MBWS ferments back-office processes with Oracle Cloud

Founded in 1755, Marie Brizard Wine & Spirits (MBWS) produces an award-winning portfolio of products, including Marie Brizard liqueurs and syrups, Sobieski vodka, William Peel scotch whisky and Maison Gautier cognac. Its smaller, more local brands include San José Tequila, Old Lady’s Gin, and Pastis Berger.

Based in France and serving customers mainly in Europe, North America, and Asia, MBWS is looking to expand further internationally and boost profitability, refocusing on its spirits businesses. As part of that effort, the organization needed to consolidate its back-office applications to improve internal efficiencies, while continuing to innovate and respond rapidly to supermarket chains and other large customers.

The company was also looking to reduce the cost, increase the scale, and improve the performance, stability, and security of its underlying IT infrastructure.

In 2020, MBWS consolidated on Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP application suite, running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), to automate key back-office processes and deliver “one version of the truth” to inform management decisions.

Having chosen the on-premises JD Edwards over SAP, the company wanted the benefits of a cloud infrastructure to minimize IT overhead and ensure a faster international rollout of the ERP application.

Although it considered cloud infrastructure services from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, MBWS decided that an Oracle-on-Oracle solution was a better fit. “We wanted to go with well-established, proven solutions from a company with a strong global commercial presence,” says Group CIO Stephane Jourdain. “And from a purely financial point of view, Oracle’s offer was very competitive compared to other vendors’. We are very happy with our Oracle software and cloud infrastructure choices, which have lived up to our initial expectations.”

MBWS’s Oracle implementation significantly lowered the group’s IT total cost of ownership—for example, reducing its software costs by consolidating more than 10 legacy applications onto Oracle JD Edwards, while eliminating the need to buy expensive servers at each of its international locations to host the application. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s subscription model allows the company to pay only for the capacity it consumes. “This was a specific request from our management, which Oracle has delivered,” Jourdain says.

With Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, MBWS has increased system and application stability, and it no longer needs to worry about infrastructure performance, thanks to Oracle’s service-level guarantees. “In terms of OCI and JDE performance, it’s perfect,” Jourdain says.

The group’s IT team can now focus on more strategic work instead of maintaining hardware systems, which with an on-premises deployment would have also required considerable training investments. “It’s not our vocation to be specialized in infrastructure, so the choice of the Oracle Cloud was an obvious one,” he says. “It also aligns with our strategy, as we are almost 40% in the cloud if we count all of our applications in the group.”

By replacing multiple ERP applications with Oracle JD Edwards, MBWS centralized its financial and operational data, increasing group collaboration as well as streamlining resources. The group has improved its cost accounting, reducing the monthly close from two weeks to three days, and it has enhanced planning and stock management. “In the domestic market we have to supply the quantities requested within 48 hours or face extremely high penalties, so with Oracle’s solutions there is a measurable financial gain,” Jourdain says. “We are transitioning from a rearview mirror style of driving to one that really looks into the future.”

Additionally, the broad range of the Oracle JD Edwards suite—including modules specific to the wine and spirits sector, such as blend management—has improved MBWS’s ability to trace the path that its wines and spirits take through the supply chain, which is important for regulatory compliance and ultimately public safety.

With its Oracle-on-Oracle implementation, the company has also bolstered its cybersecurity by ensuring that its data is encrypted. MBWS’s previous systems had vulnerability issues. “Today we have to be particularly careful about security challenges, and Oracle meets our requirements in this regard.”

For its Oracle-on-Oracle implementation, MBWS selected implementation partner Vigilens, part of the Redfaire International Group, because of its industry knowledge, deep JD Edwards expertise, and experience deploying Oracle JD Edwards on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Vigilens continues to provide technical support at all levels, while MBWS sets up its own center of excellence using staff from the project team.