What’s Infor been up to?

MUMBAI, INDIA: Back in 2012, Forrester analyst George Lawrie had mentioned Infor and SAP-Oracle duopoly in the same breath. He had pointed out interoperability, loose coupling upgrade advantage, vertical-specific offerings and other such differentiators leaning on the side of Infor’s strength-kitty. Interestingly enough, this enterprise software challenger has grabbed more than those squares in industry quadrants and has been stirring up the ERP geometry in India too with more fervent ink than ever,

A few months back in a chat with CIOL, Charles Phillip, CEO, Infor had remarked that Infor is committed to making enterprise software beautiful and how typical ERP vendors are ignoring that truth. “I wanted to approach it with a new energy. Our differentiation is simple – no generic product for all industries and instead purpose-built products.” He had been surgically-precise.

As the camera pans to today, we are told that Infor has clocked a global 90 per cent YoY growth with 3000 new customers, 15 ERP products so far and 700 new features and functions released.

Jeff Abbott, Senior Vice President - Global Alliances and Channels and Demand Generation who was in the country recently pulled up a chair and told us why and how Infor keeps making its incision in an otherwise giant-dominated, horizontally-freckled and AMC-pockmarked world of enterprise software. And what keeps the big rivals scared and sleepless today?

How is India warming up to the USP Infor has been talking about?

As to India, the key products sold are LN, M3,Syteline, Supplychain Execution, EAM, ION, and SunSystems. We have focused on the following manufacturing verticals – Fashion, Food & Beverage, Retail, Logistics, Automotive, Industrial Machinery, Hi Tech Electronics. There is a big recruitment of partners in full flow in order to get geographical coverage and to help in the mid-market push. We have over 700 customers and are growing every day. We have made some notable customer wins that cut across verticals, like: Kent RO, L&T (LN), Asian Paints (Optiva), Future Supply Chains, Madura Garments (WMS), All Cargo (WMS, SunSystems and EAM), Dalal Engineering (LN), Merino Industries (LN), Brandix (M3), Emkay Global (SunSystems), Transparent Energy (LN), Magnum Forge (SyteLine), Electronica Toughcarb (LN), Transformers & Rectifiers (LN) and Shivalik Bimetal Controls Ltd. Incidentally, WMS -NB Infor is number one in WMS in APAC according to ARC.

We have had  3,261 new customers in FY14, 25 million cloud users, 1,810 new employees in FY14, 1,065 new engineers in the last year, 421 new products and 16,300 new features last 18 months. The number of customers in India to date is 914 and the partner count in India is 28.

What made Inforum worth the talk this year? Why is Cloud snatching so much attention?

We launched CloudSuite strategy and lots of micro verticals on Cloud with risk-free paths and latest features and functions. Big or small, vendors or users, no one can ignore Cloud but when it comes to strategy we have an advantage. In fact, our biggest competitor is terrified of this cloud force and is spending billions on acquisitions. The new price model that is emerging is understandably scary to them.

Let’s talk about customization. What’s happening in this industry on that front?

Well, customers hate customization. When you do innovation, you do it for life. We have a cloud-ready platform and encourage customers to move beyond customization and do away with headaches. Vertical-focus drives us as we do not believe in carrying the same code database across verticals. From a technology point of view, it could be a nightmare and that’s why we have invested as much as a billion dollars into R&D and that’s all we have been doing in last four to five years. The scope of modification and extension would always be there but our effort is always on minimizing it.

Is Vertical-funneling playing out right?

It has been quite a gap in the market and we are taking market share away from large competitors now. The customers are especially impressed. Our architecture is built on apt principles so that customers are not lost in proprietary lock-ins. We have been focusing on an ability to create excitement round customer experience. We map out new personas for new verticals and we not just approach CXOs but new decision-makers and savvy users of these times.

But enterprise software can be big and beautiful at the same time? Is that not too far-fetched or a conflict with the way things have been?

In fact, beautiful enterprise software does seem like a paradox as business applications are not, historically, beautiful. The user interface (UI), which is how people interact with software, has been designed to make business processes easy and fast, but not beautiful. But we have taken a different take as we feel it can be beautiful. Infor has created its own in-house design studio, Hook & Loop, to do this and this was purposely built last year in our new head office in New York. We've recruited software designers even from art, fashion and theatre houses - not just software companies to bring the right skills and visions to bear. Infor believes beautiful software is what drives an exceptional user experience to boost their productivity, their enjoyment with using these applications and even create a fun environment where collaborative decisions can be made with ease.

Why are companies like Salesforce bringing out Lightning etc? How do you reckon the new developer baskets coming?

It is providing a specific industry gap and that’s what we did as well. We have a developer platform and not just some modifications or extensions.

Is there a cloud-first genre of customers and companies that you see in the market?

In India, the talk about Cloud picked up a couple of years back. I guess both from a vendor and a user perspective, there has been a ‘wait and watch’ stance. I think India has been a little cautious so far but now we can see the cloud-readiness clearly.

Can you share something about how key is the Hyderabad Centre of Excellence to your overall portfolio and development work?

Infor’s 140,000 Sq. ft. Centre of Excellence opened in April 2010 and has grown phenomenally and already employs 1200 staff and the plan is to grow this by over 150 people by end of Infor fiscal year. The CoE Already supports many Indian customers as well as global brands like Boeing, Ferrari, Siemens, ABB, OTIS, Sony and BMW. It provides services on over 40 Infor products and also plays a key role in developing some of the new strategic products for Infor – LN, EAM, CRM, WMS, ION, Workspace and Inforce.com. The Hyderabad center also has a global support team which provides level-2 support to customers in APAC and EMEA. The focus is on positioning Infor as an innovation engine introducing newer technologies and products for India market, and as a company that is committed to hire and nurture valuable talent for the growth of India. Research and Development is at heart of Infor’s strategy to create software that simplifies the way people work, and create compelling experiences for enterprise software users.

What in nutshell is Infor’s differentiation edge in this recently-changing market?

We have the potential and scope for enterprise applications in growing markets with our micro-vertical focused approach to provide solutions to best fit the demanding requirements of different sectors. Infor as a company has outlined strategic roadmap for its customers by bringing in technology innovation. Infor’s specialized solutions cater to the specific need of each industry (e.g. Automobile, Fashion, F&B etc.). Therefore Infor’s tag line states: Infor is “Specialized by Industry. Engineered for Speed”. Infor believes that with the market dynamics compelling businesses to strategize and react faster, their lies a huge void across industries, to which smarter technologies can play an important role.