Infor to acquire GT Nexus

The deal is expected to close within 45 days, pending regulatory approval. Approximately 25,000 businesses rely on GT Nexus, including six of the top ten logistics service providers and 30 global financial institutions, all managing more than USD 100 billion in goods each year using its cloud-based business network.

The continued shift to contract manufacturing moves the shop floor outside of the brand owners ERP system to the ERP of their suppliers - many of which are existing Infor customers. It is now common for a single product to be designed, manufactured, and shipped by different companies, requiring a common cloud for coordination.

GT Nexus provides a global order management system that coordinates commerce across partners. Retail, fashion and manufacturing companies can collaborate with suppliers to manage and optimize shipments to customers, distribution centers and retail outlets to meet demand. The cloud was designed to enable this collaboration.

The GT Nexus network integrates directly into the order management system of the buyers and suppliers. Buyers transmit order information via GT Nexus to their suppliers, financial institutions, freight carriers and logistics providers. GT Nexus becomes the order management system for the entire network by managing the master record of the order across multiple partners.

GT Nexus also facilitates more than USD 20 billion in payments between buyers and their suppliers in 90 countries and in 8 currencies. Buyers and financial institutions provide pre and post export financing and payment protection via the GT Nexus cloud.

Infor will also enable the social collaboration for unstructured processes within the supply chain on GT Nexus through Infor Ming.le, a social platform for collaborative business processes. Retailers and manufacturers will also be able to leverage Infor Rhythm, Infors omnichannel ecommerce platform for engagement and direct order flow into the commerce cloud.

GT Nexus and Infor CloudSuite have similar architectures; both have a single canonical map for orders, are event driven and make use of open source components. Unlike other B2B information exchanges, GT Nexus is a network cloud service with one code base for all customers providing a single view of the order across the value chain. The canonical map allows suppliers to join the network once and talk to all buyers, as opposed to implementing custom maps and portals for each buyer, which is required in legacy networks.

GT Nexus is a direct procurement network which ties directly to the goods being sold to the enterprises end customers. This is a much larger market than indirect procurement which primarily targets the administrative goods and services for internal consumption. The GT Nexus direct procurement network optimizes critical orders that generate revenue for the buyer/brand owner.

GT Nexus customers include Adidas Group, Caterpillar, Columbia Sportswear, DHL, Home Depot, Levi Strauss & Co., Maersk, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble and UPS.

Infor is a supplier of ERP software, which helps manufacturing companies orchestrate production inside the walls of the enterprise.