The Advantages of Infor ION

Infor ION is a lightweight business process management-platform which has been designed to integrate people, applications, and processes in order to run businesses. It will enable to route and configure infrastructure, setup work-flows, activate and design business event-monitors and also manage business alerts & tasks.

Background of Infor ION

ION is based-on the OAGIS-standard which allows the user to connect all the systems and all the employees in the enterprise in a flexible and agile manner. Infor ION enables a new modern, consumer inspired user-experience which incorporates mobile, social, and cloud-computing in all existing environments, unlocking hidden-information and analytics where and when it’s needed.

Infor ION enables smart, intelligent business operations and processes by simplifying the integration between the disparate systems, while at the same time combining the contextual business-intelligence, common analysis and reporting, streamlined workflow and business-monitoring in one single, consistent architecture. This solution will also unify mobile services, reporting services, & cloud services into just one elegant network that is built on 4 principal elements.

Infor ION is basically a new approach to integrating and connecting multiple applications via a middleware-layer. ION will help the flow-of information between analytics, applications, social media and a powerful business-vault with master data which allows users, with disparate-applications, to work together. It is light in weight and less technically demanding-to implement, it’s also built on open-standards. Users do not need to actually go to the system so as to get the needed information. Infor-ION ensures the information will come straight to the user.

Infor ION services consist of the following:

  • ION Task-list: Managing tasks and alerts.
  • ION Workflow: Controls business processes within the enterprise with ability to track step-by-step execution of all processes.
  • ION Connect: Allows the user to integrate ION-enabled Infor to both Infor & non Infor-applications, as-well-as Infor legacy-applications and the Cloud.
  • ION Event Management: Helps track exceptions with the business processes, while being notified in real time of any problem that occurs, allowing the user to pro-actively act to resolve problem.
  • ION Desk: Intuitive, browser based interface which is used to configure & monitor all Infor-ION services.

Purpose Built Middleware

If your business(es) is(are) like most, the organizational systems used have generally evolved over time thus creating a more complicated technology-landscape. Disconnected systems & information silos usually result in inefficiencies, costly-maintenance requirements, and missed opportunities.

You can easily integrate Infor and 3rd party software-applications with Infor’s Intelligent Open-Network (ION). This purpose built middle-ware solution will provide you with a simple but quite powerful & scalable framework, thus allowing you eliminate operational-silos, improve exception-management, and also achieve unparalleled end to end efficiency.

With Infor-ION, all the applications publish-in XML, which is the language of internet; and all business events or transactions produce an XML document which is published and subscribed-to, by all applications that use that document. Based-on OAGIS standards, ION creates an inverted-model for the enterprise applications which moves all of them away from the huge, complex middleware-stacks, creating harmony.

Infor ION Workflow

The user gets a framework to standardize, create, and monitor business-processes, and also make changes without the need for IT involvement.

Infor ION Event-Management

Takes a proactive approach-to identifying and then resolving all the problems with rule based notifications & alerts which are then automatically delivered to any of the employees/staff who need them.

Infor ION Pulse

The user gets a lightweight, flexible messaging system which moves the information via the ION-network between the connected applications and the components of the ION-system, this allows your systems to work-together more effectively.

Infor-ION Technology Connector

Integrate both Infor & non Infor applications with little effort and minimize disruption & complexity of the upgrades by de-coupling your integrations.

By easily connecting to your Infor-solution, Infor-ION Workflow and Events will connect your software to all the actions which take place outside the software. It will give your people/staff a framework for monitoring, managing, and documenting what has been done, what will need doing, and what-did not get done.

The Benefits of Infor ION-Workflow and Events:

  • Design workflows more quickly. You can design the workflows in a much simpler flow chart view, that makes it much easier to create complex workflows & refine them when needed.
  • Prevent oversights. You can detect events which should’ve happened, but did not happen.
  • Ensure consistency. You can rapidly reproduce work-flows between the different sites so as to ensure consistency-in all the parts of the business.
  • Make your very own rules. You can detect exceptions based-on business rules which you define, and set-automatic alerts and notifications directed to all the appropriate staff/people/employees.
  • Provide a much better service. You get to monitor service-levels to ensure that your performance levels are met and also get to maintain an excellent customer service.
  • Automate your approvals. You can create a simple or sophisticated/complex workflow to automate document-routing and approvals across all departments and office-locations worldwide.

What It Means

With Infor ION-Workflow and-Events you will have power to:

  • Identify every task in your business processes.
  • Continuously refine the processes for maximum-efficiency.
  • Replicate the processes as widely-as-possible.

Infor-ION-workflow and Events delivers you the ability to:

  • Track performance and completion-of all routine tasks ensuring all the work-in the organization is done correctly and on-time.
  • Streamline all your finance, manufacturing, and administrative operations.
  • Boost the performance to new greater levels.

There’s no single database or system that contains all information you need/want to make that decision. Information normally comes to you from various sources and many different systems and that technology which connects all these together as one, is the key to delivering-value.

  • ION Connect gets your applications to easily operate together, so the user can seamlessly execute business-processes and get much faster results.
  • ION Business Vault gives you a single, optimised-business repository where ION-Suite stores all the enterprise data. This one unifying source for data makes it a robust-platform for analytics, reporting and business intelligence.
  • Much easier search. When all data resides in a single place, there is no need-to index all your transactional systems.
  • A better reporting. The Business-Vault has a master data-reference to ensure all your data is ever consistent and always relevant across the entire organisation.
  • Up to date data. The Business-Vault uses event driven synchronisation to make sure the data is up to date as-soon-as each transaction occurs/happens in the originating-system.

The simplicity and  efficiency are the key driving forces behind Infor-ION. This new technology has been inspired-by the internet, making it the most scalable & integrated application to ever be designed. In case one application happens to go down, the internet wont go down with-it; Infor ION is built-to be as open and as resilient.

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Brooke Nelson is the Lead Author & Editor of NetSweets. With more than 20,000 customers, NetSuite is a fascinating platform! It is the major player in ERP, CRM, and ecommerce.