CASE STUDY
Haleon launches as a global leader in consumer health
4-MINUTE READ
Haleon became one of the largest independent consumer health businesses in the world. Find out how Accenture helped to make the separation and the move to cloud successful.
Call for change
A standalone consumer health business
The journey for Haleon started back in 2019 as a new consumer health joint venture between two pharmaceutical companies, bringing together the portfolios of trusted consumer health brands to be a leader across many categories, including Oral Health, Pain Relief, Respiratory, Vitamins, Minerals and Supplements, Digestive Health and Other.
At the time of the joint venture, the stated intention was to demerge and list the new consumer health company on the UK equity market, within three years.
Demergers can help large companies clarify the value of their underlying business units and separation can boost speed, efficiency and value for both the former company and the newly formed spin-off.
Like many demergers at scale, achieving this for Haleon was no easy process. In many M&A situations, technology presents the biggest challenge and opportunity. For Haleon, hundreds of systems that made up the overall technology estate needed to be formally separated, so that the new standalone consumer health company would be able to operate independently. This also offered an opportunity for Haleon to pivot to the cloud, boosting efficiency and setting up the company for future growth.
When tech meets human ingenuity
A compressed timetable, a strategic plan and one team
Accenture worked with the company that would become Haleon and an ecosystem of partners from strategy to execution to enable the separation against a very tight timeline. To be successful, this needed to be a highly compressed transformation.
Unlike a brand-new deployment of technology, the separation had layers of complexity, involving hundreds of systems, with numerous suppliers and contracts. The SAP environment alone was over 40 Terabytes, one of the largest in the industry. The process of migrating, cloning and purging that in four short days had never been done before.
Making the whole process more pressure-filled, there was a single opportunity on the horizon to execute the separation: over the four-day Easter holiday weekend. Over that bank holiday weekend, the team would undertake multiple simultaneous procedures to transfer the technical ecosystem to the new environment—including all critical manufacturing and financial processes. After that, Haleon would be standing on its own.
The importance of one unified team
Working shoulder to shoulder, the team included future Haleon employees and strategic partners blended seamlessly to operate as one integrated unit. Over the weekend, everything went without a hitch, on time. Finally, as part of the overall separation strategy, Accenture helped Haleon to pivot to the cloud. Infrastructure migration was a key workstream, as part of the separation, as it positioned Haleon to hit the ground running with a modern technology estate from day one.
Accenture was a major partner in this and someone that we relied on to help us see the way forward, because we had never done anything like this, so we had to stand on the shoulders of giants.
Amy Landucci / Chief Digital & Technology Officer, Haleon
A valuable difference
A lean and strong company emerges
In July 2022, Haleon was listed on the London Stock Exchange, its largest listing in over a decade, as well as on the New York Stock Exchange. Haleon then became one of the largest independent consumer health businesses in the world.
“I needed to rely on people that I could trust” said Amy Landucci, Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Haleon, of the collaboration with Accenture.
Post-demerger, some of the world’s leading consumer health brands—such as Sensodyne, Centrum, Theraflu, Panadol and Voltaren—found a new home within a more focused independent company. Also, by pivoting 100% to the cloud, Haleon is set up for success by ensuring it has an entirely modern foundation for its technology estate.
If you have a group of individuals that stop acting as individuals and act as one team, there is nothing that can’t be achieved.
Liza Jordan / Global Client Account Lead, Accenture