Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 54 | Page 64

CASE STUDY

Derungs Licht has been an expert in lighting solutions for medicine and care for over 80 years . The lighting manufacturer is best characterised by constant innovation , Swiss quality standards , good design and the durability and sustainability of its products . Due to constant development of the business model , the ongoing digitalisation trend and dependence on its parent company – especially regarding its IT infrastructure – the company ’ s internal processes were reaching their limits . The amount of work in preparing quotations and processing invoices kept increasing and the manual processes generated a high wastepaper load . “ Until a few months ago , we were still doing many tasks manually and on paper ,” said Andreas Schenkenbach , Derungs Licht CEO . “ A lot of time was lost and we could no longer meet our own demands .”

It was time to update the internal processes . A new Enterprise Resource Planning ( ERP ) system would meet the technological standards of today . “ The question we asked ourselves at the beginning was where do we want to be in three to five years with our IT and our business systems ,” said Schenkenbach . “ We didn ’ t just look at the status quo , but also at what other options the cloud could offer us .”
Moving to the Infor cloud
Derungs Licht had been a satisfied Infor customer on Movex since 2006 and now moved to M3 in March 2021 . “ The move to the cloud was only logical for us ,” said Schenkenbach . “ Although we were a current Infor customer on-premises , the decision to choose Infor was not clear from the beginning . We wanted a solution that not only met our current requirements but could also grow with us – and we found that with Infor .”
Nevertheless , changing an IT system always requires careful consideration : “ COVID was , of course , a factor in the decision-making ,” Schenkenbach said . “ We were initially concerned about whether the changeover , as well as the training sessions , could actually take place in a pandemic-appropriate setting without affecting quality .”
Thanks to online workshops and support from the Infor team , Derungs Licht ’ s staff quickly learned the new system and are still working closely with the Infor team to take full advantage of all the features and tools . “ It went better than we initially expected and that was mainly due to the great team that looked after us . Even though this is software , it ’ s still about people working together .”
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