Godrej Consumer Products harnesses digital transformation with Microsoft Azure

Embracing cloud technology for digital transformation

Known for its early adoption of modern technology, Godrej Group paved the way for Godrej Consumer Products to explore the benefits of cloud computing. Basis extensive market search and thorough evaluation of multiple platforms, Godrej Consumer Products found Microsoft Azure to be a standout choice to transition its on-premises SAP platform to SAP S/4HANA to cloud. Azure’s diverse portfolio of services, multi-geo presence, and on-demand cloud offerings made it a clear choice for Godrej to adopt cloud.

Godrej Consumer Products, a big organization that operates in various regions, has to deal with critical applications that run 24/7 due to its global presence in various regions. Transition to cloud was complex due to various integrations along with strict compliance & security requirements.

The migration was planned in four phases. The first phase laid the foundation with critical elements such as security, global connectivity, resiliency measures and a strong governance structure. Following a few dry runs and support from Microsoft global experts, Godrej Consumer Products identified the optimal configuration and roll-out schedule. In the second phase of execution, Godrej Consumer Products moved its workloads to Microsoft Azure with a downtime of 48 hours against an earlier estimation of 72-hours. The production data was over 2TB in size and migrated within just six hours.

In the third phase, third-party applications were integrated, ensuring adherence to operational and security requirements. The last phase was dedicated to fine-tuning the application to meet target performance requirements and ensuring the smooth running of operations across the globe. The teams set up key monitoring controls for new data inputs and analytical dashboards for business users.

Redefining operational excellence

Vijaykumar Kannan, Head – Business Transformation and Digital, Godrej Consumer Products, says, “Migrating to the cloud was the first step in our digital transformation journey. Moving to Azure has resulted in increased scalability, enhanced collaboration, and improved security. It equips us to unlock more value from our operations and achieve our growth goals.”

Migrating to Microsoft Azure has resulted in several benefits for Godrej Consumer Products:

• With disaster recovery capabilities seamlessly integrated into the cloud environment, Godrej Consumer Products now has an availability rate of 99.9%, ensuring uninterrupted business continuity and greater resilience.
• The application response time has improved thereby enhancing user experience and operational efficiency.
• Microsoft Azure's robust security framework facilitates secure access to Godrej Consumer Products’ applications anywhere, anytime, fostering greater flexibility and productivity among users. Godrej Consumer Products also leverages Microsoft Azure’s support for vertical and horizontal scaling, ensuring adaptability to evolving business demands.
• The IT team is more productive and can focus on more critical tasks, such as making the application environment scalable, as Microsoft Azure manages the security of the underlying infrastructure.

Forging ahead on the digital transformation journey

Satyavrat Mishra, Head - Corporate IT & Group, CISO, says, “The success of large, complex IT projects depends on working with the right technology partners. The Microsoft team collaborated well with our teams to successfully implement this project. We look forward to continued collaboration with Microsoft to further modernize our core systems.”

Looking ahead, Godrej Consumer Products is committed to establishing a unified data landscape and is exploring options for a data warehousing solution. It has already started using Microsoft PowerBI for analytics and reporting and plans to expand integration across operations. As an enterprise focused on innovation, Godrej Consumer Products is developing products with generative AI capabilities for its internal operations and aims to increase their development and deployment across the organization.

Mr. Mishra said, “Migrating to Azure allowed us to streamline our vendor relationships, simplify processes, and drive cost efficiency. As a result, we successfully consolidated our entire cloud landscape under a single Hyperscaler. Azure also enabled us to build a lean Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery strategy for our critical applications and consolidate our overall datacenter footprint.”