Chances are your brand already relies on an ERP solution to house foundational functions and master data. But can it withstand the rapid developmental, transactional, and digitized industry of the future? To meet the rigorous demands of supply, demand, financials, inventory management, and the needs of a collaborative network, the ERP solution employed by your company needs to have the flexibility to meet changing business models, encapsulate industry best practice processes, and integrate in real time with other key applications. Just as your people need to be connected in a collaborative network, so do your technology solutions.

As an equipment rental organization that wants to differentiate itself in a highly competitive market, you need to offer your customers the right rental equipment, when and where they want it, at the right price. The challenges you face today are forcing you to rethink the way you do business.

Modernize your business with Infor CloudSuite™ Equipment Rental, a cloud-based, rental-focused ERP solution that allows you to deploy faster, respond faster, and evolve faster, while running your business on the most secure infrastructure available.

CloudSuite Equipment Rental is designed specifically for rental companies that are focused on growth, customer engagement, and extended services. Supporting almost 40 localizations and 18 languages, and built on industry best practices, the solution gives you the flexibility and scalability to easily take on new markets and quickly adapt to change. It features deep, proven capabilities to support all your business processes—not just rental.

Even better, the solution is delivered in the cloud—ensuring efficiency, cost savings, built-in support for global operations, and security that follows industry-leading best-practice protocols.

Since 1983, Mitchell B. Chi, CPA, MBA, and General Manager - Enterprise Software, has worked with many Fortune 500 companies and hundreds of fast growth start-ups in designing low-cost agile business systems to stay ahead of the competition. He has authored numerous white papers, been a keynote speaker at national conferences, and continues to advise companies in building a “strategic vision with tactical results”.

Mitchell held executive positions with PriceWaterhouse, Goldman Sachs, Oracle, Infor, and 11 successful start-ups. A technology company he founded, MicroSage, won Small Business of the Year from the Small Business Administration. The next year MicroSage was awarded Minority Sub-contractor of the Year from the Department of Energy.

Mitchell is a dynamic and passionate speaker on many topics, especially how to stay relevant in today’s economy by empowering technology.

Q. The United States has depended on overseas manufacturing for many of our products which, in times like the current pandemic, has created a supply chain breakdown leading to stock out situations. In response to that do you think companies will focus on bringing more manufacturing back on shore to address this problem?

A. In the 1990’s, America sacrificed quality, availability, and brand loyalty for shareholder value, top line revenues, and acquisitions. The consumer was complicit in this, as they also sacrificed quality for price.

Fast forward to our current global quarantine and staying alive times. I believe the manufacturing reboot will be organic and with a huge “Buy America” movement, A.C. (After Corona). The US has a significant inventory of idle factories, the highest unemployment in history, and many families continue to be worried about basic commodities. Consider this: If there was a 10% increase due to “Buy America” that’s $2.15T of the US GDP of $21.47T. The trickle down could be as high as 5x or $10.75.2T from real estate (commercial and residential) renovations and durable goods to services and even, entertainment. 

Supply chains are the most fragile in the “first leg”, raw materials to finished product inventory. Currently, with supply chains stressed, US based, leading companies are developing plans to fortify as much of the “First Leg” back to America. The answer is not hard assets and labor alone. Flexible and agile technology is core to any tactical execution.