BioMar Teams Up with Columbus to Take Digital Leadership with Infor Cloud ERP

Infor announced that BioMar, a leading sustainable aquaculture feed producer, has chosen Columbus as a strategic partner to implement its Infor M3 ERP system in the cloud as Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage. Aiming to standardize and streamline business processes globally with the latest digital technologies, the solution will empower over 550 users in 13 countries to work more efficiently with a future-proof digital platform by 2023.

With EUR 1.5 billion in turnover, sales in more than 80 countries, and around-the-clock operations in every major time zone, the Denmark-based BioMar Group’s business is typical of a large multinational, which presents challenges in harmonizing processes.

“BioMar and Infor held a series of design-thinking sessions to obtain a common understanding of BioMar’s future strategies and goals,” says Johan Made, Infor’s executive VP for northern and eastern Europe. “Based on that understanding, a number of digital capabilities were identified, which were later used to form a digital roadmap going forward. The implementation of Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage is the foundation and a major step in BioMar’s journey into the digital future.”

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Operating in an aquaculture feed industry with many digital opportunities and challenges, the group’s digital roadmap and business goals through 2023 require more streamlined business processes and a more data-driven approach to decision-making.

BioMar has been using the Infor M3 ERP since 2013, but the company felt it was not getting the full benefit of the powerful ERP system as business processes were not well aligned across the multinational group of companies. BioMar’s CIO and global IT director Thomas Mortensen shares the plan for addressing this: “The case for this project is only 20% about technology and 80% about business. With strong management support and buy-in, we have adapted our governance structure by appointing group-wide leaders as business process owners in each business area to standardize and streamline processes. Combined with a future-proof digital platform built around Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage, a corporate process template and strategic advice from Columbus, this will allow us to harmonize business processes across the group and drive major efficiency gains.”

Another challenge for BioMar is that its operations in each country have been focusing on solving country-specific challenges with individual modifications and customizations in Infor’s ERP system. Kent Enrico Petersen, executive director of international M3 business at Columbus, sheds light on how Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage makes complex modifications directly in the database and software a thing of the past: “Any additional functionality needed will be deployed as add-ons and tools. As a result, 90% of the ERP system will be standardized across the group and only 10% will differ for localizations. By enabling the harmonization of item numbers, bills of materials, and other parameters, this will drive data-driven decision-making with vastly improved data comparability and availability. BioMar is a strategically important customer to us, and we see great potential for adding substantial value with our shared vision for strategic digital initiatives.”

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Looking ahead, BioMar aims to take digital leadership by continuously investing in cutting-edge technologies with the Infor CloudSuite platform as a basis to fulfill its ambitious all-cloud and all-mobile 2020–2023 digital strategy. With plans to accelerate sustainability initiatives and innovation in digital services for customers as well, Mortensen highlights what support is needed to succeed: “By 2023, we aim to be on the forefront of using digital tools both internally and externally. This will create new ongoing digital skills needs and we will be challenged to attract and retain top talent. We also need a strategic partner that is invested in our future success, shares our focus on deliverables and can help us make the right strategic decisions every step of the way. Given their experience as one of the top M3 consultant organizations and global presence in the food and beverage industry, it was only natural to team up with Columbus.”