Thursday, April 19, 2012

Charles Phillips: Infor collaborates with Oak Barrell

Charles Phillips Photo credit: www.infor.com

Charles Phillips, Infor’s CEO, stated that one of his company’s goals is to create software that handles all of clients’ business processes. The release of Infor10 a few months ago proved this resolve, with the suite’s advanced applications covering a wide variety of platforms. Infor pushed the envelope with its announcement of its collaboration with Oak Barrel Software in improving Infor10 PLM Process (Optiva) to provide customers with better tools for product lifecycle management.

"Getting new products to market is a race that continues to grow more complex, and process manufacturers must be increasingly agile, responsive and focused on the rapidly changing demands of the market to outpace the competition," said Venkat Rajaji, Infor’s Global PLM Product Manager.

Charles Phillips Photo Credit: www.facebook.com

According to Charles Phillips, Infor intends to create software designed for the particular processes of specific industries. Indeed, the Infor-Oak Barrel collaboration is focused on enhancing the manufacturing process to speed up time-to-market and give users better control over the critical aspects of the operation. Infor announced three enhanced modules:

Infor10 PLM Process Material SpecSafe
This helps manufacturers work closely with suppliers to better meet specifications and minimize recall and decreasing compliance issues.

Infor10 PLM Process Product SpecSafe
This allows manufacturers to communicate new product specifications across the entire supply chain, creating an efficient way of inputting new ideas for product development.

Infor10 PLM Process Recipe Builder
This helps companies in batch manufacturing industries produce recipes that are compliant to the S-88.

Charles Phillips Photo Credit: www.facebook.com

"The process manufacturing expertise of both Infor and Oak Barrel Software enables companies to speed product time-to-market and help ensure that products are accurately and efficiently guided through critical steps of development, a differentiating capability for our customers," said Rajaji.

More updates on Charles Phillips, Infor CEO, are available in this Facebook page.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Charles Phillips: Infor is first founding sponsor of Veterans Posse

Infor’s partnership with Habitat for Humanity is in the works, and the firm, with Charles Phillips at its helm, continues to uphold corporate social responsibility.

Charles Phillips. Photo credit: Habitat.mit.edu

The ERP software vendor sponsors the Posse Foundation as the latter launches the Veterans Program, which seeks countrywide increase of the rates of attending and graduating veterans in selected colleges and universities.

Mr. Phillips already expressed his appreciation of the service:

"The Posse program has a proven track record of sending teams of high school graduates to great universities and helping them succeed by forming reinforcing support groups. Extending this concept to veterans is a great idea."

Charles Phillips. Photo credit: Synergy.net.pk

To walk the walk, Infor has initially donated $100,000 to Posse, becoming the first founding sponsor of the initiative; Vassar College, on the other hand, is the first institution to open enrollment to the Veteran Posses.

Charles Phillips, the CEO of Infor, is the co-founder of the Phillips Charitable Organizations which also hosts programs to help single African American mothers, students with inclination towards engineering and the sciences, and veterans.

Selecting a Veterans Posse Scholar

The Posse Foundation has a signature selection process that will filter, gather, and train multicultural teams, or Posse, of 10 veterans and send them to selected four-year higher education institutions. All tuition and support will be provided by the Posse until the scholars graduate.

Posse President and Founder Deborah Bial thanks Infor for its “leadership in supporting this incredibly important investment in our nation's future leaders." Information about the foundation’s programs can be found here.

From Charles Phillips

Visit Twitter for more updates on Charles Phillips.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Shifting gears: Speeding up a Charles Phillips affair

Charles Phillips photo credit: synergy.net


The motto “Survival of the fastest” embodies the spirit of the enterprise software giant Infor. The company has begun shifting gears from within under the auspices of current CEO Charles Phillips. An affair like this is typical for Phillips, who has behind him a long career in enterprise applications. A former U.S. Marine, Charles Phillips has a management style that involves rapid deployment and aggressive expansion, evidenced in his days in Oracle up until 2010.

Speed is the byword that characterizes the Infor company strategy. Having made key changes to the company’s interior organization, Charles Phillips has been instrumental in the positive developments of the company in the past year. These changes reflect the attitude of continuous change and rapid development that is part of the corporate culture of Infor, later manifested in the improvements in product delivery, integration, and upgrades made in its flagship product Infor10.

Charles Phillips photo credit: dribbble.com


Rapid deployment and changes have been part of many of Charles Phillips’ affairs since his days as the co-president of Oracle. While it remains early to give a judgment on his performance, he appears to be on the right track as far as the current developments at Infor in the past year show. Time will tell if this affair would be a repeat of the growth generated by Charles Phillips at Oracle.

More information on Infor and many other Charles Phillips affairs can be accessed on Twitter.

From Charles Phillips

Friday, March 2, 2012

Charles Phillips, CEO: Accelerating Infor’s development

Charles Phillips Photo Credit: facebook.com


The seeds sown by the Oracle Four at Infor have started bearing fruit. Formerly co-president of Oracle, Charles Phillips the CEO has been instrumental in the many leaps forward Infor has made in the past year alone. The company has had an annual organic license growth of 17 percent in 2011. The company has started making waves through new acquisitions, the most notable being that of Lawson Software.

The company’s growth can be attributed to the inward focus that Charles Phillips has made over the past year. Charles Phillips saw to it that the internal distribution of resources would be sent to research and development.


Charles Phillips Photo Credit: facebook.com


And it shows. The company has recently released Infor10, a new program suite with a new user-friendly interface, and a middleware layer that makes quick work of upgrades. The attitude that Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor, holds is that of speed. Phillips stands by the company’s motto of survival of the fastest. Reflecting on this attitude, Infor has become an official sponsor to racing giant Scuderia Ferrari.


Charles Phillips Photo Credit: Justin Sullivan, Getty


Coming from a military background, Phillips has a characteristic management style that emphasized swiftness. This is reflected in his days as Oracle’s president, where he planned the major acquisitions that the company had made. While it is too early to tell if the successes that Charles Phillips had at Oracle would make a comeback, things are looking up for the CEO’s new affair.

More information on Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor, can be accessed on his Twitter.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Charles Phillips: Infor at full year of growth

After a full year under the strategies put in place by the new management under CEO Charles Phillips, Infor has grown considerably. The company reports a 17% annual organic license growth in the past year, with the most recent quarter receiving 16% organic license growth on November 2011. It also reports improved EBITDA margins at 27%, with new customer additions and support subscriptions acceleration.


From Charles Phillips

At the second fiscal quarter, Infor reports growth in its enterprise resource planning business—representing the core of the company’s services—by up to 25% compared with last year. This strong financial performance is the acme of the major internal transformation the company has undergone within the past year, driven as it was by major investments in industry-specific business applications. The company now has 2,500 new customers and expanded its relations with 12,000 of its current customers.

From Charles Phillips

These and other changes were spearheaded by Charles Phillips; Infor has, in the first few months of his management, been turned upside down with its resources shifted toward engineering, hiring 500 new engineers in the process. The company has also moved to New York City’s “Silicon Alley.” Other improvements include a new product line—Infor10—and a strategic partnership with Salesforce.com, a leader in enterprise cloud computing software.

From Charles Phillips

For Charles Phillips, Infor is up for an exciting new year as 2012 offers more opportunities for growth. More information can be accessed on Twitter.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Business as usual for Charles Phillips and Infor: The Lawson acquisition

From Charles Phillips


Acquisitions are an important aspect in the enterprise software industry. No one knows this better than Charles Phillips, Infor’s new CEO. Having been instrumental in the string of high-profile acquisitions that brought Oracle to the top, Phillips has changed his overall goals and kept out of the limelight, but his strategy remains the same.

While the acquisitions he has planned for Infor would focus mainly on compatibility, they are by no means small. His recent low-profile in the industry (a far cry from his days as Oracle president) is not without purpose or fruit: he and his team have been planning a new direction for the company, leaving the first indelible mark through the acquisition of Lawson Software in 2011.

From Charles Phillips


Costing over 2 billion, the Lawson acquisition cemented Infor as the third largest ERP company in the industry, next to Oracle and SAP. A large achievement for Charles Phillips and Infor, the acquisition of the company, which focuses on software applications for healthcare, came uncontested from the bigger players.

The company was chosen because its products are complementary with those of Infor and would be easily integrated to the company’s new middleware layer, which reflects one of Charles Phillips’ many aims for the company in the future. Many of Infor’s future acquisitions are planned with this in mind.

More information on Charles Phillips and Infor can be accessed via Twitter.

From Charles Phillips

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Charles Phillips: Manifesting Marine values in business

Charles Phillips Photo Credit: passionateflame_1


The U.S. Marine Corps is a proud organization built upon many values. A former Marine Captain, Charles Phillips retained some of these values, and has applied these into his business strategies. Phillips’ corporate affairs have shown what he has said: that his management style was heavily influenced by his military upbringing.


The Marines are among the icons of the U.S. Military, having engaged in many of the nation’s finest moments. A member of the U.S. Marines is expected to uphold a set of values that encourages them to become better citizens—among them are integrity, tact, and decisiveness. A former Marine himself, Phillips has carried these values over to his new career in the world of enterprise software.


Charles Phillips Photo Credit: orvalrochefort

The Charles Phillips business strategy can be described in three words: quick, aggressive, and strategic. This was first implemented during his time as the president of the enterprise software giant Oracle and manifested many of the aforementioned values, primarily decisiveness and tact. The acquisitions made by Oracle were not only fast but well-thought-of; Phillips had focused on acquiring a lot of big-name companies into Oracle’s wing, propelling the firm towards further growth and prosperity.


This strategy eventually proved successful—today, Oracle now sits at the top of the enterprise software industry alongside SAP. Now the CEO of Infor, Phillips continues to apply the strategies, which owe their existence in part to his Marine upbringing.


Charles Phillips Photo Credit: Getty Images

More information on Charles Phillips and his background is available at his Twitter.