Syngenta & Benchling: Driving faster seed and agricultural development at a global scale
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- America
- Asia
- Europe
Country
- Argentina
- Brazil
- China
- Switzerland
- United States
Product
- Benchling
Tech Stack
- Cloud Computing
- Data Management
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Digital Expertise
- Innovation Output
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Agriculture
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Collaborative Robotics
- Predictive Maintenance
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Data Science Services
About The Customer
Syngenta is an innovation powerhouse in seeds and agricultural products, with teams in over 90 countries. Their R&D focuses on designing seeds with desirable genetics that require fewer inputs—land, water, pesticides, nutrients— while producing great outputs. Growers depend on Syngenta for hardier, higher quality crops as geographies of fungal and bacterial diseases shift, climates fluctuate to more extremes, and the demand to feed the global population grows. Syngenta has maintained its position as a global leader in agricultural science and technology, particularly in seeds and crop protection products, by cultivating innovation. One of the strengths that drives this culture of innovation is diversity throughout the company. Syngenta benefits from a diversity of roles, from regulators to molecular scientists, as well as a diversity of geographies, leading to differing climates, conditions, tool availability, and cultural norms. Another key aspect to Syngenta’s success is scale. Researchers are able to test hundreds of thousands of products at a time, share with labs, greenhouses, and regulatory agencies in many countries, and create a stock that can be distributed globally.
The Challenge
Syngenta, a global leader in agricultural science and technology, faced several challenges. One of the main challenges was balancing customization and standardization. Syngenta wanted standardized data for cross-company analysis, but each department had its own preferences and needs for recording and recalling data. Another challenge was collaboration across the globe. Handoffs between different geographies, languages, time zones, and areas of expertise while using paper records led to bottlenecks. Lastly, managing many regulatory requirements was a challenge. Different countries maintain complex, shifting regulatory requirements around product safety that all need to be met.
The Solution
Syngenta invested in Benchling to capture the strength of all the different people working together to bring new seeds to fruition while also enabling different roles at Syngenta to collaborate more cohesively–both internally and with regulatory agencies around the world. Benchling offers a lot of flexibility to suit individual working preferences and surface role-relevant information. Teams can take advantage of Benchling’s codeless configuration to easily model their specific workflows. Such customization allows different users to interact with Benchling intuitively and efficiently, while tracking information seamlessly through the entire lifecycle of a product. Furthermore, sharing information in real-time makes it easier to run activities concurrently in different locations. A research team in Beijing can use results from an experiment conducted the day before in North Carolina, and share next steps with field teams in Idaho and Argentina to run parallel experiments on the ground. Benchling’s Validated Cloud provides a solution with the rigor and security necessary for recording requisite data and demonstrating continued efficacy and safety in Syngenta’s products.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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