Who Is CRM Player Infor?
I didn’t think it was possible for a $2 billion dollar software company to exist without me knowing about it, but Infor is just such a company. Infor focuses on enterprise applications such as CRM and more, and competes with the likes of
SAP (News - Alert)
and Oracle. The company has grown revenue by 300 percent in the past year, and has had a string of acquisitions as of late. The result is a company with 70,000 application customers. I decided it would make sense to schedule an interview with the company’s Global Director, CRM Product Marketing, Patric Timmermans, to get a better idea about what the company is and where it’s going.
RT: Before we discuss CRM, who is Infor and what are you doing different in the market?
PT: Infor recognizes there has been a large gap in the enterprise software market. There are players trying to bring their heavy solutions downmarket and small companies bringing their niche solutions upmarket. Infor fills this void by providing customers of all sizes, through innovation and acquisition, with proven, business-specific solutions with experience built in, backed by a vendor with global scale and stability. Our more than 70,000 customers turn to Infor to solve their needs in CRM, supply chain, ERP, performance management, enterprise asset management and more.
RT: Tell me about Infor CRM.
PT: Our legacy in CRM comes from Epiphany as well as other best-of-breed CRM providers we acquired. Infor CRM is a strategic set of solutions that enables companies to develop and maintain a consistent and continuous dialog with their customers, and brings all channels and sources together to create one experience. To be effective, a company’s CRM solution must integrate marketing, sales and service to provide a 360-degree view of the customer. Comprehensive CRM can provide real-time information about the customer and match that to the best possible service or product or next best action.
RT: What should customers take into consideration when selecting a CRM provider?
PT: When a CRM system is deployed, it will be there for a long time. With new applications being introduced every year, your CRM provider has to have the ability to integrate with any service you want to offer. This creates a mashup within CRM, and the real estate on an agent’s screen becomes a combination of several applications and capabilities. The CRM system must pull all of this information together, regardless of whether it comes from legacy or third-party applications. Companies should look for CRM solutions that are agnostic to other applications in the enterprise infrastructure and are not reliant on a specific middleware platform.
RT: What does the future of CRM look like?
PT: Marketing to the consumer on their time. This is a shift from the current concept in which companies market solutions when it is convenient to them, not the customer. CRM is evolving towards utilizing real-time information from across the enterprise to provide offers to consumers when their attention is at its greatest. For example, using a customer’s calling history to offer more services when they visit the Web site to pay their bill or call the contact center. Our customers have seen dramatic increases in campaign effectiveness with this approach.
RT: What will be the key milestones for Infor CRM in the next 12 to 18 months?
PT: You will see additional functionality in our CRM solutions for b-to-b, b-to-c, and b-to-b-to-c environments as we strive to enrich the customer experience. In addition, we will continue to extend our solutions’ capabilities in our key verticals such as communications, financial services, insurance, retail, hospitality, travel and leisure, and manufacturing. Infor CRM will continue to evolve and interoperate with new applications and services.
RT: What do you predict the evolution of CRM to be over the next 10 years?
PT: I see CRM evolving toward the concept of intelligent customer dialog to create one experience. Companies realize that consumers want more than exceptional service or product, they want the whole experience the brand they are buying promises, and to connect with the vision of that company. Products are so similar from one brand to another, so companies are competing on customer service. This too will become very similar and the shift will be toward the customer experience and feeling a part of the brand and company. CRM will provide the tools to help companies move beyond simple sales tactics and create this experience.
RT: In what industries do you see the most momentum with CRM?
PT: There are three industries I see as leading: communications, retail banking and insurance. All three have a strong customer vision with set strategic goals for how CRM can help them increase revenue, not just create efficiencies. The retail sector is also surging, and I see it as a good growth market for CRM. Interestingly, we also see manufacturers developing a strategy of supporting the whole supply chain from manufacturing through retail to the end customer in a b-to-b-to-c model.
RT: What is the key ingredient many companies are missing from their CRM strategy?
PT: I believe many companies overlook the ability to gain insight into the customer and act upon it. CRM is a strategic resource to turn contact centers into profit centers by using real-time analytics to reduce costs while driving new revenue by creating a customized customer experience at every touch point. This may change the way performance is measured. For example, one of our retail banking customers changed their metrics for success. Their call center agents were previously measured on call handling times and speed of entry, but now they are measured on products per household, deposit growth goals and customer satisfaction.
RT: Thank you for your time.
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