Today’s food industry faces supply uncertainties, increased customer demands, and ongoing government regulation. Manufacturers, therefore, require sector-specific business systems which can quickly adapt to significant challenges.
And that's precisely what Infor CloudSuite offers.
"Food and beverage producers need business systems and IT solutions that can handle rapid changes or disruptions in the value chain, as we've witnessed in recent years," says Per Christian Øen, Business Solution Director at Columbus.
"This also includes growing transparency demands from regulators and changing consumer trends.
These rapid changes require robust enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.”
Traditional, on-premises, solutions are no longer effective for managing today's complex food and beverage industry, explains Per Christian Øen.
He emphasises the need for sector-specific solutions that continuously update in the cloud to keep ahead of the demands of all stakeholders.
Major trends in the food and beverage industry
- Better food safety and animal well-being: Producers need to ensure control over their entire process, including suppliers. This includes maintaining transparency over the source and ingredients of animal feed, having a deep understanding of animal welfare and enforcing strict quality standards right up to when the finished product is in stores.
- Disruptions in the value chain: A strong value chain is crucial – and so is the creation of a back-up plan, including potential alternative suppliers. This helps mitigate risks, whether tied to pandemics, animal welfare, or changes in demand.
- New regulations: Business systems are significantly influenced by new regulations and legal requirements, which means that they should be continually updated to ensure compliance.
- Changes in consumer behaviour: Consumer behaviours are increasingly influenced by factors such as taste, health, convenience and environmental concern. Therefore, producers require an ERP platform which enables them to adapt their production lines and products swiftly, access external data, anticipate trends, and enhance product development efficiently.
Listen to our podcast if you would like to learn more about the transformation of the food and beverage industry. We share a wealth of actionable business tips.
Key reasons to choose Infor CloudSuite and Columbus
There are four competitive advantages that Infor CloudSuite offers today:
- An industry-specific solution with enhanced functionality for multiple sectors, including food and beverage.
- A swift implementation process due to integrated industry functionality and APIs for major third-party solutions.
- A multi-tenant cloud solution which includes continuous updates and a significantly lower total cost of ownership compared to many competitors.
- Columbus has developed deep understanding across a number of key sectors - and the food industry is one of them.
These factors mean that Infor CloudSuite is a solution all food companies should consider when switching to a new cloud-based ERP system.
Dedicated industry solution for food
Infor provides market-leading business systems for a number of key industries and within each has developed solutions tailored to micro-verticals.
"For example, in food production, there are micro-verticals for meat, dairy, and bakery, among others," says Per Christian Øen.
Infor continues to invest annually in research and development for its ERP system, refining it to the specific needs of micro-verticals. As a result, Infor's industry solutions offer extensive functionality, customised for each vertical. In contrast, many competitors rely on partner networks to handle this task.
Let's take the dairy industry as an example. It has distinct requirements, such as the shelf life for fresh products or the aging period for specific cheese varieties. Infor recognises these needs, so this functionality is integrated into the solution from the outset, turning it into a configuration task rather than a solution development process during implementation.
These feature-rich industry functionalities significantly reduce the implementation time of the ERP system compared to most competitors.
Infor has developed a 60-30-10 methodology, where 60% of the solution is delivered 'out-of-the-box,' 30% involves configurations tailored to the industry and micro-vertical, and the remaining 10% of the ERP implementation is dedicated to development and integrations specific to each business.
"One part of the secret behind Infor's cloud platform is Infor OS. It facilitates development and customisation with minimal coding requirements," says Per Christian Øen at Columbus.
Infor's cloud platform also offers the flexibility to easily incorporate various solutions and add-ons, such as integration with apps and mobile devices. The system is also designed to leverage advanced analytics, predictive maintenance, and make predictions about market developments and demand in selected market segments.
Lower total cost of ownership
In recent years, businesses , have increasingly focused on avoiding long, resource-intensive, and often risky IT projects and implementations. Their goal instead is to make swift progress and enjoy early rewards from their chosen systems.
While the trend of moving ERP systems to the cloud has continued and strengthened, there are significant differences among the various systems in the market in terms of how far they have progressed in becoming a genuine, full-fledged, multi-tenant cloud platform.
Multi-tenant means that a single software solution and its surrounding infrastructure serves multiple customers. This means that customers share the software and database, but each customer's data is isolated and invisible to other customers using the same software and database. The significant advantage is that integration with other systems is more straightforward, and the total cost of ownership is lower compared to competitors.
"Infor CloudSuite is somewhat of a hidden gem. Right now, Infor is several years ahead of competitors when it comes to multi-tenant cloud solutions. On the path to developing a true cloud platform, Infor has focused on developing integration interfaces and APIs with the best and most widely used IT solutions in the food industry," says Per Christian Øen.
He emphasises that the ready-made APIs also contribute to making implementation easier and faster.
"Integration with solutions from other vendors is often a significant and challenging task in many ERP projects, but with Infor CloudSuite, most integrations are simplified with the pre-built APIs."
It is widely acknowledged that a cloud-based ERP solution offers numerous advantages over traditional on-premises ERP systems, and benefits from continuous updates, eliminating the need for large and costly upgrade projects. Infor CloudSuite receives monthly updates, covering everything from solution optimisation to the development of new functionality to support best practices in the industry and address emerging market trends.
Successful ERP project with Norsk Kylling
Norsk Kylling’s mission is to create the world's best food value chain. The business includes 133 farmers who produce eggs, hatching hens, and broiler chickens. In a year, Norsk Kylling delivers approximately 81 million meals to Norwegian consumers under the Solvinge brand.
"A chicken that is better treated tastes better. The best possible animal welfare and responsibility throughout the value chain are central to our strategy," says the company’s IT Manager, Torfinn Utne.
