Infor has announced H&L Digital, a new division to provide end-to-end digital cloud solutions. H&L Digital, together with Infor's existing software and platforms, enables Infor to offer Digital as a Service, which are solutions that drive new capabilities, generate new revenue streams, create differentiated IP, and help Infor customers run their business better. Infor has tapped Chief Creative Officer Marc Scibelli as lead digital strategist and head of H&L Digital.
Hook & Loop, Infor's in-house creative agency, was formed in 2012 as an internal-facing organization with a singular mission to create meaningful experiences for users of Infor software. H&L Digital is a client-facing extension of Hook & Loop, using many of the same approaches, including digital workshops and hackathons, to deliver differentiated experiences for Infor customers' customers.
"Many consulting firms and design agencies claim to help deliver digital transformation to help clients meet the challenges of digital disruption, but because they lack the underpinning technology to effect real change, their customers' projects often languish, stall, or fail to meet expectations," said Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor. "With the creation of H&L Digital, Infor can deliver all the components of an end-to-end solution as a service: cloud-based industry applications, dynamic data-driven insights, cutting-edge user experience design, and a connected supply chain network."
Infor has taken an enterprise-out approach to digital transformation services that improve operations and provide new experiences for both customers and employees. The three layers of this approach are:
- Software and platforms - at the core of any transformation program are the cloud applications that power a business including enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise asset management (EAM), human capital management (HCM), supply chain management, configure-price-quote (CPQ), and the standards-based middleware in Infor ION® to integrate them and publish data.
- Data and analytics - layered on top of the core applications are API management, insights from Infor Dynamic Science Labs, and the elastic supercomputing power of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
- H&L Digital - rethinking the way a business works to make it more effective and impactful for the connected age and create new data-driven ways to deliver an elevated experience, service, or product.
"The rise of powerful digital platforms and networks has sparked significant changes in the way we all work, communicate, and sell," said Marc Scibelli, chief creative officer of Infor and head of H&L Digital. "H&L Digital will help Infor customers create new cloud solutions to differentiate their businesses and retain their customers in a strong digital ecosystem."
Elements of Infor Digital as a Service include:
- Strategize - building on insights from interactive workshops, H&L Digital creates a digital strategy for the business and the brand. The process starts by defining a digital ecosystem and identifying "quick wins" to prototype first. The development team collaborates with customer IT teams to identify gaps in current architecture and create implementation roadmaps.
- Design - design-first thinking helps H&L Digital focus on the experiences companies seek to create for end-users. By creating beautiful, intuitive experiences for users to reach their end-goals and work seamlessly in any environment, H&L Digital helps change the way employees engage and collaborate and the way customers interact with the organization.
- Assemble - H&L Digital leverages disparate products and services, as well as existing technologies, to power elements of the digital ecosystem, and performs a gap analysis to understand the components required for integration and potential development to accelerate the project.
- Run - H&L Digital manages SaaS services with company-specific technology solutions, and provides services for continued evolution, support and maintenance.
"H&L Digital is the next evolution of Infor's strategic investment in digital and user experience as competitive differentiators," said Michael Krigsman, industry analyst and founder of CxO Talk. "Because Infor already advises its software customers on digital strategy, this new group represents a further commitment to digital transformation. H&L Digital deepens Infor's ability to leverage the company's platform to execute customer engagements."
