Henkel is a global manufacturer and leader in adhesive technologies and consumer brands. With about 48,000 colleagues worldwide, the company has a rich product portfolio and focuses on finding innovative, yet sustainable solutions to global problems at a pace that meets consumer demand quickly.
“We want to bring our products to the market much faster,” says Michael Nilles, former Chief Digital and Information Officer at Henkel. “We want to bring it to the customers much more sustainably. That is a comprehensive process you can only manage if you connect all the pieces between the commercial and lab procedures.”
Navigating this entire process efficiently, from R&D to manufacturing to commercialization, requires a fully integrated and digitized approach. While many individual digital solutions exist to address certain steps in this process, no “out-of-the-box” solution ensures seamless integration.
For Henkel, this meant finding a software platform to integrate its R&D operations with the rest of its operations, which are managed by SAP. Nilles and his team at Henkel identified LabVantage LIMS as a best-in-class solution.
To better understand how this custom integration came to be a successful partnership and the benefits Henkel has experienced, we caught up with Nilles at the 2024 CTEC conference.
Integrating Software Platforms for Unified Operations
When integrating laboratory software with other platforms, such as SAP, a widely used enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, many factors must be considered.
One critical aspect that needs to be considered when navigating this integration is domain expertise, flexibility, and scalability that a LIMS and its support team are capable of. There’s no off-the-shelf solution for these types of integrations and so success depends on close collaboration and open communication.
“There was no question that for a LIMS, we wanted to go with LabVantage because they are the best in the field,” comments Nilles. “Our operations were already managed exclusively with SAP, so we brought SAP and LabVantage to the table and said, ‘Hey, why don’t we work together?’ Now, three years later, we have come to a very successful partnership between the three of us. We have become a fully integrated R&D digital platform.”
The Benefits of SAP-LIMS Integration
The major benefit of SAP and LabVantage has been clear management of lab processes, formulation, packaging management, supply chain, and the innovation portfolio together.
After three years of partnership, there have been additional benefits.
“We have two partners with whom we can quickly co-innovate,” raves Nilles. “I think now we can reap even more benefits because both companies are doubling and heavily investing in AI. For AI, it’s even more important to have a comprehensive, integrated R&D platform with an integrated data platform, which LabVantage provides.” Nilles continues, saying that this fully digital approach they’ve built has had continued benefits for Henkel.
“When it comes to cloud and SaaS, you’re changing your entire internal organization, the tech organization, and how tech works with the business,” explains Nilles. “We call it the ‘Macintosh approach,’ where you have integrated teams between tech and business. They are much faster in developing the solutions in the SaaS system we’ve built, which pays into our ultimate goal, accelerating time to market.”
Unifying Operations Through Digitalization
Integrating the LabVantage LIMS with Henkel’s SAP systems provides a powerful model for organizations in other industries.
“It will be a huge benefit for adjacent industries like pharma, healthcare, and so on,” says Nilles. “I see the big advantage for them when two partners bring together their strengths.”
Henkel’s fully digital operations management solution enables the company to continue rapidly developing new products and accelerate the path to market, keeping it at the forefront of consumer goods innovation.
To learn how the LabVantage LIMS can integrate with your SAP EPR system and enable seamless data flow, contact us here.
