Case Study: Sanofi-aventis

Business Profile:
Sanofi-aventis is the third largest pharmaceutical company in the world and is a leader in major therapeutic areas such as cardiovascular disease, thrombosis, cancer, diabetes, central nervous system disorders, internal medicine, and vaccines. The research organization also ranks among the best, with 11,000 scientific personnel worldwide. In 2003, the company achieved consolidated sales of 25 billion euros.

The Objective:
Sanofi-aventis faces continual pressure to discover new drugs and bring them to market more quickly. In particular, Sanofi-aventis wanted to increase research collaboration within the globally dispersed Drug Innovation and Approval (DI&A) organization. With emphasis on producing results, researchers tended to become siloed in their work. Interviews with scientists also revealed frustrations in being able to find appropriate knowledge that they were sure existed somewhere in the company-for example, being able to find the internal research history of a compound or previous findings around a particular enzyme. As a part of a corporate initiative to become a more networked enterprise, Sanofi-aventis saw opportunity in improving access to tacit knowledge and connecting people for idea exchange, knowledge transfer, and resource sharing.

Initial Deployment Results:
Because there were no pharmaceutical implementations to use as a benchmark, Sanofi-aventis initially deployed Tacit software to 435 people across three global sites. Success of this deployment was measured based on productivity gains, product usability, and cultural-fit.

• Productivity Results: Over a three-month period, Tacit helped Aventis save 7.8 man months in research time.



• Product Usability: Participants rated Tacit software as 4.1 out of 5.0.



• Cultural Fit: When asked how they would feel if the product were removed, 83% of users asked that the product not be taken away.

One User's Success Story:
A scientist was trying to develop a macrophage assay by culturing macrophages and using cell sorting. Normally he would have spent up to two weeks searching through literature to find examples of different protocols on various methods for culturing and an additional two weeks to identify appropriate cell sorting technology. Instead, he used Tacit software to find other scientists who were able to provide the information and relevant experience he was looking for. This information was not published in any public repository, but Tacit's technology was able to make the connection between these scientists and reduced the research effort by four weeks!

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