IFF unlocks cloud potential

Call for change

International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF) acquired the nutrition and biosciences business of a global chemical company. But with operations across 345 sites—including 100 manufacturing and laboratory locations—plus more than 500 applications and a myriad of processes and people to consider, integrating this business would not be easy.

Aware of the underlying complexity, IFF—a global leader in food, beverage, health, biosciences and sensorial experiences—partnered with Accenture to guide its post-merger transition. A critical element of the project was to integrate the quality systems of the new business into IFF’s existing operations.

These included SampleManager Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), which provides manufacturing operations and quality control capabilities, and Northwest Analytics Focus EMI, an enterprise manufacturing intelligence solution.

With Amazon Web Services (AWS) selected as IFF’s cloud provider, the LIMS system would be migrated to AWS. IFF wanted to further leverage this opportunity to take its other enterprise and plant applications to the cloud.

When tech meets human ingenuity

The Accenture team brought deep business process engineering capabilities, technical expertise in manufacturing, proficiency in enterprise solution architecture, transformation and change management to meet IFF’s needs. The IFF and Accenture teams worked together to create a roadmap that aligned the migration with IFF’s business requirements.

The LIMS environment consisted of a global application in Microsoft Azure Cloud shared across five manufacturing sites. The migration was complex, involving an integrated ecosystem of approximately eight applications, 300-plus users and more than 400 interfaces. Once the site transitions were made, the LIMS system was moved from Azure to AWS.

Accenture worked closely with IFF teams to ensure a seamless transition, which included training IFF staff so they were up to speed on the latest capabilities and processes.

A valuable difference

The go-live for IFF’s new cloud-based solution was a huge success. The new capabilities—including SampleManager LIMS and Focus EMI—are now enabled in IFF’s manufacturing space to manage quality-control work processes. This creates a foundation for new cloud opportunities that IFF’s other business functions can leverage.

The AWS cloud platform provides extensive scalability and security and adheres to strict IT standards, allowing structured, controlled business growth for IFF. The reliability, speed and connectivity this solution brings are important from both a financial and process perspective and will make IFF more operationally efficient and compliant with industrial and governmental agencies.

Transitions are not easy, but for IFF the move to the cloud is one that will continue providing value, positioning the company to continually innovate, advance its capabilities at other sites and businesses, and ultimately make its products better and safer.