Midsona envisions becoming one of Europe’s leading players in the health and well-being market.
As the F&B industry faces ongoing challenges, from supply chain complexities to shifting consumer demands, the Swedish health food and personal care company is not alone in seeking digital innovation to strengthen business and build resilience.
In order to achieve this, the company has been actively expanding its existing brands – while also acquiring new ones – in growing categories such as natural, organic products, health foods and consumer health. These include Earth Control, Davert, Helios and Friggs, to name a few. The latter, which is in the health category, for example, grew by 19% year on year in H1 2023.
However, the company has faced new challenges in keeping business operations efficient as it scales. The complexity of having five separate ERP systems across the organisation highlighted the need for Midsona to establish a centralised platform. As a result, the company made the strategic decision to adopt Infor technology in the cloud, with the aim of consolidating its disparate ERP systems. The aim of this has not only been to save software licence costs and reduce reliance on external consultants, but also to accelerate operations and reporting alongside business growth.
Increased visibility and accessibility
Businesses often end up with multiple ERP systems after acquiring businesses and factories, which can be hard to replace because the legacy systems are embedded in complex IT landscapes and heavily customised to fit specific needs in operations.
However, multiple systems can make it difficult for employees to find the information they need, due to the likelihood of siloed information and increased complexity in the employee journey. By consolidating ERP systems, businesses are giving employees a single, user-friendly interface to complete tasks more efficiently, while also providing high visibility and accessibility to a unified data source.
Before standardising on one platform, which has helped Midsona to harness more value add, the company was lacking in best practices and a strategy for how newly acquired businesses should be integrated into the group. This caused hindrances to business operations as the strategy was ineffective, manual, expensive and resource-intensive.
A successful implementation
As a result, Midsona opted for Infor CloudSuite Food and Beverage, which proved itself a suitable choice due to its baked-in food and beverage-specific capabilities and competitive total cost of ownership of the industry cloud service that Infor had already exemplified in Midsona’s Danish companies. With the support of Infor Gold Services partner, DXC, the implementation of Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage was successfully completed in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
The successful implementation of this updated technology marked a turning point for Midsona, as the group now enjoys the benefits of a common, standardised platform, enabling efficient integration of new acquisitions and alignment of business operations.
Beyond financial savings is also the ability of cloud-based systems to handle localisation differences, deliver easier and faster technology upgrades to support growth and remove the need for customisations and expensive external consultants. This creates a compelling business case for companies looking to develop a platform that can support digital initiatives that help to build a dominant position in their markets.
“With CloudSuite Food and Beverage, our common business platform makes it easier, faster and more cost-effective to bring new acquisitions on board as we continue our drive to grow,” says Christoffer Filippini, head of group information systems and technology at Midsona.
Infor CloudSuite has facilitated synergies
The decision to upgrade multiple ERP systems has provided Midsona with best practices and a new-and-improved strategy for integrating newly acquired businesses, granting Midsona increased control, improved efficiency and cost savings in operations. This also helps to minimise the potential of manual error while providing an accurate 360° view of information across the whole business, resulting in the efficient management of finance, people, supply chain, communications and operation processes.
“We had several different platforms with no integration, which meant that the same product appeared under different SKU references throughout the group, resulting in long transaction times,” says Filippini. “No common processes for finance, purchasing, logistics, manufacturing, customer orders, quality and forecasting made the decision to standardise on a single ERP platform an obvious one, especially as we continue to acquire new companies.”
A new and improved ERP strategy
Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage has enabled Midsona to hone all crucial data and operations in a centralised platform, allowing consolidated processes across the group. This gives multiple synergies across revenue, costs, logistics and the supply chain, with increased control, improved efficiency and better negotiating strengths.
This unified process not only strengthens business operations and organisation but also helps Midsona to build a more stabilised position from which to grow business as it continues to acquire new brands without losing efficiency at scale, leveraging the business to meet its goals in an industry that continues to pivot and remain adaptable as it tackles ongoing challenges.
