New York—Sept. 10, 2014—Infor, a provider of business application software serving more than 73,000 customers, announced Infor Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) 10x. The 10.4 version of Infor S&OP marks a major development in sales and operations planning, and provides a framework for manufacturing and distribution companies to bridge the gap between operational realities and financial objectives. The release features Infor’s 10x technology, which utilizes Infor ION, a purpose-built middleware, and social collaboration engine Infor Ming.le to facilitate and record internal communications across all functions and departments, as well as external communications with customers and suppliers. Infor S&OP 10x helps customers achieve financial and strategic business objectives through a mature S&OP model with greater speed and efficiency.
“The introduction of the component of S&OP is a further step in the improvement and optimization of operational procedures that characterize the highly integrated operations between headquarters and markets,” said Vittorio Boero, chief information officer, Ferrari.
The 10x release offers the full social S&OP functionality that enables users to work together with greater accuracy and efficiency. As an Infor Ming.le-enabled solution, customers are able to easily collaborate on business processes throughout the supply chain and enterprise. Social S&OP provides a single point to review planning alerts, exceptions, outstanding tasks and workflows, and enables individual escalations from other stakeholders.
The solution features a component called S&OP Xpress that provides best-practice, prebuilt content that allows rapid implementations of Infor S&OP, while aligning customers in mature, complete Infor S&OP processes. This includes preconfigured reporting, workflows, key performance indicators (KPIs) and planning. S&OP 10x also provides a playbook component to organize pre-S&OP meeting reports into structured chapters; automatically generates formatted Microsoft PowerPoint presentations; and is equipped with Infor geographic information system (GIS) capabilities to provide users with a visualization of where demand and supply are occurring, where products perform best and where costs are a concern.
The solution supports intelligent decision-making to generate the best possible outcomes using embedded graphics and analytics through Infor ION Business Intelligence (BI). Infor S&OP 10x can also reduce the need to reconcile transactions by allowing users to drill down into individual production and sales orders. With multi-panel and embedded worksheets, the solution allows data to be populated in real time, which enables users to process the data with greater efficiency.
“Infor S&OP 10x is designed to help companies evolve their S&OP model to achieve a more profitable balance between supply and demand,” said John Bermudez, vice president of product management, Infor. “By supporting the planning process with pre-built workflows and social collaboration, and equipping users with 10x technology, this release of Infor S&OP helps companies to ensure that operations processes support their overall strategy, and vice versa.”
Infor S&OP will serve as a core component for the upcoming Infor Integrated Business Planning suite, which will be announced later this year.