Z Nautic Group floats to the cloud with Infor

Infor, leading cloud company, today announced that Z Nautic Group (formerly known as Zodiac) is deploying Infor CloudSuite Equipment, a multi-tenant cloud ERP system specifically designed for equipment manufacturers, dealers and rental companies. The project follows the group’s demerger and the relocation of its French production unit to Tunisia – a collective of events that caused it to lose control of its IT tool in terms of distribution, equipment management and tracking of boats by serial number.

In its 125 years in operation, Z Nautic has undergone several changes in recent years that have reshaped the company. Today, with 600 employees, the group has 1,600 dealer partners (and a few distributors) throughout the world and is exclusively dedicated to the production and distribution of boats in the leisure and professional markets.

Infor has been Z Nautic’s preferred supplier in the past and was already equipped with an older version of Infor M3. Because of the changes within in the business over the last years, Infor M3 had not been upgraded. In 2019, the company decided to transform its IT solution and entrusted EY with an audit and market consultation. Following a call for tenders involving various vendors, Z Nautic chose Infor and its partner Hetic 3 at the end of 2020, opting for a cloud migration process rather than replacing its solution.

The solution, deployed in a multi-tenant cloud environment, will allow Z Nautic to eliminate time-consuming maintenance and upgrade processes for its IT team. The integration of a customer and partner configurator is also expected to eventually offer greater fluidity and efficiency in terms of customisation and choice of options, but also management of associated parts, when building a boat.

Anthony Chapeltegui, Z Nautic’s IT manager, says: “There were three main reasons for this choice. The first was Infor’s ability to offer us standard business functionalities that were perfectly adapted to our equipment sales (including rental), spare parts management, procurement and stock management issues. The second is our desire to switch to a SaaS mode configuration for security, scalability, simplicity and reliability. The last is the integration of embedded analytical modules to be able, in the long term, to give our users control over the production of tables and reports, particularly by geographical area and by product.”

Christophe Pino, Hetic 3’s sales manager, comments: “The relationship of trust we have had with Z Nautic for many years, as well as the cloud option offered by Infor, were key factors in their decision to migrate. This option offered real advantages in flexibility and scalability on demand, while respecting the customer’s needs and financial capacities.”