Pfm Devices Complex Project Initiatives

Synopsis

Jeff Goodman was a strong advocate for the product synthetic cartilage, and saw an opportunity to launch a successful company in the medical industry. His vast experience in the medical field helped to successfully create PFM Devices. As of 2002, Goodman, still CEO was looking to extend his product on a global scale. His final initiative before retirement was to increase global market share. It seemed as though the most significant way to increase global market share would be to acquire competing companies in new areas of the world. He decided to purchase a small company in France to hit the European market, and a fast growing company in Japan to access the Asian market. PFM’s global market share went from 17 % to 33% with the acquisitions. As of January 1st, 2004 Gary Lunde replaced Jeff Goodman as CEO. He had been with the company from the beginning, and seemed to be a worthy candidate to lead into the future. He quickly created three divisions to march into the potential growth markets that had opened up due to the acquisitions. Lunde felt the information technology teams in each division lacked leadership, and brought in Betty Brewer as CIO to manage the global IT team. She brought previous global experience in the retail industry to the table despite lacking experience in the medical devices industry. Brewer’s first task was to do an assessment of the IT operations. Upon concluding the assessment Brewer had many recommendations mainly increasing IT budgets, and working towards better disaster recovery for all international divisions. Following the year ending 2005 it was clear that PFM Devices was not reaching their full potential, and a change of strategy was needed.

Issues at hand

* The need for a data warehouse could reduce costs by increasing access and visibility to real-time data

* Inventory control needed to be increased (inventory and sales data in divisions was not timely or easily accessible)

* Financial Hardship

* Revenue down, cost up

* Money was tight and 2 projects (CRM: Customer Relationship Management, and Data Warehouse Project )had been proposed to solve some of the financial strain (lack of funding was giving PFM the hard decision as to which project to chase first)

* Problems have risen from the different structures of the 3 distribution models

* Lack of disaster recovery

(Some Location specific issues)

* No visibility to subsidiary inventory accessible in real-time (France)

* Infrastructure not up to current standards (France)

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