By: Keith Wayland October 15, 2024
RPI Consultants recently attended the first-ever Infor Velocity Summit in Las Vegas, where we gained exclusive insights into the future of the cloud-based ERP provider.
As an Infor Alliance CloudSuite Specialized partner, our mission is to deliver innovative solutions that maximize the value of our clients’ Infor ERP investments. Attending events like the Velocity Summit helps us stay ahead of key developments and future priorities
The two-day conference showcased Infor’s exciting new updates and functionality, with a clear focus on solutions that address real-world organizational needs. Below, we highlight our top three takeaways and offer insight into how they’ll impact businesses moving forward.
The Infor Velocity Summit appealed to a broad spectrum of the Infor market, spanning healthcare, manufacturing, and public sector verticals, among others. This cross-industry focus proved invaluable, as several keynote sessions outlined Infor’s goals to prioritize functionality that supports diverse industry needs.
During the event, Infor unveiled its vision of becoming the Industry Cloud Complete Company, emphasizing its dedication to refining its cloud ERP portfolio across industries. This highlighted its commitment to helping organizations across all sectors achieve greater efficiency with tailored solutions.
Following the event, Infor’s Chief Marketing Officer, Kirsten Allegri Williams, reaffirmed this focus in a LinkedIn post, “Because we are so entrenched in the industries we serve, we know what processes drive value—and we know what best practices for those processes look like. Those best practices are built directly into our cloud solutions in the form of our Industry Process Catalog (IPC), tailored to each industry we serve.”
For businesses, this means more industry-specific applications are on the way. These solutions will help organizations continue to optimize their ERP investment, drive efficiency, and deliver stronger customer outcomes.
In line with this push for industry-specific solutions, an immediate feature to explore is Infor’s GenAI assistant. For those in the services sector and using Infor FSM, GenAI can support users in creating tailored instructions for purchase order receipts and generate text descriptions for receipts and requisitions. More on AI below.
AI continues to evolve rapidly, and while it promises to streamline operations, organizations are slow to adopt it in their everyday operations. The leading cloud-based ERP provider acknowledged this challenge and is providing the add-on service Infor Value+ to help businesses maximize AI.
This new offering, powered by Infor OS, helps organizations achieve new efficiency with their ERP investment. It includes a “roadmap” that accounts for unique business requirements, identifies new efficiencies and entry points for getting the most value out of AI, with minimal disruption.
Moreover, Value+ offers tailored functionality for industries like healthcare, manufacturing, and public sectors, integrating with existing systems to improve productivity and reduce costs. Plus, its flexible design helps businesses meet unique operational challenges while driving growth and sustainability through scalable, cloud-based solutions.
Another AI feature discussed during the Velocity Summit, and something to look forward to this October, is Infor Process Mining.
First highlighted at the 2024 Infor Connect Conference, Infor Process Mining allows organizations to track performance across their applications, including third-party software. By reviewing data collected over a selectable timeframe, businesses can assess their level of effectiveness in administering applications and executing core functional processes.
Key questions Process Mining will help answer include: “Are we using recommended processes?”, “Are there deviations in how we’re using the system?,” and “What changes can we make to improve efficiency?”
Infor Process Mining and the GenAI assistant will also enable organizations to benchmark against KPIs, both internally and against other organizations across their industry verticals.
With Infor delivering more ways to leverage AI, organizations can feel confident that the technology company is committed to empowering its customers to be successful with CloudSuite and its other cloud ERPs, which brings us to our final takeaway from the Infor Velocity Summit.
Consistent with its messaging at this year’s Connect conference, Infor remains focused on ensuring customer success with CloudSuite. And during the Velocity Summit, they made that clear in a variety of ways.
The first is that an organization’s success with CloudSuite and all its functionality hinges on its users’ ability to use the system. As such, Infor is making available greater access to customer support and training resources.
Throughout the entire ERP engagement process, users can leverage several resources, including RPI, to adopt innovations to solve their business challenges. From establishing requirements for the implementation, to assessing readiness, and maximizing application functionality post go-live, the tools for ensuring ERP success are there for the taking.
Another example of how Infor is empowering customer success can be found in its new Mongoose platform. Unlike Configuration Console which enhances landmark applications such as Infor GHR, and FSM, Mongoose is a fully configurable tool that allows organizations to build simple applications from the ground up, addressing their unique ERP needs.
The intuitive platform includes a simple user interface, and automatically sets up a database on the backend for performance and data insights. Tools like Mongoose empower customers to act more independently to address quick business needs. By being able to develop simple web applications, organizations can better maximize their ERP investment.
Infor’s ultimate goal is to ensure that its customers are realizing value throughout their ERP journey. And by helping organizations use the software more effectively, organizations can achieve their business goals and ultimately deliver successful outcomes to their customer base, whether that be the community at large, patients, or consumers.
The 2024 Infor Velocity Summit has wrapped up, but the journey is just getting started. If you’re currently utilizing Infor CloudSuite or considering a migration to the software, RPI is here to help you optimize your investment and fully realize the many benefits of the cloud ERP.
Many of the insights identified above can also be achieved by working with an ERP partner, like RPI. With over 25 years of experience in the Infor and Lawson ERP landscape, we possess the expertise and technical skills to enhance your business’ back-end operations and pave the way for long-term success.
If you’re interested in learning more about our findings from the Infor Velocity Summit, or exploring some of the new services and solutions displayed at the event, contact us.
For more detail on our experience at Infor Velocity, join us next Wednesday, October 23 on RPI Tech Connect for an in-depth conversation with RPI’s Principal Technical Consultant, Jeremy Stoltzfus and Director of Marketing, Michaela Fallon. Subscribe to the bi-weekly show below.