After the induction of Charles Phillips as the new CEO for Infor made the headlines in November 2010, people are now curious as to what Phillips has been up to for the time he has been occupying the position. After a short while of avoiding the cameras and interviews, Phillips finally approved for an interview that shall disclose his plans, expectations, future moves, and everything that people are just dying to know.
Charles Phillips told IDG news Service that at first, his first goal was to help Infor go out of its comfort zone. Obviously, Infor has a solid customer base, but the factor that pushes the company at the back of its competitors is its lack of ideas and innovations. For some customers, this can be very convenient since they are very satisfied with the service they are receiving, but Phillips saw this as a treat and thinks that an ERS company should always be a trailblazer when it comes to the newest applications and software in the market. In fact, they should be the ones producing these. Taking risks and disrupting client acceptance is better than just staying on the comfort zone and with what your company has provided to your clients since day one. Innovate. That was his first move.
Also, Phillips noticed that Infor was spending a lot of money on production; he opted to save more money, expand the resources and shift expenses into product development. He knows that Infor’s development organization was ready for a change to start focusing more on products. This paved way for Infor10, a next-generation set of new technologies which consists of ION middleware framework to tie up all previous Infor software modules.
Phillips has also developed a set of verticals on the future. He has specialized and specified industry and economic divisions that will help their client find a better solution. For an instance, instead of having just food and beverage category in one vertical, they have devised brewery, bakers, butchers and other micro-verticals that can be more focused on a specific activity of the client.
Charles Phillips also recharged the Software as a Service (SAAS) as a key area for growth and development for Infor. He said that Infor is the only company who has the exact same process multi-tenant enabled in the cloud and can be run on premises. With that, they can do hybrid deployments and give their customers the option to mix and match.
Looking forward to a new project, they are still developing the installed base which is an upgrade centre that he is excited to announce to the public. This upgrade centre will focus on the cloud and look at the customizations on how the product in the market has evolved overtime.