Infor, the world's third-largest ERP vendor, has ambitious plans to move from a mid-market ERP vendor to a full range vendor, taking on the likes of SAP and Oracle on the global industry stage.
Jane Thomson, Managing Director of Softworx, a South African provider of business applications and local Infor partner, says with the recent overhaul of Infor's strategy and the introduction of new CEO Charles Phillips, the company had released an industry-altering product in the form of Infor10.
“Along with Infor's new strategy came a new approach to product development that is clear when looking at Infor10. The product has been termed the 'ERP game changer', and offers out-of-the-box industry-specific applications which set a new standard for business software.”
Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor, has been in the role for almost a year now and often says that following his 25 years in the business, he has an intimate understanding of what people don't like about the enterprise software market. He quotes the challenges and cost of upgrading and infrastructure problems as forefront on that list. “Our challenges locally are no different,” says Thomson, “our clients routinely comment on the cost of customising business software for their specific organisations, and the costs around such customisation inhibit them from moving forward with upgrades.”
Thomson says South African manufacturers and distributors are looking for business software that is specific to the demands of their business, and not a “one-size-fits-all” solution requiring lengthy and costly customisation to accommodate industry-specific requirements.
Infor10 is completely specialised by industry, and as a result, is a more cost-effective and flexible option for companies needing specific applications, as opposed to bolt-on applications offered by competitors. Infor partners such as Softworx can easily provide industry-specific functionality through widgets and mash-ups at a micro industry level, given its local domain expertise, and integrate these into the standard Infor suites. This will provide added value to customers and prevent the local customisation of the solution.
Infor has launched a worldwide campaign to publicise the launch of Infor10, and the refreshed thinking displayed on all fronts. Over the past year, eight of the 12 senior executives at Infor have changed, giving rise to a completely refreshed management strategy and a heavy investment in software engineers, adding over 400 new resources to the total headcount.
In addition to the industry-specific option, Infor10 also offers a completely new interface when looking at enterprise software. Similar to desktop social networking applications like Tweetdeck, Infor10 presents all relevant information on one screen, including role-based workflows, task and alerts, in-context business intelligence, event management, consumer-like search capabilities and business activity streams. In essence, users are able to search and select the feeds they would like to see on their workspace.
“Infor10 is an incredible product produced by a company on an upward path, and with the amount of user and back-end upgrades to this product, as well as support for their partners, I am looking forward to future innovations from Infor that we can offer our clients locally,” concludes Thomson.
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Softworx
Softworx is a successful South African business applications company that prides itself in being able to deliver world-class products to its extensive customer base, which includes a number of Fortune 500 companies. In addition, Softworx supports clients in industries ranging from manufacturing, retail, distribution and financial, to supporting various government entities. The company is dedicated to marketing, implementing and providing support for its range of complimentary software products to medium and large enterprises that require effective solutions to optimise their business processes.
Softworx has positioned itself as a leading provider of business applications in South Africa, specialising in end-to-end business solutions. The company prides itself on being able to deliver true value to its customers through the implementation of business solutions based on a powerful combination of leading-edge products and consultancy. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of EOH, Softworx has increased the number of services and products that can be offered to its customers from within the group.
EOH
Listed company EOH is the largest enterprise applications provider in SA and one of the top five IT service providers. EOH follows the consulting, technology and outsourcing model to provide high value, end-to-end solutions to its clients in all industry verticals. For more information, visit: www.eoh.co.za.
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