5 Ways Infor ERP will Enable Midsize Enterprise Transformation in 2024

May 02, 2024

Infor | 5 min READ

Traditionally, businesses considered Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software a technology for large-scale enterprises. But in an increasingly competitive market, this perception is shifting fast.

Ravindra Kabbur

Sr Solution Architect

Infor

Birlasoft

In turn, ERP solution providers are beginning to recognize the needs of midsize enterprises. As CFOs subject technology investments to greater scrutiny, the need for solutions with focused capabilities and lower overheads is universally felt.

Not all ERP solutions are suitable for midsize organizations. Fewer IT resources, shallower pockets, and tight competition from large-scale players and new entrants call for nimble and low-touch ERP offerings.

Infor, a leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP 2023, has been paying close attention to the evolving digital requirements of midsize enterprises. This is evident in the fact that Infor achieved the highest product scores from Gartner use cases in critical capabilities for cloud ERP for product-centric mid-size enterprises in discrete and process manufacturing. Recent updates and new offerings from the ERP leader present a spectrum of opportunities for midsize companies.

Learn more about the 5 ways in which the Infor ERP platform will drive midsize enterprise transformation in 2024.

How Infor ERP will enable midsize enterprise transformation in 2024

#1. Industry-specific offerings will build more functional processes with reduced overheads

What an organization needs from its ERP solution varies significantly across industries. This made customizability a highly sought-after attribute of ERP systems, enabling businesses to fit the solution into their processes. However, this customizability came at a cost that midsize enterprises could not afford.

Customizations meant expensive deployments and increased maintenance overheads. The complexity of such customizations could not be handled by the smaller IT teams of midsize organizations.

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Infor’s industry-specific solutions eliminate this hurdle from the ERP adoption journey. Infor ERP provides targeted capabilities for various sectors, like manufacturing, distribution, retail, and healthcare. They offer robust functionalities that address critical challenges specific to these industries – thus enabling midsize companies to optimize their processes and attain industry-leading KPI benchmarks from day 1.

In addition to faster RoI, industry-specific ERP capabilities warrant fewer customizations, thus reducing the deployment cost and ongoing maintenance and management overheads.

#2. Cloud deployment models will accelerate cloud maturity in the midmarket

ERP systems came long before the advent and mass adoption of cloud. Over time, ERP systems accrued so much complexity that migrating them to the cloud became challenging and costly with uncertain outcomes.

Yet, cloud-based deployments offer significant advantages over on-prem deployment models. Cloud deployment has better scalability and enables users to orchestrate critical enterprise processes from anywhere. Moreover, cloud-based, product-centric ERPs eliminate the need for retrofitting the solution to the business model, by providing out-of-the-box industry capabilities and best practices implemented by default. In addition, preconfigured standard deployable objects and interfaces reduce the need for extensive customization.

Businesses can further accelerate the time to value with a 30-60-10 implementation approach. For midsize enterprises, all of these benefits are even more critical as they tend to scale faster and adopt hybrid work models as a strategy to differentiate themselves in the talent market.

Infor’s cloud-based deployment option now brings these advantages to midsize organizations. Moreover, it eliminates the need to own and manage the underlying IT infrastructure and turns ERP costs into OpEx spend.

#3. Native AI and ML capabilities will ease adoption and bring repeatable success

AI adoption tends to be a hit or a miss for midsize organizations. Integrating AI into the ERP lands them into a loop of experimentation and scaling challenges, thus rapidly draining resources.

Infor ERP makes available native AI and ML capabilities within the platform. Infor Coleman and Infor Enterprise Automation offer prebuilt content to build asset intelligence, improve pricing decisions with AI, and automate cognitive and swivel-chair tasks with automation.

This enables midsize organizations to ignore the how of AI adoption in ERP. Instead, it fast-tracks them to the results, including improved operational efficiency, accurate forecasting and planning, enhanced decision-making, and better customer experience.

#4. Consumer-grade user experience will come to the midsize ERP environment

One of the trickiest aspects of ERP programs in midsize companies is attaining high adoption after implementation. Adoption issues usually result from clunky interfaces, poor experience design, and rigid accessibility options.

Infor ERP eliminates this hurdle for midsize enterprises. It presents a modern user experience comparable to consumer-grade apps and delivers the right functionalities at the right place. It provides role-based dashboards that empower employees to make data-driven decisions and democratize access to insights drawn from business-critical data.

Lastly, accessing these features in mobile apps greatly improves the accessibility to critical enterprise processes – enabling users to act quickly anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

#5. Simpler and more reliable integration of the ERP into the enterprise ecosystem

ERPs sit at the crossroads between multiple enterprise systems – CRM, eCommerce, HRM, supply chain, IoT, SCADA, and MES – the list goes on. The topology of enterprise systems varies strongly across organizations and industries, making integration a key factor of success for ERP programs.

Poor integrations break frequently, affecting business-critical processes and raising maintenance costs. Moreover, managing a growing number of integrations becomes even more challenging as new systems and solutions are added to the enterprise technology stack.

Infor OS offers a native application integration platform, enabling businesses to build a continuous digital fabric across their systems. This managed API layer provides a complete set of API orchestration and management capabilities within a single place. This enables a low-touch integration experience and abstracts the complexity of API scripting from the administrators.

With improved cross-system visibility and reliable integration management, the connected midsize enterprise is now attainable, even without a whole team of IT engineers.

Building a productivity engine with Infor ERP

Today, digital transformation is no longer limited to a select few pockets of the enterprise. Competitive market conditions and changing industry dynamics are compelling midsize organizations to tap into every productivity lever in their arsenal.

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Infor ERP brings these productivity levers as ready-to-deploy offerings for midsize organizations. It offers self-contained features for transforming workforce management, asset management, and supply chain processes that run on the nimble yet powerful Infor OS.

Infor ERP is a complete solution that can turn a midsize organization into a digital powerhouse. With a trusted technology partner, businesses can now leverage the Infor ERP suite to advance their digital maturity and transform their organization into an intelligent productivity engine.

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