Kindeva combines four ERP systems into one using Dynamics 365 and remote collaboration

Creating an ERP solution from scratch

The first asthma inhaler was created by 3M in the 1950s, which led to 3M breaking into the pharmaceutical industry. Over the decades, 3M built its pharmaceutical business and designed innovative ways to deliver medicine. Fast forward to May 1, 2020, when 3M transitioned its drug delivery business to an affiliate and the business was relaunched as Kindeva Drug Delivery (Kindeva), becoming a standalone business entity. 

Kindeva delivers on its mission to “manufacture more tomorrows” by engineering, manufacturing, and distributing drug delivery systems. These are devices that provide medicine to patients in forms other than a pill or tablet. Kindeva produces four types of drug delivery systems: autoinjector, inhalation, intradermal, and transdermal. Inhalation delivery systems are devices like inhalers, used to treat respiratory illnesses. Intradermal technology is used for accurate dosing and reliable microneedle-based delivery.  An autoinjector is a device with a syringe that contains a spring-loaded needle with a preloaded does of medication for self-administration. Transdermal delivery systems include adhesive skin patches, which can provide treatments like hormone therapy or pain management.

As Kindeva began the process of becoming a new company, it needed to extricate its data from 3M and move it into a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that could eventually support all 700+ global employees with the capability to scale. Its five sites—including headquarters, R&D facilities, and manufacturing plants—were using four different ERP systems, one system per geographic location. The systems were a mix of new and legacy technology located both on-premises and in the cloud. With data spread across four systems, it was difficult to understand the nuances between the sites. 

DeCabooter says, “Our five sites include our manufacturing, R&D, quality, administrative services, finance, IT, and HR processes, and we wanted to move as many processes into as few systems as possible. We really wanted to be able to have one source of data, one source of truth, one set of financial books.”

As part of the transition service agreement (TSA) with 3M, Kindeva would continue to receive IT support for up to one year in order to afford it the time to get its   new ERP solution up and running. Under a tight timeline, Katie DeCabooter, Vice President of IT at Kindeva, worked with three Microsoft Cloud Program partners, Armanino, PCB Apps, and West Monroe Partners, to design and deploy an ERP system built on Dynamics 365 in the cloud.  

The importance of ERP

Kindeva works with several pharmaceutical companies, manufacturing, packaging, and distributing drug delivery systems to more than 60 countries. An ERP system is integral to its business as it gives insight into the company’s complex global supply and manufacturing chain for each product. Kindeva needs to track which pharmaceutical company purchased its devices, which facilities are developing and patenting drugs, how parts are procured for a drug delivery system, which site receives and assembles the components, and where the assembled devices are shipped—all while managing the financial transactions beneath it all. The inventory management capabilities within Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management allows Kindeva to keep accurate traceability of inventory across different sites as components are delivered and assembled, and then again shipped out to end customers.

The new ERP system would need to integrate with ISV solutions that helped support Kindeva’s compliance needs, such as eSignature for confidential and secure digital signatures. The system had to be intuitive, ensuring users could easily learn and trust it to function in any setting. This was crucial as the development of the new ERP system coincided with the hiring process for the remaining Kindeva IT team. When Kindeva became a separate business entity there was a very small team that transitioned to the new IT Team. DeCabooter worked with business partners to develop the ERP framework,  while she was simultaneously  onboarding a new team who were learning this new system. d The ERP also needed to grow as Kindeva grew, and a big goal of DeCabooter’s was that Go Live would have no impact on users & customers. 

DeCabooter says, “We wanted a SaaS solution because we needed to spin-up quickly and not have to build a large datacenter. We knew a SaaS solution could give us reliable, 24/7 uptime with support from the SaaS provider.” 

Partnerships make the deployment a success

DeCabooter says, “My Microsoft Cloud Program business partners really made the rapid deployment of Dynamics 365 possible.” 

West Monroe Partners stewarded Kindeva through the TSA from 3M, beginning with an evaluation of the existing IT infrastructure to determine which parts should be consolidated. West Monroe Partners presented Kindeva with multiple options from different cloud providers and determined that Dynamics 365 was the best option for Kindeva’s SaaS needs. 

“We chose Dynamics 365 because we determined it was the best fit for our company’s potential growth. It would give us the best opportunities to build or purchase ISV solutions to fit niche needs rather than developing customizations.” DeCabooter continued “And we felt Dynamics 365 would be the best option to meet our timeframe, allowing Kindeva to complete the TSA by deadline. In addition, Microsoft is a well-known company that we knew would be around in five years.” Kindeva already used Microsoft 365 in the cloud for its day-to-day business needs. 

DeCabooter worked with WMP & Armanino partners to stand up a skeleton framework of Dynamics 365 on an Azure stack, using Azure SQL Database for storage first, beginning in May of 2020. The framework was running within a few months. DeCabooter’s team along with the partners WMP & PCB then built an extract, transform, and load (ETL) solution with Azure SQL that helped Kindeva IT migrate data from the previous infrastructure at 3M to the new solution at Kindeva. The rest of the deployment was rolled out gradually, finalizing the initial global implementation for 700 users on June 1, 2021. 

Kindeva uses Dynamics 365 modules like Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Dynamics 365 Finance to ensure that there was a single ERP system working across key areas of the supply chain, such as procurement, finance, and manufacturing. The solution ties all of its' sites' data into one system, giving Kindeva oversight into each site that it could not have previously.

“The number one win of this deployment was that our data was now in one central place,” says DeCabooter.

West Monroe Partners brought another Microsoft technology partner, Armanino, in to assist Kindeva integrate existing third-party solutions into the new ERP system. Armanino subject matter experts relevant to the current phase of the deployment regularly joined Kindeva IT’s Teams video calls to provide support and source needed skills. DeCabooter says, “Armanino really wanted to be a partner in the deployment and acted as an extension of our team at times. If they didn’t have a required skill, they would source talent to fulfill that skill need. They were dedicated to helping us reach our goals and working through any issues.”

Kindeva worked with all three business partners to find workarounds that meant it could proceed with the planned Go Live date. Then, it worked together to tidy up the workarounds and roll them out on a schedule. IT also assembled a control plan and process for any new issues or questions that could arise post-deployment. DeCabooter says, “This has helped us grow and find ways to do things better within our system and processes.”

Since launching the new ERP system built on Dynamics 365 modules and Azure services, DeCabooter says, “We’ve seen a decrease in IT tickets from our users, which confirms for us that they’ve become familiar with the system, and that the system is in a good place.”  

Building a global bond

The entire ERP project was executed during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic—meaning DeCabooter and her colleagues could not travel. 

“Microsoft Teams really made us stronger as a company cross-functionally because we had to spend so much time working remotely, across different time zones. Since Teams encompasses SharePoint, OneDrive, and Collaboration—we really leaned on it. It’s where we stored a lot of our documents and conducted video calls.” 

Laughing, she adds, “And we used a lot of the GIFs built into Teams to develop camaraderie with one another.” 

Reflecting and looking ahead

For an IT undertaking similar to this project, DeCabooter suggests, “Align your processes as much as possible prior bringing them into the system.” She wished that her team had had more time to do this before the implementation, but the tight deadline created under the TSA meant that it would sometimes take the Kindeva IT team several attempts to determine how to implement a process within Dynamics 365. 

She also advises to, “Make sure that you have strong business engagement. Our business partners were very involved in our deployment and a major key to our success.”

Kindeva is keeping the architecture simple for now, with Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 running on Azure SQL Database in the cloud. Since launch, DeCabooter says, “We’ve been maturing our Dynamics 365 platform and settling into a regular rhythm to address any foreseeable issues.” 

Microsoft also provides support for regular maintenance needs and providing scheduled updates.

Kindeva IT’s next tasks are to scale to 1,000 users and incorporate data from a new merger, Meridian Medical Technologies. Kindeva IT is taking inventory of Meridian Medical Technology’s processes and data to see how well it will integrate with Dynamics 365. 

For DeCabooter, the most unexpected win of the deployment was how technology helped bring the global Kindeva team together. “Teams really helped us develop into a global team versus regional or site teams. We now have a broader knowledge of who our colleagues are around the world.”

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