Industry focus, talented people, and innovative technology are driving the future of Infor and this session discussed what is the “Infor Differentiator”?
The success of an ERP solution comes down to a combination of both technology and people and yet the reputation for big enterprise projects is that they run late and over budget and so make people nervous.
Infor mitigates against this by bringing not just industry knowledge, but also insight gained from >65K existing customers. This insight has provided vital in architecting the development of the product so that the industry specificity takes vertical solutions to a new level. Infor combines industry features to the core ERP to bring fully formed industry solutions.
Just some of those >65K customers;
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The Infor differentiator is the level of specificity that is built into the product.
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This demonstrates true understanding of the way people work in different industries. As Infor recognises the limiting factors of cloud, in that there needs to be a unified product, so their industry specificity is built in. Adding industry specificity means that “Time to Value” is faster as it enables sub-industry customisation and processes with an innovative core alongside the expertise and talent to deliver.
However, time to value destroys the services business but customers are looking for ROI and Infor have transformed the experience to bring value and performance of a simplified implementation process. This provides a better service for the customer and achieves their value and outcome, rather than focusing on services revenue.
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When our customers win, we win.
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According to Infor, customers used to be afraid of enterprise software, but Infor collaborate with customers and have a commitment to continual innovation. And doing the technology right enables Infor to move the discussions to a higher level towards process automation and digitalisation rather than just an ERP system.
What’s New?
Meet the Infor Marketplace: the Infor “App store”
At Inforum, Infor announced the launch of a marketplace which will enables partners to go deeper into the micro-industries. They also provided deep-dive information on their Infor ERP industry solutions which include
- Heathcare
- Food
- Defence
- High Tech
- Automotive
- Manufacturing
- Distribution
Infor describe the Marketplace as a curated showcase of solutions that augment and enhance your existing Infor investment.
The Marketplace will make it easier for customers to source industry specific software and micro-vertical solutions. Here they can check out what add-ons are available, compare products and read peer reviews. It will be interesting to see how this ecosystem of solutions develops and grows. As more add-ons become available it will provide easy access to software developed by Partners who understand Infor software and customers’ industries.
For more info; Infor Marketplace | Infor
If we succeed, our customers succeed.
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Infor’s customer service journeys
Infor customers are optimizing their digital transformation plans by partnering beyond the software. Discover how Infor is helping them realize the value of their investments faster, while mitigating risk. The team from Infor were keen to explain the importance of the Customer Success Approach, so in their own words;
“Our customer success team make sure our customers reach their business outcomes and goals. We give customers consistency of leadership to deliver on their success plan with one point of contact who understands their journey and we help them define success and bridge the gap. This way we lead the customer through the change cycle by showing them the future and identifying what success looks like and then figuring all the major components they will need within their own organisation as well as the technology that we are bringing.
So, we are not just standing up the technology but bringing the people skills. This helps to de-risk the implementation by reducing complexity and reducing time to value. The “Time to value” not only changes the what we do, but the how we do it too. Then we want to ensure we provide maximum value for the life of the product – so provide enthusiasm and ownership of the customer through implementation and on-going support.”
If we succeed, our customers succeed.
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How is LN better supporting your business.
Infor LN is now in the Gartner Upper Quadrant for ERP and some of the features that have driven this innovation are the role-based configurations, custom widgets, ease of visual appearance with drill down to detail at your fingertips. Customers can create their own roles or use pre-configured ones. The inclusion of REST API’s helps with integration and therefore deployment speed.
Easy access, speed of deployment and security are the three pillars driving innovation and the roadmap for Infor LN. For anyone looking to assess the benefits of Infor LN, ReInforce Technology can help map your requirements.
Industrial Manufacturing Briefing
The digital transformation journey for manufacturing businesses involves the ability to gather data from the industrial processes to effect a positive change, rather than having to change the business principles to suit the system.
As they say however, data out is only as good as the data in, and at Infor it is all about ensuring there is the right data available at the right time to ensure the right decisions are made – so quality of data and a 360-degree view to bring business agility.
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Increasing Operational Velocity & Supply Chain
Performance with Infor LN
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This has been assisted at Infor by the acquisition of Lighthouse to build the bridges between production, inventory, quality, maintenance and connecting management to the shop floor through technology solutions. Although moving forward and innovating means a cloud-based solution, the processes still need to be singled out and historical data needs to be maintained for comparisons and compliance.
There are key factors making “Time to Value” differences:
· Improved UI such as role-based users / KPIs and Dashboards
· Extensibility eliminating the need to code and self-implementation options
· Industry functionality embedded in Automotive Cloudsuite (such as line-side labelling enabling a “scan to book” automotive requirement)
Driving Continuous customer value from Infor OS
The value of something is largely down to the person using whatever it is they are using. So, something you deem valuable may be rubbish to someone else.
Infor Invests in AI
Infor’s approach to this is to invest in resources and talent to help take the technology to the customer to help ensure the value. Being close to the customer also enables customer systems are fully integrated and kept up to date. The Infor investment into AI also demonstrates embracing the newest advances in technology and incorporating those into solutions. These have brought better decision making by compiling and analysing data to highlight past anomalies, real time updates, new trends and comparisons.
Discover real-world innovation with Infor platform technology
Enough about AI and futures, how about some real-life case studies?
When driving continuous customer value, the proof tends to be in the pudding…or a case study.
A great example of the innovation and application of Infor has been within 2 companies in 2 separate industries.
Midwest Wheel, an automotive parts dealership, already had a selection of Infor technologies, however, they did not realise that they also had access to the rest of the operating service stack as it is all integrated. They begun using ‘Coleman AI’ to go through all of the data they had. It then pieced together products that were most related to each other. This in turn allowed staff to link the item that the customer needed with other items that the customer might also need to benefit the customer of one singular visit to the store. From using Coleman AI, they saw a 30% reduction in time to process sales orders and an improved ordering experience for the customer.
For more details please see the full case study: https://www.infor.com/en-gb/resources/midwest-wheel-uses-ai-to-recommend-parts
The second case study is Watami, who operate large organic farms in Japan.
Infor SPEAK FOOD & BEVERAGE
As a result of continued growth, Watami needed to eliminate inefficient legacy software systems that could not keep up with its changing business model. Using the Infor Agile 60:30:10™ deployment method and Implementation Accelerator, Watami went live on multi-tenant CloudSuite Food & Beverage––on schedule and on budget delivering on aggressive ROI targets. Read the case study to learn more. https://www.infor.com/en-gb/resources/watami-digitizes-with-cloudsuite-food-beverage
A modern ERP solution built for food and beverage can improve food safety, minimize waste, and create a more transparent food supply chain.