Reckitt Benckiser (RB) is an international manufacturer of category-leading brands that are loved by consumers. Its brands fall into three categories: hygiene, health, and nutrition — and include iconic names such as Calgon, Dettol, Nurofen, and Strepsils.
RB is fighting to make access to the highest-quality hygiene, wellness, and nourishment a right, not a privilege for everyone, everywhere. This relentless pursuit for a cleaner world is what drives everyone and everything at RB, including the integration strategy. To ensure everyone in the world can access the brands of RB freely, the company embarked on a journey to upgrade its digital IQ by digitizing its core operations, building strong and efficient IT foundations, developing a strong integration strategy, and by investing in top tech talent.
The integration strategy developed by RB incorporates four main elements — collaboration, standardization, and self-certification — which leads to the final element, acceleration to deploy solutions faster than competitors. Collaboration was put into practice through enterprise integration councils that bring together key people from IT and the wider business lead by an enterprise architect to provide the focus on value propositions. The company implemented standardization by offering high-quality integration standards (and not by providing one single tool as standard). The last element, self-certification ensures that the right standards are in place, to avoid tech becoming a burden. It’s about federating integrations in a rapidly changing environment like RB.
When assessing the technology side for a better digital IQ — and thus having a strong integration strategy, RB formed a new team that had to align integration KPIs with the business KPIs. This team was sent on a mission: to gain an understanding of the integration demands across the business. The team then had to develop a program that ensures IT can deliver the reusable core elements the business needs, today, tomorrow, and three years from now. The result? A non-disruptive integration strategy focused on one fundamental viewpoint: reusability. An API-led approach with MuleSoft at its core.
This integration vision, providing secure and smooth integrations with APIs, significantly reduced the time to market and made RB more adaptable in a changing world. During the COVID-19 pandemic for example, the company successfully implemented business-to-consumer integrations, with Salesforce and MuleSoft as an ecosystem for eCommerce. The integration strategy is strong and future-proof and gives RB a 1-0 advantage in its fight to make hygiene a right, not a privilege.
Learn more about the integration strategy at RB and its ‘People API Project’ in human resources, which reduced the CAPEX of HR projects by almost 50% by watching this Customer Spotlight Webinar.
