Infor, global provider of business cloud software products for companies in industry specific markets, recently announced significant platform technology updates to its industry-specific CloudSuite portfolio. Each new innovation, including a GenAI Assistant, process mining capabilities, and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Strategy Management, enhances Infor’s suite of industry-specific products. Infor developed its multi-tenant CloudSuite tech stacks with out-of-the-box hyper-specific capabilities, redesigning the way organizations work and helping to reduce risk. Infor offers industry specific automations, leveraging AI and machine learning, which are pre-configured solutions that customers can easily deploy without disruption to core systems.
“I am excited about the immense value these solutions will drive for our customers,” says Soma Somasundaram, President and CTO of Infor. “Infor’s deep industry expertise is showcased through thousands of best-practice, micro-vertical processes built into the product. With each release, we increase the volume of pre-built experiences that harness the power of transformative technologies. For example, with embedded process mining capabilities, customers can quickly examine process efficiencies, optimize, and automate with minimal disruption to business operations.”
Aiming to help customers unleash hyper-productivity in their flow of work, Infor released its GenAI Assistant, which enhances the user experience of Infor CloudSuites. This conversational assistance offers a more dynamic, intuitive, and actionable approach to interacting with industry-centric data, addressing time-consuming tasks such as managing manufacturing projects, analyzing requisitions, and tracking products.
Infor GenAI Assistant is part of Infor’s Industry AI portfolio, that also includes Infor GenAI. GenAI continues to be embedded deeply in the flow of industry-specific processes, enriching applications one experience at a time. As of October 2024, the GenAI Assistant is in limited availability across select Infor solutions.
“With the assistance of Infor GenAI, we have significantly accelerated our project with greater accuracy and consistency. The initial plan to cleanse our item master data would have taken several years with a two-person team manually grouping and updating over 800,000 items,” said Elisabetta Venezia, Group Director, ERP System & Data Management, GMM Pfaulder. “We now expect to complete the project within the next six months. By eliminating duplicates with a cleaner database, we anticipate at least a 5% reduction in inventory costs, which translates to €1-2M in savings.”
Infor is also offering enhanced, accelerated visibility into business processes with Infor Process Mining. Users quickly gain streamlined data definition, simplified export-import capabilities, efficient data loading, accelerated insights retrieval, and comprehensive insights analysis—all within a simply, easy-to-use, unified platform that enhances operational agility and decision-making effectiveness.
“This transformative tool [process mining] provides visibility into business process events within our daily order-to-cash operations, highlighting areas for improvement and actionable opportunities,” says Steve Turner, Director of Information Systems for Oberg Industries. “We anticipate by addressing these process inefficiencies and bottlenecks we will be able to increase our business throughput with existing resources over time.”
Infor also announced new capabilities that allow organizations to develop a systematic approach to set, meet, and report on their organizational ESG goals. With this release, Infor is embedding ESG data and process improvements into day-to-day workflows for continuous improvement.
Finally, Infor introduced new Industry-specific supply chain management enhancements that aim to help improve supply chain accuracy, reduce manual intervention, and speed time to value. Using AI and embedding purpose-built capabilities within Infor CloudSuites, data can be unlocked and unified, which can reduce manual intervention, and accelerate time to value. For example, Infor has embedded procedure supply planning and distribution management capabilities targeting the healthcare industry. Other industry-specific supply chain enhancements include supply planning, warehouse management and demand forecasting.
What this means for ERP insiders
Know the reasons and circumstances that make a vertical-specific ERP a good choice. Certain industries benefit more from industry-specific ERP providers like Infor compared to horizontal ERP providers due to the tailored features and deep vertical expertise offered. The choice to go vertical can impact factors including customization and cost required, deployment time, scalability, and native embedded industry knowledge. A few of the industries that should consider vertical specialists include discrete and process manufacturing; healthcare; retail and fashion; hospitality; food and beverage; aerospace and defense; and energy and utilities. Manufacturing companies have complex supply chains and unique industry compliance obligations that vertical ERP providers can address head on. Retail and fashion companies have seasonal demand planning and inventory optimization across multiple locations, while food and beverage companies require lot traceability, shelf-life management and regulatory compliance. ERP providers that have chosen to specialize in these verticals have tailored features and pre-configurations that can meet more requirements out of the box and ultimately save time and expense during deployment and maintenance phases.
Do your due diligence if you’re not already an Infor customer. The most helpful perspectives you’re likely to hear when evaluating ERP providers will come from those providers’ existing customers. In the case of Infor’s GenAI Assistant, Elisabetta at GMM Pfaulder, a global provider of corrosion-resistant technologies, is the logical place to start. But companies would also be well-served to talk to other CloudSuite customers in the same industry to get a sense for Infor’s strong track record. For instance, Medallion Midstream in the oil and gas industry worked with Infor to streamline complex operations, reducing process complexity by up to 80%. Or Vallen in the distribution industry used CloudSuite Distribution Enterprise to increase customer satisfaction and reduce total cost of ownership by 30%. Or Miller Industries in the automotive manufacturing industry reduced reliance on multiple point solutions, achieving a unified system that improved data visibility and operational efficiency.
Explore every layer of potential value in Infor Process Mining. Companies should utilize Infor Process Mining’s capability to load and extend ERP data with minimal effort and ensure that data is readily available for in-depth analysis and process optimization. Also, they should access the Industry Process Catalog within Infor CloudSuite, which includes detailed descriptions, best practices, and preconfigured processes for various business functions. This will reduce the need for custom development and manual setup, leading to cost savings and faster deployment times. And companies should look at integrating Infor Process Mining with Infor Value+ solutions to conduct thorough root cause analyses and uncover inefficiencies. This will likely enable proactive changes and drive continuous improvement and operational excellence. Finally, companies should utilize Infor Process Mining’s capabilities tailored to specific industries, such as distribution, discrete manufacturing, and healthcare. This will provide detailed visibility into industry-specific processes, ensuring timely customer deliveries and optimized operations.
