From Integration Chaos to Digital Clarity: Nutrien Ag Solutions’ Post-Acquisition Reset

Nutrien Ag Solutions overhauls its digital infrastructure

Nutrien Ag Solutions Australia consolidated its fragmented IT systems into a unified digital platform to resolve massive technical debt following a major corporate merger. Sriram Kalyan, the company’s head of applications and data, detailed the transition during a recent session with the Infosys Knowledge Institute. The project transformed a high-risk landscape of duplicated software into a scalable foundation for future cloud and AI deployments.

The overhaul began after the merger of two prominent Australian agricultural firms, Landmark and Ruralco. This corporate marriage created an immediate crisis for the IT department, as the new entity inherited two of nearly every critical business system. Kalyan described the resulting environment as a collection of "fragile integrations" that threatened daily operations across the Australian agricultural supply chain.

Nutrien Ag Solutions operates as the retail arm of Nutrien, the world’s largest provider of crop inputs and services. In Australia, the company manages hundreds of retail outlets and provides essential services to thousands of farmers. Any failure in the underlying digital architecture could disrupt the delivery of fertilizers, seeds, and financial services to the country’s massive agricultural sector.

Fixing the mess of merging companies

The merger left Nutrien Ag Solutions with a redundant and expensive technology stack. The company faced the challenge of managing multiple ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems and CRM platforms simultaneously. These systems did not communicate effectively, leading to data silos that prevented leadership from seeing a single version of the truth regarding sales and inventory.

Kalyan identified these duplicated systems as more than just a financial burden. They represented a significant operational risk because the integrations between them were poorly documented and increasingly unstable. When systems are "bolted together" during a fast-paced merger, they often rely on temporary fixes that eventually become permanent, brittle liabilities.

The IT team had to map out every connection point between these legacy platforms. They discovered that many critical business processes relied on undocumented code and manual workarounds. This "integration chaos" made it nearly impossible to implement updates or launch new digital services for customers without breaking existing functionality.

Managing the loss of institutional knowledge

The technical challenges were compounded by a sudden loss of human capital. During the merger and subsequent restructuring, several key platform experts and external partners left the organization. These individuals held the "tribal knowledge" required to maintain the legacy systems and understand why certain technical decisions were made years prior.

Kalyan noted that losing these experts turned the IT landscape into a "black box" for the remaining staff. Without the original architects, the team struggled to troubleshoot issues in the aging infrastructure. This loss of expertise forced the company to prioritize platform consolidation as a defensive measure to ensure business continuity.

To solve this, Nutrien Ag Solutions partnered with Infosys to provide the necessary technical depth and stability. The partnership allowed the company to bridge the knowledge gap and begin the process of documenting and modernizing its core systems. This move shifted the IT department's focus from "firefighting" daily outages to building a long-term strategic roadmap.

Prioritizing business outcomes over technology

Kalyan emphasized that the turnaround succeeded because the team focused on business outcomes rather than technical specifications. Instead of simply upgrading software, the IT department aligned its goals with the company’s broader commercial objectives. This alignment ensured that every technical change provided measurable value to the retail branches and the farmers they serve.

The team adopted a disciplined approach to decommissioning old software. They identified which systems were essential for growth and which were redundant relics of the pre-merger era. By cutting the "dead wood" from the IT budget, they freed up resources to invest in modern, cloud-native applications that could scale with the business.

The transformation involved several key technical milestones to stabilize the environment:

• Consolidating redundant ERP and CRM systems into a single source of truth
• Migrating legacy on-premise data centers to cloud-based environments
• Implementing standardized API protocols to simplify third-party integrations
• Establishing a centralized data governance framework to improve reporting accuracy
• Automating routine system maintenance to reduce the burden on IT staff

Moving from legacy to cloud

The shift to a cloud-first architecture was a central pillar of Kalyan’s strategy. Legacy on-premise systems were difficult to scale and required significant physical maintenance. By moving these workloads to the cloud, Nutrien Ag Solutions gained the flexibility to expand its digital services without the need for constant hardware investments.

Cloud migration also improved the company’s disaster recovery capabilities. In the previous environment, a hardware failure at a single data center could have crippled operations for days. The new distributed cloud architecture ensures that critical applications remain available even if one part of the network experiences an outage.

This modernization effort also addressed the security risks inherent in aging software. Legacy systems often lack the security patches and modern encryption required to protect sensitive financial and agricultural data. The new platform includes automated security monitoring and identity management, significantly reducing the company's attack surface.

Building a foundation for AI

With the "integration chaos" resolved, Nutrien Ag Solutions is now positioned to leverage advanced analytics and AI. Kalyan explained that the previous fragmented data landscape made it impossible to run meaningful AI models. Now that the data is consolidated and cleaned, the company can use machine learning to predict inventory needs and optimize supply chains.

The new digital foundation allows the company to respond faster to market changes. In the agricultural sector, weather patterns and global commodity prices can shift rapidly. A scalable IT infrastructure enables Nutrien Ag Solutions to deploy new tools for farmers—such as precision agriculture apps—in weeks rather than months.

Kalyan views the current state of the IT department as a "strategic enabler" for the company. By resolving the technical debt of the merger, his team has moved from being a cost center to a driver of innovation. The company continues to refine its digital clarity, ensuring that its technology stack remains an asset rather than a liability as it faces a more data-driven future in global agriculture.