Integreon Global

How one company streamlines its business processes and bridges international gaps with Exact Synergy and Exact Globe.

A diverse portfolio of high-tech products... a family of companies spread out over multiple countries... complex business processes involving numerous stakeholders... For Integreon Global, it’s all in a day’s work.

As the parent company to some of the most trusted names in the life sciences industry—Cryopak, DDL, LaunchWorks and Nexkemia—this New Jersey-based company serves a broad international client base, with subsidiaries located in the US, Canada and France. Its innovative products and services range from cold chain packaging and temperature-monitoring solutions, to packaging, product and materials testing, contract manufacturing and expandable polystyrene (EPS) resin manufacturing.

One of the major challenges facing any multinational company is streamlining workflows while maintaining seamless teamwork between many locations. That’s why Integreon Global has adopted Exact Synergy and Exact Globe. According to Jennifer Hutton, Director of Information Technology at Integreon Global, “We already knew that Exact was simply the most efficient product for finance management, and we found that it also allowed us to control warehousing and inventory. Now, we use it in many different areas of our business. It just works best for everyone. We’ve migrated all business units from their legacy systems to Exact.”

Jennifer has been in charge of business applications at Integreon Global for less than two years, but this period has witnessed a major rebranding throughout the company. Fortunately for Integreon, Jennifer happens to be one of the most experienced Exact process management software users in North America.

“I’ve been working with Exact software for almost fifteen years,” she says. “Every day, it’s my job to look after all the business applications in our company, including our ERP and our CRM, as well as Exact Globe and Exact Synergy.” Some of Jennifer’s main focuses within her role are process improvement and streamlining workflows. “That means looking at how we can use additional functionalities within Exact to work faster and more efficiently.”

Now that Exact has become part of everyday operations at Integreon Global, Jennifer says she has been particularly impressed with software’s flexibility as well as the excellent international support she receives.

“One of the reasons I am so passionate about Exact personally is that it is really diverse,” says Jennifer. “People always ask me ‘What can Synergy do?’ I tell them, ‘The sky’s the limit.’ It can do whatever you want it to do.”

“The reason we started working with Exact Synergy is that it allows us to streamline our business processes. Take the COVID pandemic, for example. Our workforce had to quickly switch to working at home. We used to be a company that used paper to track our workflows. Working with Synergy has enabled us to go paperless and manage our workflows across different countries and all of our business units.”

According to Jennifer, Exact Synergy will empower Integreon Global employees to work more independently. It gives them easier access to important sales information, for example. “If our sales reps in one location don’t have access to the ERP, they can still access Synergy remotely through the web portal. Synergy is a hybrid tool, so it can be used as a CRM, but also as an HRM or for business management, particularly with workflows and project management.”

“One thing that I find most helpful for almost every one of our business units is Exact Synergy’s workflow features. Right now, we’re using its workflows to manage our projects. This eliminates the need to send envelopes and folders, and tens if not hundreds of emails from office to office to get sign-offs. This is all taken care of when you have electronic workflow with Synergy. All of these workflows will happen electronically, and this enables us to communicate more efficiently and eliminate human error. It also improves our customer service: now, we can easily find out the status of a project or an order when a customer calls, just by checking in Synergy. Anyone the customer talks to has access to the same real-time information on their screen.”

Exact Synergy also gives Jennifer the flexibility to customize it to the specific needs of Integreon’s various business units. “We have five business units, spread out over four companies and thirteen offices. They all have different business models,” she explains. “There’s a lot of diversity, if you look at what each of our separate business units does. It’s like saying we breed zebras and build trucks all within the same company!”

One of the Integreon companies, Cryopak, offers a diverse range of cold-chain packaging, testing services and temperature monitoring solutions. To meet the needs of its diverse client base, Cryopak needs flexible process management software. “At Cryopak, we use Exact as a project management tool. The workflow functionality really means something to each different customer,” says Jennifer.

Exact is flexible enough to account for these differences while creating a streamlined, consistent user experience throughout Integreon Global. “With Exact, you can contour to very different business models without having to buy multiple pieces of software. This is a basic functionality that we can turn into something truly personalised.”

Another common challenge facing global companies like Integreon is ensuring seamless teamwork across international borders. “There are lots of ERPs that you can use in Europe, but not in North America, for example,” explains Jennifer. “One of the advantages of Exact Globe is its localized legislation functionality. That enables us to use the same software in three different countries, spread out over two continents. Exact Globe is built to account for those differences and for the uniqueness of our company’s structure. It’s our finance management backbone, and we use it across all of our business units now.”

Best of all, says Jennifer, Exact is backed up by expert international customer support, in case she runs into any queries that require a customized solution. “It’s international support, but Exact makes it feel like it’s not international support. I just think of it as support. You get the same level of support, no matter which country you’re in, and you have access to resources that are not within your country or even your own continent.”

“Even if I put in a help desk ticket at three in the afternoon in New York, for example, I can still expect to get a response on the same day. It’s not like I have to wait till the next morning, like I do with some other suppliers. Exact provides support at the times that we need it,” she says.

Integreon Global is continuing to expand with the help of process management tools like Exact Synergy and Exact Globe. Jennifer knows that there are still many exciting possibilities to explore. Throughout her career, she has seen how adaptable Exact products are.

“We at Integreon are well on our way towards our goal of streamlining our processes,” she says. “I think that Exact still gives us plenty more options, even beyond managing workflows. We’ve only just begun to see what it’s capable of. To me, ‘workflow’ doesn’t really cover exactly what Exact Synergy does. There’s so much more... HRM, CRM, helpdesk software for preventive and reactive maintenance tracking, document management, expense management, you name it.” For Jennifer and her colleagues at Integreon Global, it looks like the sky really is the limit.