Frontier Co-op builds cost resilience and process excellence with Infor Velocity Suite

As a mission-driven producer of natural and organic spices and essential oils, Frontier Co-op sources raw materials from farmers around the world. Protecting organic integrity is central to the company’s philosophy, and Frontier believes the best way to do that is by investing in farmers, communities, and ethical sourcing practices.

In an industry increasingly shaped by climate volatility, supply uncertainty, and thin margins, Frontier recognized that sustaining its mission required greater control and efficiency of internal processes.

Infor Velocity Suite: Process Mining and automation integrated with Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage

To address these challenges, Frontier implemented Infor™ Velocity Suite, leveraging generative artificial intelligence (GenAI)-powered tools such as Infor Process Mining to focus on internal process efficiency. While Frontier had access to traditional reports to investigate process issues, the information only showed what happened—not why it happened or where to intervene.

“In the past, analyzing business processes required months of work, multiple teams, and a lot of frustration just to piece things together. Infor Process Mining and its process catalog provide ready-to-act insights, enabling us to make improvements faster. The system extracts data, builds dashboards, and even explains the results using GenAI,” says Eduardo Pulido, Vice President of Information Technology (IT).

Infor Velocity Suite also offers prebuilt automations powered by GenAI which are critical for Frontier to protect margins, improve execution, and support sustainable growth without compromising its purpose.

The results: Cost control without compromising values

Frontier used Infor Process Mining to analyze manufacturing workflows and discovered that incomplete order closures—such as failing to return unused raw materials—were driving cost variances. Frontier was able to:

• Identify specific users not following standard manufacturing steps
• Pinpoint exactly where deviations occurred
• Deliver targeted training tied to real process data
• Reinforce the financial impact of proper order closure

Result: By September 2025, Frontier closed the month with zero manufacturing cost variances, significantly improving confidence in financial reporting and standard costing.

Infor Process Mining also revealed a major opportunity in accounts payable:

• 17% of spend lacked purchase orders, taking five times longer to process (compared to 83% with purchase orders)
• Manual invoice ingestion slowed processing
• Only approximately 30% of available early payment discounts were captured

By identifying these issues with Infor Process Mining, Frontier is implementing Infor Velocity Suite’s automation solution for invoice processing, which will save Frontier approximately $500,000 US in early payment savings.

Most importantly, Infor Velocity Suite has become a continuous AI innovation engine, helping Frontier define its improvement roadmap dynamically rather than relying on assumptions.

ERP modernization and integrated ecosystem strategy

In 2019, Frontier selected Infor and went live in August 2020, migrating from a legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) environment to a modern, cloud-based ecosystem.

A key strategic decision was to remain within the Infor technology stack rather than layering third-party tools. Frontier determined this approach would deliver greater value than introducing additional external systems.

Today, Frontier leverages:

• Infor CloudSuite™ Food & Beverage for manufacturing and financial processing
  
• Infor Warehouse Management System (WMS) for warehouse management
  
• Infor Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) for financial reporting and budgeting
  
• Infor Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) for business process risk management
  
• Infor Velocity Suite for process innovation

The integration across these systems allows information to flow seamlessly without requiring internal teams to dedicate significant resources. Frontier trusts the integrity of system-to-system data exchange, enabling teams to focus on business outcomes rather than technical reconciliation.

For a mid-sized organization with limited IT resources, this unified system has been a major differentiator.

“Because our systems are integrated within the Infor ecosystem, we don’t spend time worrying about whether the data is flowing correctly. We trust the integration and focus on improving the business,” says Eduardo

Looking ahead: Sustainable growth and global expansion

As Frontier explores expansion into international markets such as the UK, Canada, and Mexico, maintaining tight internal cost control will be essential to staying price-competitive globally.

With a single integrated Infor system, Frontier has built a scalable foundation that supports:

• Ethical sourcing and farmer investment
• Operational excellence and automation
• Affordable pricing for customers
• Long-term profitability and resilience