Distributors Drive Enterprise Efficiency with Infor.

Enhancements to Infor ERP SX.enterprise Reduce Costs and Improve Customer Service

ATLANTA -- Infor today announced enhancements and new features to the latest version of its industry-leading distribution ERP solution, Infor ERP SX.enterprise, which will enable companies to improve business efficiency by increasing employee productivity and reducing operating costs. The next generation of SX.enterprise includes an enhanced user interface, improved central distribution support, and streamlined sales and purchase order approvals for better customer service.

"Infor continues to enrich its solutions for the Distribution industry to enable customers to meet the most challenging and opportunistic environments head on," said Andrew McGlasson, Infor's director of industry and product marketing for Distribution and Supply Chain Group. "The latest enhancements to SX.enterprise provide distributors with additional functionality that gives them a competitive edge and strengthens their market position."

Infor ERP SX.enterprise provides distributors with rich functionality to manage complex products, improve inventory accuracy, control forecasting demand and simplify fleet scheduling. The new features were developed from specific customer feedback and represent Infor's commitment to enriching customers' investment in its software, extending that investment through integrations to complementary solutions, and evolving that investment through leading technology approaches like Infor Open SOA.

The improved user interface offers employees a larger onscreen workspace, and industry-customized pull down menus allow users to work more efficiently. The easy to learn and navigate interface helps decrease training time and improves employee productivity across the enterprise, resulting in reduced costs and downtime.

Houston-based Texas Screw, one of the top single-source suppliers of engineered industrial fasteners in the country and a long time customer of Infor, chose SX.enterprise 5.5 for its business-specific functionality, which enables the distributor to manage the flow of goods across its North American operations. With the latest version of SX.enterprise, the company is well positioned to diversify its offering with value-added services such as light manufacturing.

"Our business model has evolved over the years as the need to serve our customers has changed," said Annamarie Clark, director of operations for Texas Screw. "We have broadened our product offering in an effort to meet this new demand, and the latest enhancements to SX.enterprise will enable us to provide our customers with unsurpassed service."

The latest version of SX.enterprise includes a special pricing authorization (SPA) code to automate rebate information through the use of EDI 845 transactions. As manufacturers authorize rebate changes, the system automatically reflects the adjustment and uses built-in electronic data interchange (EDI) to provide real-time rebate modifications to the distributor. This is especially important for electrical distributors since the National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED) is currently developing a SPA requirement that will require companies to support simultaneous rebate updates.

Distributors also will benefit from the solution's improved warehouse management capabilities with enhancements to central distribution management and Infor Total Warehouse Logistics (TWL). Improvements to SX.enterprise's central distribution management allow distributors to control which users have access to order and warehouse management systems, ensuring that products are shipped regionally to control costs. Enhancements to Infor TWL include improved serial lot tracking between TWL and SX.enterprise, value-added capabilities to support light manufacturing and better integration between Infor TWL and SX.enterprise.

Additionally, new Sarbanes-Oxley tracking allows distributors to add limits of authority to sales and purchase orders, triggering an approval process for orders outside of predefined limits. This new feature ensures compliance with corporate governance legislation.

About Infor

Infor delivers business-specific software to enterprising organizations. With experience built in, Infor's solutions enable businesses of all sizes to be more enterprising and adapt to the rapid changes of a global marketplace. With more than 70,000 customers, Infor is changing what businesses expect from an enterprise software provider. For additional information, visit www.infor.com.