Shopper healthcare firm Haleon is each outdated and new. Whereas many readers is likely to be unfamiliar with the corporate’s identify, they are going to be acquainted with its merchandise. To record them is to recognise the contents of most of our toilet cupboards: Sensodyne toothpaste, Advil painkillers, Centrum vitamin dietary supplements, Tums and Nicorette, to call however a couple of.
The corporate was based in July 2022 by means of the merger of shopper healthcare portfolios from GSK, Pfizer and Novartis. Its core enterprise useful resource planning (ERP) system is a clone of GSK’s SAP ECC6 set up, says chief digital and expertise officer Claire Dickson, and the expertise technique plan is to accomplice with SAP, but in addition with Microsoft, fairly deeply.
Dickson joined Haleon on the time of the brand new mixed firm’s inception. She has been guiding a potential new ERP for the corporate, S/4Hana on SAP’s Rise cloud migration programme.
Dickson beforehand held CIO roles at multinational packaging enterprise DS Smith and BP. She was additionally a senior supervisor at Accenture and an SAP analyst at United Biscuits. However she says the position at Haleon is of a unique order, since it’s a complete new firm composed of components drawn from well-established entities. And on the expertise aspect, there may be alternative to place in place a considerably new stack, and yet another oriented in the direction of being a shopper firm.
“The proposition with Haleon is sort of thrilling as a result of although there’s maturity within the firm, it’s additionally model new,” she instructed Laptop Weekly at this 12 months’s SAP Sapphire convention in Madrid.
The corporate’s avowed goal is to “ship higher on a regular basis well being with humanity”, specializing in what it describes in its literature as “accessible, science-backed options for on a regular basis well being wants”. It has annual gross sales of roughly £11bn (2025) and 24,000 workers. Haleon operates in over 100 markets worldwide. Its said purpose is to succeed in one billion extra customers by 2030, and it’s concentrating on 4-6% income development yearly till then.
Haleon’s SAP board-level contact for its transformation programme is chief govt Christian Klein. He and Haleon’s CEO, Brian McNamara, are carefully linked on the partnership. “I might count on that we’ll do some co-innovation collectively as we get going,” stated Dickson.
“Once we entered into the partnership with SAP, we made some assumptions that there can be extra agentic functionality coming, and due to this fact the partnership was premised on being [SAP] ‘clear core’ and we belief that the brokers are coming,” Dickson instructed Laptop Weekly.
“So, we had been delighted with the announcement right here, as a result of clearly numerous that comes out of the field as commonplace,” she added. “Our AI technique is to leverage as commonplace out-of-the-box from our suppliers the place doable. We don’t wish to be systemically constructing enormous numbers of brokers ourselves. We’re constructing some, however we don’t wish to try this as a technique.”
“The chance right here is to design a fit-for-purpose clear core that may allow us to be a a lot faster-to-market shopper items firm”
Claire Dickson, Haleon
Haleon’s ambitions are massive, stated Dickson. “The partnership with SAP allows numerous that as a result of the SAP platform that we’re on immediately is mainly a clone from GSK. We’re in a pharma template now, and we wish to be a shopper items firm.
“The chance right here is to design a fit-for-purpose clear core that may allow us to be a a lot faster-to-market shopper items firm,” she added.
As a part of that, the corporate has used SAP Signavio, and is planning to make use of it extra. “We’re enthusiastic about utilizing Signavio as a part of our design course of as a result of you are able to do all of your course of mining and evaluation inside SAP. You may lock and cargo it into the prevailing ECC platform and see what your course of health appears to be like like, and based mostly on that course of health, we are able to determine the place we predict the worth sits, both by means of automation or simply ripping out a few of what we do immediately,” stated Dickson.
“It wouldn’t make any sense to look elsewhere for course of mining as a result of it’s simply a part of the SAP household. Strategically, we are attempting to create an ecosystem of companions that’s fairly clear. Much less is extra, I believe, and reduces the assault floor,” she added.
When Haleon separated from GSK, it took the chance emigrate every part to the cloud. “We put 98% of our package into [Microsoft] Azure in two years to make us digital prepared, which is great. And we constructed on that and signed a partnership with Salesforce to create a pharmacy platform on their Life Sciences cloud,” stated Dickson.
“We’re co-innovating [with Salesforce] to construct a platform for our salesforce. We have now 4,500 salespeople that exit to work with our prospects, who’re pharmacists, and their healthcare professionals, and in addition with dentists. In order that’s fairly an enormous a part of our enterprise, much less mass market.”
Collaborating on digital, knowledge and AI
One other provider that’s strategic to Haleon’s transformation is Microsoft.
In June 2026, the patron well being firm introduced a five-year “collaboration with Microsoft to scale digital, knowledge and AI capabilities throughout the enterprise”.
The settlement is claimed to construct on Haleon’s current use of Microsoft 365 Copilot and additional helps the broader adoption of AI-powered instruments.
Within the announcement of that partnership, Dickson stated: “This collaboration marks a serious step ahead in how we use digital, knowledge and AI to ship our world technique – driving development, bettering productiveness and constructing a extra agile, performance-focused tradition.
By combining Microsoft’s cloud and AI capabilities with Haleon’s deep shopper well being experience, we’re accelerating our AI progress – simplifying how we work, unlocking extra worth from our knowledge, accelerating innovation and serving to our groups make quicker, smarter selections to profit our customers Claire Dickson, Haleon
“We’re already embedding AI capabilities throughout the enterprise, delivering measurable outcomes and efficiencies in areas together with shopper insights, advertising, R&D and provide chain.
“By combining Microsoft’s cloud and AI capabilities with Haleon’s deep shopper well being experience, we’re accelerating our AI progress – simplifying how we work, unlocking extra worth from our knowledge, accelerating innovation and serving to our groups make quicker, smarter selections to profit our customers.”
Alongside these provider relationships, the corporate is purposely educating its senior administration groups in AI.
“Schooling is every part,” stated Dickson. “As a part of our knowledge and AI journey, we’re placing all of our prime leaders by means of a Cambridge College knowledge and AI course that now we have crafted collectively.
“Our prime 160 leaders can have been by means of that by the top of September of this 12 months. I believe the Cambridge course has been so profitable as a result of it’s a two-day course in Cambridge, with leaders flown in from all around the world. We have now additionally deployed a knowledge camp for all workers with differentiated modules for them.
“We have now to take accountability for educating our folks as a result of in any other case solely a minority will use AI correctly. Even with Copilot, folks don’t have a tendency to make use of it to its full functionality.
“However when you educate folks, they realise that, say, on the finish of the week you may ask it who owes you an motion and what you owe another person, and get a abstract of your final three conferences. However folks don’t actually know the ability of it. They ask it questions extra like Google, however that isn’t the ability of Copilot.”
