Vehicle manufacturer upgrades to graphical system from Infor to gain flexibility and leverage its current technology
Atlanta, GA — November 7, 2005 — Infor, a global enterprise software provider for the manufacturing and distribution industries, said that recreational-vehicle manufacturer Polaris Industries has chosen to expand and upgrade the Infor technology that integrates its operations by migrating to flexible graphical applications.
Minnesota-based Polaris, which manufactures and markets snowmobiles, ATVs, Ranger utility vehicles and Victory motorcycles, has been using Infor's XA enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, an element of Infor's Manufacturing Essentials. With $1.9 billion in annual sales, Polaris found it needed additional capability for integrating its production operations and its distribution facilities in eight nations.
Infor said its Manufacturing Essentials product enables the company to move from green-screen to graphical applications that have a high degree of functionality. The system makes it easier to write applications and connect to other applications through an Enterprise Integrator and System Link. These capabilities, coupled with the latest version of Infor XA, enable Polaris to use its current technology to integrate such processes as customer service, engineering, manufacturing, planning and distribution.
In 2000, Polaris chose to stay with Infor (which since has acquired the system's developer, MAPICS) rather than adopting another ERP system. The company saved $20 million in implementation costs by expanding its existing Infor technology. Infor provided a solid platform and proven performance and enabled us to implement many projects that would not have been possible if we had changed vendors, said Bill Fisher, chief information officer of Polaris.
Fisher added: The Infor XA software and the IBM iSeries platform on which the solution runs are the key reasons that our IS costs run far lower than 1 percent of revenue. Our purchase of Infor Manufacturing Essentials is key to expanding our use of Infor XA and maintaining our low-cost, high-value operations.
