Pharmas can accelerate digital transformation with Infosys’ BASE acquisition

Life sciences lead across industries in adopting emerging technologies to address opportunities up and down their value chain to improve the triple aim of care: cost of care, health outcomes, and experience of care (see Exhibit 1). Life sciences are accelerating digitization and will benefit from Infosys’ latest acquisition of BASE life science. The acquisition will allow global life sciences enterprises to drive value from the cloud, data, accelerated clinical trials, and scaling of drug development.

Infosys has a mature life sciences business with around $700 million in revenue and over 9,000 employees. Infosys’ life sciences portfolio includes clients across pharmaceuticals, consumer health, animal health, medical technology, and genomics. BASE, a much smaller entity, complements Infosys’ capabilities with its consultancy, research and development (R&D), and enhanced technical expertise, with commercial operations delivered from its headquarters in Denmark, and in Switzerland, Italy, France, the UK, Germany, and Spain.

Exhibit 1: Life science enterprises have higher adoption of AI, blockchain, AR/ VR, and smart analytics across industries

Sample: 800 respondents from Global 2000 enterprises
Source: HFS OneOffice Pulse Study, H1 2021

BASE will help expand Infosys’ footprint in Europe and complement its capabilities

BASE will augment Infosys’ domain expertise in commercial, medical, digital marketing, clinical, regulatory, and quality competence. Infosys will add specialist data scientists to its team at the frontier of the latest technological developments, with experience in data and artificial intelligence (AI) to drive informed business decision-making.

Life sciences enterprises struggle to capture opportunities offered by the cloud, being held back by legacy systems and inefficient processes. BASE life science, with its strong abilities in data migration, data engineering, business intelligence, advanced analytics, and AI, has helped numerous companies in their cloud migration journeys. Infosys expects to replicate that success with its data engineering teams to boost its capabilities.

The life sciences industry is going through spin-offs and consolidation activities. The BASE acquisition will augment Infosys’ capabilities to help life science enterprises to execute their post-acquisition integration.

Enterprises will be able to leverage the commercial and R&D capabilities of Veeva and IQVIA with its strategic partnership with Infosys

With this targeted acquisition, Infosys expands its platform capabilities by employing BASE’s partnership status with the market-leading life sciences platforms Veeva and IQVIA. Veeva is a life science-focused customer relationship management platform; as one of two global partners, BASE often influences new features and functionality. IQVIA is a purpose-built platform to orchestrate molecule-to-market processes. These newly reinforced partnerships will translate into strengthening Infosys’ commercial cloud (for iterative market releases with healthcare professionals) and development cloud (R&D users) capabilities to enhance value for their clients.

Infosys has numerous large pharma clients, while the BASE has strong relationships with several highly innovative small and medium clients. BASE recently entered the US market, aligning with Infosys’ intent to expand into the US and the Nordics with newly acquired capabilities. Infosys and BASE can combine footprints, capabilities, and scale to synergize capabilities, resources, and geography.

The Bottom Line: Infosys’ first industry-specific acquisition in life sciences signals intent to double down on the vertical and accelerate building its capabilities in a highly competitive and lucrative service market.

Although the life sciences industry is a leader in adopting emerging technologies, it must overcome the roadblocks in cloud strategies and bring together its siloed initiatives to achieve its digital transformation objectives. Infosys’ acquisition of BASE life science reaffirms its determination to deliver next-generation life sciences solutions while expanding market segments. It will help life sciences enterprises realize greater business value from domain-specific cloud-native platforms, accelerate clinical trials, scale drug development, and optimize commercial operations.