Infor, provider of business application software serving more than 70,000 customers, has announced that the company will support auto-gration, an initiative designed to integrate small and medium enterprises (SMEs) into the digital supply chain. The project is led by the European Commission and driven by large automotive industry organisations such as Odette International, CLEPA, and CECRA.
By supporting auto-gration, Infor addresses a common SME problem. Many companies in the mid-market refuse to deploy EDI because it does not pay off. However varying requirements of different OEMs make electronic processes increasing complex as orders must be retrieved via the individual web-based portals of each OEM or tier 1 supplier before being printed, leading them back to manual, paper-based processes. Auto-gration provides SME with a unified communication standard and complementary software to link their ERP systems with OEM web portals, offering simple, cost-efficient access to consistent electronic supply chain processes.
Infor creates the necessary connection based on auto-gration's Collaborative Reference Architecture (CAR). By providing a joint, simplified XML format for data exchange, CAR Simple Message (CMS) connects different formats used by VDA, Odette or EANCOM. Infor connects its ERP systems to the CMS transfer via the software module auto-gration CAR Simple Connector. Infor supplies this standard interface as part of the Infor ION framework so Infor customers using Infor's ION enabled ERP solutions will be able to benefit from CAR. Once deployed, the architecture covers all key business processes between OEMs' respective tier 1 suppliers and SMEs, including orders and delivery forecast schedules, spare parts ordering, part call orders and e-invoicing.
"Infor is one of the first enterprise software vendors to support auto-gration", says Michael Spth, Regional Vice President Development Automotive at Infor. "We gradually want to decrease the number of variants in electronic data interchange so that diversification of standards is not an issue for suppliers. Infor currently maintains requirements of over 400 trading partners for our ERP solutions."
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