New site aims to give customers complete visibility into all the innovations available for their industry-specific needs
Have you of heard the latest workforce innovation called the autonomous office pod?
With so many people working from home, the traditional home ecosystem has been disrupted, creating a new set of problems and stresses. Fortunately, the problem solvers and creative thinkers of the world have found solutions to adapt and make the pandemic home life more joyful and efficient, such as the creation of an autonomous office pod and, additionally, a new market of products and services for the remote worker.
This same adaptability and problem solving applies to technology, with platform-as-a-service (PaaS) being utilized as an innovation platform to quickly stand up solutions to keep customers happy and the workforce efficient, especially now with almost every industry challenged with the pandemic. With Infor’s cloud technology platform or PaaS, it’s not only about providing an innovation platform to extend Infor’s business applications, but also to provide any problem solver an easy way to channel ideas and share solutions with the availability of Infor Marketplace.
With a constant stream of validated solutions available on Infor Marketplace, Infor makes it easier for customers to adapt quickly and stay modern in their business and industry. I spoke with Massimo Capoccia, EVP, Product Management & Development, Technology, to share with us his vision for Infor Marketplace and the value customers and partners can expect in the months ahead.
1. Tell us about your role at Infor and what your vision is for Infor Marketplace?
In the past 10 years, we have assembled Infor CloudSuite business applications, purpose built for a specific industry. As we learn more from our customers, the underlying cloud technology platform supporting the CloudSuites allows us to quickly add new and advanced capabilities to manage, automate, and optimize end-to-end business processes. At the same time, we have partners and customers that are also developing innovative capabilities relevant to their specific industry. Infor Marketplace provides a channel for innovation and a single place where all these unique capabilities can be registered, so everyone can benefit from innovation.
2. Who should sign up for Infor Marketplace?
There are three types of users I recommend subscribing to Infor Marketplace. The first is a power user or a person who knows the application very well but is seeking to enhance a business process. Infor Marketplace will be the place to easily search for a solution and download, provision and utilize immediately, such as a new portal widget.
The second is a business analyst seeking to extend a business process due to market changes or new customer requirements. Infor Marketplace will provide different pieces that are needed to extend the business process. An example would be a new dashboard application that requires new data, visualizations, alerts, documents, and third-party integrations for a new decision-making workflow.
The third is a developer or technical person that has an idea to extend a business process requiring connectivity to different systems and services. Infor Marketplace offers a wide range of building blocks from data connectivity to machine learning models to build applications, application extensions, and multi-page applications. In turn, these builders can develop their own APIs and share with Infor Marketplace.
3. What business problems is Infor trying to solve with Infor Marketplace?
First and foremost, the aim of Infor Marketplace is to provide customers complete visibility into all the innovations available to them for their industry-specific needs. We can achieve this by making it easy for partners or any developer to share their innovations in a single location, whereas before, these capabilities were not shared or were in locations not easily found.
We also want to grow a community of innovation driven by shared ideas and inspiration, whereas before, builders may have worked in silos without a channel to share ideas. Not only can the community grow with ideas, it can also gain more visibility at a bigger scale.
Last, we want to make it easy for innovators to monetize their solutions with the flexibility to register a free solution or a paid subscription. Not only does Infor Marketplace address the visibility and community issue, but we are also creating new business opportunities.
4. How reliable and secure are these solutions on Infor Marketplace?
We have a clear process to check the content and validate it so that the customer has a positive experience. This means the code will install and work without any disruption to the application or business.
5. With the unveiling of Infor Marketplace today, how can customers start consuming these solutions for fast time to value?
Our goal is to not only give that visibility, channel, and opportunity for innovation and monetization, but also for customers to gain value from day one by shortening the time it takes to go live with the solution. This is possible because these solutions are fully integrated into our cloud platform and operations. The end goal is for our customers to get to production fast by making the download, provision, and configuration processes completed in minutes. This is where we feel Infor Marketplace adds value and differentiates from other vendor marketplaces.
Visit Infor Marketplace.
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