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CASE STUDY | 12 MINUTE READ

How Unilever Achieved 133% Faster Go to Market without Abandoning Existing Tech Investments

Consumer goods company Unilever built an integration platform using Liferay DXP that offers crucial insight into the product journey.
133%
faster go to market
4.4M
retail stores
190
countries

Key Takeaways

  • Invest in technology that will work with your tech stack.
    Liferay DXP integrates with many systems in Unilever’s tech stack while acting as a crucial component of the integration platform itself.
  • Keep looking for ways to innovate for true digital transformation.
    Unilever’s teams worked and communicated well even in silos, but Unilever saw significant potential in improving efficiency and transparency.
  • Stay agile in the face of successes—and failures.
    Now that Unilever has reduced go-to-market time by as much as 133%, they can respond faster to both positive and negative customer sentiment about a product.

Background

With a presence in 190 countries and 4.4 million retail stores, consumer goods company Unilever is known for their high-quality brands and commitment to doing business the right way.

Challenges

As a global brand with a number of complex business processes and different functions, Unilever had a problem: teams like Marketing, Supply Chain, Research & Development, and Legal were siloed and working in disconnected technology systems.

Although Unilever’s teams had communication methods in place, the lack of unification and centralization was costly, causing challenges like:
  1. Inconsistent and inaccurate product packaging information. For Unilever to get just one product of even two varying sizes onto shelves, for example, involves many different teams working together to ensure cohesion, and mistakes can have legal and financial implications.
  2. Slower time to market. The product rollout process sometimes took longer than a year given the complicated coordination between so many teams, which meant Unilever had a more difficult time responding to market shifts.
  3. Misalignment across corporate and local entities. Having such a global presence with varying needs throughout individual markets made cross-team collaboration even more challenging while working in existing silos.
The entire digital journey is now orchestrated in a unified way.
Srikant Chandrasekharan
Senior Delivery Lead, Enterprise Platforms & Products

Implementation

In order to address these problems, Unilever decided to create an integration platform that would break down barriers between teams and provide a central location for their existing disparate systems to connect.

After consulting Gartner, Unilever chose Liferay DXP together with other technologies to build the integration platform, with Cognizant serving as the implementation partner. Unilever’s Senior Delivery Lead for Enterprise Platforms & Products, Srikant Chandrasekharan, noted that “Liferay was a bit of a no-brainer for us.” Having had previous experience with Liferay, Unilever knew the powerful Low-Code out-of-the-box capabilities of the platform would allow them to build what they needed quickly while keeping costs low. Unilever also chose Liferay for its ability to integrate seamlessly with other technologies as well as handle complex architecture requirements.

Choosing a technology platform wasn’t the only hurdle, however. As Chandrasekharan said, “It’s not just technology change — it’s business process change.” Getting approval and buy-in from all stakeholders was what Chandrasekharan called “herculean.” 

The possibilities of the new integration platform for global unification, however, overcame the inherent difficulties, in addition to the demand for online shopping that grew exponentially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In implementing the platform, named Cara, Unilever has given much-needed insight into the status of a product at any given time. “This is true, genuine cutting-edge technology,” explained Chandrasekharan. “The entire digital journey is now orchestrated in a unified way.”

Results

Cara sits in the center of all the existing technology systems and allows them to talk to each other and regulate data hygiene, offering a seamless workflow that has transformed complicated business processes.

After Cara’s worldwide rollout, Unilever has experienced these results:
  1. Product information is consistent and accurate. With all teams able to communicate more effectively and gain more insight into the product journey, product data is now more reliable on and off the shelves.
  2. An up to 133% increase in go-to-market time. From start to finish, Unilever can roll out products worldwide significantly faster as a result of the new platform, enabling them to introduce products more quickly and even respond with agility to lackluster product performance.
  3. Positive feedback and an NPS score increase. Chandrasekharan said, “Even now, we get rave reviews in terms of the sexy-looking user interfaces that we have and that’s all thanks to Liferay’s capabilities.” Cara has also increased corporate and local team alignment.
In a sometimes turbulent market, Cara has helped Unilever gain a competitive edge, which Chandrasekharan has called “game-changing.” His advice to other companies on their digital transformation journey is this: “For a complex problem, you need a simple solution… Simplify, simplify, simplify.”

Chandrasekharan also recommended focusing on the present and the future when making a technology investment decision—something that will serve Unilever well as they continue to give customers great experiences with their family of brands.