Coty Inc. Achieves Significant Return on Investment With iWay Software

Information Builders, the leader in production business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced that Coty Inc., one of the world's largest and most successful fragrance companies, has quickly integrated the IT infrastructure of acquisition Unilever Cosmetics International using Information Builders' iWay Software. Given the speed of the integration, Coty expects to realize millions of dollars in benefits and gleaned a 415 percent return on investment (ROI).

"We would not have been able to integrate Unilever's infrastructure so quickly without iWay Software," said Dave Berry, senior vice president and Global CIO, Coty Inc. "Having to code manually would have taken at least a year. Missing our target date would have cost us several million dollars and possibly impacted revenues. iWay has lived up to its reputation for handling large, complex integration projects, and has already given Coty great ROI, including project payback within two months."

Following its acquisition of Unilever Cosmetics International in 2005, Coty, which was planning to use iWay's adapters for implementing SAP, sought to quickly integrate Unilever's infrastructure with its own and build an IT environment that would quickly leverage the two companies' synergies and sustain revenues amid a changing business environment. Posing an additional challenge to the initiative was the signing of a large, long-term outsourcing contract with IBM for procurement services, which warranted integration of Coty's IT systems with IBM.

The integration project's goals were extensive and included the integration of a complex computing infrastructure with multiple ERP platforms and databases, complex messaging requirements, staff savings by avoiding costly writing of code, and the ability to see sales and supply-chain data in real time. Noteworthy results include:

-- Quickly integrated the Coty and Unilever IT Infrastructures - completed in five months for a net benefit of millions of dollars

-- Integrated Coty's systems with IBM's for procurement outsourcing - done concurrently with Unilever IT system integration

-- Used iWay Software as the integration platform with the SAP system being implemented in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

-- Built a foundation for real-time operations - built a service-oriented architecture (SOA) allowing for the creation of a flexible architecture to provide views into real-time data operations

"iWay software's simple point-and-click interface can create services from any application without coding," said John Senor, president of iWay Software. "The software offers a fast method for creating powerful, reusable business services from existing applications - so companies can cost-effectively build a foundation to accommodate growth. Coty is using iWay SOA Middleware to connect messaging and data transfer via XML services and iDocs. Their IBM procurement application is connected via XML as well. This provides Coty the ability to integrate with an external company that is effectively code independent, thus providing yet another business benefit."

Coty will be able to integrate future acquisitions even more quickly, because the company has built reusable components that can be used to connect business services and IT infrastructure. iWay has established the groundwork for a SOA and Coty has moved closer to becoming a real-time organization. In addition, the company has all the pieces in place for using Web services to connect it to suppliers, business partners, and customers.