Infor, the industry cloud company, announced that Bright Food Global, a market-leading distribution network spanning the Asia Pacific region, specializing in consumer packaged goods, high-end fine foods and Australia’s largest exporter of citrus fruit, has selected Infor Food & Beverage (F&B) to power its move to a multi-tenant cloud setting for ERP and core business systems — a decision that will underpin the organisation’s next phase of growth.
Bright Food Global, a diversified group with origins dating back more than 100 years, represents a portfolio of iconic businesses and brands including heritage dried fruit business Sunbeam Foods, Manassen Foods, Hutchinson’s New Zealand, Calendar Cheese Company, Simon Johnson, Mildura Fruit Juice Australia, etc., and is also the largest distributor of specialty cheese and caviar in Australia.
The enterprise-wide transformation program will see Infor F&B deployed in financial management, inventory management, procurement, warehouse management, sales order management, cost accounting, manufacturing, quality management, and other areas.
Infor F&B will provide Bright Food with greater flexibility, mobility, automation and visibility across the business in warehousing, retail, finance and manufacturing pillars, and positively impact a variety of users, from production line workers to administration staff. Infor F&B will replace Bright Food’s 14-year, on-premises Infor ERP solution, and will future-proof the organisation’s internal core business systems while ensuring compatibility with external applications, platforms and emerging technologies.
The implementation will be rolled out in three phases across Australia and New Zealand, in partnership with Infor gold channel partner and ERP specialist ComActivity. Bright Food will also have the choice to use Infor Coleman AI, a digital assistant that will redefine access to systems, information and workflows with text and voice interactions in a variety of business units and tasks such as maintenance requests, inventory assessments, and customer inquiries. Such AI capabilities can aid Bright Food’s end-users in how they operate with the system.
“Bright Food Global has been at the forefront of food innovation for decades, and the move to the cloud with Infor will provide the group with greater flexibility, enhanced mobility, and substantially improve visibility for the organisation – both internally and externally,” said Peter Gunning, Bright Food Global chief financial officer and executive director. “We’ve had Infor in our corner for many years and trust them to keep delivering for the business in our next phase of growth. Having such high-quality ERP cloud technology will put our systems, processes and operations in a better position to deliver significant efficiency gains. Infor’s value proposition was too compelling to refuse.”
According to Sarah Kibble, Bright Food Global head of IT, Infor’s F&B offering will enable the organisation to provide better employee and customer experiences, improve its bottom line and play a pivotal role in the organisation’s efficiency and growth plans.
“Infor has been an important strategic partner and, with Infor F&B, we will be able to deliver more efficiencies and scale the business with improved, intuitive functionality. The multi-tenant SaaS model with continual investment by Infor provides a pathway to improvements without the need for major system upgrades in the future, saving time, costs and resources whilst ensuring business process advancement.
“When we embarked on our move to the cloud, we assessed the market, opting to continue partnering with Infor due to its strong cloud technology investment and emerging leadership in this area. Its deep experience in the F&B vertical provides an ongoing and important advantage, as is the benefits of the stability and security of Infor F&B, which is a highly-resilient cloud platform,” Kibble said.
Infor ANZ managing director Jarrod Kinchington said: “Infor is thrilled to be able to continue supporting Bright Food Global as it embarks on a company-wide program to move to the cloud. We’re pleased that Bright Food Global has maintained its trust in Infor to deliver on this critical transformation project and look forward to helping the organisation drive its innovation agenda into the future.”
