Dear frustrated retailer:

Are you responsible for the success of your company’s retail business from sales, margin, and inventory levels to overall customer satisfaction? If so, what happens when a valuable customer tries to make a purchase from one of your stores or online but is disappointed when there is no inventory? Odds are great you won’t get them back. Out of stocks are a huge problem for your financial bottom line.

What happens when you have excess inventory in the wrong products, wrong locations, or at the wrong time, leading to disappointed customers? You might not be back. Slow moving, stagnant inventory stranded in various locations throughout your supply chain is a tremendous problem for your financial bottom line—and your career.

Your greatest challenge is balancing the need to satisfy customers with your business’ profitability and
growth. Customer loyalty is finicky. They demand inventory when they want it, where they want, and
have a myriad of options on their smartphone to change brands, retailers, locations, and delivery
method. In this new age of retail, you can’t afford to lose a customer to your competition. At the same
time, you can’t load up every location/channel with an infinite amount of inventory in hopes of satisfying every customer’s purchase

Infor is focused on productivity improvements and outcomes-based delivery of projects as the keys to ERP technology success.

To enhance productivity, Infor wants to make it easier for customers to move to its CloudSuite systems, a cloud-based ERP, and wants those systems to be embedded with intelligent ERP technologies such as business analytics, as well as AI, machine learning and robotic process automation (RPA).

"We're constantly looking at ways for our software to bring value to your organization," Infor CEO Kevin Samuelson said during Inforum 2019's opening keynote.

There is interest in intelligent ERP, but some customers and analysts believe it's too early to tell if it will be widely adopted in applications.

Digital transformation is on the agendas of virtually all corporations today. It has risen to the top of strategic plans and has become the focus of businesses around the globe. So great an industry evolution, IDC indicates spending on technologies and services that enable the digital transformation of businesses will hit $1.97 trillion in 2022.

Distribution business trends for 2019, the year of moving strategically.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has a lot of people talking. The fact that those people no longer hail primarily from the world of science fiction is representative of just how far the ideas driving this technology have come. AI has entered the mainstream, and it has the technology world buzzing with excitement. The potential applications of AI are vast and varied. And in truth, that is where the real excitement lies—in finding out just how far we can take AI, and in turn, how far it can take us.

Kelly Squizzero, Infor’s Director, Industry & Solution Strategy, points to five key business trends that are shaping distribution business in 2019.

Could AI solve that problem? Speed that process? Five important things you should ask to unearth AI opportunities in your organization.This article by Kevin Casey at the Enterprisers Project which is a community of CIOs discussing the future of business and IT, provides actionable insights on how IT and business leaders can think clearly about where AI might be a good fit. 

Start by putting the infrastructure in place to support a new way of thinking. 

The growing enthusiasm for Artificial Intelligence (AI) is unquestionable and well documented. CEOs marvel at the potential of AI and deep learning to perform cognitive functions such as problem solving and reasoning – functions previously undertaken only by people. 

Rather than making us redundant, all the evidence says that AI amplifies our potential. Infor’s Rick Rider explains how AI can make us better at being human.

This checklist provides nine elements critical to a successful digital deployment, based on a timely report by Constellation Research.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has a lot of people talking. The fact that those people no longer hail primarily from the world of science fiction is representative of just how far the ideas driving this technology have come. AI has entered the main stream, and it has the technology world buzzing with excitement. The potential applications of AI are as vast and varied as any complex technology vision that has ever been brought to life. And in truth, that is where the real excitement lies—in finding out just how far we can take AI and in turn, how far it can take us. In this paper, we’ll take a look at the many exciting applications taking shape for AI today; what ideas are on the horizon; and importantly, what the potential impact on the B2B world might be.

Expectations are high, as long as AI delivers real business value

What do IT decision makers really think about AI? Are they buying the hype? Are they laying some groundwork for artificial intelligence implementations?

Random interviews with several IT managers across a variety of industries on The Hub show floor at Inforum 2018 reveal what one might expect — a variety of opinions on AI. But most all believe it could be big, possibly very big.

Another widely held belief is that tapping into the capability of AI to optimize human potential will take some trial and error. To some extent, this reflects the thinking of sports superstar Venus Williams, who told a packed General Session at Inforum, “Failure is a huge part of knowing your pushing yourself hard enough.”

But all agreed on one thing: IT must acknowledge AI in some way, and at least begin to closely and seriously examine how it might fit into their organizations. After all, as Williams said, “It’s not where you start, but where you finish.”