The kind of change an industry used to see once in a generation now seems to hit once a year, or more. And every change brings new industry firsts that set new standards, putting pressure on every organisation to adapt. It’s the new normal in a world where AI can close the gap between an idea and its execution from years to days, and often, in a matter of minutes.
Consider self-driving cars, AI models that detect disease in a scan faster than a radiologist can, or even warehouse drone deliveries that accelerate orders to doors in hours. All of these innovations were developed in just the last decade. What was once thought to be science fiction is now around the corner.
And for every headline-grabbing breakthrough, there are smaller, yet just as meaningful advancements: sensors that let a warehouse count inventory without a human touching a scanner, routing software that reshuffles an entire delivery fleet mid-shift, algorithms that flag a machine failure before it happens. None of it makes the news the way self-driving cars do, but it’s raising what every business expects from its own technology, and fast.
From manufacturers and distributors to hospitals and everywhere in between, every industry is being asked to modernise at once, and few organisations have the luxury of waiting to see how it plays out. But where transformation stalls is rarely ambition or budget. It’s industry fit.
When generic technology treats every industry as interchangeable—and none of them are—the mismatch shows up in countless workarounds and missing features that compound quietly (and cost-intensively) over time.
Consider invoice processing. It sounds like a back-office task any system should handle the same way, but an industrial manufacturer and a food and beverage producer are reconciling two different things. For the manufacturer, an invoice is only correct if the unit cost matches long-term supplier agreements negotiated on volume, tooling and lead time — a few cents of drift on a high-runner component compounds fast across thousands of units. For the food and beverage producer, an invoice is only correct if it accounts for weight-based pricing, spoilage allowances and ingredient specifications tied to a specific formulation, something quantity and price alone can't tell you.
Generic software runs the same three-way match for both industries: purchase order, receipt, invoice. But it doesn't know a component tolerance from a formulation specification. The manufacturer ends up absorbing marginal overcharges across thousands of transactions before anyone notices the pattern. The food and beverage producer has been paying against the wrong ingredient specification for months because nothing in the system was built to flag the discrepancy.
It’s the same process and same blind spot, with two industries losing money for entirely different reasons.
Infor has always been different. We've invested at the ground level, in the granular realities of how an industry actually runs, because we've always believed industry specificity is the differentiator that matters. And it shows up in the value our customers realise, quarter after quarter.
Industry Forward reinforces the guiding principle of our product design, carried out as a daily discipline. We show up every day with a deep understanding of what it takes to help our customers lead their industry to new heights: the nuances of their enterprise and the changing dynamics of their micro-industry.
We design our products for our customers’ industries, sequence by sequence, with contextual intelligence built in and capabilities that evolve at the pace of your industry. So that instead of spending time bringing others up to speed, you’re hitting the ground running in your business.
Being Industry Forward means faster time to value because the technology already speaks the language of the business it serves. It means AI and automation that close gaps and act as a natural extension of how the work already gets done. And it means a company never has to translate its own operations into software logic, because the solutions already understand them innately.
You don’t have to look further than Infor Industry AI to see that commitment come to life. Where generic solutions stall, Infor Industry AI has the product architecture to deliver precise outcomes, from day one. From our industry-specific application logic and API-rich cloud platform to our Industry AI Agents that reason and act with decades of experience built in, industry knowledge is embedded in every layer of the system.
That’s Industry Forward in action.
Our commitment to industry is nothing new. And it’s ongoing. We’re continuously innovating at the forefront of every industry we serve, so our customers can keep driving their businesses forward.
Because when our customers win, so do we. And so do the industries they’re working to move forward.
Ready to see what Industry Forward means for you? Contact one of our team members.
Consider self-driving cars, AI models that detect disease in a scan faster than a radiologist can, or even warehouse drone deliveries that accelerate orders to doors in hours. All of these innovations were developed in just the last decade. What was once thought to be science fiction is now around the corner.
And for every headline-grabbing breakthrough, there are smaller, yet just as meaningful advancements: sensors that let a warehouse count inventory without a human touching a scanner, routing software that reshuffles an entire delivery fleet mid-shift, algorithms that flag a machine failure before it happens. None of it makes the news the way self-driving cars do, but it’s raising what every business expects from its own technology, and fast.
From manufacturers and distributors to hospitals and everywhere in between, every industry is being asked to modernise at once, and few organisations have the luxury of waiting to see how it plays out. But where transformation stalls is rarely ambition or budget. It’s industry fit.
Industry-agnostic solutions don’t get your work—or work on day one
Most enterprise technology providers are worlds away from the everyday of the businesses they serve—they wouldn't know a work order from a work instruction.When generic technology treats every industry as interchangeable—and none of them are—the mismatch shows up in countless workarounds and missing features that compound quietly (and cost-intensively) over time.
Consider invoice processing. It sounds like a back-office task any system should handle the same way, but an industrial manufacturer and a food and beverage producer are reconciling two different things. For the manufacturer, an invoice is only correct if the unit cost matches long-term supplier agreements negotiated on volume, tooling and lead time — a few cents of drift on a high-runner component compounds fast across thousands of units. For the food and beverage producer, an invoice is only correct if it accounts for weight-based pricing, spoilage allowances and ingredient specifications tied to a specific formulation, something quantity and price alone can't tell you.
Generic software runs the same three-way match for both industries: purchase order, receipt, invoice. But it doesn't know a component tolerance from a formulation specification. The manufacturer ends up absorbing marginal overcharges across thousands of transactions before anyone notices the pattern. The food and beverage producer has been paying against the wrong ingredient specification for months because nothing in the system was built to flag the discrepancy.
It’s the same process and same blind spot, with two industries losing money for entirely different reasons.
Infor has always been different. We've invested at the ground level, in the granular realities of how an industry actually runs, because we've always believed industry specificity is the differentiator that matters. And it shows up in the value our customers realise, quarter after quarter.
Introducing Industry Forward
Today, we’re naming that commitment: Industry Forward™. Because we build our approach around how you do business, at the industry and micro-vertical level.Industry Forward reinforces the guiding principle of our product design, carried out as a daily discipline. We show up every day with a deep understanding of what it takes to help our customers lead their industry to new heights: the nuances of their enterprise and the changing dynamics of their micro-industry.
We design our products for our customers’ industries, sequence by sequence, with contextual intelligence built in and capabilities that evolve at the pace of your industry. So that instead of spending time bringing others up to speed, you’re hitting the ground running in your business.
Being Industry Forward means faster time to value because the technology already speaks the language of the business it serves. It means AI and automation that close gaps and act as a natural extension of how the work already gets done. And it means a company never has to translate its own operations into software logic, because the solutions already understand them innately.
You don’t have to look further than Infor Industry AI to see that commitment come to life. Where generic solutions stall, Infor Industry AI has the product architecture to deliver precise outcomes, from day one. From our industry-specific application logic and API-rich cloud platform to our Industry AI Agents that reason and act with decades of experience built in, industry knowledge is embedded in every layer of the system.
That’s Industry Forward in action.
Our commitment to industry is nothing new. And it’s ongoing. We’re continuously innovating at the forefront of every industry we serve, so our customers can keep driving their businesses forward.
Because when our customers win, so do we. And so do the industries they’re working to move forward.
Ready to see what Industry Forward means for you? Contact one of our team members.
Kirsten Allegri Williams
Chief Marketing Officer, Infor
Kirsten Allegri Williams is the Chief Marketing Officer of Infor, where she leads end-to-end marketing strategy showcasing how Infor's industry-specific tools and agentic AI solutions solve the operational challenges that keep both CFOs and operators up at night.
With over 20 years of experience connecting enterprises to transformative technology, Kirsten has a deep understanding of how modernization efforts are reshaping the way work gets done inside complex organizations.