Manitou updates IT infrastructure

French access equipment manufacturer Manitou is streamlining its IT infrastructure by rolling out new software across the entire group, with the intention of standardising processes, increasing agility and developing new service offerings.

The company is implementing a solution from business cloud software specialist Infor that is purpose-built for the equipment manufacturing and distribution industries. Infor M3 Equipment, which has been applied successfully in France, is now being introduced to Manitou’s factories, logistics centres and distribution subsidiaries further afield.

Manitou, which generated a turnover of €2.1 billion in 2019, has 11 production centres, including five in France, and eight logistics centres spread around the world. The firm is present in more than 140 countries, relying on 30 distribution subsidiaries to manage approximately 1,050 dealers.

Thibaut de La Bigne, Vice President ERP (enterprise resource planning) and process redesign projects at Manitou Group, said, “Manitou Group gradually became aware that its original solution, which integrated an ever-increasing number of specifics, was making maintenance and upgrade operations more complex.”

Vincent Girault, project manager at Manitou Group, added to these comments saying, “A team of around 40 people, totally dedicated to the project, was set up in 2016.

“It was made up of resources from IT and the business lines with a view to returning to the ERP standard and managing change within the organisation. Its objective was to deploy this standard solution on French sites by 2018.”

The roll-out of the system across Manitou’s European distribution subsidiaries is being carried out in collaboration with Infor and the integrator Authentic Group, which specialises in Infor M3.

Manitou’s long-term objective is to harmonise the disparate systems used at its international subsidiaries by equipping them all with Infor M3 Equipment.

It was said that this will help increase the company’s agility and bring new services to its dealers and subsidiaries, who face changing machine usage and increasingly specific end-customer requirements.

Girault said, “The successful implementation of the solution and the addition of high-value-added service modules for our businesses, in line with market expectations, reassured us and convinced us of the need to extend the project to our distribution subsidiaries, namely those in the Benelux, Portugal and currently Germany.”