For many businesses, the promise of digital transformation remains just that – a promise. While leaders widely recognize the potential of advanced technologies like AI and automation, the path from intention to realized value is often blocked by the complexities of legacy systems, a lack of specialized expertise, and the sheer challenge of integrating disparate solutions. Infor’s Velocity Suite” width=”200″ height=”300″ />
Infor, an industry cloud software provider, aims to cut through this complexity, particularly with its recent introduction of the Infor Velocity Suite, designed to accelerate the delivery of tangible business outcomes.
Mari Cross, Chief Customer Officer at Infor, understands this challenge intimately. Her role oversees teams dedicated to ensuring customers implement Infor’s solutions and continuously derive value from them. “We’re deeply committed to our customers,” Cross affirms, a commitment that extends equally to those running on legacy systems as it does to cloud-native clients.
Bridging the Divide
For companies anchored by older technology, the idea of a rip-and-replace can be daunting and disruptive. Infor offers a bridge. “We have approaches where we can create hybrid environments,” Cross explains. This allows businesses to immediately tap into the power of the Infor OS platform and house data in a modern data lake to prepare for optimization. According to Cross, the goal is a complete transition “to help them see the future and show what best practices look like.”
For Cross, the true partnership begins not at contract signing but after implementation: “When a customer goes live, it is probably Day one of their journey. But in the days following this, they start realizing value.”
Making Businesses Agile
The current economic climate, marked by volatility and unpredictable factors like tariffs, amplifies the urgency for businesses to become more efficient. This is the backdrop against which Infor launched the Velocity Suite. Cross describes it as a collection of advanced technology where things like process mining, automation, and AI are combined with services to help implement those technologies, which are almost like pre-wired business outcomes.
She notes that the emphasis is on the result. “The focus there is critical that we’re trying to not sell technology but really doctor outcomes for our customers,” Cross explains. This outcome-centric approach, rooted in Infor’s deep understanding of specific micro-vertical industries, makes the suite “really relevant for customers, especially in this environment, providing prepackaged solutions to common challenges like pricing pressures or resource constraints,” she adds.
Industry Specific AI
Additionally, Cross points out that AI capabilities are “built into our basic ERP applications,” providing industry-specific intelligence within daily workflows. The Velocity Suite then layers advanced AI and automation across the application landscape. “This allows Infor to identify and optimize processes or drive even further value beyond the core ERP functions,” Cross explains. She adds that because AI is part of the platform, it creates a much faster time to market compared to stitching together separate third-party tools.
Translating Capabilities into Action
When it comes to implementation, Infor follows a structured path for its customers: Diagnose, Automate, and Optimize. The company starts with understanding a customer’s core business drivers and then uses tools like process mining to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies.
“Process mining is literally observing all the processes within a customer’s business,” Cross notes, “helping pinpoint anomalies and prioritize areas for maximum impact on profitability or cost.”
Once the opportunities are clear, Infor applies solutions from its value-plus catalog—like accelerating invoice processing—or builds custom solutions. Automation removes manual steps, while optimization leverages AI and advanced modeling to enhance remaining activities, such as improving demand forecasting accuracy.
However, Cross acknowledges that barriers often include a lack of in-house expertise or the capacity to take on innovation projects while managing daily operations. By providing the technology and implementation support, Infor aims to lower that barrier.
“By engaging with us, as we automate, optimize, and reduce the workload, [customers] have more time to spend on strategic tasks,” she observes.
Cross illustrates the impact of this approach with some real-world examples:
Express Boats, a customer focused on rapid delivery, used process mining to optimize their shipping process, reportedly achieving a remarkable “50% reduction in expected shipping costs and in time of delivery.”
In another instance, Infor automated invoice processing for a customer, transforming a multi-step manual workflow into a near-automatic process.
A groundwater equipment distributor facing volatile demand due to weather leveraged Infor’s AI models for forecasting, achieving 90% more accurate forecasting compared to their previous method.
“These cases highlight the Velocity Suite’s potential for delivering significant, measurable results, often on timelines far shorter than traditional implementations,” Cross concludes.
What This Means for ERP Insiders
The focus is shifting to industry-specific solutions. While the move to cloud ERP is a clear trend, industry-specific solutions are better equipped to deliver tangible business outcomes. According to a McKinsey study, 75% of customers expect a lot of gains from software implementations, and only about 25% get those gains. This underscores the need to choose solutions and partners focused explicitly on value realization within your specific industry context, moving beyond generic systems that may fall into the “value void.”
Infor’s strength lies in its deep micro-vertical focus. For businesses in manufacturing, distribution, and other heavy industries, aligning with a vendor like Infor means they likely understand your unique processes, challenges, and value drivers from the outset. This can significantly accelerate time to value and ensure the technology effectively addresses your most critical needs. Moreover, companies like Infor stress a robust process mining strategy for these industries as it prioritizes identifying workflows with the highest potential impact on cost, revenue, or delivery time. For ERP users, decision criteria include selecting tools that integrate with your ERP and operational data, provide clear visibility into process anomalies and bottlenecks, and directly inform automation and optimization initiatives to ensure insights translate into action.
ERP providers must offer more than just transactional recording. Organizations should expect capabilities that provide real-time visibility into dynamic costs, support scenario planning for alternative sourcing or production, and enable quick adjustments to pricing and inventory strategies. Solutions that improve overall operational efficiency, like those for process automation and optimization within suites like Velocity, become crucial for offsetting increased supply chain costs.
