Infor10 Distribution Business (SX.enterprise) Road Map

Infor10 Distribution Business SX.enterprise We are committed to delivering value, addressing necessary changes, and continually providing solutions that help distributors solve their toughest business challenges.

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INTRODUCTION TO INFOR DISTRIBUTION

Supporting the Expanding Role of Distributors 

Infor is now the third largest business software company in the world and the leading provider of business solutions for mid market and tier-1 companies. With over 5,500 customers globally, the Infor Distribution business unit is uniquely positioned to deliver the most comprehensive solutions and services to the wholesale distribution industry.

Our heritage includes some of the most robust and easy-to-use solutions created specifically for wholesale distributors. These solutions have been made greater through optional extended solutions that Infor offers directly, like Demand Planning and Asset Management. In addition, we also work with strategic partners to bring our customers the best possible solutions to complete our offering, including best-in-class CRM, mobile solutions and strategic pricing. More importantly, we work closely with our active, extensive user community to deliver enhancements that put our solutions ahead of the curve. We deliver technology that makes sense to our customers, at a pace they can accept.

In addition, Infor Distribution employees have been serving this market, in many cases, for over 20 years, continuing our tradition of innovation in delivering the technology and tools you need to increase productivity, improve profitability and support growth – today as well as tomorrow.

We are committed to delivering value, addressing necessary changes, and continually providing solutions that help distributors solve their toughest business challenges such as: 

Infor is best positioned to predict, react, enact, and offer distributors what they need to thrive.

What Distributors are Seeking

We spend a lot of time listening to companies and this is what we frequently hear:

 You want software implementations to be faster, easier, more cost-effective, and less risky. Cost and time overruns are rampant in the software market and are simply not acceptable.

 You want customization to be minimal or better yet, to go away. You want the software to be designed so that it can meet your current and future business needs without having to write code or hire expensive consultants, and then do it again every time there is an upgrade.

 You want more value for maintenance, especially as it relates to making upgrades easier and more cost effective, so you can take advantage of new capabilities.

 You want integration to be easy and flexible so your application doesn't break when another application is changed or upgraded.

 You want a software provider that is committed to understanding your business and the unique challenges faced in your particular industry. And you want to software to support those specific requirements.

 You want a solution partner that is ready to support your distribution business even if you are exploring processes that more likely resemble a manufacturer, retailer, 3PL, or some combination.

 You want an end-user experience that is easy, consistent and requires little training or support, so users can focus on getting their jobs done versus learning a new application.

We understand the many challenges that companies like yours are trying to solve, and the common disconnect between what you need and what other software providers are delivering.

Our vision is for Infor Distribution to be established as the undisputed global software leader for the wholesale distribution market.

MARKET LANDSCAPE

To thrive in this post-recession economy, distributors often need to deliver more than what has been traditionally expected from them. Some distributors are delving into light manufacturing, some the retail arena, while others are exploring the value of resembling 3PLs and taking a more active role in managing their customers' inventory.

In addition to expanding the typical business model, distributors are always exploring new markets to drive organic growth, whether it be geographically or through new lines of business. Regardless of which tactic today's distributor takes to become more competitive in this changing landscape, the pressure to deliver exceptional service continues to rise.

This shifting landscape offers an opportunity for distributors to take a more proactive role in the value delivered from suppliers to customers—actively monitoring inventory demand, detecting trends, and implementing new strategies to help keep suppliers lean and customers satisfied. Advanced technology for synchronizing the data, processes and communications can help you do the job right.

Emerging Trends

These trends are increasingly impacting the traditional distributor models:

Additional Revenue from Value Adds

Increasingly, distributors are assuming responsibility for active manufacturing and assembly operations on behalf of their customers and suppliers for additional growth opportunities. These operations can include traditional value added operations such as kitting, labeling and assembly, or more complex value adds, such as customer-based milling or advanced manufacturing.

Customer Management and Marketing

For distributors, maintaining service levels and meeting the expectations of customers through increasingly customized order activity is where growth strategies succeed or fail. Understanding the value that customers expect and having visibility into the requirements, status and satisfaction of those demands, as well as leveraging that dynamic to target additional streams of revenue, has become critical in ensuring business success.

Distributor Managed Inventory

Distributors are being asked to actively manage and maintain correct inventory levels at a customer's location. Whether the customer, distributor or some combination of both actually owns that on-site inventory, this scenario takes service to a new level. For distributors looking to secure key customer relationships, it's important that they can demonstrate the value of that commitment and service, and charge appropriately for it.

Selling to and Employing the Next Generation

It's no longer enough to have an end-to-end ERP connecting your departments. Your business needs to be connected to your suppliers, customers, and employees. Business contacts are expecting to interact and order from a distributor (B2B) the same way they shop as a consumer on their favorite retail site (B2C). Also, advanced mobile applications are becoming a requirement, not a 'nice-to-have'. In order to bring in and retain the best employees to ensure your continued growth, you have to be available online, mobile-to-mobile and in the cloud.

Logistics and Transportation Management 

As companies increasingly serve a decentralized base of operations – whether from having multiple locations, relying on distant suppliers, or fulfilling orders for every customer – visibility and control over an exponentially larger group of variables becomes a critical barrier to growth on a global scope. Complete visibility into transportation methods, geographic scope of operation, and routing between destinations is critical to increasing customer satisfaction and lowering operational costs, especially as fuel charges continue to rise.

Ongoing Initiatives

In addition to being open to new business models, distributors must stay true to their core competencies and make investments to continually raise the standard of service they deliver, and subsequently, each of the following should be taken into consideration:

Advanced Ordering

Because today's distributor is faced with a dynamic network of supply and demand, order generation and management is at the core of delivering customer value. The ordering process needs easy access to information to process the order or request, including detailed customer sales history, product specifications, pictures of the various product offerings, an understanding of what is available to sell, and what replacement products can be ordered.

Balancing Demand and Supply

Managing the inventory lifecycle has never been more difficult, especially as distributors expand to multiple suppliers and seek to serve increasingly diverse groups of customers. Factors such as adequate forecast visibility to dynamic replenishment that directs inventory from the most efficient locations are critical factors in improving inventory management. This requires not only a comprehensive view of what inventory is where, but also the advanced intelligence to drive decisions on what best to do with that inventory.

Warehouse Management

Warehouse management has expanded from the ability to process orders within the four-wall environment, to a critical piece in directing the flow of goods from the original source to eventual destination. From shipment visibility through receiving, putaways, picking, packing, and shipping, the flow of goods from supplier to customer is a major area of value where the capabilities can be a significant competitive advantage. Warehouse management inventory flow, fulfillment times, inventory aging, and labor required for the management of that inventory can contribute up to 27 percent of the cost of goods sold.

Financial Management

Visibility across increasingly extended and complex financial operations is the key to sound financial management. Whether reducing operating costs or keeping an eye on profitability, managing the company budgets, customer account activities, credit extensions, or tracking asset value, strong financial control is critical to the organization's existence.

After Sales Services

Post-sales service has emerged as a common area of operations expected by many distributors today. As distributors seek to expand the role they play within the commercial sales area and seek additional revenue for that expanded role, the ability to manage service, repairs and warranty procedures for both the customer and supplier can contribute significant revenue and create additional selling opportunities for distributors today. Having complete visibility into managing these activities is the difference between this value-add success or failure.

Emerging Technology

We would be remiss if we didn't point out that new technology is one of the most influential drivers affecting the changing market landscape. For every initiative outlined above, there is a technology that can help make that process more effective. We don't suggest investing in technology for technology's sake, but for the real success that can be achieved when a solution is successfully implemented and adopted throughout the enterprise.

Business Intelligence

And perhaps the solution that has the greatest potential to positively impact the bottom-line across all departments is Business Intelligence (BI). For those companies that have been 'getting by' without a comprehensive BI strategy in place, the day of reckoning is approaching, if not already here. Everything is moving faster, and if you don't have the tools in place to get immediate answers to your business drivers, your competition will outmaneuver you. You need dashboards and alerts to point the way, intelligent reporting to provide clarity, scorecards to help set priorities, and analytics to more easily see the big picture.

Technology needs to be viewed as a competitive weapon that is integrated into your business to streamline operations and improve margins. Your challenge is to prioritize those initiatives that will provide you the greatest profit potential and continue to differentiate your offering. This reality serves as the fundamental driver to the future direction of Infor10 Distribution Business (SX.e).

Infor is committed to meeting the changing demands of wholesale distributors. In determining future product direction, we evaluate strategic requirements for durable and non-durable distribution markets in general and selected target markets in particular. We look at key solutions areas that will improve market competitiveness, support trends that push distributors to expand their business model, and provide innovative technology that supports the changing market landscape as well as requirements requested by our extensive base of installed customers.

Some key investments we believe will offer the most value to wholesale distributors include:

Hybrid Business Models

For those distributors seeking to incorporate manufacturing initiatives into their business model, it's important to recognize that Infor is uniquely positioned to meet your requirements. Whether through a value added services module or integrating your distribution solution to one of Infor's premier manufacturing ERPs, we have options for you to consider, and we'll continue to explore standardizing this integration.

Another hybrid model we're investigating addresses the growing need for distributors to deliver the same level of product information and service as a B2C retailer. Whether you need to support a full-blown online storefront or just counter sales and a showroom, Infor is interested in supporting these requirements.

Specific Industry Functionality

There are certain industries where Infor has a critical mass of customers, and it makes sense to develop standard enhancements to support the unique requirements of that industry. We work with customers and consultants in these industries (electrical, BMAT, industrial distribution, etc.) to build agreement on what the standard industry packs contain now and in the future.

An Improved User Interface (UI)

The new UI will add a leading edge, web-based user interface and will retain the speed and ease-of-use critical to distributors. The use of advanced controls to provide data visualization, an extendable platform for easy customization, and the adoption of Infor style guidelines will leapfrog what is currently available in the market. Docked in Workspace and leveraging context sensitive BI on the fly, Infor Distribution solutions will redefine the market.

Transformed User Platform Technology

Critical distribution functionality must be available when and where the distributors, and as importantly their partners, customers, suppliers, and employees, need it. That means it must be available on smart phones, iPads, Windows tablets, and touch screens.

Speed to X

Speed to X is both a platform and a philosophy. The current API layer has been augmented with code generation to expose all the data sets as web services that can be leveraged by either java or .NET clients. The same has been done for the application server business logic. This allows for quicker development time to market and easier modification management if customization is required.

Global Market Functionality

The core product will be enhanced to provide additional international capabilities, with a focus on North America and other English speaking countries that do business with customers and suppliers around the world. We are expanding taxation capabilities along with localizations and translations to Latin America and other smaller markets based on emerging opportunities and with the assistance of local partners.

SaaS / Appliance / Database

As we migrate to the web user interface, accelerating projects to support MS SQL and Oracle databases also increase the appeal of Enterprise. The simplification of settings and default values to be leveraged by the SaaS deployment also facilitate the appliance model. The vision here is simple. Whether you are a 5-user distributor with no physical inventory or a 10,000 user global organization, the Infor Distribution solution can deliver, on-premise or off.

Expand Strategic Partnerships

Infor will invest and expand key strategic relationships when it means offering additional value to enhance the core functionality we already deliver to wholesale distributors. You'll see this in areas like Infor CRM Business with Microsoft, Infor Advanced Mobile with BlueDot Solutions, Gross Margin Optimization and Data Cleansing with epaCUBE as part of the Infor Distribution BI offering, and Infor Solutions built on IBM Power Systems.

Best-in-World Functionality

While all the above initiatives are critical, we must not lose focus on what led to the market share we enjoy in North America and why others cannot offer the same solution breadth and depth, coupled with the corporate strength Infor brings to the table. As the supply chain evolves and functionality is redefined, distributors are compelled to advance or give up. Our customers depend on us to keep ahead of the feature commoditization curve and provide them with the solutions they need today and the innovation they'll depend on tomorrow.

Our commitment is clear. We are investing in our products, our people and most importantly, our customers. Our Infor developed solutions, customer or partner co-developed offerings, and the strategic providers with which we partner, all contribute to Infor offering the most comprehensive solution for wholesale distributors, backed by exceptional services and support.

We are bringing our message to the world with plans to grow domestically and internationally. We're investing heavily in our future and by extension, our customers' future. We challenge ourselves to remain true to our heritage companies and be the best partner we can be, while honoring the commitment and investment Infor has made and looking to the future to deliver on the promise of our full potential. 

This document reflects the direction Infor may take with regard to the specific product(s) described in this document, all of which is subject to change by Infor in its sole discretion, with or without notice to you. This document is not a commitment to you in any way and you should not rely on this document or any of its content in making any decision. Infor is not committing to develop or deliver anything described herein.