Infor announced the winners of the 2019 Infor Customer Excellence Awards. These accolades recognize customers that drive innovation and showcase exceptional business results. A panel of Infor solution and industry experts evaluated each applicant on scope and depth of performance improvement, quantifiable business benefits, customer focus and satisfaction, and technology use and innovation.
“We are thrilled to formally honor these innovative organizations for their exceptional use of technology to drive bottom-line results and better serve their internal stakeholders, partners and, ultimately, their customers,” said Kevin Samuelson, Infor chief executive officer. “We are proud that more than 68,000 customers around the world trust Infor to help them navigate critical business decisions, and the Infor Customer Excellence Awards give us a platform to highlight notable successes and true modern thinking.”
The winners of the 2019 Infor Customer Excellence Awards are:
Manufacturing — Oliver Packaging & Equipment Co.
Oliver Packaging & Equipment Co. is a Michigan-based company that develops bakery equipment and meal packaging systems. Oliver wanted to automate antiquated processes to help streamline production, speed inventory handling, track labor, and automate attendance operations. The company chose Infor CloudSuite Industrial (SyteLine) with Infor Factory Track for better factory floor automation and to help reduce inventory. By leaving its legacy system and adopting modern business applications, the company has achieved inventory reduction through more efficient planning, reduced freight spend, and streamlined customer care processes.
Infor’s cloud-based applications provided manufacturing, supply chain, sales, and IT teams with tools to more quickly exchange data, information and ideas to help improve business processes.
Since go-live, Oliver Packaging & Equipment Co. has reduced inventory by $400,000 (roughly 20%) across half of its manufacturing processes, and the company anticipates a similar reduction on the other half, which is still in process. In addition, teams anticipate a 5% savings through negotiations with freight carriers on rates and a reduction of administrative work in customer care.
Distribution/Manufacturing/Asset Management — Starbucks
As a premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffee around the world, Starbucks understands the importance of equipment reliability. To help uphold its high standards, the company decided to implement Infor Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) software at seven new manufacturing/distribution locations, because it was interested in making more data-driven decisions.
Through Infor EAM, Starbucks is driving better strategic planning and production planning, and more effective manpower utilization through more consistent and reliable data that supports strategic asset life-cycle and maintenance planning.
Cost control, operational efficiencies and responsiveness, and the implementation of standardized network practices are currently helping streamline Starbucks’ maintenance operations and are allowing for easier prioritization of work. This structure enables the maintenance team to better support the operations team, which helps ensure a collaborative approach to equipment reliability and supports the resulting increasing production.
Consumer Goods — Deckers Brands
Deckers Brands is a leading footwear designer and distributor based in Goleta, California. Deckers was challenged with very manual and time-intensive processes for order fulfillment and supply chain planning. Through the company’s implementation of Infor Nexus applications, Deckers Brands achieved a more streamlined system for automating and integrating supply and demand data into one real-time view that uses machine learning to project inventory issues.
Since deployment, the team can more quickly find issues and execute solutions, which has helped streamline decision-making, minimize fulfillment disruptions, reduce overall inventory, and ultimately improve customer confidence in the brand.
With Infor Nexus, Deckers has made 99% of invoices nondiscrepant and reduced distribution center receiving time by 50%. By virtually eliminating paper processes, their teams can work from one version of the data, and can pinpoint inventory issues more easily and resolve them more efficiently.
Public Sector — Watercare Services Limited
Deeply committed to the 1.4 million people of Auckland who depend on its services, Watercare, New Zealand’s largest water utility company, needed to modernize its business applications to better serve its communities. The company chose Infor applications to help better manage assets, enrich interactions with customers, and motivate and manage its workforce.
Watercare tackled a full digital transformation with Infor, affecting roughly 60% of business processes. The company achieved a fully redesigned, integrated, analytics-enabled solution for customer management, billing, and asset management that has produced savings in virtually every corner of the business. Watercare is realizing substantial savings by driving customer interactions through digital channels, reducing manual processes across customer operations, improving asset planning and optimizing construction, reducing reactive maintenance, and improving employee engagement.
Human Resources — PRA Health Sciences
PRA Health Sciences, a leading clinical research organization, was challenged with managing a time-intensive manual process for making employee data changes. PRA was seeking a modern technology solution to help automate communication, support accurate data flow to downstream systems, and apply mandated security controls for all global users. PRA decided to move the entire organization — 7 divisions with 52 business units in 80 countries, including 17,500 active resources — to Infor Global Human Resources in the cloud, and fully unify both data and processes.
Since go-live, PRA has experienced improved efficiency in global HR administration, time savings from automated processes and notifications, and it has maintained higher quality and control of data. By sunsetting unnecessary systems, PRA estimates saving at roughly $600,000 annually, but PRA feels the biggest advantage has been creating a solid foundation for future growth. PRA needed a foundational, global, scalable system that could be more easily accessed and used by employees, managers and support staff, which they have now created with Infor.
Healthcare — Northern Light Health
Northern Light Health, one of the most expansive integrated health care systems in Maine, was looking to modernize antiquated systems in order to better manage financial and information challenges. Northern Light turned to Infor CloudSuite Healthcare applications to help improve processes, preserve revenue, and deliver better services to the community. With Infor, Northern Light Health has a single enterprise-wide platform for all entities, with common practices and processes, that is automating manual processes and gaining efficiencies across the enterprise. Northern Light has shortened the cycle of month-end financial close by two business days and automated key reporting.
In the near future, the organization plans to implement a suite of mobile applications to enhance employee experience and accessibility, transition applicant sourcing and recruitment into Infor Talent Management, as well as automate accounts payable workflows.
Hospitality — Frasers Hospitality Australia
Frasers Hospitality Australia (FHA) was on a path to paperless and partnered with Infor to innovate in all areas of the guest experience and operations across its four luxury service apartment properties. Since the implementation of Infor Hospitality Management Solution (HMS) and Infor Mobile Check-In, four key initiatives have come online: paperless check-in, paperless e-sign, paperless payments, and a mobile housekeeping app.
Check-in efficiency has doubled, and check-in time has declined 40% since the roll-out at Fraser Suites Sydney. By going digital, the organization has reduced agreement lead times from up to three business days to just minutes. The paperless processes have improved accuracy and efficiency at all of Frasers’ properties and reduced printing costs by 50%. Perhaps the most outstanding difference seen by the business is the notable 80% improvement in operational productivity since introducing the Infor HMS Housekeeping mobile app.
Technology and Business Intelligence/Analytics — Miller Industries Inc.
Miller Industries, a world leader in towing and recovery equipment, wanted to make strategic business decisions faster and better manage its business processes. The company turned to Infor Birst analytics to combine internal and external data sets to help it more precisely analyze and forecast workforce and business performance, and ultimately better manage the overall business.
Since go-live, Miller Industries has begun to replace hundreds of spreadsheets with a handful of automated dashboards. This provides more consistent, timely and accurate information to all users, which has reduced the time needed to produce business reports by as much as 80 percent. In addition, Infor Birst has provided visibility to real-time information, which has help streamline the A/R and cash management processes.
