Infor Completes Acquisition of Predictix and Continues Push to Modernize the Retail Industry

Infor announced the acquisition of Predictix, a provider of cloud-native, predictive, and machine-learning solutions for retailers. Predictix uses next-generation data science and big data analytics to help solve some of the most complex and challenging problems faced by retailers today. Predictix will become part of Infor CloudSuite Retail, a new modern suite of enterprise applications delivered in the cloud and designed for today's retailing landscape. The acquisition comes six months after Infor announced an investment in Predictix.

Details of how Infor and Predictix will work together were announced in January at the time of Infor's original investment in Predictix, and are included again below.

Predictix software was built native to the cloud, harnessing its elastic supercomputer capabilities to solve complex problems on a massive scale and to deliver business benefits beyond those achievable from the cloud as a deployment model. Engineered with built-in science, Predictix applications feature machine learning and predictive (what will happen) and prescriptive (how to respond) analytics. Unlike legacy applications accessible only by select "super users," Predictix is designed for people across the retail operation to easily configure and build models, driving greater user adoption and enabling greater agility. Predictix applications will be managed in the Infor cloud, which has grown to include more than 58 million users.

Predictix will enable Infor to enhance CloudSuite Retail with modules that support:

• Demand Forecasting - Using machine learning and the power of the elastic cloud to unlock a rich understanding of consumer demand at very granular levels not possible with legacy forecasting solutions. The benefits can be enormous for retailers, leading to as much as 25 to 50 percent accuracy improvement over legacy forecasting solutions. Predictix's self-learning algorithms recognize patterns from unlimited amounts of data, becoming more accurate as data builds over time. Increasingly accurate Demand Forecasting facilitates more informed decisions in the execution systems, leading to higher sales and greater profitability.
   

• Merchandise Financial Planning - Infor customers will be able to leverage Predictix's self-service configuration tools which allow retailers and their users to configure the solution and ensure that they can customize processes that are unique to the company, empowering competitive differentiation, while also benefitting from Predictix's embedded best practice process for Merchandise Financial Planning. The solution supports best in class global multi-currency and omni-channel retailers.
   

• Assortment Planning / Category Management - Built specifically for the needs of fashion, grocery and specialty retailers to reflect the unique attributes and processes for each type of business, benefitting retailers with advanced analytics for localizing and optimizing company, cluster, market, and/or store-specific assortments. Retail leaders are already taking advantage of these unique characteristics in Predictix Assortment Planning solutions, driving as much as $15 - $20 million in annual benefit for every one billion dollars in sales.
   

• Network Flow Optimization - Models a retailer's entire supply chain network and all of the various flows in and out of it, considering billions of variables, depending on the size of the retailer, by leveraging the elastic cloud and predictive platform. The application then optimizes and determines how much to flow and when to flow between nodes and selects the most optimal modes of transportation to maximize profit.
   

• Allocation & Markdown Optimization - Solves both allocation and markdown processes simultaneously to provide up to 20 percent greater revenues and profit. This proprietary technology leverages mathematical optimization to solve these problems holistically, yielding substantial retailer benefits.

Predictix supports multiple formats and types of retailing on a global scale, including online, brick-and-mortar, social, mobile, fashion, hardlines, mass-merchant, and grocery.

Integrating Predictix with the merchandising co-development being done with Whole Foods Market, Infor will bring planning and optimization together with merchandise execution. Infor and Predictix will share underlying technology to advance big data and machine learning (via the LogicBlox platform) across Infor products, like Analytics and Sales & Operations Planning with Infor Dynamic Science Labs, and to enhance Infor Demand Management with cutting edge design (via Hook & Loop), enterprise social collaboration (via Infor Ming.le), and loosely-coupled, standards-based middleware (via Infor ION).

Demand Management and CloudSuite Retail will also be integrated with Infor's GT Nexus, the world's largest cloud-based global commerce platform. This integration will provide unprecedented visibility into a retailer's extended supply chain to manage production, and monitor goods in transit and at rest. The system will function as a virtual global control tower for the retailer, providing best responses to disruptions in the supply chain and recommending responses to minimize stock-outs and other negative consequences of irregularities.

Keywords: Cloud-Native, Predictive, Machine-Learning, Big Data Analytics, Retail, Merchandise Execution, ARC Advisory Group.