Moroccan deep-sea fishing company streamlines operations with SAP on Azure Server

Morocco-based deep-sea fishing company CNFC Group has worked for more than 30 years in the North Atlantic, exporting gourmet seafood across Europe and Asia. The company needed a digital upgrade to create a more flexible, agile, and scalable IT landscape. Microsoft partner CBI deployed SAP HANA on the Azure server. The platform has enabled CNFC to streamline operations, simplify financial management and ensure clear traceability on products from inventory to sales.

Formed in partnership with China National Fisheries Corporation more than three decades ago, CNFC Group Maroc comprises nine companies and 31 trawlers working in the deep-sea fishing industry. With multiple subsidiaries working concurrently from fishing to sales, it needed to upgrade its on-prem IT infrastructure while maintaining the existing enterprise resource planning software (ERP) to streamline company operations.

A virtual solution was the best and fastest option for CNFC. “With shipping delays of six to eight months due to COVID-19, an on-site physical server would have taken a lot of time to set up, and we would still be waiting for materials and components today. The project needed to take off quickly which is why we opted for a cloud-based solution,” says Amine Bouhaigon, Technical Cloud Leader at CBI. “We will also be saving time since there will be on-site, cost-effective solutions that can improve the information systems without having to buy materials for hardware.”

Transitioning to the cloud

CNFC decided to run SAP HANA on Azure as its new data platform. “We needed a highly available platform with guaranteed security that would also be certified to host our existing SAP environments—Azure offered all of this,” says Soufian el Gharah, Project Manager at CNFC. In addition, the company needed a server that would be available 24/7 where problems could be quickly resolved during day-to-day operations. “Azure’s service-level agreement guaranteeing high availability of minimum 90.95 percent was a key factor in our choice as well,” says Bouhaigon.

Helping the company deploy SAP HANA on Azure was Microsoft partner CBI, a company specializing in moving customers from on-prem to the cloud. The software solution is now used at seven companies within the group, including fishing companies, reefers, cold rooms, and trawler maintenance. The platform offered an agile and scalable eco-system that allowed CNFC to oversee its entire operations from purchasing and sales to accounting and inventory. “The solution has combined flexibility, high security, and simplicity of use for the CNFC team,” says Bouhaigon.

An efficient way of working

Since its implementation of the cloud solution, CNFC has already seen positive changes even at an early stage. SAP-certified virtual machines (VMs) now work seamlessly with the server to monitor inventory, track orders and sales, and control the purchasing process.

Complexities within the IT infrastructure have also been removed to simplify financial management and accounting. “We’ve felt the success of the implementation since the first day of our Go-Live. The platform stores all of our buying and selling transactions as well as information about our inventory, accounting services, and order tracking. That has given us much higher operational flexibility. It’s helped us become more efficient and better trace all procedures,” says el Gharah.“

Besides increasing efficiency, CNFC also leverages Azure’s advanced security features. “One of our main goals when implementing SAP within Azure was upholding the security of our information systems and having a flexible platform to support additional security services,” says el Gharah. As such, CBI and Microsoft worked in tandem to customize the most optimal security protocols. “We had a transfer of expertise via the platform, which was very beneficial not just for the security team but the whole IT department.”

With an efficient cloud solution, CNFC Morocco is geared to take on the future. “Thanks to Azure, we can ensure a high-performance level, high availability, and guarantee the safety of our data,” concludes el Gharah. “I think Azure is a great choice for companies that want to save the time and cost spent on-site hardware maintenance while improving the availability of their information systems.”

“We’ve felt the success of the implementation since the first day of our Go-Live. There’s higher operational flexibility. It’s helped us become more efficient and have better traceability of all procedures.”

Soufian el Gharah, Project Manager, CNFC