Infor, a leading provider of beautiful business applications specialized by industry and built for the cloud, announced that a new solution for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is now available for Infor M3 clients to simplify the way that industry-driven enterprises serve their customers. This new solution is made possible through Infor ION® a purpose-built middleware, and Infor EDI Managed Services solution, which provides a fast and secure way to manage data. The integration is now available as a standard service to organizations using the M3 enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and serving the Fashion, Food & Beverage, Distribution and Manufacturing verticals.

The changing dynamics of the retail, distribution and manufacturing industries has positioned the use of EDI as a foundational element for exchanging order, delivery and invoicing information to automate the supply chain. As business moves towards faster and leaner operations, the ability for trading partners to quickly and securely transfer business data, whether sensitive or not, has evolved into a competitive attribute. For industries such as Fashion, Food and Beverage that are driven by the large retail channel masters the ability to pivot quickly based on transmittable data such as orders, shipping information or payment status can be a decisive factor for meeting customer demand and service levels.

In the new EDI solution, Infor provides a flexible collaboration platform and will manage the mapping process between each trading partner to simplify the EDI mapping and maintenance. The addition of this EDI service can help shorten the time for establishing new trading partner connections, which could lower implementation costs for the ERP.

"Organizations need to invest in an EDI solution that packages and simplifies the challenge of processing, maintaining and utilizing incoming data from an evolving customer base. In the past, this challenge would require a company to develop a homegrown EDI solution, which can be costly to build, expensive to implement and difficult to manage throughout release updates. By integrating this functionality into the core of Infor M3, our customers benefit from a simplistic approach for managing data transfers," said Andrew Dalziel, senior director, industry and solution strategy, Infor. "Being able to accurately predict and meet demand is critical in every industry, but this especially rings true in fashion, food and beverage, some of the most highly competitive and consumer driven industries, where a single social media post can spur demand volatility."

By utilizing Infor ION, companies are now able to transfer information from trading partners to the ERP for processing and send messages back to their customers. Organizations using Infor M3 only need to connect to the EDI solution to gain access to a range of EDI formats and utilize a vast number of trading partner mappings. New trading partners can be added on demand. Companies benefit from a simple, cost effective solution that creates a unified business practice without the complexities associated with standalone EDI solutions.

According to Gartner Research Inc., "Business process outsourcing services are evolving due to increasing functional and process complexity, innovation delivered via scalable, cost-effective methods and new delivery channels. Strategic planners should leverage these trends to generate profitable and high-growth business opportunities."

In the new Infor solution, M3 users can monitor the status on, for example, incoming EDI customer orders and invoicing as part of their daily work. Infor Xi technology enables these messages to be integrated into the process oriented workflows and role based homepages within the M3 user experience to improve responsiveness and customer service.

Gartner Market Trends: New Business Model and Digital Service to Drive Next-Generation BPO Services in 2016, TJ Singh, Cathy Tornbohm, Morgan Yeates and Michael Dominy, April 29, 2016

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