Equipment companies used to compete mostly on product and price. But that was before customers could get whatever they needed with just a click of a button. With reduced differentiation and diminishing sales margins, equipment companies are shifting the focus beyond product and price to what problems they can solve for their customers. Today’s equipment companies compete on service.

Which means that one of the biggest challenges equipment OEMs, dealers, rental, and service organizations face today is how to increase customer service levels. It’s this push for finding new and better ways to serve customer needs that are at the core of many of the key issues that are impacting the equipment industry today.

Read on for a deep dive into the top issues facing the equipment industry and how addressing these issues can help companies better compete on customer service.

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.

When it comes to addressing market and customer demands, aging enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications can hold modern day business back. Legacy systems can also prevent organizations from delivering value instantly to customers.

More than 80% of CFOs see identifying and targeting areas of new value across the business as one of their main responsibilities, according to research from Accenture. That's why CFOs, who are attracted to the cost-effectiveness and scalability of connected enterprise management solutions, are being swayed by the compelling functionality of unified ERP and enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions.

Infor M3 and Infor M3 Cloud offer multi-functional capabilities - combined with highly productive new technologies to support mobility and team collaboration - developed over years of working with some of the best companies in the world. Designed for medium to large national and global manufacturers, distributors, and aftersales service providers, M3 provides industry specific process support and functionality built on good practices, and an industry-leading user experience. Flexible deployment options and implementation accelerators yield low total cost of ownership and short time-to-value.

Effectively managing Segregation of Duties (SOD) is a key requirement for any enterprise resource planning (ERP) or financial system to pass an audit. Initiation and efficient maintenance of SOD requires a fully automated financial control testing platform to identify, prevent, and mitigate issues that can negatively impact the accuracy, and validity of financial reporting -- putting the organization at risk.

Segregation of Duties (SOD) requires organizations to ensure users of business applications do not have the capability to perform two processes that could permit fraud, waste, and abuse. These are called "toxic access combinations" and enable an individual to execute such fraudulent activities as creating and paying himself as a supplier. 

When CFOs adopt innovative technology, they help build organizations that are more agile, profitable, effective, and positioned for growth. Here are the five actions CFOs can take immediately to get started down the right path:

1. Develop one single source of the truth—Data is the currency of success. Effective data management translates to big opportunities for companies that are intent on growth. But the key to effective data management is creating one source of the truth—a central data repository. Everyone needs to work from the same set of information, if your organization is going to operate as efficiently and effectively as possible. Companies can uncover key insights about their customers and business processes by breaking down data silos and building one single source of the truth. Whether that data comes from a single source, or more likely, multiple disparate sources, it needs to be visible from one place, so it can be trusted as reliable and acted upon by everyone who needs to make decisions.

For three generations Smarties candies have been a favorite among Halloween trick-or-treaters who love the pastel-colored wafers that are even good for some allergen-sensitive children. On Wednesday the Smarties Candy Co. celebrates its 70th anniversary at its manufacturing headquarters in Union, New Jersey.

The company, founded by 96-year-old patriarch, Edward Dee has a lot to celebrate. It is one of the few family-owned mass-production confectionery companies left in the United States, and it turns out more than 2 billion rolls of the candies every year.

According to Infor, the next wave of its ERP innovations will be driven by agile deployments as it opts for a series of short iterations.

How often does a typical business decide on a new ERP system? Perhaps once a decade. It is a big decision and one that incurs massive costs if errors are made – on both a financial and an operational level.

A bad ERP strategy can ruin a company’s bottom line and stifle its growth moving forward – the irony being that growth was probably the very factor that informed the need for an ERP system in the first place.

Read Infor Press Release

Infor, a global leader in business cloud software specialized by industry, today announced that Independent Computer Consulting Group (ICCG) has been selected as a preferred partner to drive digital transformation for the Fashion, and the Food & Beverage industries in India. The alliance will strengthen the delivery of Infor solutions such as Infor Cloud Suite Fashion, Cloud Suite Food & Beverage (Infor M3) including Infor’s edge applications like Infor Fashion PLM and Infor Optiva PLM to accelerate the adoption of robust, purpose-built and industry-specific suite of offerings designed to meet the evolving demands of businesses.