Clarins Boosts Global Operations with OutSystems, Saving $140,000 on a Single App

Challenge

Turning local disparities into global beauty

The mission of Clarins is to make life and the world more beautiful. This commitment is reflected by how they run their global operations.

Clarins recognised that streamlining its back-office processes, including its ERP, IT, HR, and financial systems, would increase operational efficiency while establishing stronger governance of its regional IT landscape. Many local IT solutions had become obsolete and were difficult to integrate into a coherent global ecosystem. Shadow IT tended to proliferate. With a desire to build strong global/local collaboration, and with a central IT team guaranteeing security and infrastructure, Clarins sought a way to simultaneously enable central governance and local autonomy.

"The vision is to have the global team offer several applications and reduce local development without slowing the business down,” explains Mylène Couvidoux, Applications Director at Clarins.

Solution

Empowering global sales and distribution with OutSystems

Clarins chose OutSystems to accelerate time-to-market, increase agility, reduce shadow IT, and lower costs, all while maintaining a strong framework to ensure visibility and control over locally built applications.

Supported by certified partner Rokodo, Clarins set up a new, governed structure and started building several critical applications, focusing on both global and regional requirements.

One of the key solutions developed was "Elite," an international Sales Force Automation (SFA) tool designed as a core model solution that replaces numerous disparate local applications. Elite enables sales representatives to manage orders, capture in-store visuals, and submit requests. It seamlessly integrates with the company’s new global Infor M3 ERP system, as well as its product information management system (PIM) and the middleware. The app is critical for the business of Clarins, supporting over 350 active users who manage relationships with retailers and are responsible for revenue-driving channels.

Another key application, "Athena", was designed to meet the needs of selective distribution across Europe. Used by sales representatives, Athena allows them to qualify and select retailers based on defined criteria and within a clear and fixed legal framework. The OutSystems low-code platform significantly increased development velocity. Rapid iteration and customisation facilitate the process of adapting to customer requirements and regulatory demands in over 20 countries.

Results

New looks deliver business growth through enhanced agility at a fraction of the cost

The adoption of OutSystems has yielded impressive results. More than 10 OutSystems applications are already live, deployed in 15 countries across the world, and actively used by more than 400 employees from different business teams. The Elite SFA tool and Athena, both originally estimated to take 1.5 years each to build using traditional development, were completed in just 6 months with OutSystems.

The OutSystems low-code approach resulted in estimated cost savings of up to $140,000, with Athena costing $75K versus an estimated $195K for a high-code solution.

The new solutions also increased IT and business productivity, with users expressing satisfaction with the "user-friendly" and "successful" applications.

The ability of OutSystems to provide adaptable tools that conform to business processes, rather than the other way around, has been a key factor in this success.

The growing demand from various business units underscores the platform's value across the organization. "Now, when the business has a new need, they call our team. That was not the case before,” explains Mylene. “It always starts with a small need, but then it keeps growing, proving the platform’s adoption and usefulness across the group."

Clarins considers OutSystems a strategic platform, crucial for bridging gaps in existing systems and driving future innovation. Using the platform’s generative and agentic AI capabilities such as Mentor and Agent Workbench, Clarins plans to streamline development and automate complex tasks even more, building a robust digital backbone that fully supports its vision of beauty.