Infor CloudSuite Benefits with Richard Leigh Stout

Today we talk with RPI Consultants Partner Richard Leigh Stout to understand the benefits customers are achieving with Infor CloudSuite.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Tech Pro Unicorn Podcast brought to you by RPI Consultants, a podcast about the magic of digital transformation through technology. Each week we’ll cover topics related to ERP, RPA, business transformation, leadership, healthcare, and unicorns.

Michael:

All right. Welcome back to Tech Pro Unicorn Podcast, episode four here in the month of March. We are joined today by RPI partner, Richard Leigh Stout. Mr. Stout, if you could just introduce yourself a little bit to the audience.

Richard Leigh Stout:

Yeah, sure Michael, thanks for having me. This is Richard Leigh Stout. I have been with RPI consultants since about 2004. In 2013, I had the opportunity to join the leadership of the organization, and I currently work along with my practice managers to manage the Infor Professional Services focused on CloudSuite implementation.

Michael:

Awesome. Well, thank you for taking the time out of your schedule, I know that there’s a lot of implementations and such going on and you have a busy day, so I appreciate you taking some time to join the podcast.

Richard Leigh Stout:

Sure thing.

Michael:

We’re obviously talking about Infor CloudSuite. It’s a topic that is getting a lot of attention in the market as people are looking at what to do with their ERP solutions. And I noticed that RPI has really positioned a couple of offerings, but one of them that’s a particular interest is around pre-planning. And so could you talk a little bit about pre-planning, what it is, why it’s important to pre-plan versus just doing implementation? And any other trends that you think might be helpful to folks, things that are happening that you see as helpful to being successful.

Richard Leigh Stout:

Yeah, sure. So pre-planning is different from planning in that pre-planning is some activities that you can do prior to getting an implementation project actually rolling. Pre-planning involves coming up with this scope and structure of an implementation project, a high-level timeline. Really figuring out what you want to achieve, what are your objectives with an implementation project, and then starting to get a handle on resource requirements in terms of your project team, an implementation partner to work with, technology assets and requirements for the project. Pre-planning, basically, the advantage to conducting a pre-planning exercise is it puts you in a much better position to find an implementation partner that’s a great fit for your organization and for your goals as a project, and then to get a head start on initiating an implementation project so you can overall shorten your timeline, be more efficient.

Michael:

Awesome. Thank you. That sounds useful for anyone really. And I think when I listened to you describe it, I think people kind of maybe go through that on their own in various fashions, maybe as they’re budgeting or going through a budget cycle trying to estimate-[crosstalk 00:00:03:43]

Richard Leigh Stout:

Sure. Yeah. At least any organization that’s had to do an RFP for a CloudSuite implementation, I think they’ve had to do some level of pre-planning just to figure out what goes in the RFP, and collect some information that’s needed, answer questions from different vendors and be able to do an apples-apples comparison looking at various implementation proposals.

Michael:

Awesome. So as you’re helping customers move to CloudSuite and helping them with their planning and such, are you noticing any trends? How is this different than maybe going from a previous version, like version nine to version 10? How is CloudSuite different?

Richard Leigh Stout:

Yeah, I guess, CloudSuite really is a different application than Lawson. It shares a lot of the same DNA. It’s a natural step forward from Lawson, but it’s a different application than Lawson. So previous Lawson upgrades were generally technical focused projects, oftentimes run by IT, and oftentimes a measure of success was minimal disruption or change to the business, for Lawson upgrade. I think, we