From Integration Chaos to Digital Clarity: Nutrien Ag Solutions’ Post-Acquisition Reset

Sriram Kalyan:

So when some key people left who were contractors who built the integration platform from the scratch, we had to really scramble to manage some of those things. And the interesting thing was we had a partner who was supporting us, but they also got acquired and we had a deadline that we have to move away from. So I think it all came at once, but it also was a perfect timing for us to think about how do we move to a target state?

Dylan Cosper:

Welcome to the Infosys Knowledge Institute podcast, where business leaders share what they've learned on their technology journey. I'm Dylan Cosper, Infosys Knowledge Institute research program manager. Today, I'm speaking with Sriram Kalyan, Head of Applications and Data at Nutrien Ag Solutions, Australia. Sri is an accomplished technology leader, transforming customer and employee experiences.

Today, we will explore how he and his team turned a complex post-acquisition IT landscape into a high-performing ecosystem. Welcome, Sri.

Sriram Kalyan:

Hi Dylan, great to be here and look forward to chatting with you on this topic.

Dylan Cosper:

Sri today's discussion centers on the complexity of trying to marry two IT landscapes post-acquisition. Before we get to the details, can you tell me a bit more about the acquisition?

Sriram Kalyan:

In 2019 Landmark which is a company that I work for acquired Ruralco and this is two big agriculture companies with a long history of servicing the farmers in Australia coming together to form nutrient act solutions. In terms of scope and scale we have about like 700 locations in Australia. We do provide fertilizers, seeds and crop chemicals for the farmers but also we have a large agency business where we offer financial insurance, livestock and other areas. Also we have our own proprietary products business where we manufacture our own products for the farmers and as you can see these two companies played a huge role in the Australian agriculture industry and is critical from a country point of view. So when these two companies came together, obviously we had two of everything, two different processes, two different approaches to how we deal with customers and also multiple systems that we had to deal with. And both were on different stages of their organizational maturity from a system point of view. So it was a huge challenge for us to bring it together and create this one company with a standard platforms, but also simplifying and focusing on our business objectives and how technology can enable an acquisition at this scale. So that was the complexity that we were dealing with at that point in time.

Dylan Cosper:

It sounds like bringing together two very significant pillars of Australian agriculture. So what changed after the acquisition that made integration a priority? And what problems were you trying to solve by consolidating systems?

Sriram Kalyan:

When you go through an acquisition and integration of two companies, you have a large system landscape that doesn't talk to each other. But at the same time, from a business point of view, everything changes. So from a customer point of view, we are one company. So there's no dealing with two different brands that they were dealing with before. So everything has to work seamlessly from an integration point of view. And integration is something that people don't talk about or hear about unless there is an issue. We all see that play out in our lives as well. So integration became much more important and a critical enabler for us to meet our business goals and objectives. But also, it is important for us to simplify our platforms. Like you have a two of everything.

We had to reduce our operational inefficiencies. We had to make sure we are aligned to our global strategy from a system and a landscape point of view. But also, we need to lower our maintenance and licensing costs because running two platforms is not efficient. You're paying two licenses. You have to also manage two different teams to support these platforms.

And also, it is hard to scale when you don't have a clear strategy on how you're going to standardize and what platform you're going to choose. So we can scale the business moving forward.

Dylan Cosper:

Now, I want to go back to that two of everything. I mean, you mentioned you had two SAP systems, two middleware platforms, multiple landscapes. How did that complexity impact daily operations?

Sriram Kalyan:

The main thing there was like around we would have like high support overhead. So we had two teams supporting the two platforms, but also we had higher cost and integration fragility as well. So when you have a complex landscape and then you have multiple systems talking to multiple platforms, that's not an efficient way to manage the business or that's not the way how we could support the growth of the business. And also that delays some of our project initiatives as well. We had to coordinate between multiple teams to make a small thing happen. And also it comes with its own risk because we had to be clear on what is our strategy and where we want to land before we start investing more in these platforms. So we had to align on that first on which is the platform of choice. So we did a lot of work in that space to figure out which platforms will suit us towards the future. And we landed on SAP Integration Suite or Cloud Integration Platform, which met all our objectives. It ticked all the boxes. Though it was pretty new in the market at that time, it gave us a clear direction because obviously a lot of our systems, and we use a lot of SAP systems, so it made sense to go with SAP Integration Suite, which is also aligned to a global strategy to help us scale and consolidate platforms.

Dylan Cosper:

Thank you for sharing. So when key people left and no one fully understood the inherited platform, what kind of risks emerged for critical areas like payroll, customer onboarding, and even like credit and approval?

Sriram Kalyan:

I think we had a very interesting journey on this. So when some key people left who were contractors who built the integration platform from the scratch, we had to really scramble to manage some of those things. And the interesting thing was we had a partner who was supporting us, but they also got acquired and we had a deadline that we have to move away from. So I think it all came at once, but it also was a perfect timing for us to think about how do we move to a target state? And when you look at integrations that was happening through a platform, like things like payroll and HR integrations are critical? Like you can't have the integration is not working towards payroll, which means that I probably wouldn't get paid, which is not a good thing. And also a lot of the people wouldn't get paid and we would be in the news. The same thing around customer onboarding and experience as well. So that will have massive impact in terms of us not being able to meet our business objectives, but also it reflects poor as an organization when we can have information available at the right time at the right place as well. And also we had critical supplier integrations that was going through the platform. So it had an overall business impact when we had key people left. Also, I think it's a common industry problem where most of the technology teams don't necessarily have good documentation of how these things work. And then how do you ensure you uplift the maturity in that space and not have a key person dependency as well, which was probably our learnings where we depended on certain people. And then when they left and when we were like sort of had to move away from the vendor, we had those challenges. So I think as part of this as well, we were able to really address those gaps, uplift our maturity, improve on our documentation and all those things as well. But the risks were huge, like as I mentioned around payroll, customer and supplier components, especially when you go through an integration of this scale, the last thing we want is any impact from a customer or a staff point of view because of an integration. So I think we had that in front and center of our mind to ensure that we can actually address those risks, but also have the support and have a long-term view and not just take a knee-jerk reaction to some of these things that were happening.

Dylan Cosper:

You mentioned in a previous discussion that this was one of the smoothest technology projects you've delivered. What made the execution work? Not just from like an operational perspective but culturally as well?

Sriram Kalyan:

I think when you do a project like integration because Typically this is seen as an IT project like you know a bunch of IT guys trying to do something and in the background, but I think what Made it one of the smooth technology project was the buy-in from our senior leadership around this project and why it is important and obviously when you when we spoke about some of those risks that has real impact on various business units. So we were able to clearly articulate and explain the need for a project like this but also show us the benefit and how we would address some of these risks going forward. So I think some of the key reasons I would think is having clear understanding of why do we need to do this project, having strong stakeholder alignment and senior leadership sponsorship, but also cultural alignment as well. So it's not just a technology project that we're doing. It has a business impact, but ensuring that both the IT and the business teams are aware of the risks and the benefits of doing a project like this, but also having like shared ownership of the outcomes. I think that's really, really important when you do a project of this scale where you're essentially flying blind at the start, where you've lost the key people, you've lost the support, but you have to do something about it. And then how do you start from there? So that requires a lot of people coming together with shared accountability and ownership, but also leveraging some of the out of the box and functionalities already available as part of the platform and not customizing everything. So trying to leverage existing templates and out of the box integrations that was also clear from the start that we will be going down that path rather than trying to just migrate things that we already have. But also having a clear architecture design on how this will be executed, how we're going to manage this, how we're going to approach even the first pilot that we want to deliver. And also, I think one thing that really helped was the professionalism bought by the Infosys team in this space. So they were able to come in, advise us on the approach, but also take real ownership and bring some really good people who understood the technology, but also they were able to interact with internal IT teams and business stakeholders as well to actually deliver this program. And the good thing was also we were able to tweak our process. So we had multiple releases where we grouped the applications or integrations, but we were able to learn as we go and have a clear approach as well. And also we didn't take more than what we could chew. So we actually focused on first migrating from one platform to the other. And then also we had a phased approach as well. So which really helped us to deliver it smoothly. And it is interesting. So when you do a project like this, which especially concerning integration, there's a lot of things that could go wrong.

There's a lot of opportunities where we don't really understand how these things work because we are coming off an integration. But I think we were able to work really well together as a group and being able to deliver this pretty smoothly. So credits to the entire team for getting this done without any hiccups.

Dylan Cosper:

I mean, it sounds like really having everyone from employees, leadership, the direct project team and partners like Infosys coming together and sharing in the ownership of that project really made a difference. Now that the Integration Foundation is stable and consolidated, what new business capabilities or opportunities does this enable for Nutrien Ag Solutions going forward?

Sriram Kalyan:

I think this project and this integration platform will enable us as we get on our S/4HANA journey in the future. This will set us up perfectly. And also this will enable us to scale for new services because once we are done with so we only have one platform that we have in our business.

And we are able to connect, as we can see in the last several months and years, we are able to integrate with new data sources or new systems pretty seamlessly. And we are able to also leverage some of the existing out of the box integrations that we have available within the platform to make it much more easier and quicker and secure as well, which has been fantastic. And also, as we do more and more, from a digital enablement point of view for our customers and our staff. This will help us integrate with other platforms that we have, that we are implementing things like Salesforce or customer onboarding and make it seamless for us. And again, if you never know, we might do another integration or like we will acquire another business and this will help us integrate with those systems pretty seamlessly. And also, we were able to save cost, which is great, which is not an easy thing to do. And also have the long-term support ability and the ability to scale for our future business requirements. So that's what I see, like this was a critical enabler for not just from an IT point of view, but from a business point of view to meet all our objectives.

Dylan Cosper:

We've covered quite a bit, but if you could boil it down to one thing, if listeners remember just one takeaway from our conversation, what should it be?

Sriram Kalyan:

I would say understand what the business objectives and goals are and ensure technology can enable those objectives and goals and also probably partner well with our business stakeholders. Don't think like any project is just a technology project. It has to, again, tie back to a business objective and a business outcome.

Dylan Cosper:

Excellent. Well, thank you very much, Sri, for making time for this insightful conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed discussing with you today.

Sriram Kalyan:

Thanks, Dylan. Really nice to talk to you about this project and really well done to the entire team. And it's great to see like we're sharing more of these things about all the success stories and stuff. So that's great to hear and thanks for the opportunity to be part of this.

Dylan Cosper:

You can find more details, show notes, and transcripts at Infosys.com/IKI in the podcast section. Thanks to our producers, Christine Calhoun and Yulia De Bari, and our audio engineer, Dode Bigley. I'm Dylan Cosper with the Infosys Knowledge Institute. As always, keep learning and keep sharing.