Thanks to a very successful upgrade of Infor M3, Jula can keep on growing and expanding.
Why upgrade?
Jula looked for a modern platform that would work as a starting point for the continued expansion. An evaluation of various business systems was made before deciding to proceed with Infor M3, which Jula had used since the late 1990s. Henrik Ljungdahl, CIO at Jula explains;
- We found that there was no other system that would add value in a way that it could justify a change, so we decided to continue with M3.
The fact that the ”End of date” was closing in for the support of the version they were running, as well as the ageing hardware, further motivated a decision to move on with the upgrade.
Choice of implementation partner
Once the decision to continue with M3 was made, Jula had to make a decision on the implementation partner. The choice of partner was not decided on the offer but on a number of smaller assignments used to test the partners. Jula felt that Columbus was a stable and reliable partner and that there was good chemistry between the people involved.
There was a few deciding factors for choosing Columbus; one was Columbus’s implementation method iStep and another was the fact that Columbus offered alternative solutions for integration and electronic invoice management that was of interest for Jula. All this was weighed together in the decision-making process, which came to the conclusion that Columbus was the right choice.
The contract for the intial design phase was signed in April, which in turn led to a full-scale project starting immediately after the summer.
- The efficiency of the project can be explained with the fact that we set a project plan and kept it in full and accurately, both in terms of time frames and costs. Main reason for this being the expertise and experience of the entire project group from both Jula and Columbus, says Henrik Ljungdahl.
Migration of 4.5 TB of data in 6 hours. Is that possible?
A third crucial factor for choosing Columbus was the migration tool Columbus offers wich enabled the experienced consultants to migrate 4.5 TB in a few critical hours.
The aim was to migrate data from all department stores and central warehouses in less than 6 hours, starting at 7pm and finishing at 1 am. First a large migration of data was made and following that delta-migrations were made during the critical period. Everything went well thanks to a great commitment from the project team that was working all night. The department stores closed in the evening and the system was fully operational when the same stores opened in the morning.
The new system was started with a big bang in all three markets at the same time, in all department stores at once.
- To upgrade the ERP for a business this size in such a short time, when the staff perceived it as an update of the Office-package, that's something one can be proud of, says Henrik Ljungdahl.
Thanks to a great commitment from partners and internal departments, it went wonderfully well. Columbuss methodology has worked perfectly. The project is closed without any issues.
Henrik Ljungdahl concludes the project:
- We did everything right together.