Beier & Infor: Technical Upgrade Turned Innovation Insurance

Beier Envirotec initially embarked on an Infor LN upgrade through Infor Services at iOCO because a technical upgrade was required. However, with foresight and an innovative approach, Beier capitalised on this opportunity to insure its business for future innovation, forward-thinking functionality, and advanced mobile capabilities.

Project Summary

  • Customer: Beier Envirotec, part of the Beier Group
  • Digital Journey Partner: Infor Services at iOCO
  • Industry: Manufacturing; technical textiles that include personal protective equipment, filtration, medical, automotive and customised fabrics
  • Region: South Africa
  • Solution/Systems: Infor LN Upgrade (Infor LN FP7 to Infor LN 10.6), Infor Mingle, Infor OS
  • Time to Value: Immediate

Solution Benefits

Using Infor Mingle, Beier Envirotec now has a fully compliant Infor OS, ensuring its workflows are optimised, they’re 100% mobile, and several additional functionalities are available. These include:

  • Revisited and revised organisational processes, including an overhauled costing process
  • Moving Customer Relationship Management (CRM) away from Excel spreadsheets and into the modern era, offering real-time access to a 360-degree CRM view
  • Greatly enhancing its Service Call Desk, ensuring the highest quality service, and combatting the previously disjointed approach of tracing calls through spreadsheets
  • Enhanced Business Intelligence (BI) access, analysis, and capabilities
  • Embrace extensive new functionality available in the Infor Stack to create a platform for future innovation
  • Revised and reduced old customisations which would become standard processes
  • Introduced a mobility and development platform
  • Revisited some improved customer focussed applications

According to Tim Rautenbach, Beier Group ICT Manager, with this upgrade Beier Envirotec immediately progressed to a mobile platform, providing the business with tangible benefits, as opposed to business “bling”. In addition to attending to the technical improvements required, the upgrade delivered the following benefits:

  • The ability to introduce workflows to remotely process and approve finance, customer, and sales documents (with images integrated) on Android devices
  • The functionality to develop and integrate various data sources
  • Optimising valuable time spent by users and enabling a focused approach with an interest in business outcomes, driving operational efficiencies, and ensuring client satisfaction
  • Simplifying duplications in processes and re-inventing procedures
  • Enabling close to real-time analytics
  • Running on a solid mobility platform
  • Providing the data needed, in the right format, to offer customers true value add

Implementation Success

The upgrade implementation followed a standard approach. While Beier is a sizeable organisation, accurate scoping and proposals ensured that the implementation ran smoothly, over a period of only nine months.

Future for Beier & Infor

While no LN upgrades will be needed for the foreseeable future, Beier continues to look forward to possible future innovations. It confirms that the next project it will undertake with the Infor Services at iOCO team is the implementation of Infor Factory Track for warehouse mobility (barcoding).

“We have been exceptionally pleased with the outcome of our Infor Upgrade project, and very thankful to the Infor Services at iOCO team for its dedication and continued support. This is just one of the steps in our mobility journey and we look forward to continuously adding value to our business with Infor,” concludes Rautenbach.