Infor’s new GenAI promises productivity boost for specific industries

The move comes at a time when organisations across all industries – from healthcare to manufacturing to distribution – are looking to technology to help them become more productive and alert in order to remain competitive, profitable, and compliant. 

Speaking at the "Infor Velocity World Tour Singapore 2024" on Tuesday, Terry Smagh, its Asia Pacific and Japan senior vice president and general manager, explained that Infor GenAI uses customers' industry data and processes, along with Large Language Models, to increase productivity in the industries they serve. For example, assigning attributes automatically to products in distribution, and creating exception summaries for complex projects in industrial manufacturing, would eliminate unnecessary work that users do today.

Emphasising that Infor did not create or develop Gen AI, he said Infor GenAI is the company's modern solutions that builds on its core ERP expertise.

"By combining with the power of Gen AI, Infor's modern solutions from industry-leading ERPs to supply chain solutions with unique industry capabilities and insights give customers immediate power to leverage the right data and workflows to help realise more value more quickly," he said.

 

 

Speed is key but not everything

In an era of economic uncertainty and rapid change, Smagh highlighted the value of time, stating that no business would be willing to wait for months to successfully transform and implement one technology.

The faster a company transforms, the faster it can achieve its goal and remain at the forefront of the industry. 

"All business owners say they need to undergo digital transformation and they want to implement AI into their industry, believing that having AI would definitely eradicate all their pains," he said. 
 

A recent McKinsey study discovered that 70 per cent of digital transformation initiatives fall short of their intended outcomes. The main reason was that they had false expectations about AI as a magical potion. 

"We want to get to where we need to be in the fastest, shortest possible way.  Infor develops purpose-built applications. We kind of think and understand what is required, not only now but also in the future. And we bring the best practices and benchmarks to you," he said.

Getting operations done faster, quicker, and being more agile could be a significant advantage, he noted. However, when discussing enterprise capability, multi-tenancy, and moving workloads to the cloud, the issues are primarily about how one organisation achieves business agility.

That's where Infor GenAI and its industrial-specific solutions come in. 

"How do you become more efficient? How do you become more productive? Everyone is talking about AI, or Gen AI, which are popular buzzwords. How do you get that onto the production floor? How does that affect your people? So, I believe verticalised industry solutions with what we have to offer today are really about looking at your current needs, looking at the industries that you're in, looking at your benchmarks and their peers, and bringing that really super agile platform to your use," he said.  

Speed must be accompanied by great efficiency, which means that no matter how advanced the technology, it will be useless if it is incompatible with your business. The same goes for Gen AI, he noted. 

Infor's senior vice president of solution consulting, Phil Lewis, suggested that prioritising a company's vision and objectives before deciding which technology and AI to use is the best way for one company to begin its transformation journey. 

"It's the vision of the organisation [that is important]. This doesn't just apply to data. This applies to any kind of digitisation or transformation. The biggest mistake that we see is when people start with a technology, they think ‘I've got to do it, I've got to use some AI'," he said, adding that this perception was also one of the biggest challenges for an organisation to go through its own digital transformation. 

Lewis identified three key principles for Infor to develop a targeted digital solution: complete industry-specific solutions, a single connected platform for innovation and intelligence, and experience-oriented and hyper-productive solutions. 

"If we truly understand the uniqueness of your company, we can create a strong, targeted digital solution," he said. 

Wolfgang Kobek, executive vice president and general manager of Infor, said the company wants to assist its clients in dealing with the challenges of digital adoption.

"We want to address that and help our customers avoid these pitfalls," he said, emphasising that Infor was here to change the game. 

 

Further expansion in Thailand

In an exclusive interview with The Nation, Smagh said that Infor was already planning business strategies to expand its presence in Thailand for customers and partners.

"Thailand is Infor's largest ASEAN market and regional sales force. We have been in the market for a while. We have a strong presence in Thailand in manufacturing, retail, and automotive," he said.

Despite many Thai companies, like the rest of Asia Pacific, being conservative and slow or reluctant to embrace new technology, he is confident that the situation is improving.

"It is not perfect, but it is getting better. However, this is not unique to Thailand. We also see it in the Philippines and Indonesia, where customers are very conservative. They're waiting and seeing, but this is changing. So far, we haven't seen a customer or a customer's partners who want to do something but don't. They are very forward thinking, but also systematic, cautious, and ready to act," he said. 

Citing the positive momentum that many Thai manufacturers now understand cloud technologies and AI concepts, as well as the strong support from the government sector, Infor has had a lengthy discussion with machine manufacturing customers. 

"They want to migrate to the cloud. And we've seen a lot of these companies looking into the cloud. We are also very excited because Thailand is a country where the ministry has asked a lot of businesses to automate under Industry 4.0 policies, and there is a big thing happening right now," he said. There was already a lot of demand from existing customers as well as potential new customers in the industrial area where Infor operates, he revealed.

He emphasised that Infor's primary focus market in ASEAN was Thailand, and he intended to expand by hiring a large sales force and adding new partners. 

"We intend to double our partner ecosystem in Thailand this year. We are looking for partners with deep capabilities in our focus industries of industrial manufacturing, automotive, and distribution," he said. 

Smagh believes that with its distinct industry-specific solutions, the company could continue its growth and achieve double-digit year-on-year growth in Asia Pacific in fiscal year 2024. 

Founded in 2002, Infor is the world's leading provider of industry-specific business cloud software. Currently, approximately 68,000 organisations in over 175 countries use Infor solutions to accelerate their cloud transformation. As of December 2023, the company had over 17,000 employees worldwide and had set a new revenue record of US$3.4 billion due to the exponentially growing demand for cloud services among businesses.