Infor’s cloud solutions provide Middle East clients digital edge

NEW YORK // The opening of the Inforum 2016 three-day conference in New York on Monday was a suitably spectacular introduction by the host, the US cloud and app specialists Infor, one of the world leaders in business information technology.
To a background of thumping rap music and flashing lights at Manhattan's huge Javits centre, a video on an enormous screen showed a biker riding a Triumph motorcycle (the company is an Infor client) through the rush-hour traffic of New York. More a pop video than a company presentation, it ended with the rider appearing moments later in exactly the same leathers and helmet on the stage in front of several hundred of the 8,000 attendees registered.
That the biker's hair had apparently grown several inches in the sprint from car park to stage only slightly spoiled the effect of the arrival of Pam Murphy, Infor's chief operating officer as she took off her helmet.
Thus began a two-hour presentation of the company's view of where cloud-based business solutions are at and where they are going. It is pinning its hopes on a series of what it calls CloudSuites, designed to provide businesses and entire industries with the tools necessary to compete in an increasingly digitised world.
With one of its catchphrases being digital disruption, Infor says it is leading the way in providing clients with instant and customised access to the kind of deep, intercommunicating analytics that previously could only be dreamed of.
The multinational, which has offices in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, has four operating divisions, which it says "help commercial, professional and academic communities to connect and learn, and which create and provide access to content and intelligence that helps customers work smarter and make better decisions faster".
A fifth division, Global Support, underpins the group and provides business services to the other divisions.
Infor's Business Intelligence (BI) division "provides specialist data, intelligence and insight to our customers, helping them make smarter decisions, gain competitive advantage and enhance return on investment.
BI offers a portfolio of more than 100 digital subscription products, providing critical intelligence to decision makers and influencers within five core industry verticals: finance; agribusiness; maritime and law; telecoms, media and technology; and pharma and health care".
The emphasis on digital disruption as both a threat and an opportunity was illustrated by the firm citing a couple of examples where such disruption has led to the rapid creation of new players whose agility and tech know-how has enabled them to become huge international entities. Uber, the world's biggest taxi company, Infor points out, does not actually own any vehicles, while one of the planet's largest hospitality operators, Airbnb, has no real estate. Less than a decade ago these two, and others like them, were not even a twinkle in their founders' eyes.
Infor's full-year 2015 results seem to support its insistence that the future is connected and that the firm is a leading connector. The company had revenue of £1.21 billion, up 6.6 per cent on 2014, with adjusted operating profit of £365.5 million, an increase of 9.5 per cent on the previous year.
Among companies in the GCC that will eventually come onboard with the firm's outlook is Saudi Arabia's Zahid Tractor & Heavy Machinery, the country's main Caterpillar dealer as well as its Volvo and Renault Truck dealer.
One of the firm's subsidiaries out of Jebal Ali, Altaaqa Global in 2014 became the first Zahid Group company to implement Infor M3 for equipment in less than nine months. The firm said it is continuing to roll out to other companies across the group in Saudi Arabia throughout 2017-2018 with an expanded configuration of the latest version of the Infor M3 solution. Composed of scalable applications for the equipment industry including supply chain execution, warehouse mobility, sales management and financial accounting, the M3 solution is designed to help Zahid "increase visibility of critical business information, support the smooth flow of data between departments and streamline business processes across 40 sites throughout the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia", according to Barig Siraj, the CIO for Zahid Group.
Infor says: "As a multi-site, multi-country, and multi-company solution, M3 empowers organisations to adapt to changing business needs. It provides flexibility in managing mixed-mode and complex environments, with the agility to make quick adjustments at any time. Written in Java, M3 also gives you platform independence and choice." The contract was signed and implemented by Infor with the participation of Accentia Middle East, Infor's M3 partner for the Middle East and North Africa.
Zahid said its business divisions had seen major growth since the end of the last financial crash, and its original data management structures were not able to keep up.
Accentia pointed out that the switch to M3 enables companies such as Zahid to maintain and develop a competitive edge.
"Equipment dealers operate in an extremely competitive and challenging market, and so Infor has created a true value-added community by establishing an equipment centre of excellence in Sweden and a CAT community where dealers like Zahid can collaborate with similar dealers round the world," said Samir Alwani, the chief executive and president of Accentia.
"This community and the strength of the Infor M3 application for equipment can really help dealers operate more strategically and profitably in the years ahead."
Ms Murphy's leather-clad arrival heralded a section briefly outlining the firm's view of the internet of Things and how it is rapidly becoming an essential part of business considerations.
The management consulting firm McKinsey predicts the global economic value from the internet of Things could reach US$11 trillion by 2020, when 50 billion devices will probably be connected.
For industries such as manufacturing and asset maintenance, interconnected devices can mean major changes to the way manufacturers design, produce, inventory and distribute products to customers.
This paradigm shift is close at hand, Infor believes.
Still, as Ms Murphy adeptly demonstrated, while that seismic revolution impacts most areas of commerce, a biker will always be a biker.
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