Japan�s Food Business Giant Watami Deploys Infor Cloud ERP for Business Standardization and Decision-making

Multi-tenant cloud solution includes data-driven management BI for costings and production planning

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TOKYO,
JAPAN - Media OutReach -
5 December 2019 – Infor, a
global leader in business cloud software specialized by industry, today
announced that Watami Co. Ltd. has gone live with Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage (F&B) – a multi-tenant¹ cloud ERP solution purpose-built for the
F&B industry — as its supply chain management (SCM) platform for its sites
across Japan. At the same time, Watami will implement data-driven management
with Infor Birst cloud-based business intelligence (BI) platform linked to the
Infor CloudSuite solution.

The Watami Group of companies,
with Watami at its head, is an integrated food business operating multiple
restaurants and meal delivery services. The group is currently working on
“Merchandise Reform,” a set of transformations to enable better earning
structures and data-driven management decisions in real time via an optimized
SCM platform. The aim is to implement a renewable energy-based program in
support of what is known in Japan as the “sixth industrialization model²“.

 

Watami selected Infor CloudSuite
F&B for its ability to drive business standardization through
industry-specific functions and to build a platform for data analysis. In
October 2019, Watami went live at three of its domestic sites with a
cloud-based SCM system based on Infor CloudSuite F&B. By February 2020, it
will roll out the system to all 11 of its food processing plants across Japan
that service its restaurant and meal delivery businesses.

 

Adoption
of Infor CloudSuite F&B has enabled Watami to unify item numbers across the
entire company, where previously a single item had multiple codes, and to
define multi-level recipes depending on the process, where previously they were
single level. This has helped standardize business processes and data
definitions in production management. As a result, it has built the foundations
of data-driven management to enable advanced cost calculations and production
planning.

 

Watami
also adopted Infor Birst to
visualize production management data that has been standardized when adopting
the multi-tenant cloud ERP solution. Infor Birst links data residing in Infor
CloudSuite F&B as well as external data across the whole organization and
sites, and builds dashboards that automatically collect the required data for
the business.

 

With standardized business
processes and data definitions, Watami uses Infor Birst to manage costs across
its manufacturing sites and manage food loss associated with sales performance.
It achieves real-time insights in line with its business mission by documenting
decision-making criteria and subsequent actions as “user story” scenarios to
help eliminate cognitive bias that could corrupt the decision-making process,
and by building BI dashboards with drill-across³ capabilities
using Birst optimized to each member of the management team. By the end of the
year, it will also start making data-driven management decisions in real time
using data stored by the Infor CloudSuite F&B solution.

 

With Infor CloudSuite F&B
being a multi-tenant cloud ERP solution, Watami plans to leverage its high
extensibility to expand into accounts management, add store management,
performance management and other functionalities, and extend the solution to
overseas sites. It will also continue to drive business standardization and
visualization through business data integration as it develops the business
foundations to achieve its Merchandise Reform.

 

Shigeru
Wakabayashi, general manager of Watami Co.’s Business Administration/IT
Strategy Department, says, “We are grateful to members of Infor, including
those overseas, for their support in helping us adopt the Infor CloudSuite
F&B package and best practice templates, and in achieving SCM reform and
technical innovation. Going forward, we will fully implement the Infor Birst
cloud-based BI and business analytics platform and expand this solution into a
global integrated ERP platform incorporating finance and accounting
functionalities. Using data-driven processes, we will also further improve the
management of our renewable energy-based ‘recycling sixth-order industry
model,’ including three nonprofit foundations that we assist, and drive further
digital transformation on our frontline.”

About Watami

Watami Co. Ltd. was founded in
1984 as a restaurant and meal delivery business. Out of a desire to provide
customers with food that they can enjoy free of agricultural chemicals and
other concerns, it started organic farming practices in 2002. Its operations include
organic farms, (cage-free) poultry farms and dairy farms at 11 sites covering
about 360 hectares across Japan. To build a sustainable recycling society,
Watami is implementing a range of initiatives including efforts to reduce
environmental impact, and efforts to develop, construct, and operate wind power
generation equipment as a renewable energy business.

About Infor

Infor is a global leader in business cloud software
specialized by industry. With 17,300 employees and over 68,000 customers in
more than 170 countries, Infor software is designed for progress. To learn
more, please visit www.infor.com.

Infor customers include:

• The top 20 aerospace companies
• 9 of the top 10 high tech companies
• 14 of the 25 largest U.S. healthcare delivery
  networks
• 19 of the 20 largest U.S. cities
• 18 of the top 20 automotive suppliers
• 14 of the top 20 industrial distributors
• 13 of the top 20 global retailers
• 4 of the top 5 brewers
• 17 of the top 20 global banks
• 9 of the 10 largest global hotel brands
• 7 of the top 10 global luxury brands