L’Oréal Americas is building beautiful enterprise solutions with Microsoft Power Platform

For over 115 years, L’Oréal, the world’s leading beauty player, has devoted itself to one thing only: fulfilling the beauty aspirations of consumers around the world. The company’s purpose, to create the beauty that moves the world, defines its approach to beauty as inclusive, ethical, generous and committed to social and environmental sustainability. Through a broad portfolio of 37 international brands and ambitious sustainability commitments as part of its L’Oréal for the Future program, L’Oréal offers each and every person around the world the best in terms of quality, efficacy, safety, sincerity and responsibility, while celebrating beauty in its infinite plurality. 

With over 90,000 committed employees, a balanced geographical footprint and sales across all distribution networks (e-commerce, mass market, department stores, pharmacies, hair salons, branded and travel retail), 20 research centers across 11 countries around the world, and a dedicated Research and Innovation team of 4,000 scientists and 8,000 digital, tech and data experts, L’Oréal is focused on inventing the future of beauty and becoming a Beauty Tech powerhouse. 

In 2025, L’Oréal Groupe was named the most innovative company in Europe by Fortune magazine, out of 300 companies, in a ranking spanning 21 countries and 16 industries in Europe. 

To help drive this innovation, the company has been engaged in a dramatic digital transformation – and Power Platform has been a key part of that strategy. In L’Oréal in the Americas Zone, a Tech Factory is helping makers across the region develop innovative, low-code applications across a wide range internal process, including solutions for purchasing, facilities, and event management. 

“Our digital transformation journey at L'Oréal is profoundly enhanced by strategic tools like Microsoft Power Platform, which empowers our teams to readily drive innovation and efficiency, propelling us further into our future as a Beauty Tech powerhouse,” said Susannah Greenberg, CIO for L’Oréal Groupe in the Americas Zone.

“Through Power Platform, we are giving makers at L’Oréal in the Americas the tools to drive real business improvement across all aspects of the business,” says Shakib Shayegh, Associate Vice President for L’Oréal Americas Tech Factory & Business Process Automation. “Our broad Power Platform portfolio has created significant savings in development costs compared with developing the same solutions using custom code or purchasing off the shelf.” 

Enterprise-wide Power Platform solutions  

Along with the solutions for individual users and small teams, L’Oréal Americas has developed several solutions that have since been adopted globally across the enterprise. One of the first was a solution for reserving laboratory equipment at one of the company’s new research facilities. The state-of-the art facility includes a shared “flex lab” designed to reduce the high costs of supplying each technician with their own equipment.

For many technicians, there were initial concerns that sharing equipment would create bottlenecks. The Power Platform “Open Bench” solution has effectively addressed those concerns. Developed using Power Apps, Power Automate, and Dataverse, the solution streamlines a process which was previously done through spreadsheets and basic Outlook calendaring. 

Employees reserve equipment in the lab using a Power Apps application on their mobile devices. They can either scan a barcode at a lab station which takes them directly to a reservation page or they can select the equipment from a map on the app. Icons on the map are updated in real time to easily identify which equipment is free, reserved, or being repaired. 

The app also makes it easier to report repairs, starting with a link to the laboratory’s maintenance system. When a ticket number from the system is entered back into the app, a Power Automate cloud flow looks up all users who have active reservations on that equipment and notifies them that there has been repair reported. The status automatically changes on the map to yellow.

With all equipment data now centralized on Dataverse, both users and managers also have access to a wide range of metrics, including usage and repair history and how long it is taking to complete a repair once its reported. These metrics are, in turn, driving more timely repairs and better uptime. A feature that allows employees to report how equipment was left by the previous user has even led to better equipment maintenance. 

The app was recently approved for global use by the company’s Enterprise Architect team which assesses multiple security and governance criteria. There are now plans to build a version of the app in three other countries - with many more to follow. “Thanks to a basic but innovative Power Platform application, we are optimizing use of our flex lab facilities around the world,” says Tiger Wolf, Solutions Architect and Lead Developer in the Research and Innovation Division at L'Oréal. 

Optimizing investments in SAP systems

L’Oréal in the Americas is also building enterprise applications that integrate with key internal systems like SAP. Several years ago, the division moved to SAP on Azure and today, SAP applications are used across finance, HR, sales, and even warehouse distribution. The challenge is that working with the SAP UI can be difficult, especially for novice users. “Power Platform has made it easier to develop customized front ends to our SAP systems and that has really helped to optimize use of our SAP infrastructure,” says Wolf. 

One app is dramatically transforming the purchase approval process for L’Oréal. With an automated approval process and better documentation and tracking, the “Sign & Order” app has enabled one team to improve its purchase order request audits from previously being noncompliant to now being 100% compliant with organizational audit and documentation requirements.

Here’s how the solution works: Once a user has submitted their purchase request information through the app, a series of Power Automated cloud flows determine whether the request needs legal or finance reviews and routes for approval. Other unique features save even more time. For example, if the user selects a currency other than euros, the system will use the currency exchange rates added into the app and apply the rules appropriately.

The solution has also improved the time it takes to submit approved POs to SAP. A bulk upload feature enables employees to export all approved POs as a single CSV file which is then added to a ‘shopping cart’ for submission into the MyMarket SAP system, whereas previously each shopping cart was individually created as a manual task by an Executive Assistant.

It’s estimated that the app is saving users up to 90% of the time previously needed to get a PO request approved and submitted into SAP. That kind of efficiency has already saved the US division hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in processing costs. 

The next step is to leverage Power Automate RPA and the pre-built SAP connector for Power Platform to automatically create the cart in SAP, saving employees even more time. The SAP connector recently passed L’Oreal’s security and platform reviews and has been approved provisionally for proof-of-concept testing. This will be one of the first Power Platform applications with SAP connectivity to be used globally. Several similar apps are planned. 

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