Editors’ Note

Susan O’Day joined Bristol-Myers Squibb Company in 1996 and since then has served as Director of Information Management Technical Services and Vice President of Information Management Services. In her current position as Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Global Shared Services, she is responsible for enterprise information management including platform, application and data architecture and delivery, divisional information management organizations, financial shared services, and meetings and travel services. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Saint Lawrence University and a master’s degree in business from the College of William and Mary. Additionally, O’Day is President of the Board of Trustees at Miss Hall’s School, one of the foremost college-preparatory schools for girls in the country.

Company Brief

New York-based Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (www.bms.com) is a global biopharmaceutical and related health-care products company whose mission is to extend and enhance human life by providing the highest quality pharmaceutical and related health care products. More than a century old, Bristol-Myers Squibb has 43,000 employees throughout its two business units: Worldwide Pharmaceuticals and the Health Care Group, which includes Mead Johnson Nutritionals, ConvaTec (ostomy and wound care), and Bristol-Myers Squibb Medical Imaging.

Can you highlight how you are managing your multiple roles at Bristol-Myers Squibb? How do those roles relate to each other?

As Chief Information Officer, my most important objective is to maximize the return on our investment in information technology. That’s done by implementing and enabling technologies and process improvements that work toward the mission of the company, and drive either greater efficiency or greater shareholder return through automation or relevant and timely access to information, which drives rapid and high-value decision making. My role as Vice President of Global Shared Services is to deliver a set of services to the company at its lowest unit cost and at the best quality. So while the CIO role is about innovation and identification of opportunities to enhance the value of the company, the role in Global Shared Services is about driving efficiency and productivity into a set of processes or services. These jobs relate, because the services that are provided through Global Shared Services are the operational reality of what Bristol-Myers Squibb business leadership, business partners, and information management professionals come up with.

How important is it that senior leadership understand the CIO role and how it affects the business? Is that a key to being successful in this role?

It’s the senior leadership’s responsibility to recognize and invest appropriately in information technology to achieve our mission. At Bristol-Myers Squibb, we rely heavily on information to be successful, and we’re in a very data-intensive industry. There are vast amounts of data involved in discovery, clinical trials, manufacturing, and marketing and sales activities. Pharmaceuticals have a long legacy of needing and relying on technology for the delivery of their product or their mission, and Bristol-Myers Squibb is no exception to that. For senior executives to be successful in the pharmaceutical industry, they need to recognize the value and competitive differentiating potential of information technology, and they need to foster its use. As CIO, my role is to assure the potential value in the application of information technologies is understood, and appropriate investment trade-offs are made as a result.

Have you found that you’ve been able to attract talent to both global shared services and information management? Also, how important is it to you to have diversity within the workforce?

We’ve been able to attract very strong talent to both information management and shared services. As innovation and new ideas are critical to information management, we use various methods to attract and retain employees at all levels within the organization. An example of this is our IM Associate Program, in which we bring recent business school graduates into this program and not only let them learn about Bristol-Myers Squibb, but also let them teach us new ideas and new thinking about technology. This builds a pipeline for future leaders, and creates a high-energy environment for our associates. We not only search for talent at the entry level through this program but also try to bring tenured leaders who have good industry and technology experience. Diversity in my leadership teams is a top priority. I mean diversity from all angles: diversity in thought, diversity in background, cultural diversity, and diversity in experience. Diversity has to be a priority in areas where we’re trying to innovate.

You’ve been with Bristol-Myers Squibb for more than 10 years. Are more women coming into the industry? Are there opportunities for a good work-life balance?

The pharmaceutical industry is a very smart and data-driven professional industry, and it is a place where many people from different backgrounds have come to make their careers. Why wouldn’t you want to work for a company whose mission is to extend and enhance human life? That’s very aspirational. I think that resonates loudly with everyone – not just women. Many of the women who come into the pharmaceutical industry are very accomplished, and I think they find working for a corporation like ours very rewarding and satisfying. Over the past 10 years, Bristol-Myers Squibb has been making the work-life balance a priority.

Part of the mission of the company ties in well to the ideas of community involvement and corporate citizenship. How important is it that the company and employees are socially responsible and engaged in the community?

Bristol-Myers Squibb has a company pledge, and within the pledge we cite the various constituents whom we are here to serve. One of them is the community where we live and work. Bristol-Myers Squibb has made that a very visible priority, both internally and externally, and it really does come through to all of the employees.