TOKYO, JAPAN - Media OutReach^[1] - 2 October 2020 - Infor^[2], a global leader in business cloud software specialized by industry, announced Japanese food business giant Watami a winner of the 2020 Infor Customer Excellence Awards at a prize presentation ceremony.  These annual awards recognize customers that drive innovation and showcase exceptional business results. A panel of Infor solution and industry experts evaluated each applicant on scope and depth of performance improvement, quantifiable business benefits, customer focus and satisfaction, and technology use and innovation.

Award presentation ceremony held at Watami Tokyo office:

Miki Watanabe, Chairman/CEO, Watami Co Ltd.(left) Shinya Miura, vice president and country manager, Infor Japan K.K. (right)

Watami Co. Ltd. was recognized for utilizing Infor's industry-specific ERP and BI to achieve data-driven management. In addition, Watami was also selected as a "Notable DX Company 2020^[3]" by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry for its project involving Infor solutions.

"The business environment has changed significantly this year, and these awards give us a formal platform to commend all of our customers that have had to develop entirely new protocols, adapt and evolve to continue to make critical business decisions amidst so much fluidity," said Shinya Miura, vice president and country manager, Infor Japan K.K. "Infor is committed to helping its customers leverage industry-specific cloud technology to better analyze, manage and protect their increasing amounts of data more effectively."

■ Watami Co. Ltd.: Industry Category / Consumer Industries (APAC)

As Watami Co. Ltd., a Japan-based "general food company" that operates several restaurant chains and catering business continues to grow, it needed to eliminate inefficient legacy system issues that could not keep up with its changing business model. The company implemented Infor's cloud ERP "Infor CloudSuite™ Food & Beverage^[4]", which is focused on the food and beverage industry, and cloud BI platform Infor Birst^[5], to increase transparency, traceability, and create a more data-driven culture. Using the Infor Agile Deployment Method and Infor Implementation Accelerator, the business transformation project, dubbed COSMOS (Global Corporate Strategy Monitoring System), went live, on schedule and on budget.

Since deployment, the company has completed its production management initiative, implementing key organization reforms. For example, it established target bases and further integrated and established operations and systems. It improved dashboards and reporting, and better managed customers, consumers and purchasing, with the ability to better grasp and analyze purchasing behavior. Watami has the data to cultivate important customers and promote sales to acquire new customers, leading to increased customer lifetime value (LTV). Consumer-grade dashboards give teams immediate access to view the number of products made for each center, compared to the budget, and easily compare productivity by center and by product. Users can see the manufacturing cost and compare the theory with the actual results.

Watami can now digitize inventory management of raw materials/products at food delivery factories, eliminating the need for weekly ordering work from a catering factory purchaser. Handwritten traceability information is no longer required, and the large amount of paper printed at each factory has been reduced to nearly zero. With the COSMOS manufacturing/supply chain project, Watami achieved a cost savings of 33,600,000 yen in 2019 ($313,136.88 USD), and it predicts a total cost savings of 312,700,000 yen (~$3 million USD) in 2020.

Media Contact

Phyllis Tan

Infor Asia Pacific

phyllis.tan@infor.com^[6]

+65 9799 9133

References

1. ^{^} Media OutReach (www.media-outreach.com)
2. ^{^} Infor (www.infor.com)
3. ^{^} Notable DX Company 2020 (www.meti.go.jp)
4. ^{^} Infor CloudSuite™ Food & Beverage (www.infor.com)
5. ^{^} Birst (www.infor.com)
6. ^{^} phyllis.tan@infor.com (www.media-outreach.com)