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Case Study
Chemicals

Agricultural excellence through Azure cloud

Corteva migrated its laboratory systems to Azure cloud, giving it the ability to streamline data collection and the scalability for future growth.

Challenge

In 2017, chemicals manufacturing giants Dow and DuPont merged to become "DowDuPont." This new company would be the launching pad for the formation of three independent entities—Corteva, DuPont and Dow.

In order to operate as a separate company, Corteva needed to migrate its existing manufacturing execution system and enterprise resource planning systems from Dow’s on-premise infrastructure platform to its own on-premise and Azure cloud-based platform. One of the key components of this migration would be its quality systems. This would involve placing its core laboratory information management system (LIMS) in the cloud, moving an integrated ecosystem of related systems and performing a complex migration—all without interrupting its business activities.

What Accenture did

Corteva joined forces with Accenture to build the foundation for a sustainable and independent organization through the establishment of an integrated LIMS application system in Azure cloud.

Accenture and its alliance partner, Avanade, began by conducting parallel studies, running and testing the LIMS solution on both the on-premise and cloud platforms. Once the core LIMS system was operating on Corteva’s Azure cloud platform, the two companies began migrating 10 related laboratory systems. This effort involved approximately 30 plants spread across 11 locations, with often diverse architectures.

Corteva and Accenture approached this through a staged, site-by-site migration. The companies "bridged both worlds" during the effort, and carefully managed the cross-domain integration of systems so that these systems could all continue to operate together seamlessly while the migration was in process.

People and culture

Throughout the effort, Accenture worked closely with a range of Corteva stakeholders to help ensure that the migration remained focused on the needs of the business.

Accenture also provided training to the Corteva system-support team so that they could manage the cloud-based system effectively going forward. Key change management efforts included:

Engaging key stakeholders

Connecting managers, site subject matter experts and Corteva’s application user community through weekly touchpoints and workshops.

Providing training

Training SMEs and Corteva’s user community through working sessions and hands-on training.

Infusing ownership

Instilling an ownership thought process among Corteva’s team so they could lead after the project’s conclusion.

Developing guideline documents

Producing and sharing ad-hoc and formalized guideline documents with the end-user community to ensure their alignment with the migration.

Value delivered

Corteva has successfully migrated its laboratory systems to the cloud. The cloud platform eliminates a large proportion of capital expenses related to setting up hardware infrastructure and enhances the overall management of applications deployed in Azure.

It also boosts agility and scalability in support of future business growth. Finally, it allows seamless integration between the applications deployed in Azure without sacrificing any security or performance. With its own quality systems now in place, supporting more than 1,200 users and critical business work processes, Corteva is well positioned to stand up on its own, re-energize future growth and continue to support its mission of helping farmers around the world.

As an independent entity, Corteva will have laboratory systems with:

Accessibility:

Systems that are accessible from any part of a plant.

Transformation:

Code updates to manage applications seamlessly.

Run & maintain support:

Facilitation of knowledge transfer workshops with Corteva’s Run & Maintain team and site SMEs.

Vendor support:

Licenses and annual support (Level four).

A ‘like-to-like’ migration approach:

The retention of all key business work processes, ensuring its user experience will be enhanced compared to its Dow experience.

Cross layer integration:

Integration between Azure LIMS and ecosystem applications, enabling transparency through secure data exchange protocols and role-based security.

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