Jamarl Scase

Planning and Production Control Manager, Camatic Seating

Supernova Award Category: 
Next-Generation Customer Experience
The Organization: 

Camatic Seating is the first company in Australia to manufacture commercial and venue seating from design concept through to finished product in a single location. Camatic has developed a global reputation for innovative design and manufacturing excellence in seating for some of the most iconic venues such as Wimbledon, Sydney Opera House, Pasadena Rose Bowl, and the Atlanta Olympic Games. 

Major international success arrived during the mid-1990s with the company winning worldwide projects such as the refurbishment of the Pasadena Rose Bowl and the contract to supply stadium seating for the Atlanta Olympic Games. 

The Problem: 

In construction, time is money. Supplying seating to the world’s largest construction projects for stadiums, arenas, and more, our goal is to deliver products without delays, so customers can complete construction as scheduled.

As Camatic continues to grow and enter new markets, we wanted to be more efficient and accurate in decision making instead of making decisions based on intuition or manually analyzing data across many different processes. Applying machine learning to our data sources gives us the automation and instant insights we need to ensure on-time delivery of seating and our customers stay happy.

Starting with its CRM system, Hubspot, we wanted more precise sales and product forecasts by region. Accurate forecasting would help ensure it had the right number of raw materials in the right place at the right time.  Improving the sales confidence or win prediction for each opportunity would also give us the insights we need to achieve forecast goals. Knowing which prospect is most likely to make a purchase and which is at risk of not purchasing helps us allocate precious resources to the right targets.

For the hybrid ERP system (Infor LN on premises and Infor CloudSuite Industrial Enterprise), we wanted vendor performance insights to make faster and smart vendor selections. With procurement tasked to meet forecast demands, the right vendor selection is critical to further ensure customers receive their seating on time and at the right cost. 

The Solution: 

The Infor OS technology platform that underpins Infor CloudSuite Industrial Enterprise provides us the complete set of low code services needed to apply AI/ML to up to five years of data in our systems and deliver instant and accurate insights in forecasting, win predictions, and vendor performance. Prior to leveraging Infor OS, creating forecasts was a manual process for aggregating disparate CRM data to create monthly sales forecasts. As a result, capacity planning based on these forecasts was prone to risk and unforeseen costs such as a lack of supplies and outsourcing work to subcontractors. Additionally, CRM Hubspot confidence calculation was based on sales knowledge, not data, therefore creating lost opportunities.  For vendor selection, we were previously analyzing the data in an inconsistent manner, and it led to us sometimes making the incorrect supply selection. If the right vendor is not selected, there can be longer-than-expected lead times and quantity/quality issues.

The Results: 

Infor OS is very valuable in applying machine learning to data sources managed by our hybrid and heterogeneous environment to generate insights.   

Now that we are using data to drive smarter and faster decision-making, we have the confidence to tell our customers we can deliver seating on time, which is critical for them to complete projects on their end such as building out seating for a new stadium, cinema, or any construction with time sensitivity.   

The entire organization works off the same real-time information to ensure on-time delivery.  Management and sales teams are more effective in strategic decision-making, operations are better equipped to plan for capacity, and procurement can acquire the right number of raw materials at the right time.       Use Case Video 

Metrics: 

With more accurate and timely forecasts, win prediction, and vendor performance, Infor OS provides the following results: 

  • 5% expected increase in win rate, translating to $10-15 million in new revenue 
  • Improved sales productivity and customer communications 
  • Improved capacity planning to meet demand and revenue/profit goals 
  • Improved supply chain plan for sales and operations  
  • Better allocation of capital for growth 
  • 93% faster vendor selection—process has gone from 30 minutes to 2 minutes 
  • Increased customer satisfaction with better delivery performance 
  • Ability to manufacture better-quality products at a lower cost 
  • Cost savings with users better equipped with negotiating power 
  • Under 30 days time to value with low code, integrated services
The Technology: 

For these use cases, Infor OS provides the end-to-end services needed to embed AI capabilities into business processes—Infor ION®, Infor Coleman® AI, and Infor Birst. ION data connectors move data into the Infor cloud data lake and the underlying APIs control what and when data is moved. Infor Coleman AI provides machine learning services to generate insights. The results from Coleman AI are then presented through Infor Birst reporting and analytics where it can be consumed.

Disruptive Factor: 

We are a manufacturer in Australia successfully competing at a global level with the help of modern technology.  Infor is playing a key role in helping us stay competitive because we can now leverage our data with AI to be more efficient and accurate in our processes and decisions.  It also delivers real value to our business being able to deliver products to our customers on time and within cost.  

Efficiency is key to enabling growth, scaling, and staying competitive.  What is game-changing is that we can continue to integrate AI into our processes easily to increase efficiencies because of the reusability of Infor’s platform technology. All the services, including AI/ML, are integrated into one platform and can utilize the same data in the data lake to provide anything from data integration, workflows, reporting, analytics, and AI/ML so that we can really be focused on continually deriving value from our data.

Shining Moment: 

We pride ourselves on being a very high-standard manufacturer; therefore, we want to partner with suppliers that deliver to those high standards.  Our employees are proud when they see the seats they produce on TV and can say hey those are our chairs in that stadium or cinema.  It’s great that I can now deliver an efficient, and more accurate AI-driven tool for my team so they can select the correct supplier with greater precision and prevent incorrect supplier selection.

About Camatic Seating

For more than 55 years, Camatic Seating has provided exceptional audience comfort solutions in stadiums, theaters, cinemas and places of learning & culture across the globe. As an industry leader, Camatic Seating's products are designed and manufactured to the highest standards for the most demanding environments, indoors or outside.  Camatic Seating