Infor, a leading provider of beautiful business applications specialized by industry and built for the cloud, today announced Infor CloudSuite™ is now available for the wholesale distribution industry. The cloud-based suite pairs a consumer-grade interface with rich distribution functionality that is deployed with a flexible, subscription-based delivery model designed to significantly reduce upfront IT expenditure. The CloudSuite options provide a modern suite of enterprise cloud applications to meet the needs of any distributor, regardless of size, geography, or micro-vertical focus.
The Infor CloudSuite for distribution is designed to address the pressures exerted on wholesale distributors including the need for speed, flexibility, and differentiation through services. Cloud Solutions that can be deployed quickly, adopted and expanded easily, with streamlined order processing, flexible pricing, and tools to optimize inventory, can be of great value to distributors. The cloud journey, once taken, allows wholesale distributors to remain on a modern platform, automatically accessing the latest technologies so they can focus energies on building competitive differentiation.
“As distributors continue to seek out better ways to gain flexibility, enhance customer satisfaction and strengthen value-added services, the prospect of migrating to a cloud-hosted environment is becoming more apparent to the industry. Infor has aligned itself with a trusted partner in AWS, which allows distribution customers to establish a path to reducing capital IT investment,” said Simon Ellis, Program VP, IDC Manufacturing Insights, a leading source of research and consulting services for supply chains businesses and IT leaders. “As cloud adoptions continue to grow universally for businesses in almost every vertical, the distribution industry is shifting in that direction as well.”
The Infor CloudSuite solutions utilize Infor ION®, a purpose-built middleware and Infor Ming.le™, the social collaboration engine, which supports better internal and external communications, including between customers and their suppliers. These enhancements provide better visibility and accountability by allowing users to view real-time data at any time and from any location. Infor CloudSuite does not require users to purchase onsite servers or additional physical hardware, thereby lowering long-term IT costs associated with on-premise hosting. Because cloud delivery via AWS is managed through a monthly subscription, Infor CloudSuite requires a reduced upfront investment, serving as an operating instead of a capital expense which can be very beneficial, as most wholesale distributors typically operate on small margins.
Infor CloudSuite not only offers customers the ability to reduce their capital cost, but also allows customers’ IT staff to focus on strategic initiatives and take advantage of new features and solutions as new releases are made available. This means that less energy is focused on maintaining an increasingly complex infrastructure and more energy can be put back into core business initiatives. The solution offers customers a full enterprise suite for their entire business, including Business Intelligence, collaboration through Infor Ming.le, Infor ION for seamless integrations, Implementation Accelerator for Distribution for fast and efficient implementations, Enterprise Search to quickly find information, Document Management for storing and accessing documents, images and other content related to the business.
“Just shy of two years ago Infor began to announce the creation and availability of the Infor CloudSuite group of industry-specific application suites and today we are very excited to announce the availability of Infor CloudSuite for distribution, applications designed to meet the needs of all distributors and deployed in the cloud,” said Kelly Squizzero, industry and solution strategy director, Infor Distribution. “The wholesale distribution industry is continuously evolving, and by operating in the cloud our customers are able to meet the demands of their industry while still staying up to date with the most innovative technologies available.”
Infor customers include:
· 18 of the top 20 aerospace companies
· 10 of the top 10 high tech companies
· 10 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies
· 21 of the 25 largest U.S. healthcare delivery networks
· 18 of the 20 largest U.S. cities
· 20 of the top 20 automotive suppliers
· 17 of the top 20 industrial distributors
· 15 of the top 20 global retailers
· 4 of the top 5 brewers
· 21 of the top 30 global banks
· 6 of the 10 largest global hotel brands
· 6 of the top 10 global luxury brands
