CIN's colorful business integrates across borders with IBS ERP system

Customer Story

Changing strategy to confront the future is easy. The difficult thing is to find the right ERP solution, at the right time, with the right partner – a feat that CIN managed with flying colors with IBS.

“I need a shade of white, neither dark nor light, between hard and pearl white, which looks strong in low light and bright in natural light.” If a customer asks for this at one of paint manufacturer CIN’s 70 shops in Portugal, the answer is likely to be, “We have it.”

With more than 30 percent of the Portuguese market share and 12 percent of the Spanish, CIN (Corporação Industrial do Norte) is the Iberian leader in the paint and varnish market. The company is ranked 16th in Europe among paint and varnish manufacturers, and 46th in the world. It was the first paint brand in Portugal to provide a computerized process for mixing 5,000 colors. CIN is the only Portuguese paint company quoted on the stock exchange, with an annual turnover of about 178 million euros.

The company processes some 3.5 million order lines per annum. Product segments include decorative, industrial, car repainting, anticorrosives and accessories. The CIN Group currently consists of several companies, with factories in Portugal, Spain, Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde, and exports to Germany, France and China.

New business model

In the early 2000s, CIN was faced with the need to standardize procedures. “We adopted a corporate philosophy that we could extend to all companies in the group. It did not make sense for the companies to have different procedures,” says Luís Pinto, IT Director of the CIN Group. The idea was to define a new business model that would take into account CIN’s activities and objectives, as well as how the world changes.

The new strategy brought with it a need to modernize the company’s ERP solutions for global planning. Pinto says, “We found some powerful solutions but they were not very flexible and did not allow for structural changes. We wanted a solution that would adapt to our needs and reality – not the other way around.” The most effective and flexible response was supplied by IBS enterprise software. “Apart from being the best product, it continued the relationship of trust that had already existed between the two companies for more than 10 years.”

Ambitious project

Large accounts executive Rui Rodrigues at IBS Iberia has the commercial responsibility for CIN. He says, “We are used to big challenges. What made this more complicated was the technological leap for CIN, at the same time as the company was adopting a new philosophy.” Rodrigues points out that the project was a mixture of infrastructures, software and service. “Basically, it was a large project with several subprojects.”

CIN’s presence in both Portugal and Spain added some extra requirements. Pinto explains, “With the two main factories in different countries, we had to have a multilingual application that complied with Portuguese and Spanish fiscal aspects.” However, this was not a problem, since IBS Iberia – with customers that use the software in both countries – has extensive knowledge of  the languages as well as the legislation. “Our operations strategy is Iberian, and mobility underlines our working method,” says Rodrigues.

IBS Iberia marketing director Adelaide Leitão adds, “When a change of ERP software is linked to other changes, namely company strategies, it requires a reformulation of the processes themselves. But this just makes things more challenging and enticing.”

Environmental factors

One of the main difficulties that CIN and other companies in the same market segment face relates to the new environment laws from the EU whereby companies are obliged to adjust their manufacturing processes. In this market segment, “eco-efficiency” is no longer a concept but a very important reality. The idea is taken seriously and the new EU rules are very clear.

In this sense, “It was some years ago that CIN already started to make the transition”, says Pinto. “We had to assure the same quality level while using processes less dangerous to the environment.” Nowadays, around 80 percent of CIN products already respect the limits for volatile organic compounds. 

Priority areas

The introduction of the euro meant the financial department needed to have the ERP system up and running by the start of 2002. A year and a half later, the IBS ERP solution was implemented in commercial and production areas. Other departments, such as R&D, human resources and distribution, have specific software adapted to their requirements. One key point of implementing IBS ERP software was to create an interface between all the different systems. Rodrigues says, “The integration of the systems was complex, especially since it involved people and our adaptation to the processes.”

If the target was already high with all the IBS ERP software “sub-projects”, it got even higher during the implementation process of the new integrated solution. This was due to new IBM hardware being installed for the first time in Portugal.  With two different partitions plus a disaster recovery solution installed, this server now supports all IBS ERP software applications and one of its main advantages is the capability of answering to “on-demand” needs in terms of processor capacity.

Including software, hardware, assistance and training, CIN invested a total of about 3.5 million euros in the project, and is now about to reach the point of return on investment. In this final phase of the process, CIN maintains frequent contact with IBS, but mainly in terms of support, says Pinto. “We are adapting to the new realities that have been covered by the new ERP solution.”

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