5 Steps to Enable Enterprise Automation with Infor ERP in 2024

5 Steps to Enable Enterprise Automation with Infor ERP in 2024

Driving enterprise automation at scale has been a challenging undertaking for enterprises. This is evident in enterprises' dissatisfaction with their RPA initiatives – 63% say that RPA implementations take longer than expected to implement, and 37% say that these exceed the budgets.[1] 
This is hardly surprising because businesses relied on point solutions to build automation in their ERP environments. Maintenance and management took center stage, and results took the backseat. 
With a new low-code, composable automation platform in the Infor OS, running ERP processes on autopilot is becoming a reality. Here are the five steps to accelerate enterprise automation in your organization with Infor ERP:

Enabling Enterprise Automation with Infor ERP: 5 Key Steps

#1. Discovery and planning: Know your ERP processes

Despite Infor ERP's industry-specific capabilities, process implementations vary, sometimes even within an organization. That's why it is crucial to discover all the processes implemented within your ERP and observe how they are executed in practice.

Moreover, it is also essential to learn about all the variants of each process flow so that they can be addressed while you build automation for them. Once you have cataloged all the processes configured within your ERP system, you can devise a strategically sound automation journey.

#2. Conduct an automation assessment

Not all processes are ideal candidates for automation. At the same time, some processes may represent a more significant opportunity. Top candidates are usually high-volume processes or workflows that entail many repetitive tasks. Similarly, automating swivel-chair data entry processes will bring strategic benefits, such as improved employee experience.
An automation assessment will help you prioritize the highest-value use cases, bringing the greatest ROI to your enterprise automation initiative. It is worth noting that efficiency and productivity are not always the primary objective of automating enterprise processes. Automation can significantly elevate the customer experience by speeding processes, and if this is your end goal, you should prioritize those processes.

#3. Prioritize the low-hanging fruits

Once you have identified the processes ready to be automated, the next step is to devise an optimal order of priority. With Infor's composable automation platform, some of the key processes in your industry can be automated with prebuilt templates available through the content library. These include invoice creation, data retrieval from other systems, processing of invoices received via email, item replenishment, and data extraction/upload from physical documents. To automate them, you will need to make only minor tweaks in the templates to fit them into your workflows.

The Infor automation platform offers nearly every component required to build automation natively within the Infor OS. If the content library provides templates for the high-priority processes identified in Step 2, these are low-hanging fruit that you must prioritize over other methods. Find out which has the highest volume and how much cost and time savings their automation will bring. By prioritizing these processes, your organization will start realizing time and cost savings early on, potentially turning the program into a self-funding one. 

Because Infor offers a pay-per-use subscription model for the automation platform, your business can start reaping the benefits of automation without significant upfront investments.

#4. Build automation with Infor's composable automation platform

Infor offers a low/no-code interface for building end-to-end automation. With this interface, various elements can be dragged, dropped, and configured to orchestrate end-to-end process automation. Moreover, enterprises no longer need to build and maintain integrations, as they are made available natively in the Infor Enterprise Automation platform. 

Infor's Enterprise Automation platform offers a modular approach for building frontend and backend automation and driving intelligent decision-making at scale. Automation can be embedded with AI models if some processes entail cognitive tasks. Moreover, these AI models can be built and trained within a low/no-code environment, making these capabilities accessible to business users. If your organization lacks the bandwidth or skills required to drive an ERP automation program at scale, you can join hands with an Infor partner to assist you through the transition. 

#5. Revisit your workforce strategy

Automating some processes will leave your teams with more time on their hands. These users can be deployed to focus on more strategic tasks and power users may be trained to run and maintain the automation.  However, an automation initiative will warrant a realignment of your workforce strategy with the current state of your enterprise. Estimates suggest that RPA alone can provide 20% of full-time equivalent capacity.[2]Employees that have been freed up can be re-skilled or upskilled to fill other gaps in your talent strategy.

Next steps

With enterprise automation capabilities and content now available through the Infor OS, businesses are perfectly positioned to exploit the strategic advantage of achieving ERP automation at scale. Along with increased efficiency and productivity, companies also benefit from enhanced process quality, standardization, better compliance, and improved employee experience. 

Moreover, Infor automation is billed on a pay-per-use model, making it easy to scale up and down as and when necessary. Enterprises now equipped to achieve ERP automation through in-house teams can tap into the partner network to experience the benefits of enterprise hyper-automation. 

 

About the Author:

Ravindra C Kabbur. Senior Solution Architect, Birlasoft Limited.

Birlasoft combines the power of domain, enterprise, and digital technologies to reimagine business processes for customers and their ecosystem. Its consultative and design thinking approach makes societies more productive by helping customers run businesses. As part of the multibillion-dollar diversified CK Birla Group, Birlasoft with its 12,500+ professionals, is committed to continuing the Group’s 161-year heritage of building sustainable communities.

[1] https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/bg/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/Deloitte-us-cons-global-rpa-survey.pdf 
[2] https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/bg/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/Deloitte-us-cons-global-rpa-survey.pdf