In this episode, Steve and Sam are joined by Jennifer Noonan, Vice President and General Manager of CX and IPMC business units at Infor.
The conversation begins with Jen offering a refreshingly clear overview of Infor’s mission to deliver industry-specific software solutions, particularly for sectors such as manufacturing, distribution, and healthcare. She outlines how Infor CRM SLX (formerly SalesLogix) has evolved to meet the needs of modern businesses, focusing on delivering deep functionality without requiring extensive customization.
Jen dives into Infor’s vertical-specific go-to-market strategy, emphasizing the importance of tailoring solutions to distinct industries and micro-verticals. The group discusses how Infor CRM fits into this approach, serving as a matrix layer that spans multiple industries while offering nuanced capabilities depending on the operational focus, whether it is manufacturing, distribution, or services. Jen shares insights into the complexity of determining the best ERP fit, especially in hybrid organizations, and how Infor addresses this through core ERPs supported by integrated modules.
One major highlight is the role CRM plays in unifying customer relationship data with operational systems, such as ERP. Jen talks about how integrated solutions reduce friction for users—particularly sales and customer service reps—by putting everything from sales order history to pricing at their fingertips. She emphasizes that CRM should act as the system of engagement, capturing leads, communications, and customer interactions. At the same time, ERP retains its role as the system of record for financials and fulfillment.
The episode concludes with a look at Infor’s innovation strategy under Koch Industries, which has enabled the company to adopt a long-term perspective on product development. Jen reflects on the rebranding of Infor CRM, which now includes ‘SLX’ as a nod to its SalesLogix heritage, and how cloud transformation has retained the platform’s robust customization capabilities.
The discussion encompasses a range of topics, from marketing automation to CPQ integration and the importance of thoroughly rethinking business processes during CRM implementations.
Excerpt:
Most of the ERPs have some level of capability around some kind of CRM offering built in. Now, in some cases, it might be as basic as just account and contact management. In other cases, they’ll have more of what my team affectionately refers to as CRM lite, where it can handle a basic and straightforward sales process and a basic and straightforward sales organization.
And so for those companies, they don’t need to buy an additional product. I mean, we’d all love for them to, but they don’t need it. And they can make do or, or function perfectly well with the light capability that is included in an accounting system or an ERP system or wherever it may be.
We’ve even seen, in some cases, some of the marketing automation vendors building some light CRM into what they do. And that’s really for those organizations that have a very basic sales process and a very basic sales operation where marketing’s leading the charge and all sales is doing is capturing orders, perhaps.
The customers that are coming to us are really looking for more of what CRM says it does on the label, customer relationship management. So when they’re coming to us, they’re saying, “Help me to better manage to get more out of my customer relationships.” And so the scope or the vision of exactly what that includes has really expanded over the years and continues to expand. And I think the two of you could probably attest to this from the early days of CRM, right?
Back then, it was more around contact, opportunity management. And over time, it’s grown, so that customers now they’re looking for a CRM that’s going to integrate seamlessly across their operations. And really give them visibility to all of the factors that are influencing their customer’s relationship with their organization. And so it’s really where the start of the conversation is, I think, for us.
A lot of the time it’s, “I want to do something more complex. I want to do something more strategic, less transactional with my customers.” And that’s when people are coming to talk to us.