Infor Drives Profitability for Automotive Suppliers

ATLANTA - Infor, a provider of business applications to mid-sized companies, today announced Infor AutoConnect, a demand management solution for suppliers in the automotive industry. Built upon Infor's automotive domain expertise, AutoConnect provides a single view into planning, production and shipping across the industry's complex supply chains. AutoConnect integrates with Infor enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems such as Infor ERP LN, as well as third-party ERP systems. The combined power of Infor AutoConnect and Infor ERP systems helps suppliers strengthen their critical relationships with OEMs, accelerate response time to customer demands, better support varying OEM business practices, and ease expansion into new markets.

"Truck-Lite Europe had several different ERP systems and EDI methodologies deployed and were looking to standardize on a solution that provided a comprehensive view of the business and addressed the requirements of an automotive manufacturer," said Paul Beavis, IT manager, Truck-Lite Europe. "Truck-Lite Europe selected Infor ERP LN Automotive including AutoConnect for the comprehensive financials, to streamline the automotive business processes, reduce costs and become more competitive."

"With volatile customer demands and complex global supply chains, the automotive industry puts unprecedented pressure on its suppliers," said Wolfram Schmid, director, automotive solution management, Infor. "Infor AutoConnect helps automotive companies reduce costs to increase profitability and ensure long-term viability by providing their OEM customers with greater service, dependability and support for worldwide operations."

Infor AutoConnect is a new flexible and scalable demand management solution designed to help suppliers better compete in the increasingly complex and globalized automotive industry.

The solution consolidates multiple electronic data interchanges (EDI) into a single solution, providing suppliers global visibility and communication across the entire supply chain enabling them to:
o Reduce administrative costs
o Accelerate response to supply chain variability such as customer order changes and demand shifts
o Help ensure compliance with differing import, export and other regulations across regions
o Improve global logistics visibility, delivery execution and shipping accuracy
o Ease expansion into new markets and regions through rapid addition of new up-stream and down-stream supply chain partners

AutoConnect uses the deep automotive domain expertise from Infor to extend, complement and integrate with any ERP system to support standard industry business practices and trading partner variations.