Illumina Reduces Onboarding Time by 50% Percent with Cleo Integration Cloud

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Illumina, a global leader in DNA sequencing and array-based technologies, migrated to Cleo Integration Cloud (CIC) to reclaim control over its B2B integration strategy and eliminate sluggish onboarding cycles. By moving from a restrictive managed service provider to a blended-service self-service model, Illumina reduced its partner onboarding time by 50%, transitioning from a 10-week average to just a few days. This modernization enabled real-time visibility into mission-critical transactions across API, EDI, and PunchOut channels, ensuring seamless eProcurement fulfillment for their $4.6 billion global operation.

KEY PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES

• Dramatic Onboarding Speed: Slashed the average time to activate new trading partners by 50%, moving from a stagnant 10-week backlog to a streamlined process completed in days.

• Autonomous Technical Control: Empowered the internal B2B team to build, maintain, and monitor integration projects in-house using CIC Studio, eliminating dependencies on third-party developer availability.

• Optimized Communication Workflows: Replaced inefficient email-based mapping requests with a digitized, automated system, significantly reducing errors in order requirements.

• Enhanced Channel Support: Successfully integrated diverse sales channels—including complex eProcurement PunchOut orders—into a single, high-visibility cloud platform.

• Proactive SLA Management: Leveraged real-time cockpit analytics to identify and resolve transaction issues immediately, preventing the delays that previously plagued their managed service relationship.

INTRODUCTION

Established in 1998, Illumina Inc. develops, manufactures, and markets life science tools and integrated systems for large-scale analysis of genetic variation and function. The company serves genomic research centers, academic institutions, government laboratories, hospitals, consumer genomics companies, as well as pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and commercial molecular diagnostic laboratories. Illumina markets and distributes its products directly to customers and life-science distributors across the globe.

BUSINESS NEEDS

With more than a hundred connections and over 100,000 annual transactions executed with myriad customers, partners and suppliers, Illumina has an expansive digital ecosystem to maintain. Due to their growing business, Illumina needed an integration platform that could rapidly scale, as well as enable faster trading partner onboarding and mapping requests.

The reason for these needs was largely due to Illumina previously outsourcing integration responsibilities to a managed service provider. By outsourcing, Illumina gave up a large portion of control and visibility as they relied on an external party to handle integration responsibilities.

As it turns out, the managed service provider’s approach caused lengthy response times, meaning onboarding and service requests took an extended amount of time to complete.

Since outsourcing to a managed service provider dramatically slowed down Illumina’s operations, this prompted the organization to search for an integration solution that provided a self-service approach. A self-service approach would not only grant Illumina greater visibility and control of their integrations, but it would also enable them to better adhere to their desired timelines since integration responsibilities would be brought in-house.

These various issues were hindering Illumina’s revenue growth and success and ushered the Life Sciences Tools & Diagnostics company into seeking alternative integration solutions. The Illumina sales and marketing organization sponsored the project and selected Cleo Integration Cloud under a “self-service” deployment option.

IT CHALLENGES

llumina was using a popular managed service provider for their onboarding and integration needs. The business relationship was plagued with slow response times and poor communication, as well as lengthy completion times for service requests.

When Illumina had a service request, the managed service provider would acknowledge each request, assign a developer, and only then would start the work.

Every request, whether big or small, had a twoweek SLA. Oftentimes though, the managed service provider took longer than the allotted two-week timeframe.

When project managers from Illumina escalated slow response and project completion times to the managed service provider, the project managers would eventually receive a point of contact to triage their requests.

Once responding to the new point of contact and providing them with the necessary background information, it would take several additional days for Illumina to receive a response. Meanwhile, Illumina had no direct access or lines of communication with the developer assigned to a request or project.

Lastly, all mapping requests were funneled through email – not automated through a digitalized system. This led to requests and their associated requirements getting lost or completed inaccurately. These challenges harmed Illumina’s relationships with trading partners, increased onboarding times, exacerbated integration errors, cut into revenue, and made it difficult to scale.

SOLUTION: CIC’S SELF-SERVICE MODEL

Illumina became a Cleo customer at the beginning of 2022 and has been using Cleo Integration Cloud (CIC) increasingly ever since. Two main factors convinced Illumina to choose Cleo as its new integration provider. First, the ability to make integrations faster, cheaper, and better, with far more visibility and control. And secondly, Cleo’s intuitive and easy-to-navigate self-service model.

B2B Product Manager, Daniel Chong, and Sr. Manager Operations, eCommerce & Analytics Casey Foote at Illumina, express that Illumina B2B team now use CIC every day—whether they are developing solutions in CIC Studio and building, maintaining, and monitoring their own integration projects, or taking action in CIC Cockpit assessing customizable dashboards that contain real-time data that informs minute-to-minute business decisions.

And when it comes to onboarding, Chong states, “We can now onboard a new customer within a week, sometimes a customer a day.” By harnessing Cleo’s flagship product, CIC, Illumina has proven able to dramatically reduce onboarding times:

• Onboarding new trading partners, which previously took 10+ weeks on average, has been cut in half

• Technical onboarding times have been reduced from weeks to days

One reason for the increased efficiencies is attributable to how CIC works at the hands-on development level, which allows already completed work to be repurposed. 

“We found the project copier feature in CIC particularly useful. It lets you directly copy a previously created project and then edit/tweak it to fit the requirements of the new project. This greatly reduces the amount of time it takes to get a new trading partner integration up and running since you do not have to start from scratch for every new integration,” says Chong.

LOOKING FORWARD

Illumina plans to grow its partnership and business alongside Cleo as it invests more in Cleo technology, and as Cleo continues to grow and innovate the integration technology space. This will largely take effect by further incorporating Illumina’s eCommerce team into the mix. The eCommerce team plans to:

• Integrate more EDI customers onto the Cleo platform

• Introduce and support more message types

• Begin sending order confirmations

• Add greater API support

• Transition cXML to OCI PunchOut—allowing buyers to access Illumina’s eCommerce stores and procurement catalogs through Illumina’s eProcurement system.

• Implement EDIFACT to support European customers

Overall, Illumina expects to continue transitioning more processes to the CIC platform and will onboard more trading partners. The organization will also rely on Cleo technology to improve efficiencies, control, and visibility over integrations thanks to Cleo’s innovative self-service approach.