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Coty Inc. Case Study
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Industries
- Consumer Goods
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Procurement
Use Cases
- Process Control & Optimization
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Coty Inc., one of the largest and most successful beauty companies in the world, embarked on a series of strategic acquisitions aimed at facilitating rapid expansion. This included the purchase of several Unilever brands, Del Labs, OPI, Philosophy, Dr. Scheller Cosmetics, and TJoy. While this activity created many new opportunities for the company, it also posed major challenges – particularly when it came to simplifying and unifying IT environments to ensure unhindered supply-chain collaboration. Coty needed to connect its environment with systems maintained by its partners, to whom the company outsources many logistics and supply-chain processes. The need for robust, enterprise-scale integration middleware first came to light when Coty acquired several popular Unilever brands. It needed to find a means of streamlining and coordinating ordering, logistics, distribution, and other mission-critical supply chain operations across both entities, so it could become a more real-time organization.
About The Customer
Coty Inc. is one of the largest and most successful beauty companies in the world. The company offers a wide array of products, such as fragrance, color cosmetics including nail, and skin and body care, through such well-known brands as Sally Hansen, Chloe, Philosophy, and OPI. Founded in 1904, Coty now employs approximately 12,000 staff members at three corporate headquarter offices in New York, Paris, and Geneva. The company generated net sales of $4.6 billion in 2012 and raised $1 billion on behalf of existing shareholders in an initial public offering in June 2013. Several years ago, Coty embarked on a series of strategic acquisitions, aimed at facilitating rapid expansion. This included the purchase of several Unilever brands, followed by the acquisitions of Del Labs, OPI, Philosophy, Dr. Scheller Cosmetics, and TJoy.
The Solution
To overcome the obstacles associated with such rapid merger and acquisition activity, Coty sought out a powerful, yet flexible and economical integration middleware platform that would enable it to bring together back-end operations – and a diverse mix of related systems – across its own enterprise, as well as among any acquired entities. Coty found the most aromatic answer in Information Builders’ iWay integration solution. iWay’s Integration Suite quickly and cost-efficiently provided a broad-reaching infrastructure that met both current and future integration needs. iWay solutions facilitated the fast and effective creation and maintenance of a wide variety of application-to-application (A2A) and businessto-business (B2B) collaborations, while allowing Coty to fully leverage its existing hardware and software assets. More than 120 A2A interfaces have been developed, to connect more than 40 different systems. There are also 210 B2B interfaces in action, which handle approximately 90 percent of all incoming orders in the U.S.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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