CASE: Walgreens Boots Alliance
Chief Architect, Wholesale
The Situation
We were approached by Walgreens Boots Alliance to recruit a Chief Architect for its pharmaceutical wholesale division, Alliance Healthcare. It was a time of great disruption, as the division was in the midst of being sold to AmerisourceBergen, the global pharmaceutical sourcing and distribution company.
Our founder and CEO, Bryan MacDonald, had a long-standing relationship with the business, having worked with WBA for 10+ years.
The organisation was looking to hire a seasoned leader to build enterprise architecture as a discipline at a group level. The role holder was tasked with working closely with the IT teams in each of the 11 countries that Alliance Healthcare operated in to establish a world class architecture practice.
The Opportunity
Whilst the primary business activity of Alliance Healthcare was pharmaceutical wholesale, the organisation also ran a wide range of diverse healthcare and pharmaceutical operations under a number of key brands that operated across Europe. The organisation had a highly complex matrix structure, and the business was seeking an Enterprise Architecture leader who could not just cope but thrive in this challenging environment.
The role holder would act as a senior level individual contributor and would need to build trust and cultivate strong relationships with the IT leaders in each country to develop a deep understanding of their business processes and the needs of the IT departments. They would need to take a group perspective on the IT operations of each country and set the tone for future thinking in order to stabilise and improve the IT activities in line with the overarching objectives of the business.
Additionally, the successful candidate would also act as a tech advisor to the CIO and have the ability to communicate agendas to the regional IT leadership to ensure their initiation. On a personal level, this individual needed to be adaptable and think pragmatically and commercially.
What made this interesting?
We took on this assignment at a time of great change for the business, which made for an interesting and testing search. The sale of Alliance Healthcare to AmerisourceBergen had just been announced, and we were conducting the search during the transitionary months in which the organisation was still under the ownership and leadership of Walgreens Boots Alliance.
This meant that senior WBA stakeholders were heavily involved in the search, particularly at the outset, however, a key AmerisourceBergen stakeholder also became involved in the interviewing process towards the end of the assignment. Dealing with such a diverse group of stakeholders - from Alliance Healthcare itself, the outgoing owners, and the incoming owners provided us with a lot to consider, and ensured that we would have to find a candidate that would impress a varied group of people.
What made this challenging?
This was a very tough search, and Alliance Healthcare had already been trying to appoint this individual for a year before we became involved. This meant that a number of impressive-looking candidates had already been approached.
We were also looking for a candidate with an impressive mix of skills and experiences. Alliance Healthcare needed a practice leader that could set up an Enterprise Architecture capability, but also someone who had the experience of working in a company with a complex multi-national structure. On top of this, the candidate needed relevant wholesale/supply chain industry expertise.
The Digital Board Process
We began the process by holding briefing calls with key stakeholders at Walgreens Boots Alliance to understand the main requirements of the role.
Following these initial conversations, we briefed our research team. Their process starts with defining our target list. In doing this, they needed to address a number of key elements:
Relevant industry experience in wholesale/logistics to ensure strong domain knowledge and an awareness of the wholesale climate.
The experience and expertise to establish a global Enterprise Architecture capability from scratch and at scale.
Exceptional partnering skills to understand the needs of the IT leadership in each country, and to exert effective influence over them where necessary.
We developed an exhaustive initial list of potential candidates, reaching out to 48 of them to set up initial calls to assess (1) reasons for interest, (2) fit to brief, (3) key achievements, (4) culture alignment and beyond.
Seven candidates then progressed to formal interviews with Bryan, with four of them shortlisted to the client.
As always, throughout the whole process, our research team continued to work on generating new candidates just in case anything went wrong with our shortlist.
Success Story
The successful candidate was an excellent match, impressing all of the stakeholders involved. Alliance Healthcare had actually already contacted the candidate and had an initial conversation with them about the role but had failed to win them over at the time. After identifying them ourselves and feeling that they were worth contacting again, we were able to convince them to reconsider the opportunity.
The candidate had directly relevant experience from a major pharmaceutical wholesale organisation of similar size, scale and complexity, whilst also having worked for a highly complex retail group. In six years at this retail group, they had established a thriving Enterprise Architecture capability, introducing an architecture framework, building out the team from 5 to 25 and bringing a level of vision that had been lacking.
Additionally, the candidate’s main strength as a leader was in communication and collaboration with stakeholders, meaning that they ticked all of the boxes and strongly fit the criteria that we set out.