Snellman, the Finnish and Swedish ready-made food and meat processor, is migrating its current Infor M3 solution to Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage. Snellman has opted to use the next-generation multi-tenant cloud ERP solution hosted on the AWS platform. This will give it several advantages moving forward.
Hosted on AWS, the resources required to manage on-premises deployments are no longer needed, either for managing the infrastructure or performing upgrades. This does not mean that no resources are needed with Infor’s constant updates automatically applied to its solutions. Instead, change management and a degree of administration resources are required if Snellman fully takes advantage of the ERP solution.
In addition, Snellman benefits from better security, scalability and the composable nature of the Infor platform that will allow it to add other Infor solutions and modular extensions as needs arise or as it wants to enhance functionality.
This is a major upgrade, and the decision to move to the CloudSuite solution was not guaranteed. The industry-specific functionality for the food industry that Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage delivers led Snellman to make the decision.
Snellman will also deploy several other Infor solutions alongside the core ERP solution. These include:
- Infor Factory Track is an end-to-end manufacturing automation solution with warehouse mobility, traceability, and tools for tracking labour and time. Snellman is focused on improving logistics with the solution
- Infor Birst is a business intelligence solution that will help Snellman organisations to collate and analyse operational data to help drive smarter decision-making
Infor is carrying out the project with Snellman on its own. There is no mention of an Infor partner working on the project.
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Snellman has used Infor M3 for a decade. The original implementation was carried out by Merit Consulting Oy, now part of Infor. Snellman and Infor will work together during the implementation. Infor will provide support to the food group that has produced high-quality meat and cold meat products for 70 years.
Snellman and Infor are committed to long-term cooperation, and Infor will provide full support during the transition period before fully using the new CloudSuite. Juha Levo, Infor’s country director for Finland, commented, “We are grateful for Snellman’s long-term commitment to Infor and the opportunity to support the renewal and growth of our customer’s business with the world’s most modern food & beverage solution and our extensive Nordic ecosystem.”
The Snellman IT Manager, John Aspnäs, had already assisted in the original deployment of Infor M3 (then Lawson M3) at Snellman when he joined the company in late 2011. Aspnäs would unlikely have chosen this next generation of Infor solution if he did not have faith in Infor. Aspnäs commented, “We are happy to apply Infor’s solution to Snellman’s operations. Our goal is to have continuous service processes, and with the help of Infor, we now have a clear plan to continue moving from on-prem Infor M3 solutions to the cloud and Infor CloudSuite solution. We are very familiar with the basic features of the Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage solutions, which will be crucial for our long-term business needs. Infor is a long-term, important partner for us, and we believe they will continue to be that in the future, as well.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
This is another solid win for Infor in the Finnish food industry. Other customers include Meira Oy, Paulig, Atria, Polttimo and Saarioinen. There is significant loyalty to the Infor brand in the country. It is no doubt fostered by the relationships developed by the Lawson, Merit Consulting and Infor teams over the last decade.
Unusually, Aspnäs is still in the IT Manager role after more than ten years in charge. His continuity and understanding of the technology and business practices at Snellman will be a solid foundation for the company to migrate to the cloud. It will be interesting to see how the processes evolve at Snellman once the deployment is complete.
