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New Zealand fishing giant Sealord has replaced multiple legacy systems with an industry specific, cloud-based enterprise resource planning system from US company Infor.
Sealord was running multiple legacy systems, mostly based around Microsoft Dynamics NAV alongside more customised, industry- or function-specific applications.
One of these was a highly regarded, specialist fishing application from a third party that had been customised to embrace New Zealand’s quota management system.
The various platforms were becoming very dated, however: the company’s Microsoft suites, for instance, hailed from as far back as 2005.
“There were a whole lot of technical challenges there, security issues and supportability and upgradability … we needed to move significantly forward and consolidate and simplify,” general manager of information technology Matthew Dodd told Reseller News.
For Sealord, asset management had also emerged a key requirement and became a big contributor to the decision to go with Infor. This had previously been managed by a couple of separate applications for land-based and sea-based assets.
Why fishing is different
There is a key difference between manufacturing processes and fishing, Dodd explained.
“Most manufacturers will optimise their manufacturing process around market demands,” he said.
That would be around what quantities were required and the price point matched by optimised purchasing of materials to meet market demand.
“We don’t have the luxury, because we’re catching fish in the natural world,” Dodd said. “We’ve been fishing for sixty years, so we do know a lot about what you hope to catch and where, but it’s still hugely variable.”
The “manufacturing” process, therefore, has to be adjusted to whatever is landed and the need to process it fresh.
“You can’t stick it in the shed for three months and process it later,” Dodd said. “The ability to flex and to be agile and to reoptimise and replan is hugely important to our business, but not a lot of people provide that.”
Sealord embarked on a two-stage procurement process through a relatively broad request for information to learn what was out in the market. This was followed by a request for proposals.
Together these took the best part of a year before Sealord made what Dodd described as the “decision for a decade”.
“I thought that we would go Microsoft, not so much because we already had Microsoft, but just because we use other aspects of the Microsoft stack,” he said.
That would guarantee ongoing investment from Microsoft and support from a broad ecosystem of New Zealand partners.
“I was open to whatever happened, but my gut feeling was it was probably a 60 per cent chance we’d go in that direction.”
Infor, however, impressed the Sealord team with its product, people and industry focus.
“It’s been their story for a while, but we really felt that coming through, that when it got into the nitty gritty pieces of our business around that supply chain piece, around quality control, around exporting, there’s a whole lot of layers of sophistication and maturity and understanding that was relevant for food and beverage and food exporting.”
The people Infor brought in knew the language and the challenges and brought industry-specific expertise.
Could ‘evergreen’ really be forever?
That was important because cloud potentially offered an “evergreen” platform. With a regular cadence of improvement, this could be the last time Sealord had to make such a change to its systems.
Artificial intelligence may be the hot-button topic of 2024, but was not a key feature of the procurement.
“Indirectly, I guess, what we were looking to do was to try and be able to leverage somebody else’s investment,” Dodd said. “We could see that they put a bunch of money into their products over a number of years.
“In that evergreen environment where you’re looking at a regular cadence of updates to the product, it doesn’t have to be us thinking of what’s needed.”
For Sealord, sustainability was also a huge issue, especially when its capital investment in plant and fleet were very long-term.
“ERP is long, but fishing boats are even longer,” Dodd said.
“We are deeply committed to the fact that we’ve got to plan for the future. We’ve got to treat the planet and environment in a way that works for our shareholders, works for our staff, but it also actually feeds into a business that still runs successfully in 40 years’ time.”
In the past, the industry wasn’t doing a good job of explaining its thinking and its actions leading to a misunderstanding of fishing and its impact, Dodd said.
“The reality is that fishing is a good news story in New Zealand, more than people sometimes recognise.
“Whatever we eat as humans has an impact on the environment – there’s no getting around that. The measure shouldn’t be, does this way of feeding the population have zero impact because that’s not achievable.”
The test should be whether this method of feeding the population has less impact than the alternatives.
On that measure, wild caught fish was “hugely” carbon positive in comparison to most other proteins, Dodd said.
Trawlers have impact, but they use the same allotted areas and continue to catch fish in them every year.
ERP: it ain’t ever easy
The rollout of Infor was not without its challenges, but was achieved just one month later than originally planned in late 2023.
Infor itself was the main implementation partner with a specialist testing company also contributing. Sealord also built its own internal project team, taking on a role akin to that of a systems integrator with the help of a “very good” programme manager.
“I guess we felt that we were the ones that cared the most and knew the most and about our industry and needs,” Dodd said.
One factor was totally out of Sealord’s control, however: while investment was close to budget, a change in international accounting standards for the treatment of cloud-based software meant most of that cost could not be capitalised and had to be expensed, dragging down the company’s bottom line.
As a result, Sealord reported a $4.1 million loss for the year to 30 September, 2023, down from a $6.7 million profit in 2022.
Sealord was far from alone in seeing its profitability dented. In 2022, Kiwifruit coop Zespri opted to pay its New Zealand growers five cents more per tray for three years to compensate for the impact of the a change.
So, is Sealord’s rollout finished?
“My answer to that is we’ll never be finished,” Dodd said.
“In a way, part of the journey of cloud ERP is that we can now continue that journey of growth and change and improvement.”
‘Smoothing’ and work on data continues
While the project was delivered last November, there was still some “smoothing” going on. Work on data, with the help of Capgemini, continues to enable automation and reporting as does change management, mostly around people understanding and embracing Sealord’s new systems.
“There’s more accuracy and controls within this new ERP than we had,” Dodd said. “Probably our old environment was a little bit more forgiving.”
Infor also provided continuity of people, understanding and expertise throughout the roll-out and that had contributed to the success.
ERP replacements were a challenging thing, but there was no point in fighting with your vendor, Dodd said.
“We’ve chosen them to be our partner for multiple years. We’re going to succeed or fail together, and we might as well get on and be friends and help each other out.”
On other fronts, Sealord is also working on a new Azure-based data lake and Microsoft Synapse business intelligence.