There is a strong case to be made that some ERP software creators have been allowed to “rest on their laurels” to a certain extent in recent years. While not entirely due to indolence, this situation has come to pass as ERP solutions are typically “finished off” by systems integrators, who customize and configure core ERP solutions to the individual needs of a company and an industry’s particular requirements.

In industries which have a global reach, such as logistics, supply chains, and manufacturing, the drive to cloud-based technology solutions has been particularly strong, and now, the best cutting-edge ERP creators, like Infor, are providing extensible ERP on a cloud platform.

However, because the enterprise has used customized ERP solutions (tailored to industry and/or individual company) in the past, attitudes are, like systems, well embedded in infrastructure and working methods.

The better ERP suppliers, such as Infor, have had to come up with cloud solutions that go the extra mile between core functions and those required specifics from industry and individual organizations. With a cloud implementation, that, of course, offers its own challenges.

The problem of extensibility has been taken head-on by Infor, who have invested over US$3 billion in recent years to bring to market CloudSuite, which offers a richly configurable and customizable capability to cloud ERP. This gives the ability to deliver a specifically tailored product, but one that is not compromised when the core is updated, and one that can be further configured at will, without impacting on the core.

Infor’s CloudSuite represents a cloud offering born of substantial investment in building out to specific industries so that many of the implementation hassles and the need to create modifications have been obviated.

An example would be the Valmet Corporation, which migrated from a Baan IV installation this year, complete with 5,700 customizations, to Infor CloudSuite with precisely no customizations required. Valmet had considered SAP and Oracle but chose Infor for its cloud solution prowess and its offering’s suitability to Valmet’s specific needs.

Infor is based in New York but with offices worldwide, has been working with manufacturers of all types for over thirty years, and its CloudSuite allows manufacturers, among others, to take advantage of Infor’s position at the forefront of the new wave of cloud-based ERP.

The fact is that the days of in-house, on-metal installations of ERP solutions, modified by third parties, is a position that is quickly becoming obsolete. Infor’s partnership with AWS has cemented the company’s commitment to the cloud.

Not only are companies transiting to cloud provisions and SaaS models in general, but in order to retain a competitive edge, businesses can’t any longer afford not to update their ERP software due to prohibitive ongoing configuration and customization costs – costs which are required as customizations either “break”, or are broken by, core system updates.

Instead, Infor’s CloudSuite allows companies full customization options but using cloud-friendly application development frameworks which allow core upgrades, new features, and specific configurations to interact without costly interruptions to the end users.

To learn more about Infor’s cloud-based ERP solutions that allow real growth and give logistics, and high-tech process manufacturers a real competitive advantage, get in touch with a local representative today.