Even before Infor Global Solutions was formed, Jim Schaper
was listening to customers so he could ensure that the software
company he wanted to create would be the best.
“We looked at
the buying characteristics of [potential] customers … that acquire
the products we now sell,” Schaper says.
When he looked at software companies, he saw larger players
that had a wide range of products but lacked the depth many customers wanted. He also saw smaller, niche players that offered the
depth but lacked the range that others needed.
Schaper realized that customers needed a company that offered
both the width of products and also one that deeply penetrated
those markets to meet their individualized needs.
“We looked at the opportunities to fill a void from a customer’s
perspective, and that’s how we made the fundamental decision
that this was the market that was ripe for consolidation and really
provided us the ability to quickly build a different and better software company,” Schaper says.
It was customer focus that created Infor, and it’s customer focus
that drives its growth. The company had $38 million in revenue in
2002 and has since gone on to complete 30 acquisitions, which
helped Infor post revenue of $2.1 billion last year.
Schaper, who serves as chairman and CEO, maintains a strict
focus on his growth strategy through focusing on customers by
getting their feedback, evaluating their ideas and nurturing an
internal customer-centric culture.
Getting feedback
Last September, between 7,000 and 8,000 of Infor’s users converged in Las Vegas, but they weren’t there to simply hit the slots.
They were guests at Infor’s annual user conference.
“That is really focused on their education and our education,”
Schaper says. “Their education in terms of what products and
services we have and other things, and then our education process
in terms of what we’re not doing right and what we need to do better and what they expect from us.”
The user conference is just one of many ways that Infor reaches
out to its customers, and it is those relationships that make or break
the company’s growth initiatives.
“We value the relationships that we have with them,” he says. “It
doesn’t mean that we do everything they want us to do, but they
clearly know that we’re trying to do the best that we can for them.”
Schaper and his team spend about six weeks at the end of
every year traversing the globe to conduct focus sessions with
their customers’ C-level reps. This initiative touches about 350
to 400 executives each year and provides Infor with more feedback about what products its customers need and the problems facing them. On top of that, customers can also submit
ideas and problems electronically to Infor.
The other major way to gain feedback about what your customers need or want is to talk to your employees who have direct
contact with them.
“We have 9,200 employees, the vast majority of those touch our
customers every single day, so if you listen to your employees, in
essence, especially the individual contributors where there’s nothing filtered, you’re going to listen to your customers as a byproduct of that, so I view that you have to do both,” Schaper says.
He also gains feedback from partners and looks at data, such as
Infor’s wins and losses in the market, trends and industry regulations, and standards that customers may need to adapt to.
The best part about talking to customers is it’s not hard. Schaper
doesn’t have to bribe them or entice them to speak up. They simply like to be involved because their future also depends on what
products they get.
“As you might suspect, they’re very vocal in telling you what
you’re not doing right,” Schaper says.
As simple as it may sound, the key is just listening and then communicating back with them.
“I’ve seen a lot of companies fall into a trap. They have forums to
listen, and they listen, and they walk away and say, ‘That’s just not
right,’” Schaper says. “You have to listen, and then you have to act.
It doesn’t mean you’re going to do everything that a customer wants,
nor do I expect that they think you should. But if you’re going to listen, and they have a credible argument, you better be taking notes,
and then you better act, and you better act relatively quickly if you’re
going to act at all. If you’re not going to act, you have to go back and
tell them why.”
Evaluating customer needs
Wading through all the feedback that’s gathered requires having
a defined system for review and imposing a series of checks and
balances.
“The way I look at it is like a large funnel,” Schaper says. “At the
top of that funnel is the data that comes from our customers. The
second component, if you go down the funnel, would be the product user groups.”
User groups center around a specific market or product, and
then the funnel gets more specific at the next level by pushing all
the suggestions through to the special interest groups, which are
specific to an industry or a subset of an industry.
After going through those groups, it then goes back to the people
at Infor.
“The next slice in the funnel would be our product management group,” he says.
That group reviews all of the feedback, and after that, they
then go back to the user groups and ask them to rank the products and services in terms of most important to least important, so Infor can focus on what’s most crucial for the customers. This is crucial to maintaining focus and not getting
caught running down every side path that arises. But even still,
Infor isn’t ready to make a rash decision. It has more people to
go through.
“Once we have that enhancement list completed by product
or platform, then it will run through product marketing — one
last gut check in product management,” Schaper says. “They
evaluate them and bless them, and then it goes to the one committee we have — product investment review.”
The committee runs the numbers and determines how long it
would take to build, the financial components, and if there is a
broad market or if it’s just an enhancement.
If it’s not broad-based enough, then Infor will try helping that
customer meet its needs in other ways without the investments.
If there is a market for the product, it then determines if it
should be added as an enhancement to current offerings or if
there needs to be a whole new product built. In some cases, there
may already be a product on the market that would solve the problem. This determination then drives Infor’s growth strategy.
“Our acquisition strategy is clearly driven by the company,
but our customers have a strong voice in what applications
they would like to see us buy,” Schaper says. “They have a very
strong voice in our long-term product direction because
they’re the ones that are actually utilizing the technology to run
their businesses that we provide.”
When acquisitions occur, Schaper spends a lot of time with
the people in the new companies, and there’s one thing in particular he hears over and over again from those employees.
“Man, you guys talk about your customers a lot.”
“It’s amazing to me most of the companies that we’ve
acquired and many that we look at, the customer is simply a
byproduct of the organization,” Schaper says. “We have a tendency to look at it differently. Our organization is a byproduct
of what our customers have allowed us to build.”
Holding fast to that value is easier when you’re a smaller company, but with 9,200 employees, Schaper has to ensure that every one
of them understands this principle and embraces it every day in
their duties. His key is repetitiveness.
“Every time we talk about our company internally and externally,
(customers) always have to be the focus,” he says. “Being so repetitive has a tendency to stick.”
He also makes customers the center of employee awards.
Employees receive awards for putting the customer first and going
above and beyond to meet their needs. He also recognizes MVPs,
and the criteria for that recognition is also centered around customers.
“If you keep talking about it enough, and you keep driving the
company to and recognizing your employees for customer-related
activities, and we celebrate enough about our customer, it’s just
repetitive,” he says. “It starts at the top and has to stay constant.”
Future customers
Acquisitions will continue driving Infor’s growth, but with experience under Schaper’s belt, he knows what to do to make sure customers are always at the forefront.
“If I underestimated anything, I underestimated the amount of
time that has to be spent outside of my office,” Schaper says.
“The last time I checked, nobody buys our products inside our
building, so consequently, there is a ton of commitment required
to grow. It’s a lot easier to run a business that isn’t growing. It’s
very time-consuming, and there is no substitute for showing up
both at your customer’s site as well as where your employees
are.”
He also notes that it’s important for you to know that you
can’t do everything right all the time when you’re growing rapidly.
“Perfection is the evil of progress,” Schaper says. “Ninety percent is good enough except when it comes to our financials.
We’ve gotten, I wouldn’t call it ahead of ourselves, but we’re
clearly, in some cases, changing the tires on the car while we’re
driving 100 mph down the expressway.”
Know which 90 percent needs tending to immediately and
which 10 percent can wait until you have time to catch up.
Identify those things for your company based on your values.
Infor tends to things that keep it out of dangerous situations:
cash, not hiring ahead of the curve and not buying expensive
projects that may take years to yield a return.
“We were not willing to sacrifice the window of opportunity
we believed we had to build a different kind of software company, and that window is going to be over in the not too distant
future. … We will then, at that particular point in time, go back
and clean up that remaining 10 percent in some areas. Where
we know we have problems, they’re not fatal, and they don’t
inhibit our ability to grow or service our customers, and
they’re much more internal in nature.”
That down-to-earth perspective on growth combined with his
focus on customers has looked kindly on the software company. Schaper says it has helped Infor have the highest customer
retention rates, which allows him to sell additional products to
existing customers, which, in turn, increases demand for their
professional services.
“We get the benefit of not only acquired growth but also
organic growth based around specific customer or market
requirements,” says Schaper.
HOW TO REACH: Infor Global Solutions, (678) 319-8000 or www.infor.com
