Brand new benefits, same user environment

Swire Cold Storage is a leading Australian provider of cold-chain logistics services and supply chain solutions, offering temperature-controlled warehousing, refrigerated transport and distribution services to a broad range of businesses. (Update – Early in 2018, Swire Cold Storage sold its entire business to Emergent Cold)

THE NEED

Swire Cold Storage operates a network of over 75 million cubic feet of temperature- controlled facilities across Australia and a vast fleet of Frigmobile vehicles. Swire’s business is built on being reliable, as well as cost-effective, so its choice of ERP is business-critical. Swire had been a long-time Movex user, and with an appetite for change it investigated the relative costs and benefits of an upgrade to Infor M3 compared to an alternative ERP solution.

“We were seeking a flexible and comprehensive ERP system to meet our ever changing needs. Specifically, we needed added functionality such as weekly financial reporting and digital Document Management. Most of all, we needed to make the transition without any disruption to our processes” said Henry Wang Financial Controller at Swire Cold Storage.

“We’re in the business of keeping other businesses going. It was critical that the install take place without interrupting our operations.”

THE SOLUTION

 “We trusted ComActivity and knew that they knew our business well. They showed us the depth of Infor M3 – and how it could do exactly what we wanted it to. It was definitely the right decision to upgrade our old Movex to Infor M3 13.3: the whole process was very smooth.”

ComActivity considers its customers’ entire business needs and how information technology can build business value. As a specialist in supply chain businesses, ComActivity understood Swire’s business drivers and how to apply emerging technology to remove risk from its operational processes. Across the entire project, Swire’s operations were uninterrupted and the project came in on time and on budget.

THE BUSINESS BENEFITS

 Foundation for the future

 Infor’s state of the art technology platform establishes the foundation for Swire to improve collaboration, introduce digital document management and seamlessly integrate external systems such as invoicing and claims management to the core ERP system.

World first financial reporting

“Integrating our bespoke claims management into the main ERP ecosystem means that claims processes all benefit from key M3 infrastructure such as our finance system, the social collaboration platform Ming.le, and digital document management. This is such an improvement on having to do everything by email and manual data entry,” said Henry Wang.

Swire is now one of the first companies in the world to have weekly – not monthly – financial reporting across all M3 finance modules including the Fixed Assets Module. This saves Henry Wang’s team hours each week preparing reports manually.

Disruption-free innovation

Future risk management is ensured by M3’s flexible and open platform, which is cost- effective to support and easy to upgrade.

“We now have access to all the features we were missing, but without needing any change management. This was a high priority for our board – they didn’t want the disruption of a major IT change, nor the additional costs, hidden and otherwise. Because M3 feels essentially the same as Movex for our users, the upgrade happened without any pain or anxiety – and without distracting the business. We can’t put a price on that.”

About Swire

Industry: Distribution
Size: 500 employees, 8 locations

Swire Cold Storage is a leading Australian provider of cold-chain logistics services and supply chain solutions, offering temperature-controlled warehousing, refrigerated transport and distribution services to a broad range of businesses. (Update – Early in 2018, Swire Cold Storage sold its entire business to Emergent Cold)

Operating a network of temperature-controlled facilities across Australia, its sites total in excess of 75 million cubic feet, or 320,000 pallet spaces of refrigerated storage, ranging from fully-automated high-rise to traditional manual storage facilities utilising advanced integrated warehouse and transport technologies. Swire Cold Storage supports these facilities with a modern fleet of refrigerated vehicles and trailers operating under the Frigmobile brand.