La Maison Camus Chooses Infor for Global Digital Transformation Plan

677 Views

Infor®, the industry cloud company, today announced that Maison Camus, a manufacturer of exceptional cognacs and one of the leading French spirits companies worldwide, has chosen Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage, a comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution designed to help food and beverage companies meet changing customer expectations, better manage their supply chains and reduce waste. This project is part of a wider digital transformation plan, of which the deployment of this new ERP is one of the key steps.

Launched at the beginning of 2022, this project is an integral part of a global transformation master plan established in 2021, which has enabled a number of initiatives and digital projects to be identified in a collaborative manner with a view to improving the quality of work and the customer support. The aim is to provide the cognac business (some 30 products divided into several ranges) with a modern, structured tool to manage all activities from manufacturing to sales administration, including accounting and financial management, as well as procurement and stock management, all with increasingly demanding quality monitoring.

Stanislas de Foucauld, deputy general manager of operations at Maison Camus, says: “Initiated when I arrived in the summer of 2021 to lead this company evolution, this project is one of the 15 or so initiatives selected collectively by our teams in order to modernize our organization and our tools and thus enable us to look forward to the future with performance and serenity.”

Founded in 1863, Maison Camus has always jealously guarded its independence, preserving the family character of the company. Five generations have succeeded to establish its reputation with the same conviction: to transmit passion, heritage, tradition, know-how and excellence. The company cultivates a passion for exceptional cognacs, thanks, in particular, to its own patented intensely aromatic distillation process. It employs 270 people in eight countries and three continents and has subsidiaries in China and the United States. Today, its president, Cyril Camus, brings this entrepreneurial adventure into the 21st century, showing more than ever a serene and constructive ambition to build the future.

De Foucauld explains: “We launched our call for tenders early 2022 and consulted various software vendor and system integrator pairs. Following the various responses received, we defined a business case and asked each of them to organize a demonstration of their solution, in which we involved, again in a collegial manner, around 10 key users.”

The choice of Infor and its partner Hetic3 was made the following June, as the solution ticked all the boxes in terms of functional expectations as standard. Furthermore, the integration methodology proposed by the Hetic3 teams, which have all the business and functional expertise in this sector, was decisive in the choice in terms of their ability to support the cognac manufacturer in optimizing and accelerating its activities, without sacrificing any of the level of quality demanded by its customers. Moreover, by relying on the wines and spirits preconfiguration provided by Hetic3, Camus was able to benefit from the many advantages of a solution that was particularly well adapted to its business needs.

Aurélie Arlot, ERP project manager at Maison Camus, said: “The Infor solution appeared to be particularly intuitive and easy to use, which is a real asset in the context of implementing a remote working policy frame that should continue for us and our partners. In addition, its flexibility and high level of parameterization should enable us to gain in efficiency and performance in terms of production, but also in terms of omnichannel distribution.”

It should be noted that the solution will eventually be interfaced with the various Maison Camus e-commerce platforms, as well as with a certain number of tools such as the management of the winery, the management of expense accounts, and certain professional applications such as the management of relations with the cognac interprofessional bureau BNIC or the planning process.

It will be deployed in January 2024 in a multi-tenant cloud environment powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and will allow the 120 employees dedicated to the cognac activity to concentrate on higher value-added tasks.

Ara Pachabézian, co-director and head of presales at Hetic3, says: “A dozen key users, representing all the functions concerned at Maison Camus, have been involved in the project from the start. They will support us from start to finish and will eventually train 80 internal employees. In addition, a sponsor committee (including Camus’ president and general management), a project committee and a steering committee have been set up to ensure that the various stages of the project run smoothly and ultimately guarantee its success.

Philippe Maillet, Infor sales director for SMB & channels in France, concludes: “We are proud of this new signature in the wine and spirits sector. The functional business processes, as well as the great flexibility of our solution in terms of configuration, should enable Maison Camus to successfully complete this first stage of digital transformation, which constitutes an essential foundation for its more global modernization plan.”

Learn more about Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage: https://www.infor.com/products/cloudsuite-food-and-beverage