Supporting the food and catering industries means providing supplies in their freshest state. But there is the problem of serving a high volume of customers without becoming impersonal. New approaches to data – and giving customers more visibility into that data – can help.

To find out more, Dennis talked with Reynolds Catering Supplies about how they’ve achieved some of these goals with the M3 system from Infor. On site at Infor 2012, Dennis spends a few minutes each with CEO Tony Reynolds and Head of Business Systems, Richard Calder.

Reynolds wants to do business the way his grandfather did: Face-to-face for maximum customer support. With the sheer volume of customers he has, though, and with their needs increasing, Reynolds looked to Infor M3 to help him win the logistics wars.

Calder points out that, while M3 has performed very well so far, even more innovative solutions are needed. Sensor technologies, for instance, have potential but are still prone to error. And he says that there are still plenty of inefficiencies to eliminate, such as replacing handheld stock picking technology with hands-free, voice-activated devices.

:29 How M3 helps Reynolds Catering use data to create customer intimacy

2:03 Why businesses increasingly trust the data from Reynolds

3:01 Data solutions must keep up with complexity of demand

4:14 Sensor technology – promising, but poses new logistical challenges

5:53 ROI on using voice-activated picker technologies

At Inforum 2012 in London, Dennis caught up with Infor CEO Charles Phillips to get a view on Infor’s direction and find out why Infor anticipates the end of “monolithic suites.” Phillips explains Infor’s approach to a loosely coupled architecture and why Infor is taking a different, “contextual” approach to social. Infor’s micro-vertical play and mobile strategy are also covered.

Show Notes

:38 The end of “monolithic suites”

1:50 Infor and micro-verticals

3:30 “We don’t do big waterfall development anymore”

4:55 “Social must be embedded inside the app”

6:05 Managing the relationship between man and machine

7:15 Minimizing the need for configuration with pre-built profiles

8:15 Infor’s mobile outlook

Bonus coverage: Dennis also filmed a discussion with Infor customer Reynolds Catering Supplies about the challenges of customer intimacy and the difficulties of sensor technology:

Mobile is a hot topic and in this discussion, Allan Davies, Asia Pacific CIO, Dematic Pty Ltd duscusses his company’s approach to the topic in an Infor setting.

Show Notes

1:16 – What is the mobile story for Dematic? Security v BYOD

2:06 – How do we get these devices onto the network securely and add a business value?

3:12 – What do you want to know when in the field?

4:14 – Where are you up to now? ION enhances mobile and other applications

6:05 – We can’t hold it back, so we have to accomodate everyone’s needs

7:14 – How ION helps in this context, driving efficiency and process not necessarily transformational right now

9:06 – Extending process out onto a mobile device

9:14 – This will take a year to reach current goals

In this video, we show some of the highlights from the chat with analysts at Inforum 2012. We kick off with Pedrag Jakovljevik (PJ to his friends) of TEC, then talk to Frank Scavo and round out with Yvette Cameron.

Show Notes

0:25 – PJ – ‘New/Old Infor’

0:55 – PJ – What has changed? The new leadership is making progress

1:22 – FS – The challenges that Infor faces in the cloud space

2:06 – FS – The numbers are impressive

2:52 – FS – The Salesforce.com investment

3:08 – YC – Infor’s HCM progress

5:01 – YC – Introducing social to Lawson/Infor

Yvette Cameron, principal analyst at Constellation Research gave us insights into Infor’s progress in social matters as they relate to HCM/Talent Management. This is a highly competitive space with many offerings going direct to the cloud.

Show Notes

0:48 – What are your impressions? [Link: Seven Ways Infor Is Advancing HCM (Hint: Lawson is But One)]

1:54 – Where is the opportunity for customers?

3:06 – What about the social capabilities that sit behind Infor HCM? How is Infor shaping up?

4:44 – Do customers really want social at this stage? Customers need to link to social in recruitment

5:36 – Where will Infor be in a year’s time? More streamlined solutions and contextual intelligence plus leveraging the Motion mobile platform

We don’t normally think of Infor as a cloud company but at this year’s Inforum customer event we were surprised to find that Infor not only has 1,200 customers running cloud solutions but has over 2.4 million cloud solution users. In this conversation, Frank Scavo provides his analysis of Infor’s cloud strategy.

Show Notes

0:40 – Infor needs to compete and is now promoting SyteLine as its go to market offering along with point LOB solutions like expense and asset management

2:15 – They’ve put up some impressive numbers, an untold story

3:03 – Does the hybrid story make sense?

3:58 – The cloud strategy is real, the numbers make sense and they’re looking at AWS

4:54 – To what extent is Infor at ease with the hybrid approach?

6:15 – What about Inforce Everywhere and the Salesforce.com connection? [link: Infor and Salesforce.com: More Than a Barney Relationship]

7:40 – Customer CH Briggs talks cloud

8:46 – We need to pay a lot more attention

9:40 – The sales compensation problem

10:18 – Let’s revisit !!