A subsidiary of the largest company listed on the Colombo Stock exchange, John Keells Holdings PLC. John Keells Logistics has selected Infor WMS and Infor Birst. This is a significant win for Infor with John Keells Logistics rolling out the Infor Warehouse Management System alongside Birst Analytics.
The combination will enable them to manage their logistics business better. It will also provide visibility with a market-leading analytics solution to analyse performance. With this combination, John Keells hopes to find new ways of optimizing costs and increasing revenues. It also appears as though the firm used SAP WM previously. (Correction), SAP WM is used elsewhere in the Group and was not in use at John Keells Logistics. It becomes another company to choose an Infor solution, rather than a SAP solution that is used elsewhere in the same organisation.
John Keells offers a range of services including warehousing, transportation professional services consultancy around supply chain solutions. It also offers a variety of value-added services such as packing, bundling, labelling and reworking from its warehouses. It has more than 300,000 sq ft of warehouse space under management. These have state of the art storage and material handling equipment. It also has more than 100 vehicles to support its operations.
JKLL’s Chief Executive Officer Randula Chandrarathne commented: “What sets Infor’s solution apart from other competing offerings is the company’s deep logistics expertise and industry-specific capabilities. These equip us to synergize 3PL-specific business functions with fully-fledged business intelligence platforms, all of which integrate seamlessly with our existing processes. With this solution, we can now automate previously labor-intensive and time-consuming processes, thereby improving productivity and optimizing costs. At the same time, this further strengthens visibility and control over our operations and service delivery as well.”
A key win for Infor
That industry expertise is key. John Keells operates across a wide variety of industries. These include modern trade retail, FMCG, paints, lubricants, confectionaries, automobile, ports and shipping. Once deployed, will its professional services team starts to work with Infor as a partner? At the moment it has experience of deploying SAP WM, which is why this win and subsequent is so important for Infor.
Fabio Tiviti, vice president of Infor ASEAN, said, “Across today’s logistics landscape, having data-driven intelligence over one’s operations is increasingly crucial — especially in a market where supply chain disruptions, contingency planning and risk management now rank among the top challenges faced by 3PL services worldwide.
“We are proud to support John Keells Logistics’ transformation efforts. Infor’s purpose-built, industry-specific solutions fine-tuned in the cloud will boost the company’s ability to anticipate changes and make adjustments to market shifts, and stay ahead of the competition, beyond the pandemic.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
While Infor only announced the selection of solutions at John Keells Logistics, the potential in this announcement is much larger. Under the ownership of Koch, Infor is proving that it is a suitable solution across conglomerates such as John Keells. Can Infor expand its footprint in one of Sri Lanka’s largest organisations? Also, can it persuade John Keells to become a partner of either Infor WMS or Infor Birst? If it does so, then it may just help to expand its footprint in Sri Lanka much faster.
A correction was made to the above article following feedback and clarification about the use of SAP Warehouse Management within the John Keells Holdings Group.