Why Dematic chose Infor over SAP

Stephen Withers
Monday, 13 December 2010 16:49

Business IT - Technology

When materials handling solutions provider Dematic was divested from Siemens, the Asia Pacific operation had to make a quick decision concerning ERP software. Four years later, it doesn't regret the choice it made.

Logistics systems supplier Dematic has a roster of well-known customers in Australia including Woolworths and Coles. It also has an interesting history in this country, starting out as Colby Handling Systems in 1966, being acquired by Mannesmann in the early 1991, becoming part of Siemens in 2000, and then being divested into the hands of German private equity firm Triton in 2006.

The local operation (which covers Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, China and Thailand) began using software that is now part of the Infor range since 1991. It had upgraded to Syteline 4 prior to being acquired by Siemens, but was then required to switch to SAP.

When it parted from Siemens, the company was given 90 days to decide whether or not to stay with SAP, and to act on that decision.

CIO Allan Davies told iTWire that the company was given the option of buying more time by cloning Siemens' SAP system and continuing to use that for 12 months, but that would have costs around $3 million.

The choice was basically between staying with SAP and returning to Syteline. The respective licensing costs would be $600,000 or $100,000 per year, so once Infor regional vice president James Brackenrig committed to a Syteline implementation in the 73 days that remained, the decision was made.

Did the project succeed? Find out on page 2.