Insula / Food & Beverage
Customer
Insula
Customer since
2015
Solutions
Infor M3 Cloud Suite
Intro
Insula is a Nordic seafood corporation with a main focus on the development, processing, and sale of fish and shellfish products. With a number of seafood companies in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland, the corporation currently employs around 1,100 people.
Case
Since 2018, Insula has had a business system solution from Infor, M3 Food & Beverage, which has pre-configured settings tailored to the food industry.
– For Insula, it has always been a principle to stick to the standard in the solution and not resort to customisations, says ERP manager Ronny Johnsen at Insula.
Insula has now, together with Elvenite, upgraded the business system to Infor Cloud Suite, which is based on a multi-tenant cloud solution.
– The agreement with Elvenite was signed in May 2021 and the cloud solution was put into use on Monday, October 18th of the same year. Operating costs have decreased by 10 percent compared to the local solution, and the entire cloud upgrade was carried out remotely due to Covid, so this has literally been a digital project, says Line Fjeldstad, then CIO at Insula.
Johnsen emphasises that if the entire business system had been tailored and customised, Insula would have faced greater challenges in migrating to a standard cloud solution.
– Together with Elvenite, who are specialists in Infor's cloud solution for the food industry, we have had a very good team with a clear plan of where we are heading, which has undoubtedly contributed to our ability to deliver a successful cloud upgrade on time and within budget, says Line.
We now have lower ongoing operational costs despite an almost 50% increase in the number of permits. Moreover, upgrade costs are practically eliminated compared to on-prem. Additionally, stability and security are better in the cloud solution; in summary, this has been crucial for the decision to move the ERP solution to the cloud.
Insula has decreased its operating costs by approximately 10 percent compared to the previous Infor M3 on-premises 2021 and what the cloud solution will cost Insula in 2023. Fjeldstad emphasizes that the cost reduction has been crucial for the decision to move the business system to the cloud.
– We now have lower ongoing operating costs despite an almost 50 percent increase in the number of licenses. Moreover, upgrade costs have been virtually eliminated compared to on-prem. Additionally, stability and security are better in the cloud solution; in summary, this has been important for the decision to move the ERP solution to the cloud, says Fjeldstad.
Insula had a clear strategy to carry out the migration to the cloud in a "1-1" lift to avoid making the work more extensive than necessary and to keep to the schedule.
– This means that we chose not to make changes to our business processes; the primary goal of the lift was stable operations, increased security, reduced costs, and ongoing access to new functionality, says Fjeldstad.
– We spent a lot of time establishing a clear and well-thought-out contract to avoid ambiguities and conflicts that could delay progress. Moreover, it was crucial to have a team in place with sufficient and appropriate expertise and professional resources that complement each other from both Elvenite and Insula, says Erik Kalström, ERP manager at Elvenite.
The ERP system ensures decision support throughout the entire value chain, from producer, processing, and up to retail. This helps to reduce waste, improves production planning, and documentation throughout the traceability chain.
– We have implemented a flexible ERP platform that will help us collect and adapt data so that we can respond more quickly and effectively to changes in market demands, says Fjeldstad.
The experience shows that some of the risks identified at the beginning of the project occurred, points out Fjeldstad.
– The tight schedule made the project vulnerable to delays and illness. Additionally, we encountered unexpected complexity in one of the integrations. More complex integration combined with insufficient time for testing due to illness led to errors after the go-live on 18 October.
– When we chose to execute a 1-1 cloud lift, it was a wise decision not to run other parallel business projects. It would have been too demanding. Furthermore, communication and expectation management are vital for users, especially regarding which needs they can expect to be addressed in the cloud solution, says Karlström.
– We have achieved all our goals for the ERP cloud lift, and we now have a flexible business platform tailored for the future, says Fjeldstad.
| Infor M3 on-prem |
Infor Cloud Suite Food & Beverage |
|
| Cost | Higher licensing costs, upgrade-related costs are higher. |
Lower ongoing costs, reduced licensing fees. |
| Maintenance | The company controls when upgrades are made. There will be a need for major upgrades at intervals of a few years. |
Regular minor upgrades of the cloud solution are carried out by the provider. |
| Functionality | Follows the upgrades and will therefore take time before new functionality is available to users. |
Follows the upgrades and will therefore be made available to users continuously. |
| Security | The company is responsible for the security of the solution. |
The provider is responsible for the security of the solution. |
| Stability | Insula has had significant availability issues due to challenges with the operational provider on servers. |
As long as you have access to the internet, you will have access to the cloud solution. |
