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Consumer Health Leader Gets “Pain Relief” from Digital Business Platform
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Consumer Goods
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Logistics & Transportation
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Supply Chain Visibility
- Track & Trace of Assets
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
The company, a global leader in consumer health products, was facing several challenges. They wanted to 'win differently' with a digital business platform, improve access to information across the enterprise, reduce manual work and standardize processes, increase visibility across the global supply chain, and become more customer-centric. They were dealing with painful processes like manually collecting data from disconnected systems. The company had no way to detect issues in delivery flow, and customer interactions were reactive rather than proactive. Costs increased due to shipment escalations. The Approval for Product Release (APR) process was disjointed and required manually consolidating paper specs into binders across all R&D functions. Every region had a different framework with no way to monitor or share information. There was no workflow support, no integration to other systems.
About The Customer
The customer is a $70 billion family of companies that manages the world’s most trusted brands for over-the-counter medicine, baby care, wound care and skin care products, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and biologics. The company is headquartered in the U.S. and has more than 250 operating companies that span over 60 countries and employ nearly 130,000 people. The company is committed to making a difference in the lives of patients and consumers through innovation, consistently outperforming markets and competitors, and delivering innovative ideas, products, and services to advance a person’s health and wellbeing.
The Solution
The company moved onto Software AG’s Digital Business Platform, taking a process-centric approach to building adaptive applications. The platform enabled the company to build differentiating applications and adapt them as the environment demands. One groundbreaking innovation is for product analytics and formula reporting. The Digital Business Platform’s webMethods connects 'anything to anything' integrating disparate systems while Terracotta in-memory data management enables rapid data access. Full product traceability and one point of access to information across the supply chain enables timely and informed decisions. The company also made product approvals 75 percent faster by consolidating and automating the Approval for Product Release (APR) process. Using human-centric design and business process engineering, the company created a single automated process that works for all consumer products and aligns the approval process in all regions.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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