Infor, a leading CRM solutions provider, has expanded its presence in Asia-Pacfic by establishing a Center of Excellence, or "CoE," in Hyderabad, India. Among other functions, the facility will house a dedicated team of experts in Infor's Global Professional Services Organization to deliver greater value to customers, including increased implementation efficiency and customer response times.

According to Chairman and CEO of Infor, Jim Schaper, who also inaugurated the CoE, Infor's new Center of Excellence here in Hyderabad will enable the company to provide new and growing customers best-in-class professional services consulting and support.

"India is not only a rapidly growing market for businesses, it is also a fertile ground for talented software and service developers, proficient in English, and able to support the operations of a global company like Infor," Schaper said.

The CoE demonstrates Infor's commitment to India and the Asia-Pacific region, a key to Infor's strategic growth. Infor is focused on expanding its presence in India and the Asia-Pacific region by increasing its staff, channel partners and customer base in the area.

The CoE will house around 550 employees in various capacities, including:

• Professional Services: Infor's professional services team helps customers reduce the cost of ownership, focus on strategic IT initiatives, maximize systems availability, reduce risk, gain rapid time to value for new projects, and keep pace with evolving business priorities.
• Product Development: Infor continually enhances and improves its solutions to meet customers' shifting business needs, address changes in regulatory requirements and help companies achieve greater operational efficiency.
• Support: Engineers provide support to Infor customers in the Asia-Pacific region as well as overflow and off-peak support to customers in EMEA.
• Shared Finance Services: A team will support Infor's global internal finance structure, reporting to Infor's CFO and driving organizational and financial efficiencies.
• Additional Internal Support: Teams will support Infor's global operations in human resources, IT development, IT help, finance, and administration.

The India CoE provides an important component to Infor's business strategy by leveraging an experienced and knowledgeable talent pool to develop implementation best practices and solution customization that meet individual customers' needs.

In August 2009, Infor launched CRM i Edition, a solution that provides enhanced CRM capabilities to customers with Infor enterprise resource planning solutions on IBM (News - Alert) System platforms.