Working in Unison: Infor’s Channel Partner Summit 2010

Today marks the start one of my favorite weeks of the year at Infor, our annual Channel Partner Summit. As I’ve said before, our channel partners are critical to the collaborative customer relationships that set Infor apart from other business software vendors. This opportunity to come together face-to-face is essential to fostering a strong channel program and bringing maximum value to our customers.

There has been a lot of attention paid to the success of our channel recruitment drive, but recruiting new partners takes a backseat to the investments that we make in our existing partners. The Channel Partner Summit enables us to build close personal ties with our partners while also providing the education and sales tools that arm them for success. The fact that we have record attendance at this year’s Summit is testament to the value this close relationship brings to our partners.

This has been an exciting year for Infor — the new products and developments we are offering make our partners a lethal force in the mid-market business application space:

• By integrating the rich functionality of Infor's applications with intuitive Microsoft technologies, we provide mid-size businesses with fast and affordable solutions that meet their functionality needs and are simple to use.
• Infor ION services enable companies of all sizes to benefit from the advanced application integration, business process management, and shared data reporting that had previously been available only to large enterprises.
• Infor24 provides customers the option to deploy some of our most popular and robust solutions in the cloud, providing an optimum mix of rich functionality and deployment flexibility.

The Channel Partner Summit gives our partners quality time to meet with Infor development executives to learn best practices to help customers get the most out of their software investment. In addition, our CMO and marketing executives present ways to help partners market their business and grow their customer base and bottom line.

If you are an Infor Channel Partner, I look forward to the opportunity to meet with you personally this week, and if you aren’t an Infor Channel Partner - what are you waiting for?

Posted By Dennis Michalis, Corporate Senior Vice President

Infor Channel Partners: Helping Sustain Relationships with 70,000+ Customers

As companies grow in size, they often lose the personal connection to customers that made them a success in the first place. Over the past several years, Infor has faced this situation as we grew from a relatively small company to the leading provider of business applications for growth-oriented companies.

Our success has come from the collaborative relationships that we foster with our customers. This has always been what differentiated Infor from our competitors, and it is not something we were willing to sacrifice as our company underwent exponential growth.

So how do we do it? How does the leading provider of business applications for the mid-market maintain hands-on relationships with our customer base when that base is more than 70,000 strong?

Our approach was to build a world-class channel partner program that would leverage partners with deep industry-specific experience and extensive knowledge of enterprise applications. We sought to recruit partners that would function as an extension of our direct sales team and professional services organization.

We take great pride in our partners that review and evaluate the specific needs of each perspective customer to recommend the right solutions to manage their operations now and into the future, just like our salesforce. These partners provide unrivaled ongoing support and professional services to be sure that customers are getting the most out of their software investment and achieving the lowest possible cost of ownership.

Attracting more of the right channel partners is critical to our strategy. We continue to undergo a recruitment drive, and have been achieving great success while focusing on quality over quantity. This is easier said than done, of course, but we are attracting the partners we want because of five main principles:

• Our strategy works, and this is why we have grown to become the leading provider of business software for the mid-market in less than 10 years.
• Our customers are happy, and they tell us this personally and by renewing their maintenance contracts at a leading level.
• Our organization listens and works in tandem with our Channel Advisory Council to develop programs that boost channel performance.
• Our partners are armed with the tools and support they need from Infor to succeed.
• Our software is innovative and is best equipped to solve the pain points that mid-market companies face.

Recently we issued a press release that quotes IDC Analyst Albert Pang on how our channel strategy and commitment to our partners is the right approach to driving innovation for our customers’ organizations. Our Chief Strategy Officer, Bruce Richardson, will hold a webinar on April 29th that delves further into the relationship between Infor and its partners. I encourage you to register to attend and offer us your feedback on our program and our strategy here.

Posted By Dennis Michalis, Corporate Senior Vice President

Expanding Payment Options for Customers

Today, Infor launched a new financing program for all of our customers. To help introduce this program, we sat down with our own Kevin Samuelson, senior vice president, mergers & acquisitions and integration, to get his take on Infor Financing and how it will create new value for customers.

Editor: Why offer financing now?

Kevin Samuelson: At the risk of oversimplifying my answer…because our customers have asked us for it. Given the importance of preserving cash in the current environment, there is considerable advantage for customers in rolling-out new technology initiatives and business strategies in a way that lets them fund these programs over time. Many companies are using the downturn to put programs into place that will enable them to emerge as stronger, more competitive organizations—and our software is a large part of that.

Editor: When does it make sense for a company to consider financing?

KS: Customers should consider finance options for each purchase. Everyone’s feeling the effects of budget constraints and more aggressive cash management. With financing, customers preserve cash for other investments, while avoiding large up-front payments for the software they need today. Financing helps our customers turn capital expenses into operational expenses—a key factor in managing cash flow.

Editor: How can customers benefit from financing?

KS: Through Infor Financing, customers can immediately move forward with business initiatives that will improve their bottom line—without depleting their cash reserves or impacting working capital.

Editor: What types of payment options and other packages will be offered?

KS: Our standard payment programs are for 24 and 36 months; however, we also have the flexibility to offer extended payment terms for large transactions.

Editor: How long will Infor offer 0% financing?

KS: The zero percent financing program, which lets customers lock-in interest-free monthly payments for a period of 24 months, will be available until September 2009. As we get closer to that date we may consider extending the 0% program.

Editor: Is there a minimum deal size, or other “fine print?”

KS: Infor Financing is available for all customers (direct sales or through our worldwide network of channel partners) who have made at least a $15,000 purchase. Customers can finance software license costs, professional services, and maintenance/support fees. I encourage everyone interested in Infor Financing to visit the Infor Financing website.

Editor: Everyone has heard horror stories of the difficulties in securing loans recently. How difficult is it to qualify for financing?

KS: Infor has a wide range of financing programs for all companies and our goal is to make the financing process as simple as possible. Even if a customer does not qualify for traditional financing or zero percent financing, we can still work with them to establish an appropriate financing plan.

Editor: Are you offering software leasing as well?

KS: No. With our financing program, customers take ownership of their software licenses when they sign the agreements.

Editor: Where is the program offered?

KS: We are starting the financing program in North America and expect to gradually extend the program worldwide over the next year.

Posted by Lauren Banks, Infor Blog
 

Infor Expanding Channel Partner Ranks

Over the past year, Infor has launched worldwide Channel Partner recruitment drives, the latest of which was just announced in North America.

Dennis Michalis, SVP for Global Partners at Infor, sat down with me to talk about Infor’s Channel Partner Program, the kinds of programs Infor offers, and the state of the industry.

Note: For more on the North American Channel Partner Program, attend the webinar on May 14. It will be archived on the Infor website, as well. You can also visit the Global Channel Partner Program site for more information.

Editor: What is the state of the industry for value-added resellers and other types of partners in enterprise software? How are they coping with the downturn?

Dennis Michalis: Obviously, the recession is the biggest issue facing the industry today. For small businesses, where a lot of our partners’ efforts are focused, spending is definitely tighter. In general, companies at the lower end of the market don’t set aside capital to maintain spending in a downturn.

And some regions are more affected than others. A lot of it depends on the focus. We may have two partners in the same city, one focused on automotive and another on distribution, who are facing different levels of intensity.

Our goal is to help all of our partners get through this and come up swinging in the recovery. We are helping them with access to capital through financing programs for customers, tuning our programs to match the environment, helping them to create their own, and just in general giving them the tools they need to compete and win business.