Four reasons why Infor ION can make your enterprise application experience better
Part 1: Four reasons why Infor ION can make your enterprise application experience Better
In this four-part blog series, we discuss how businesses can accelerate innovation and create competitive advantage by implementing Infor OS and related solutions.
Infor Intelligent Open Network (ION) is a powerful middleware that resides beneath and empowers Infor OS – a robust enterprise ecosystem that seamlessly connects Infor and third-party systems.
While being a core component of Infor OS, ION can deliver business value in many other ways. This blog highlights the key features of Infor ION, which can significantly increase the cohesion, visibility, and the efficiency of your Infor and non-infor applications, while delivering impressive ROI.
1. ION brings together disparate systems
Infor ION can integrate and connect with Infor and non-Infor third-party software applications. This is the key benefit of Infor ION. By bringing together disparate systems under one roof, ION breaks down information silos. It provides a unified platform for business users to perform tasks, authorize actions, and make quick decisions, across the business.
2. ION provides a bird’s-eye view of business processes across the ERP and beyond
ION Event Management can watch the execution of business workflows and proactively alert incidents or exceptions that need human interaction.
This means that while connecting various business applications under the hood, ION can route tasks and information to you, rather than you being expected to find it yourself.
ION can monitor multiple business event types:
- Changes made to BODs (Business Object Documents)
E.g., a new sales order in the form of a Sync.SalesOrder document - Occurrence of multiple events
E.g., a sales order and its related shipment - Non-occurrence of events
E.g., an invoice has never been sent
The Infor ION suite of components includes:
ION Desk
Browser-based user-friendly graphical interface for configuring and monitoring ION services
ION Connect
Establish connections between Infor and third-party applications
ION Process
- ION Event Management
Monitor business events and alert when user interaction is required
ION Workflow
Model and execute processes such as work distribution, authorizations, or task-driven workflows across several components
ION Pulse
Ensure tasks for a particular event are communicated and executed by different users
ION Service
Connects Infor and third-party systems and runs Workflows and Event Management modules
Figure 1: Timeline view of a purchase order BOD in ION OneView
In addition to the standard BODs pre-built in ION, you can develop custom BODs that facilitates the unique requirements of your business.
Even third-party non-Infor applications that are enabled to work with ION Connect can use ION Event Management.
To track the status of a BOD, you can go to ION’s OneView interface and see a graphical representation of the BOD message trip and all components triggered by the BOD, from the beginning to the end.
If a process needs human interaction, ION Event Management can notify the relevant users with a call-to-action via Infor Ming.le (an internal social hub) web or mobile app, and email.
3. ION users can develop workflows without IT support
Business users with minimal IT knowledge can develop ION workflows. This is facilitated by ION Desk — a user-friendly browser-based interface that allows workflow creation by dragging and dropping components.
As workflow development does not need complex coding, business users can be easily and quickly trained to model or modify business processes.
Many workflows in ION can be used out of the box, and you can reuse and modify existing workflows to create new business processes.
The reusability, faster integration times, non-requirement of IT resources can significantly save money and time for a business.
4. ION future-proofs your organization
With ION, you can modify, upgrade, or replace an application without disrupting the rest of the enterprise application ecosystem. This is achieved by ION’s loosely-coupled, lightweight, publish-and-subscribe architecture, which is adaptable and scalable.
To explain the publish-and-subscribe architecture through an analogy, traditional integrations can be compared to email. To communicate a message via email, you must know the exact address of the receiver, and if that address changes, the communication breaks. A truly modern middleware, ION can be compared to internet services like Twitter, which publishes content, allowing any interested consumer to subscribe to the feed. The publish-and-subscribe architecture also makes ION resilient. If an application becomes unavailable, it won’t affect the functioning of other connected applications.
ION’s XML-based simple architecture allows faster integration and upgrade cycles. This means businesses can quickly adapt their business applications to face rapidly changing market and business environments.
If you want to know more about how Infor ION can solve the unique business problems in your organization, message me on LinkedIn.
For more resources on Infor ION, visit: https://www.infor.com/products/ion
Senior Consultant - Fortude
Watch this space for part two in this series, which will focus on another core component of Infor OS: Infor Document Management (IDM).
Part 2: Seamless business document management with Infor Document Management (IDM)
Part 3: Bringing information closer to business users with Infor Ming.le
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