Transforming i-Health’s operations through intelligent cloud automation
Overview
Our client, a US-based consumer health company, i-Health, a division of dsm-firmenich, develops, markets and distributes health products through leading retailers. As a global company within the CPG industry, it operates across e-commerce and brick-and-mortar channels, relying on contract manufacturers and a lean operations model to keep its products affordable and accessible.
To sustain its mission and meet the rising demands of retailers, i-Health partnered with HCLTech to modernize its operations on SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and SAP Integration Suite. The company planned to build a scalable, automated and intelligent ERP ecosystem that aligns business-specific needs with SAP best practices.
The Challenge
Meeting stringent retail requirements while maintaining operational efficiency
i-Health handles a high volume of orders, with nearly 95% received electronically through EDI systems. Each year, the company processes around 30,000 shipments covering over 180,000 individual order items. The company requires executing these shipments with precision while adhering to diverse retailer-specific requirements.
Retail and e-commerce partners impose strict standards on carton-level labeling, delivery windows and carrier selections. Any deviation leads to penalties and chargebacks, directly increasing costs and impacting customer relationships.
To address these growing demands, i-Health needed a solution that could automate order processing, streamline fulfillment workflows and customize delivery and labeling processes. The aim was to keep operational costs under control and ensure on-time delivery at scale.
The Objective
Automate, standardize and ensure compliance across fulfillment operations
i-Health aimed to streamline its order management and fulfillment processes by leveraging the extensibility of SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud. The company sought to:
- Automate manual order touch points to improve route and carrier selection and reduce processing delays.
- Eliminate errors in ship date calculation by enabling automated, accurate scheduling to meet strict retailer delivery windows and avoid penalties.
- Ensure full compliance with labeling requirements by automating the generation of pallet- and carton-level labels customized to each retailer’s specifications.
- Elevate IT capabilities from reactive to proactive by aligning with business priorities and fostering innovation.
The Solution
Leveraging SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud and SAP BTP to enable automated fulfillment
HCLTech and dsm-firmenich together implemented a scalable, cloud-based solution combining SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, SAP BTP and SAP Integration Suite to meet i-Health’s unique retail requirements.
Key innovations included:
- Emulating microservice-based label printing app built on SAP BTP to support multiple retailer-specific label formats.
- Automated route and carrier determination, reducing manual decision-making and ensuring on-time deliveries.
- Custom logic and fields for prioritizing shipments and improving fulfillment visibility.
By co-innovating with i-Health’s IT and operations teams, HCLTech helped establish a flexible, modular ERP environment capable of supporting rapid onboarding of new retailers and evolving compliance requirements.
The Impact
Driving efficiency, scalability and employee empowerment
The transformation delivered measurable improvements across business operations, IT agility and workforce productivity, enabling i-Health to strengthen customer satisfaction and operational excellence.
Business impact
- Reduced time spent on sales order processing by 20% for both order management and fulfillment teams.
- Increased ship date accuracy in outbound deliveries from 20% to 95%, allowing the warehouse team to print and prioritize orders by target ship date.
- Increased label printing volume 200x without affecting warehouse efficiency, ensuring compliance with retailer requirements and avoiding chargebacks.
- Improved agility in onboarding new retail customers, cutting timelines from weeks to hours.
IT impact
- Empowered the IT team to collaborate proactively with business units.
- Emulated SAP BTP Microservices architecture to create multiple label specifications and routing flows.
- Enabled smooth onboarding of new customers without disrupting existing integrations, ensuring a future-ready ERP environment.
People impact
- Freed up over 20 hours per week for warehouse supervisors, allowing them to focus on team development and productivity.
- Elevated the IT team from a reactive support role to a proactive innovation partner.
- Boosted team morale, collaboration and job satisfaction through active participation in cross-functional problem-solving.
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