Credit: Sanford
NZX-listed fishing company Sanford has deployed Microsoft’s D365 and Innova as its core software platforms.
The company’s digital change program, called Sancore, has delivered new safety, health and environmental software across the company, including D365 for financing, supply chain, quota management and payment systems.
“This will form the technological foundation for our company in the coming years.” The company writes this in its annual report published today.
Real-time product tracking software from US company Innova was integrated with D365 to provide better end-to-end visibility into inventory and costing by product type.
Innova allows products to be tracked through the production process regardless of whether the work is done at sea or on land, the report said.
“It starts with the caught or farmed fish or mussels and ends with the processed and packaged product.”
Sanford’s team had made positive efforts to adapt their processes and build a learning curve to support new ways of working, the report said. However, the journey appears to have been a challenge.
“As with all technology rollouts, especially of this size, D365 going live was a huge change initiative and required team effort and perseverance to come to fruition,” the report said.
Between 2020 and 2022, Sanford reported that project milestones had not been met, due in part to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Project champion and chief customer officer Andre Gargiulo said in 2021 that the implementation team was “doing everything possible” to have the platforms delivered by the end of fiscal 2022.
“It remains on time and on budget, despite some hurdles and frustrations in bringing in the necessary talent from offshore, due to COVID border restrictions,” he reported.
Sanford’s mussel processing center in Havelock became the first Innova location to go live in August 2022, and the company’s quality team used Innova’s tablets for more than 40 different inspections that were previously recorded on paper forms.
“We’re starting to get great information in a real-time environment, which will help them make better decisions about planning, revenue and efficiency, and give us better visibility into demand and costs,” Gargiulo said.
Timaru would be the next cab off the rank.
“Sancore will give us faster real-time information on catch and yield conditions, which will better inform our sales and operations planning,” Gargiulo reported.
D365’s financial model would capture and integrate richer levels of information to support better decision making.
“Under the current system, we spend a lot of time extracting data and it can be cumbersome. This will give us more robust information and more timely reporting,” Gargiulo said.
Milestones were not fully achieved in 2022 either, but substantial progress was reported, including the successful deployment of Innova in Havelock, Timaru, Bluff and on six deepwater factory vessels.
Deployments still pending at the end of the fiscal year included Auckland and another ship planned for early 2023.
Rolling out technology at sea was clearly different from getting the job done on land, the company told shareholders. The logistics of the job were crucial.
“Typically there are two or three development phases for the SanCore integration each time a ship is in port,” says project manager Adrian Gray.
“In the first case, we upgrade the onboard infrastructure by getting the racks and wiring in place. In the second case, we install and test and then the training begins.”
The training was conducted primarily by a former skipper, Steve Collier, who was recruited for his shipboard experience and because he “spoke the language” of deepwater crews.
Sanford reported $12.7 million in software-as-a-service spending in the year to September 30, compared with $10.3 million in 2022 and $6.1 million in 2020.
As reported last year, fishing company Sealord also implemented new core software from US ERP giant Infor.
Tags enterprise resource planningMicrosoftERPFMISDynamics 365financial management information systemD365Sanford
