Expansion of Irish operation just the tonic for Merck

Pharma giant Merck Sharp Dohme in Leopardstown is set to hire more workers, writes GORDON SMITH

OFFICIALLY OPENED last week, the Dublin shared services facility of pharma giant Merck Sharp Dohme (MSD) is already looking to exceed its initial jobs target.

The Leopardstown site is operational since October and currently employs 50 people, with plans to reach its target of 150 by the end of 2011.

As the facility starts to extend its reach to provide shared services to MSD’s facilities in central and eastern Europe, senior vice-president Chris Scalet says he expects this number to move “north of 200 people”.

On a visit here last week, Scalet adds that there is scope to expand the services being provided from MSD’s Dublin site beyond finance, procurement and human resources. “We have plans to look at other opportunities that fit the shared service model,” he says.

The Dublin site went live in just six months, having been fast-tracked to help with ongoing integration work resulting from MSD’s $41 billion merger with fellow pharma giant Schering-Plough in 2009.

Explaining why MSD chose Ireland, Scalet ticks two obvious boxes of competitive cost structures and an educated workforce.

MSD Dublin’s staff is a mix of recent graduates and workers with a background in shared services. Scalet says another important factor in choosing Ireland is the presence of other Fortune 500 companies with similar centres.

The mix is roughly 50-50 between Irish and other European nationals, as the centre provides support in 14 languages.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about the talent. If you can’t find the talent, it doesn’t matter what cost structure you get, because you will not succeed. So we came to where we think there is the greatest opportunity to find people who could very quickly learn what we’re trying to do and apply it.”

Scalet is also chief information officer at MSD and in this role he is well placed to comment on technology trends. Appropriately for a pharma firm, he has something to say about tablets.

Touchscreen devices like Apple’s iPad are “a huge opportunity”, he says, and MSD is actively looking at ways of using them.

Many MSD researchers use lab notebooks of the paper kind but Scalet sees a day coming where those could be of the electronic variety. “There are huge productivity gains by using the interfaces that these devices have.”

While he sees the pads’ potential, he won’t be rushed into handing them out to users. “We’re not putting out devices for devices’ sake. It has to be driven by the need and be application-specific,” he cautions.

“They’re going to have to get a bit more rugged for us to give to 35,000 sales reps around the world. They’re probably going to have to go through another couple of revs to be commercial-strength that we can deploy them, but it will happen.”

He is similarly circumspect when discussing another often-hyped tech trend, namely cloud computing. MSD has moved some applications to the internet, including customer-relationship management and human resources.

Nevertheless Scalet is not about to move all of MSD’s IT to the cloud. “When you play in a heavily regulated sector like we do, we have to have a handle on where our data physically resides.

“When you say ‘it’s in the cloud’, that puts a connotation that you’re not sure where it is. I don’t think it’s a fad, but I think it’s probably going to occur slower than people anticipate. We are not going to write off applications to move everything to the cloud; I think it’s going to be a migration.”

Unsurprisingly, Scalet is a firm believer in how technology can play a strategic role in business.

“The demand for my services is not shrinking; it’s growing year on year.” As an example, he points to mobile apps that use MSD’s trove of content like the Merck manuals of medical information and put this literally in the hands of consumers and doctors.

Content has been converted into free, non-branded apps which are available on a range of smartphones, intended to help groups with diabetes, cardiovascular problems or migraines to manage their health. That initiative was driven by Scalet’s IT team before being brought to the business.

“We play a heavy role in supporting innovation from an RD perspective,” he says. “I don’t believe IT should be an order taker. IT has to have an understanding of the business and where the business wants to go.”