Kopenhagen Fur’s journey to the cloud created challenges

Recent years have been turbulent and challenging for Kopenhagen Fur, which was one of the world’s largest auction houses for animal pelts and a cooperative owned by Danish mink farmers.

In 2019, Kopenhagen Fur’s IT supplier gave the green light for the company’s new cloud-based business platform to go live, but it quickly became clear that the solution did not meet their expectations. 

“It was a launch with very big challenges. The systems were slow and crashed. It felt like everything was more difficult,” says Kopenhagen Fur’s IT manager, Peter Skov Hansen. 

There were also challenges with the set up of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, which did not work as expected or as they were designed to. 

Cepheo Managed Services came to the rescue 

Kopenhagen Fur began to explore the market for a new IT partner to operate and support the business platform. The choice fell on Cepheo and Cepheo Managed Services. 

However, it took a lot of work to get the business platform to function. This meant, among other things, that the workflows in the solutions had to be redefined, quality checked, adjusted and, in some cases, completely recoded. 

“It gave a great sense of security to have a supplier who could deliver resources stably and competently to keep the solutions running. It was a great help,” says the IT manager. 

For companies like Kopenhagen Fur, Cepheo Managed Services ensure that Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions are updated, optimized and secure. The benefits include reducing IT operation costs, minimizing downtime and errors and freeing up time to focus on the core business and innovation. 

“It is very common to look at which IT suppliers are good at implementing solutions, but it is just as important to see who is good at helping to drive them forward. In Cepheo, we got a stable partner we could rely on and who was geared for the task,” says Peter Skov Hansen. 

The final strike of the gavel 

Just when it seemed that calm had returned to Kopenhagen Fur, the pandemic hit. And it hit the auction house hard.  

Demand for fur and skins plummeted, mink farming was shut down in Denmark and physical auctions had to be quickly converted to digital ones. This was reflected in the annual accounts. The company suffered its first loss in nearly three decades when revenue in 2020 fell by over 50 percent compared to the previous year. A few months before the annual accounts were presented, the company, founded in 1930, announced that it would be closed down over the course of the next 2-3 years following the Danish government’s decision to shut down mink farming in Denmark. 

The IT manager says that having a good partner to help navigate through these hectic years has been a stabilizing factor. 

“Cepheo has carried us through. They helped us get our business solutions under control. It was important for us during that period.” 

Peter Skov Hansen also praises the Cepheo consultants, who they have been very happy with, because they listened to the inputs and acted on them. He also highlights the value of having had the same consultants all the way through the process. 

“Cepheo has a sensible approach to things and to their customers. They don’t make promises they can’t keep. That has shone through all the way,” he concludes. 

Although Kopenhagen Fur officially transferred its assets and liabilities to the Danish state at the end of October 2024, the collaboration with Cepheo will continue until the annual accounts are completed in the first half of 2025.