How i-Health, a company that sells digestive health products, got relief by adopting automation

Gut health is an important aspect of overall well-being, though it is not often addressed openly. Yet, according to the American Gastroenterological Association, up to 70 million Americans suffer from some type of gastrointestinal issue. And that’s where i-Health comes in with relief. Based in Connecticut, i-Health, a subsidiary of dsm-firmenich, offers products for many overlooked and unspoken issues, including digestive and hormonal health, with brands such as Culturelle, Lacteol, and Estoven. The company sells its products through online and brick-and-mortar retailers, such as Walmart, CVS, Costco, Amazon, Walgreens, and others. To address its needs, i-Health sought help with managing orders from its retailers—a solution that SAP was able to provide.

 i-Health’s success relies on efficiency

Every year, i-Health’s fulfillment center handles, on average, 30,000 shipments for 180,000 sales order line items, with 95% of all orders arriving through electronic data interchange (EDI). So, it’s critical to have an efficient processing system to ensure the operation runs smoothly. i-Health’s legacy system, which included manual procedures, faced challenges due to the increasing volume of shipments and demands from its retailer customers.

A situation that caused distress to the system 

Each retailer imposes strict, varied requirements on i-Health, from carrier selection and tight delivery windows to detailed label printing for pallets and cartons. The legacy system struggled to keep up, leading to inefficiencies and potential penalties. The company needed a solution customized to each retailer’s requirements.

“In today’s high demanding customer packaged goods (CPG) industry, i-Health must be agile and efficient. Adopting a proven solution was vital to reduce costs while elevating our fulfillment capabilities and flexibility to meet business requirements,” says Susan Armstrong, Vice President of Operations for i-Health.

i-Health worked with its IT partner, HCLTech, and SAP to implement a solution that uses SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud and SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) Integration Suite. Aligning and advising on the balance of business needs vs. best practices was crucial to the success of the implementation.

Boosting shipping efficiency with regular support from SAP 

In the past, sales order processing and ship-to date calculations were handled manually, which made the process slow and prone to mistakes. This often caused issues for both the sales and fulfilment teams, as well as uncertainty among customers regarding shipping times. The rate of accurately determining when orders would leave i-Health’s fulfillment center was just 20%.

To address these issues, SAP automated the calculation of ship-to dates and other manual procedures. As a result, the time and effort spent on processing sales orders decreased by 20%. The accuracy of shipping date calculations soared to 95%, greatly enhancing the efficiency of sales order management, fulfilment operations, and overall customer satisfaction.

“That means we can now print the orders in priority of target ship date and ship on the right day to arrive at our retailer’s dock on their requested delivery date,” says Marquis Jimenez, Global Fulfilment Manager at i-Health. “This is a game changer for setting the pace of the floor and understanding if we’re ahead or behind in order fulfillment each week. Having system-driven dates means no more guesswork and happier staff and customers.”

The solution also includes custom fields and logic to support on-time delivery.

Seeing the results in print

i-Health customers need unique pallet and carton labels to ship orders, but their legacy system couldn’t meet these varied requirements. A custom SAP BTP-based application was built for on-demand label printing on any printer. This scalable solution enables staff to create multiple label specs efficiently, boosting label output by 200 times.

What’s more, the automated solution has cut the onboarding time for new customers from a couple of weeks to a couple of hours.

Improving order management health has its rewards

i-Health was recently honored with the “Industry Leader” award at the SAP Innovation Awards 2025 for successfully changing and improving how the company conducts business in the CPG industry (and providing relief for staff and customers).

If you’re looking for a remedy to improve your order management, start by checking out the i-Health pitch deck.