How a leading American packaged foods manufacturer and distributor modernized its entire IT landscape by utilizing the capabilities of top of the line Infor M3 solution suite for Foods & Beverages Industry
The Challenge
Customer was using disparate systems and wanted to implement a single ERP Solution for all its business needs. Considering the complexities of FDA regulatory requirement for the Food industry with critical needs related to effective lot tracing, accurate inventory control, quality and visibility are fundamental needs for business to embrace growth
- Growth Constraint - The legacy application landscapes constraints and confines the business growth ability, thus limiting the organizations growth aspiration. Incoherent customer experience through multi-channels was leading to order backlogs, manual tracking, product recalls, difficulty in gaining consumer interest to new products.
- Lack of Collaboration - With multiple operational systems working in silos there was lack of collaboration leading in inventory tracking, scheduling & planning, order processing and fulfilment challenges.
- Market penetration - Unreliable service and dissatisfied customer impacted introduction to new geographies, gaining market share and revenue.
- Limited Visibility - Lack of real time visibility impacted operational efficiency among the processes, and low resource utilization across all areas of food production, processing, packaging, quality & sale.
- With the challenges of disparate solutions, productivity and collaboration were not in unison with the business goals.
The Solution
Food manufacturing and processing operations rely on streamlined processes to meet customer expectations for quality, safety, sustainability, and value. Efficiency throughout the organization is critical. Keeping in mind the challenging need of Industry customer embraced Infor M3 Solution Suite. Birlasoft was key partner to support the Implementation of Infor M3 Foods & Beverages.
Birlasoft leveraged accelerators which were designed to deliver certain core industry application processes, along with reduced implementation times, risks, and costs for customers in food industry.
Infor Deployment Methodology was adapted, which is designed to provide a unified approach to the delivery of specific services projects by utilizing a prescriptive, repeatable process that helped drive predictable results while helping to lower risk and reduce overall costs.
Key Solution Levers:
- Implemented Infor M3 Solution Suite for Food & Beverages and utilized accelerator based process & tools for Food and Beverages business during implementation.
- Fully integrated solution with edge applications such as Factory track, Planning Solutions utilized along with EDI integration with customers and partners.
- To take care of the warehousing and the lot tracking, Infor Factory Track solution and the Infor Graphical Lot Tracker Solution was implemented.
- Process modifications were also carried out to suit the requirements across production, planning, order processing, fulfilment and for mission critical reports.
The Impact
A unified, integrated, profitable organization - The new platform has enabled a core, fully integrated business solution replacing an uncertainty based legacy applications landscape. Infusing reliability across process and maximizing collaboration along with seamless execution.
Strategic Impact
- Customer Service – Enabled omni-channel sales and impeccable customer experience across channels
- Profitability – Improved operational efficiency and reduced wastage across all lines of business. Reduced cost & improved profitability with better material management before expiry
- Visibility - improved inventory accuracy and visibility along with near real time information and predictive insights
- Growth – removes uncertainty of ERP replacement & supports growth (with limited additions)
- Scalability – enable the core business and accelerate integration of acquisitions (Operations and Financials)
Direct Benefits
- Compliance - Focus on compliance & control lead to minimize recalls
- Track and Trace – Improved traceability for in-production and finished products
- Optimized Supply Chain – Network integration, via increased collaboration with customers and vendors utilizing EDI capabilities
- Production increase – Process automation and cross enterprise collaboration lead to increased production
In-Direct Value
- Operating Efficiencies (planning and ordering, process improvement facilitation, Sales Tax compliance, OS Sales team visibility into orders/Inventory, Marketing campaign execution, etc.)
- Demand Planning – more effective tool for demand sensing
- Accelerate Financial Close - allows quicker decision making
Birlasoft, continuous to collaborate and invest in the partnership with customer thus enabling customer to maximize their returns on investment by utilizing the solution capabilities and enhancing the process by continuous process improvement journey through its Digital transformation roadmap.
