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The fascinating opportunity to smoothly and rapidly restructure a globally operating company is based on the internal structures that Bayer, and today Bayer Business Services, have developed over the last ten years. That was the beginning of Business Process Outsourcing.
The change began when BPO experts began looking at work processes within companies in a new way. They noticed that certain processes are more or less the same at all companies and can therefore be depicted with standardized software. Information technology was simultaneously making rapid strides, thereby making it possible to more closely network structures that reflect the various applications.
Both of these developments gave companies the option of considering which processes they wished to continue conducting themselves, and which ones might be entrusted to specialized companies capable of carrying them out more efficiently. This basically sums up the strategic environment in which Bayer Business Services operates today.
From the very beginning, Bayer intensely pursued its concept of running business procedures via standardized processes. The expertise that Bayer Business Services possesses today in all areas of BPO is based on the fact that it has continually helped to shape the development of the sector.
Dr. Horstfried Läpple, now Senior Bayer Representative in Brazil, played a leading role in the introduction of standardized software in the early days. The corresponding project was run internally at Bayer under the designation PMB (Program Management Bayer). “Bayer began standardizing processes through this project in the mid-1990s,” Läpple recalls. “That's what enabled the company to take a quantum leap – one that's paying off today.”
Like most other companies, Bayer had utilized its own developments prior to that time. However, these programs had reached the end of their lifecycles, and that necessitated a fundamental decision to standardize all finance, accounting, and logistics processes worldwide.
The project was completed when Bayer restructured itself in 2001 by creating a holding company, subgroups, and service companies. Up to 1,400 employees were involved in the project during its peak phase. Bayer Business Services' tremendous expertise in SAP systems today is due to the fact that many developments were refined and expanded in cooperation with SAP during this period. The partnership between the two companies has only gotten more intense since that time.
Bayer was one of the first corporate groups in the world to adopt such a partnership-based approach, and practically no other company has implemented SAP systems on such a broad scale. The development that Business Process Outsourcing has undergone over the past ten years can best be compared to the transition from a craftsmanship-based economy to one based on industry. Services and IT applications have in fact now become an industry in their own right.
Processes are run in a standardized manner, as are the applications they are based on. Market success these days is primarily determined by competitiveness. The achievements of Bayer Business Services over the years show that the company is a leading player in the industry.
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