In this episode of RPI Tech Connect, Chris Arey and Richard Leigh Stout take a grounded look at Infor’s newly released Velocity Suite, what it actually is, what problems it aims to solve, and the type of value organizations can expect to experience with the new solution.
From Process Mining and automation tools to embedded GenAI, they explore how Velocity might help close the ERP “value void” that many organizations face post-go-live. But with any emerging solution, there’s nuance: what’s real, what’s possible, and what’s still to come?
If you’re live on the cloud and wondering what to do next, this is your honest roadmap to making the most of Infor’s latest release—without the fluff.
Interested in listening to this episode on another streaming platform? Check out our directories or watch the YouTube video below.
Meet Today’s Guest, Richard Leigh Stout
Recognized as a thought leader throughout the Infor CloudSuite and Lawson communities, Richard Leigh Stout joined RPI’s management team in 2014. He first served as the Director of our Technical Services practice, before taking the role of Director of Infor Service Delivery.
Mr. Stout has grown the practice with a focus on client satisfaction and the core values of RPI, completing hundreds of projects from interface flows to Lawson upgrades to full CloudSuite implementations. He draws on the experience of the whole team to architect elegant solutions that meet complex business challenges faced by RPI’s service industry clients.
Prior to joining the management team, he spent 10 years as an RPI Consultant, allowing him the opportunity to gain a wide-ranging familiarity with Infor implementation and optimization projects. In this role, he expanded his knowledge of workflow and process automation, document management, data management and reporting, integrations between Infor and other systems, web user interface development, as well as end user training and documentation.
Meet Your Host, Chris Arey
Chris Arey is a B2B marketing professional with nearly a decade of experience working in content creation, copywriting, SEO, website architecture, corporate branding, and social media. Beginning his career as an analyst before making a lateral move into marketing, he combines analytical thinking with creative flair—two fundamental qualities required in marketing.
With a Bachelor’s degree in English and certifications from the Digital Marketing Institute and HubSpot, Chris has spearheaded impactful content marketing initiatives, participated in corporate re-branding efforts, and collaborated with celebrity influencers. He has also worked with award-winning PR professionals to create unique, compelling campaigns that drove brand recognition and revenue growth for his previous employers.
Chris’ versatility is highlighted by his experience working across different industries, including HR, Tech, SaaS, and Consulting.
About RPI Tech Connect
RPI Tech Connect is the go-to podcast for catching up on the dynamic world of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Join us as we discuss the future of ERPs, covering everything from best practices and organizational change to seamless cloud migration and optimizing applications. Plus, we’ll share predictions and insights of what to expect in the future world of ERPs.
RPI Tech Connect delivers relevant, valuable information in a digestible format. Through candid, genuine conversations and stories from the world of consulting, we aim to provide actionable steps to help you elevate your organization’s ERP. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the ERP scene, our podcast ensures you’re well-equipped for success.
Tune in as we explore tips and tricks in the field of ERP consulting each week and subscribe below.
Transcript
Chris Arey
Infor’s Velocity Suite is now available to CloudSuite users. But what exactly is this new solution, and what value is it bringing organizations? Stick around as we discuss all of this and more on RPI Tech Connect.
This is RPI Tech Connect. Welcome back and thank you for joining us. I’m your host, Chris Arey. And today we’re going to be talking about one of the most exciting announcements in the Infor ecosystem. And that is the introduction of the Velocity Suite.
Now, if you were at the Velocity event last October in Las Vegas, you probably caught wind of this Velocity Suite. But in recent weeks, Infor has revealed exactly what’s included and the value that it’s providing CloudSuite customers.
Joining me today to unpack it and to talk about everything that you might expect from this new solution is RPI partner, Mr. Richard Leigh Stout. Stout, welcome back. You know, I gotta say you’re becoming quite the regular here on the show and I’m excited about that.
But before we jump in, I’d love to hear, where are you today? You’re a bit of a nomad, so where are you calling in from?
Richard Leigh Stout
Yeah, thanks Chris. Thanks for the opportunity to come back on your pod. Always enjoyable to chat with you and I love the product you’re putting out here. This is always great content. Today I’m talking to you from the beautiful podcast booth of my co-working space in Asheville, North Carolina.
Chris Arey
Cool. How is it over there today? Got good weather?
Richard Leigh Stout
You know, it started off a little rainy, but it’s bright and sunny today. You know, here we’re talking here right at the height of spring. And it’s the peak azalea bloom right now in Western North Carolina.
Chris Arey
Ooh. That sounds great. Well, I hope you get to enjoy some of that after our discussion today. But so I thought a great place to start with today’s discussion would be to talk about what happens after an organization goes live in the cloud.
I know that Infor has coined this term, the value void. And I think that there is sometimes a gap in what clients expect their system to be able to do and what it’s actually delivering. And I think that the part of that concept is what has inspired the Velocity Suite solution. So what do you think? What is the value void? What is, in your experience, what have you seen customers and organizations experience post-go live? What can you share?
Richard Leigh Stout
Yeah. Yeah. You know, we’ve talked a lot about this concept before. It’s something that we’ve referred to in the past as day two, right? It’s the second day after go live. What do you do?
And it’s really about recapturing the momentum and aspirations that you have during a major project and sort of applying that to continuous innovation, right?
You know, a lot of organizations have recently gone through a big uplift to the cloud and those kinds of projects oftentimes by necessity have to focus on bringing current functionality into a cloud operating environment.
And a lot of the promise that people really believed in of why they were making this move in the first place, had to take a backseat to the realities of getting a major systems implementation completed within certain constraints.
We’ve talked a lot about different approaches that organizations can take, and those approaches aren’t necessarily technology driven, like we’re going to talk about today, but basic stuff like putting together a performance improvement team and hearing from end users what’s working for them and what’s not.
You know, getting organized and putting together a list of optimization opportunities and working through that, you know.
And of course, staying in tune with how the software evolves because cloud software, of course, is updated on a regular cadence. A lot more rapidly than organizations are used to in an on-premise environment.
Chris Arey
Yeah. So, a lot of different avenues for getting more value out of the system. And it seems like the Velocity Suite introduces new technology to the equation that in an ideal world is helping them achieve the more desirable outcomes sooner. think the first of, I think there’s three pieces to the suite.
The first one is this Process Mining. What is it? Why should organizations care? How is it delivering value?
Richard Leigh Stout
Yeah, Process Mining is pretty exciting. Let me talk about what the product does for you. At its heart, it’s a collection of process graphs. And the content really comes from the implementation accelerator workflows that Infor had developed in years past.
So imagine a basic business process workflow for all the common of business processes that are operating in Infor systems. You take that workflow and you start tying in to actual transaction touch points or status points in system and have the system start measuring. What is the average amount of time it takes to move from this step to the next step, from the next step to the step following?
Furthermore, start identifying any kind of transactions that go through an alternate workflow and identify what that alternate workflow is. Are there a set of transactions that skip a step? Are there a set of transactions that get stuck in a loop and just get bounced back and forth?
Process Mining is a visual tool that allows you to see metrics and statistics on how well do transactions move through a business process. It also identifies variants and lets you do troubleshooting and analysis on what kinds of transactions follow what kinds of alternate paths.
So you can do root cause analysis and say, you know, what’s going on here? Is there, mistakes being made? In how these things are processed or do we need to adjust our process to account for a different set of expectations around certain transactions?
Chris Arey
So when Process Mining is measuring how effective or efficient a process is within a business workflow, is it using data from other organizations in your industry? Is it just comparing it to your performance over time? Is it both? I’m wondering how it indicates or how it’s supposed to indicate how well something is working. Do we know? Or what do you think? What should that look like?
Richard Leigh Stout
Yeah, I mean, we’ve done this type of analysis before. It’s honestly, it’s very time consuming. But we’ve built out these kind of metrics reports. If you think about in a procure to pay scenario, you can follow through an individual item that needs to be ordered and paid for from requisitioning to purchase order.
To delivery from the vendor, to invoicing and to payment. And we can track as that transaction moves through the system. There are certain touch points within Infor, within other systems that are involved in processing that as well. And we can capture timestamps and average out how much time it takes.
Most organizations, they kind of know where their pain points are, right? So we use this more as a troubleshooting tool to say, hey, we know maybe certain items always seem to be out of stock or are hard to get, or certain vendors, we really have trouble getting paid on time, or perhaps there’s an offer for a discount for a prompt payment that we’d like to take advantage of, right?
Chris Arey
Yeah.
Richard Leigh Stout
Most organizations kind of know what they’re trying to figure out that we apply these tools to. I do think that one thing that a lot of our clients really are searching for is, is this normal? Are other organizations encountering these same kinds of problems? And if so, how do they fix them? That’s certainly where, you know,
Chris Arey
Mmm.
Richard Leigh Stout
A consulting partner like RPI comes in, since that’s honestly one of our big advantages is that we get to see what’s really, what’s working out in the space and can help circulate leading practices. But one of the very cool features about Process Mining is going to show
Chris Arey
Yeah.
Richard Leigh Stout
Industry standard benchmarks against your actual performance data. So, you know, that really gives you a scorecard and can help prioritize, you know, where do you want to invest your time in? What do you maybe already doing well? And what are some areas that you should really consider trying to improve on?
Chris Arey
Hmm. Yeah. That sounds actually like really great visibility, important, like being able to see all that quickly too, right? Like the tool kind of calculates and runs these assessments in the background
Richard Leigh Stout
Right. It’s a, yeah, like I mentioned, this work is extremely time consuming. The fact that Process Mining comes out of the box with all this integration to the Infor applications and can produce this data, I mean, that’s a huge leg up. That’s gonna really level the playing field because there’s a lot of customers out there that can’t.
Chris Arey
Pretty cool.
Richard Leigh Stout
Invest a ton of time and effort into advanced analytics. And these types of insights have been out of reach for them until now.
Chris Arey
Yeah. I love how like the ability to diagnose potential issues within your organizations with this tool. Like you can very quickly identify how your, how a certain work business process is stacking up to those organizations that are, you know, that are also in your industry.
So immediately see the value there. Very cool. Now I want to move on to the next part of this Velocity Suite. So we can diagnose with Process Mining.
And then once you know what’s wrong, how do you fix it? And I know that there are a number of different ways that you can go about, you know, improving, you know, your, numbers there.
But I believe that the Value+ automation library is one avenue and part of the Velocity Suite that organizations can take advantage of. What exactly is the Velocity library and why would somebody want to take it? Like what value does it, does it bring to the table?
Richard Leigh Stout
Yeah, there’s a collection of tools here and I gotta give it, I gotta hand it to Infor. I think they’ve done a great job in sort of positioning how these things relate to each other.
You know, they’ve got a nice diagram that they show where Process Mining fits in your diagnose category. Following the diagnosis, right, we’re gonna take action on that and that’s where Value+ comes in.
Chris Arey
Hmm. Yeah.
Richard Leigh Stout
It’s three different tools that can be used to actually help enhance your process efficiency. I think the one that everybody’s talking about right now is RPA, Robotic Process Automation. That’s the one that’s out there in the field. There are several organizations using it. There are success stories, customer case studies out there.
In the areas that we work in, know, we’re primarily services industry oriented and a lot of our backend financial processes can definitely benefit from RPA. Some of the out of the box tools that it comes with are a vendor compliance check flow that basically ties Infor those organizations that you know, need to ensure that any supplier they have are not on any particular exclusion list, you know, maybe for government funding or something. That’s a manual process that can be automated.
There are a lot of functions like that that are not necessarily core ERP functions and maybe don’t lend themselves well to a traditional interface or traditional integration. And that’s where RPA
Chris Arey
Okay.
Richard Leigh Stout
Kind of comes in to fill that gap for those type of processes. The other tools in the Value+ Toolbox are Insights, which is another kind of reporting or analytics function, as well as Workspace, which is a user experience enhancement.
Chris Arey
Now, I’ve heard that Value+ does have a catalog of pre-built solutions that organizations can pick and choose and deploy at will. But if someone wanted to build something from scratch, that’s also something that can be done within Value+.
Richard Leigh Stout
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Particularly with RPA, RPA used to be a specialty product.
You think about applications like Blue Prism or UiPath, and those are tools that can basically connect to any kind of system and they have a collection of different nodes or workflow activities that can be strung together.
I think a lot of organizations struggled with that messaging because it felt like a solution in need of a problem. And I don’t think that there was really strong adoption of those RPA tools when there was a lot of talk about that five or eight years ago.
Um, you know, now basically what we’re seeing is just like how document management went from being a special add on application to being commoditized and included in every enterprise application. That’s the direction RPA is going. And I think it makes a lot, lot more sense this way.
Rather than having to go out and buy a best of breed RPA tool and then figure out how to get ROI from automating all of your different processes, all of your enterprise applications should come with a built-in RPA component that can just extend the value of that enterprise application.
It can reach out and do other things, you know, primarily to improve functions that you’re for the most part doing in that application, in this case, Infor CloudSuite
Chris Arey
Yeah. So it’s very cool then to see how Infor has structured this Velocity Suite and that you can diagnose and identify areas where you can improve, know, explore the Value+ library and deploy pre-built solutions and, you know, and automate them so that they’re enhancing and improving those things that were diagnosed as areas where you can improve.
And then to kind of wrap it all up, there is this Infor Gen. AI, GenAI component. And of course, AI is everywhere and everyone’s finding creative ways to use it. So I’m curious about how Infor is deploying AI with under the umbrella of the Velocity Suite. What makes it stand out? What’s so special?
Richard Leigh Stout
I think at this point, there hasn’t been a lot of penetration of GenAI into the back office systems that we typically work with. I think that the use cases that are kind of at launch here have to do with data summarization.
Basically, let’s say I’ve seen the example of constructing a brief item description by analyzing all the data points on that item record, for example. And, you know, there’s value in standardizing the language that’s used and the information that’s included in the format and everything.
And, you know, in years past, we’ve done that type of work, right? Like, we provided data
Chris Arey
Yeah.
Richard Leigh Stout
Standardization and normalization services here to help do item master or vendor master cleanup efforts. And Gen.ai can certainly help with that. But honestly, I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I mean, if you think about GenAi and consumer use, sure, on my phone, I have Apple intelligence. So I see a summary of my communications, or even evils in my text messages, it gives me a little summary. You know, for the most part, it’s correct. I find it novel and interesting, but not really life-changing.
On the flip side, you know, we’re, we’re using GenAI here to help with all sorts of documentation creation. And whilst we have to be very careful, as we do that, right?
Because we need to make sure that we remain in compliance with all of our clients’ policies as well as regulatory policies in terms of how we’re handling data. each, you know, we do need to ensure that we have consent from the relevant stakeholders as we… apply these tools, the end result is it saves us a lot of time. when you look at, know, consulting has traditionally been driven on an hourly billing model.
Saving time right now just immediately results in us being able to deliver more value to a client at a lower cost. And you know, data summarization, that’s sort of the first thing that we can do.
Being able to create content that helps people think through things in a different way, you know, that helps people take information and turn it into actionable steps, you know?
Chris Arey
Yeah.
Richard Leigh Stout
To help get everybody on the same page and do so quickly and accurately, there’s a lot more potential here.
Chris Arey
I agree. I’m glad you clarify like here’s what it’s doing now. It is the tip of the iceberg. You know, at what point in the future is that is the AI delivering exponential more value in ways that we’ve yet to see?
Do you know if there maybe, you the answer to this, but is there any kind of forecasting ability right now or like, you know, it’s we’re diagnosing and it’s measuring your performance and it’s finding areas that you can improve and in comparing it to industry peers, I wonder if there’s a way to kind of say, well, if you made this change six months from now, here’s what your numbers could look like type thing to be interesting.
Richard Leigh Stout
Yeah, I think so. And personally, I struggle sometimes with what is GenAI, what is not generative AI. I might not use all the terms correctly. But what you’re talking about, know, Infor actually has demonstrated that capability already with a tool called Inventory Intelligence.
Yeah, that’s something that’s been out a couple of years already. It’s got a really strong track record. We have found that Inventory Intelligence is most effective for clients that have been live on Infor for over a year. So it’s got you know, a full 12 months of data to look back on, especially if you, you know, been a fairly stable organization over that time. Meaning, you know, didn’t double in size halfway through the year.
Because at the 12-month point, Inventory Intelligence can start picking up on seasonality. And it can project, hey, you’re going to need
Chris Arey
Very cool.
Richard Leigh Stout
You’re probably going to need to keep more batteries in stock in November and December because they seem to fly off the shelf in those months. Yeah.
Chris Arey
Haha. I see. Well, thank you for clarifying that. It sounded like something maybe I had spoken with a consultant here at RPI about, but I wasn’t sure. But thank you for clarifying that. Folks listening in, Inventory Intelligence, excellent tool. Happy to talk to you about that.
Richard Leigh Stout
Yeah, not part of Velocity Suite, but I would say from a technology basis, you know, it’s related.
Chris Arey
Cool. Well, great. So we’ve talked now about the three different components that make up the Velocity Suite solution. We have the Process Mining, the Value+ library, and Generative AI.
So if you’re a customer and you’re hearing all this, you might be thinking, great, how do I use this? How do I make it work for my team? And that’s a great question. And actually, to start my question for you in response to that is that
What kind of organizations are best positioned to take advantage of velocity? What do you think?
Richard Leigh Stout
Yeah, well, I would say first and foremost that the prerequisite is that you’re running cloud applications. Velocity Suite offers a ton of potential. But what it doesn’t offer is the ability to drive that from on-prem systems or from disparate systems that are on-prem.
Chris Arey
Okay. Yep.
Richard Leigh Stout
You’ve got to bring the data that it analyzes into the Infor Data Lake. And, you know, the nice thing about the Infor Data Lake is while you have to pick and choose what applications you’re going to use for what business processes, the same isn’t true for data warehouses, right? Nobody says you can only have one data warehouse.
And if you’ve got data from different line of business applications, maybe ending up in different places for reporting or integration purposes, it’s not that much of a stretch to say, let’s also make sure that data is all replicated into the Infor Data Lake. So that way Velocity Suite has visibility to it. And we have the potential to use that to drive insights.
Chris Arey
Okay, so prerequisite right off the bat, you have to be on the cloud.
Richard Leigh Stout
I would say so. mean, that’s probably, I’m sure your listeners will call me out where, you know, there’s exceptions to that rule.
But honestly, my perspective on this is in the long term that these innovations that are driven by AI technologies are going to be more impactful to organizations than the whole idea of moving to the cloud. I would say, you know, what the value we’re going to derive out of AI tools on cloud-based applications in the long run is on par with centralizing processes into a ERP in the first place, you know.
Chris Arey
Ooh. Yeah. Wow.
Richard Leigh Stout
Having everything in one place, having visibility and having a standard data dictionary that’s used across the enterprise. That’s everything we got from that. We’re gonna see that again. We’re gonna see that same leap, but it’s gonna take a long time until we get there.
Chris Arey
Okay. So if you’re not on the cloud, let this be your reason to get there because this in itself is just as significant as the move to the cloud. that what saying?
Richard Leigh Stout
Yeah, that’s essentially what I’m saying. honestly, I don’t think you need to hear that from me. I think we all kind of see that’s the future. Maybe at first, there were some cloud skeptics that said, is a fad. And a few years from now, everybody’s going to switch back and go back to on-prem. But I think that time’s passed.
Chris Arey
Haha. So, Velocity Suite solution, lot of potential, a lot of excitement. Where does RPI come in? How are we helping clients make use of this new solution and helping them explore it?
Richard Leigh Stout
Yeah, it is a strategic initiative here at RPI Consultants to be a leader Infor AI tool implementation and helping clients successfully adopt these tools. We’ve made it a priority to receive all the training that’s available. We have these tools available in our sandbox, right?
We’re getting hands on and exploring and trying things out. And we’re looking to partner with our clients identify opportunities of where this can make an impact. It’s important to us that we can help our clients make sense of.
You know, all the jargon and different product names here and just talk about, all right, what do we, what’s realistic to achieve on what timeframe and what should our roadmap look like?
Chris Arey
Yeah, that’s really, I like that a lot. And especially because we started this conversation by talking about how RPI has a lot of content and it’s a topic that we explored in many different ways over a long period of time, but this day two, right, you’re on the cloud.
How are you gonna get more value out of the cloud? Well, there’s different ways to do that. And it seems that the Velocity Suite is one solution for helping you get more out your system. Is that right?
Richard Leigh Stout
Sorry, that was a question?
Chris Arey
I believe that to be true. I’d like you to clarify if it is or isn’t.
Richard Leigh Stout
Yeah, I’m with you, Chris. You’re spot on.
Chris Arey
Thank you, sir. Well, great, great stuff. This is as always been a been an absolute joy chatting with you this afternoon. As you know, before we wrap up, always like to ask my guests if they could share one actionable takeaway for today’s audience regarding today’s topic, what it would be.
So I would I would love to hear from your perspective for those who are listening in. What is that? What is the takeaway? What is the call to action? Think here at all this about philosophy.
Richard Leigh Stout
Yeah. Yeah, you know, there’s a lot of excitement here and we’re all pretty jazzed up about the future, honestly, the future of work, right? Like what will be the consulting opportunities five or 10 years from now as we move from application configuration to more of a strategic advisory role?
But in terms of Velocity Suite, Chris, are you familiar with the Gartner Hype Cycle?
Chris Arey
I’ve come across it in my time, but I’d love to hear in your words what it is and why it’s relevant.
Richard Leigh Stout
Yeah, the Gartner Hype Cycle is a curve upon which you could measure, you know, where does a particular technology or concept fit in in terms of actual value achieved?
And I would say that Infor a velocity suite is squarely at the peak of inflated expectations at this point, right?
Some of the numbers being thrown out in terms of efficiency gains are really eye-watering. And my takeaway is, we gotta keep it real. This is extremely new and early,
Chris Arey
Haha. We do.
Richard Leigh Stout
There will be early adopters that find quick success. There will be early adopters that struggle mightily. As with any new technology innovation or software that comes out, you need to make your own assessment of what’s right for you and how much of a risk taker are you in terms of being an early adopter.
Chris Arey
I appreciate the honesty there. You know, that’s one of the benefits of the RPI TechNet platform is that we can be candid, we can be open and transparent. And we want to educate our listeners and our clients and our prospects, like that there is, I wouldn’t say risk, but like you said, it’s very new.
The expectations are high. And there is a period of time where there’s going to be some trial and error. And you have to ask yourself, we’re asking your organization, like, you comfortable being an early adopter as that, you know, we transition.
Richard Leigh Stout
There’s certainly a lot of potential out there to unlock.
Chris Arey
Yeah, I think we can agree on that. That is absolutely true. Well, thank you so much. This was fantastic. For those of you listening.
Richard Leigh Stout
Always a pleasure. Really appreciate the invite. Great conversation.
Chris Arey
Yeah, always. And for those of you listening in, if you want to learn more about the Velocity Suite or more about how RPI can help you get started or making better use of your system now that you’re live in the cloud, we would love to chat with you.
You can contact us by emailing us at podcast@rpic.com. Again, that’s podcast@rpic.com. This is RPI Tech Connect, and we’ll see you next time. Take care of yourself.
Richard Leigh Stout
Thank you.
