Marine engineer upgrades to the cloud

Industry cloud company Infor announced last year that ship repair and marine engineering company Dormac Marine and Engineering, a division of Southey Holdings, had embarked on an upgrade to move its existing Infor LN enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to the cloud.

Having implemented Infor LN in 2014, Dormac recognised the value in a softwareas-a-service approach.

Dormac IT manager Siva Pillay noted that, while the previous implementation of Infor LN showed immediate benefits – and has continued to drive value over the past nine years – it was becoming outdated.

“As a business, we realised that the latest service pack and new feature releases were no longer going to support the version of Infor LN that Dormac was on. Now the question became whether to change our entire ERP system, or upgrade to the Infor Cloud.”

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of drilling a hole, which generally lasts between three and five days. Transporting the crew between land and the barge was challenging, owing to the tender boat bobbing up and down in the swell, making it harder to get onto the ladder of the barge.”

When moving between holes, Kruger notes that the wind conditions and open waters, or swells, had to be taken into account.

Larger swells generally enter the ports of open harbours and the Geomech Africa crew

Having conducted in-depth evaluations of a variety of ERP solutions, Pillay and his team carefully considered which direction would make the most sense for the business, both financially and operationally.

Dormac realised that getting another system to a similar functionality as the current Infor LN would require time consuming and expensive customisation — and still would not be totally compatible with the older LN version.

“As a business operating in a projects environment, a single day’s delay could cost us millions. We knew that the solution we had to wait for the correct wind and wave conditions before moving the company’s barge, as it is not designed for swells.

“We were effectively drilling off a jacked-up platform 2 m above the water to take into account tides and wave action. Strict environmental controls were put in place, with regular audits to ensure there were no spillages.

“A successful drilling programme was carried out, valuable data provided to the client and a high safety standard followed with no incidents, within budget and chose had to be agile, automated, and offer unmatched reporting capabilities,” stated Pillay.

The team at Infor partner iOCO guided Dormac in charting the best course to ensure its ERP system was geared for the future, while also enjoying continued support and easy upgrades, immediately deployed.

As a result, Infor CloudSuite Industrial Enterprise was selected. As the upgrade begins in earnest, iOCO is working closely with Dormac to identify which processes and reports will be moved to the cloud today and where enhancement opportunities can be capitalised on.

The teams will be taking all historical data to the cloud rather than only opening balances, ensuring easy and complete reference into past projects and eliminating the need to run two systems.

Offering data lake, reporting and dashboarding benefits, the move is set to greatly enhance and simplify Dormac’s project module design and drive “intelligent information that empowers teams to work effectively anywhere in the world”.

“This upgrade will help strengthen and continue the development of the way Dormac does business. From the Infor OS cloud platform, dashboards, and workflows to true automation driving efficiencies — and the value of [using] an existing licensing model with no additional costs — this cloud approach is set to drive massive business value,” said iOCO solution executive

Belinda Best.

“We are excited, as the Dormac team, to embark on this upgrade journey with Infor, our trusted and long-term ERP partners.

“This upgrade to the Infor Cloud, with the release of related new features, perfectly aligns with our strategic vision of incorporate cutting edge technologies into our shipyards. We aim to enhance operational efficiencies, ultimately passing benefits onto our valued clients through our everimproving service offerings,” concluded Dormac FD

Devon Simpkins.

completed on time, resulting in a satisfied client,” Kruger assures.

Meanwhile, Geomech Africa has also drilled on jack-up barges on Lake Malawi; the Zambezi river, in Zambia; the Nile river and Lake Albert, in Uganda; and Nacala in Mozambique.

The company is also working on a project on a lake in a remote mountainous area, with Kruger expecting accessibility limitations and cold weather to be some of the major challenges.

TEAMWORK The team at Infor partner iOCO guided Dormac in charting the best course to ensure its ERP system was geared for the future, while also enjoying continued support and easy upgrades, immediately deployed