition, high-tech materials. Of special importance are new products emerging from active substance research, the consumer health business, the growth markets of Asia and new areas such as biotechnology and nanotechnology. Bayer has an extensive network of external partners and long-term alliances, such as those with biotechnology companies which strengthens its research platform and offers attractive business opportunities in the markets of the future. Its research and development are directed toward therapeutic areas where there is particular scope for innovation and where it already has successful products and/or promising product developments. It believes that biotechnologically derived active ingredients have considerable growth potential. It also plans to further expand the successful business in products for the companion animals market. Bayer plans to systematically exploit opportunities for both internal and external growth.
Operational Activities: Bayer’s operations revolve around its core principles as an inventor company. Each of the three subgroups operates as independent entities working toward a common goal: to create products that benefits people and improves quality of life. The company is an established international supplier of IT-based administrative, commercial and scientific services. Bayer Business Services has bundled all the related services in its core area of IT Infrastructure and Applications. The experts at IT Infrastructure and Applications ( http://www.bayerbbs.de/english/solutions-services/it-infrastructure-and-applications.html ) provide comprehensive and qualified consulting on all aspects of corporate processes. They implement applications for all major core business processes and provide application service for more than 60 IT systems (most based on SAP) with more than 60,000 users. The unit also maintains a global data network with data centers on three continents, provides PCs and devices for landline and mobile telephony, and sets up telephone and computer networks. Based on the IP telephony infrastructure, global communications solutions are installed and maintained. All services include comprehensive support.
Managerial Activities: The mission of providing benefit to people and improving the quality of life also guides management activities. A core element of its corporate strategy is rigorous value management. Performance-related compensation systems reward and incentivize the achievement of value-creation targets. Customers remain the focus of activities but employees are also highly valued. Common values and leadership principles form the basis for day-to-day activities. The organizational structure encourages individual responsibility and entrepreneurship. The company “places paramount importance on living our values in our work. The leadership principles on which we assess our managers are therefore based on these values.”
Bayer is using Information Technology (IT) in virtually all aspects of business operations. It is operating innovative host and web technologies as well as business systems based on SAP, supporting business processes in the areas of research & development, health, environment, occupational safety and quality (HSEQ), collaborative work processes, document and content management, performing contract and license management as well as scientific data searches and implementation and operation of scientific information systems for end users (currently 12,000 users worldwide). It is operating a “Customer Interaction Center” (CIC) from Bayer Business Services which collects data from a wide variety of source systems and presents it on screen. It is using virtualization technology enabling the resources of IT systems to be divided up creating high system availability, server load optimization and cost-effective server structures. Bayer Business Services is developing solutions for information integration, collaboration and activity management as well as research into how to best utilize RFID technology. Bayer is an example of a company that is truly focused on its mission: to create products and services designed to benefit people and improve their quality of life.