State-of-the-Art IT Integration From iWay Software Provides Needed Operation Speed at Coty

OrganizationCoty Inc., one of the world's largest and most successful beauty companies with sales of $3 billion in 2005, operates in over 28 countries and employs 8,000 people worldwide.

The ChallengeIntegrate in seven months the IT systems for the worldwide logistics and warehouse operations.

The StrategyUse iWay Software integration technology to create a complete SOA architecture connecting SAP R/3, Oracle 11i, and Genecod to JD Edwards.

The ResultsHigh-speed implementation, standard solutions eliminating manual coding, reusable integration solutions, robust and future-proof integration infrastructure, and the company is now SOA ready.

Information Builders Solution iWay SOA Middleware.

Faster, further and freer. Those are Coty's leading principles in marketing, business, and IT. IT integration was a top priority with Coty, especially when the company acquired several brands and organizations. "We had two strong business drivers for creating a new integration infrastructure," said David Berry, Coty's Global CIO. "We were on the verge of signing a big and long-term outsourcing contract with IBM for procurement and our systems needed to be integrated with IBM's. The other business driver was the acquisition in July 2005 of several of the Unilever brands, with Calvin Klein as the best known label. The Unilever acquisition forced speedy integration to be able to leverage the benefits."

Unilever runs a separate infrastructure that needed to be untwined and tightly integrated with Coty's. "To operate faster, further, and freer, we needed to become a near real-time organization," he added. "There's extreme pressure from the business to deliver full integration by the end of July 2006." The project began in January 2006.

Code-Free Interfaces

The traditional approach of writing software to make the connections no longer worked due to time constraints and complexity. Berry wanted to move quickly and without the high costs associated with manual code writing. "We have too many systems and it would take us too much time doing it by hand," he said. Hand coding would also stand in the way of another Coty objective – to enter the service-oriented architecture (SOA) arena. Information Builders and iWay Software, an Information Builders company, were enlisted to help build the new integration architecture for Coty's worldwide supply-chain management operations: ordering, logistics, and distribution. The integration was based on the proven, standard solutions of iWay and will result in a true SOA solution. iWay Software offers a point-and-click, code-free interface to create services from any application.

"We chose Information Builders for several reasons," said Berry. "One was the outstanding reputation of the company in integration matters. Coty is in the process of implementing SAP throughout the enterprise and iWay adapters have proven to deliver robust SAP integration. We preferred a third-party solution to avoid a vendor lock-in. Also, the price perspective played a role in our decision."

A major information and technology research and advisory firm endorsed Coty's decision to choose iWay Software and Information Builders. The integration initiative is a major project for both Coty and Information Builders for reasons of scale, complexity, and strategic importance. John Senor, president of iWay Software, is personally involved to ensure the project maintains the highest priority and gets the best resources from the company. In addition, Accenture, Coty's SAP implementation partner, and IBM, Coty's outsourcing partner for procurement, are involved; staff from both companies are being trained in the new technology. As iWay Software provides reusable integration solutions – also an import selection criteria for Coty – this training effort can be minimized and stay limited only to the beginning of the project.

The complexity of Coty's IT environment will be familiar to many global corporations and manufacturers: production plants in four countries, many distribution hubs, multiple ERP platforms (SAP, JD Edwards, and legacy) and databases (Oracle and DB2), and hundreds of thousands of messages exchanged every day. iWay will be used to connect all the related messaging and data transfer via XML services and iDOCs. Also, the IBM procurement application will be connected via XML. Later, customers and suppliers will be connected via Web services.

"For speed's sake we have started with a more traditional hub-and-spoke environment," Berry said. "After the integration infrastructure is implemented in July 2006, we will build the next generation of integration and implement the full iWay Enterprise Service Bus to create a true worldwide SOA solution. But we don't want to rush to nirvana."