Tokyo, November 1, 2013 - Astellas Pharma Inc. (TSE: 4503, President and CEO: Yoshihiko Hatanaka, “Astellas”) has signed an agreement with Accenture Japan Ltd. (headquarters: Tokyo, President: Chikatomo Hodo, “Accenture”) on Business Process Outsourcing in multiple business areas of Astellas and its domestic subsidiaries.
The agreement with Accenture is part of Astellas’ ongoing efforts to achieve operational excellence. By working with a specialist external partner, Astellas aims to obtain high quality services and promote efficiency, while allocating resources to businesses that contribute to the Company’s competitive advantage.
Amid a rapidly changing business environment, Astellas is targeting sustainable growth by focusing on three strategic initiatives: maximizing the value of new products; enhancing the Company’s ability to generate innovative drugs; and achieving operational excellence.
In addition to the new partnership with Accenture, Astellas has previously announced a number of other measures, including a reshaping of its research framework to optimize its research function, and other new initiatives such as the establishment of Astellas Innovation Management.
This series of initiatives is transforming the business structure, as a result of which organizational and personnel requirements are changing. Accordingly, Astellas is aligning human resources with the new business structure by offering an early retirement incentive program to 300 employees working at Astellas and its domestic subsidiaries during fiscal 2014.
Astellas will continue to implement initiatives to transform the Company’s organization and capabilities, enabling a resilient response to the changing business environment in pursuit of sustainable growth.
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