Purina Builds a Strategic Consumer IAM Solution for an Optimized User Journey Using Amazon Cognito

Purina has been producing pet food and pet care products for more than a century. Since 2018, it has expanded into digital products and an array of pet nutrition products. As its offerings multiplied, Purina sought to develop a frictionless digital environment where consumers could discover all the company’s services through one account.

In 2022, Purina set its sights on developing a robust CIAM solution with SSO to drive better consumer usability across its digital services. “SSO removes the barriers between apps and lets consumers move in and out of other products to get deeper support than we could offer before,” says Annie Scharenberg, director of architecture and services at Purina US. The company turned to AWS Professional Services, a global team of experts that helps users achieve their desired business outcomes. Purina already had a strong relationship with AWS Professional Services, which had guided the company to success on earlier projects.

After consulting with the AWS Professional Services team, Purina decided that, instead of using out-of-the-box customer identity solutions, which have greater limitations and fewer customization options, it would build its own tool using a suite of AWS services. This helped Purina design a cost-effective system with a bespoke approach to consumer outreach and engagement. Because the company had experience using AWS, the new CIAM solution and SSO features fit well with the company’s existing cloud-native workflows, resulting in a more streamlined development cycle.

Purina built an omnichannel, dynamic relationship with its consumers. AWS experts advised Purina on which AWS capabilities would serve Purina’s needs and where the company could scale and create cost efficiency on AWS. “As Purina identifies strategic opportunities to benefit users, working with the AWS team helps achieve those initiatives,” says Scharenberg.

A consumer’s first contact with Purina’s digital services is through the front-end SSO interface on the MyPurina app. The cornerstone of Purina’s CIAM solution is Amazon Cognito, which developers use to add user sign-up and sign-in features and control access to their web and mobile applications. The CIAM solution connects Purina’s pet adoption sites, Internet of Things devices, companion apps, pet care mobile apps, and consumer loyalty solutions. To create a standardized experience for Purina consumers, the development team also uses AWS Amplify, which lets developers build full-stack web and mobile apps. Purina deploys a suite of other AWS services in support of this stack.

To migrate existing user identities or create new ones, Purina uses AWS Lambda, a serverless, event-driven compute service that can run code for virtually any type of application. “We were challenged to create a custom SSO capability that can tap into another solution, discover if there’s an existing user account, and either link it through SSO or dynamically generate a new account without impacting system performance,” says Scharenberg. To store user data and credentials, Purina uses Amazon DynamoDB, a database service that can deliver apps with consistent single-digit millisecond performance and nearly unlimited storage. “We needed the solution to propagate credentials across our products, so we needed storage,” says Scharenberg.

After kicking off development in October 2022, the MyPurina mobile app went live in February 2023, becoming one of Purina’s fastest-released services. With its custom SSO solution, Purina created a seamless consumer experience that links user accounts with standalone applications using independent user stores. By using AWS Cognito advanced security features to achieve fraud prevention, Purina centralized security for all its products in one solution. And since the SSO feature was customized, Purina has achieved 80 percent cost savings over using out-of-the-box products by paying only for features that it needs.

The new solution provides Purina with increased security, reduced data collection and duplications, and an improved consumer experience. Purina also saved time on architecture security reviews undertaken by its parent company, Nestlé USA. Although these typically take at least 3 months to complete, Purina accomplished it in 1 month. “Using Purina’s overarching technical strategy and expertise in the cloud, combined with the advantage of using AWS ProServ on AWS solutions, we could save valuable time and deliver faster,” says Scharenberg.

Using AWS solutions is helping Purina build relationships with its consumers by paving the way for individual recommendations, personalized offers, and even proactive health opportunities. For example, the Petivity Smart Litter Box Monitor proactively generates insights on changes in a cat’s litter box behavior, and alerts the owners to potential problems.

Purina plans to expand its CIAM solution even further to three more applications—Petivity, Petfinder, and Purina.com—by the end of 2023. The company is excited about the new ways it can use its digital properties to improve the lives of its consumers and their pets. “SSO is the technical linchpin that will help us open the floodgates to opportunities and business strategies that didn’t exist for us without it,” says Scharenberg.