Infor announced a series of new platform technology innovations and enhancements to its industry-specific CloudSuites, which are designed to help organisations operate more quickly, efficiently, and dynamically than ever before.
These innovations are part of Infor’s new bi-annual cycle for major product releases. The new product-release cycle will help organisations better plan for onboarding the new technologies that will help them transform their businesses and better serve their customers.
“Infor is the heartbeat of our business,” said Gerro Dijkstra, IT academy Director at Nutreco, a global leader in nutritional solutions and services for the aquaculture and animal nutrition industry. “The Infor solution has helped us increase the efficiency of our factories around the world, so we can deliver the right recipes at the right time to our customers.”
Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage supports 3,600 users across more than 100 production plants in 37 countries. As a multi-tenant cloud platform, the solution helps Nutreco deploy new technologies more quickly and stay one step ahead of its competitors, according to Dijkstra. Going forward, he said, “New Infor capabilities such as RPA, AI and machine learning will help us automate processes and reduce complexity in the business.”
Infor President & CTO Soma Somasundaram said, “The innovations we are delivering with our release will enable customers to boost agility, leverage data-driven insights for improved decision-making, and get access to industry-specific solutions out of the box. They are designed to help customers automate business processes, achieve business results faster and pave the way for business transformation.”
The new products and technology in the Infor release deliver to customers:
- complete, industry-specific solutions,
- a digitally enabled open platform that enables ease of integration, and
- hyper-productive workflows that improve time to value.
New Infor Platform Technology Innovations
Enterprise Automation, featuring Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
As part of the release, Infor announced its Infor Enterprise Automation solution, a set of Infor Operating Service (Infor OS) multi-tenant cloud services, built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), which are designed to help companies rapidly scale automation across their organisations by connecting data integration, artificial Intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML), and robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities into a single platform.
Infor’s Enterprise Automation solution is unique because it delivers automation capabilities through a single composable platform, Infor OS, which connects systems and people through back-end automation, decision automation and — with the release of Infor RPA — front-end automation.
New Infor CloudSuite Enhancements
Discrete Manufacturing
Infor is enhancing its CloudSuite solution for Automotive by introducing new capabilities that will help customers increase supply chain resilience, optimise manufacturing productivity, control costs and drive profitability:
Streamlining Shipments: In Infor’s latest software update, improvements have been made to make shipment processes smoother, more efficient, and more compliant with service level agreements (SLAs). Improvements include planning for alternative packaging when needed, and a tool for planning and prioritising shipments to enable timely deliveries to priority customers.
Configurable Product Workspace: As more automotive customers seek the ability to provide special options for consumers using Configure Price Quote (CPQ), Infor’s Configurable Product Workspace provides a new space for customer service representatives to customise products from a single screen. This tool also provides pricing and tracking information for each quote, and links directly to relevant sales orders for consolidated information all in one place.
Self-billing for Aftermarket and Services Business (based on sales orders): As original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers expand their after-market businesses, this new capability helps customers better understand their finances, and simplifies invoicing and payment management for smoother orders.
Infor is enhancing its CloudSuite solution for Industrial Manufacturing by introducing new capabilities that will help customers handle unique product configurations, boost productivity and build agile supply chains:
– Configurable Product Workspace: To answer increasing demands for unique product configurations using Configure Price Quote (CPQ), the new Customer Service Workspace provides representatives with a single personalised screen for configurable products. This customisable, role-based workspace includes quote valuation, won-lost, quote aging, and related sales orders for configured products.
– Material Overage Management: The close connection between Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Infor’s CloudSuites helps manufacturers analyse how part changes can affect the remainder of a product. This lets them find substitute parts in different systems, making it easier to manage changes, reduce waste, and improve efficiencies throughout.
– Enterprise Collaboration Portal: Collaborating with businesses to procure third-party services from suppliers and subcontractors is crucial for many manufacturers. With this Enterprise Portal, subcontractors gain the ability to review, accept or decline orders, request payment, and collaborate seamlessly on cross-functional order transactions through the portal. New functionality provides a comprehensive communication history and expedited response functionality while also managing required insurance and compliance documents in one place.
Process Manufacturing & Distribution
Infor is enhancing its CloudSuite solution for Distribution by introducing new capabilities that will help distributors keep pace with customer demands, improve their visibility and capacity for profitable growth, and control costs with advanced supply chain management:
– Product Attribution Service: The new service enables unique attributes and attribute groups to be assigned to products in Infor CloudSuite Distribution. This new capability improves sort, filter, and search functionality, and expedites customers’ ability to capture and store product data — improving the overall ERP e-commerce experience.
– Product 360: With this new capability, distributors can create centralised dashboards to streamline the product journey. The enhanced dashboards improve the visibility of product-specific details on a single screen by providing insightful KPI and data analysis in one place.
– Product Certificate Management: This new capability will enable distributors to determine which product-related documents need to be received from the vendor or delivered to the customer. The solution will enable Infor CloudSuite Distribution users to determine which customers will receive specific documents, when they need them, and how they will be delivered. Ultimately, this will streamline the distributor’s ability to provide a higher level of customer service.
– Supplier Portal: This helps distributors better communicate with suppliers to support a seamless manufacturing and distribution journey. The newly embedded self-service digital collaboration tool connects businesses and suppliers for more effective communication, eliminating confusion and improving precise manufacturing with order confirmation, advanced shipping notice, and transport notifications.
Infor is enhancing its CloudSuite solution for Fashion by introducing new capabilities that will enable more sustainable product innovation and help fashion brands drive profitability, adapt to trends and scale their businesses:
– Infor PLM for Fashion: Infor’s Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution helps fashion brands make smarter, more sustainable decisions. Infor PLM helps fashion brands design and develop new collections and styles, as well as evaluate costs, materials, environmental impacts, and more.
– Infor Nexus supply chain network capabilities: These help fashion brands achieve greater transparency and control of their global sourcing supply chain. The Infor Nexus network provides further supply chain visibility, including “plan to ship,” carrier routes, automated advanced shipping notices (ASNs), and invoice processing.
– Merchandise and Assortment Planning Partnership: This enables smart planning and speeds up deployment with preconfigured, customisable templates. In partnership with Foresight Retail, Infor’s CloudSuite Fashion provides smarter assortment and merchandise planning by managing financial planning, assortment planning, forecasting, inventory allocation, and replenishment support in one platform.
