Infor Velocity Suite: What It Is and Why Your CloudSuite Investment Depends on It

If you've been following Infor's product announcements, you've heard about the Infor Velocity Suite—a platform that combines process mining, robotic process automation (RPA), and generative AI into a single offering for CloudSuite customers. The marketing sounds impressive, but what does it actually do? Is it relevant for your organization? And how does it fit into your existing CloudSuite investment? Here's my honest take after 26 years in the Infor ecosystem.

What Is Infor Velocity Suite?

The Infor Velocity Suite is a bundled technology platform that Infor launched to help CloudSuite customers extract more value from their ERP investment after go-live. It's built on three pillars:

The key differentiator is that Velocity Suite comes with pre-built integrations and process maps specifically designed for Infor CloudSuite. Unlike generic process mining or RPA tools that require months of custom configuration, Infor's Velocity Suite already understands CloudSuite's data model, process flows, and business objects.

The Three Pillars Explained

1. Process Mining: Seeing What's Actually Happening

Process mining is the foundation of the Infor Velocity Suite. It analyzes your actual CloudSuite transaction data to build a visual map of how business processes flow in reality—not how they were designed in a process diagram, but how people actually execute them day to day.

What it reveals:

• Process deviations: Where are people working around the system? Creating manual workarounds? Skipping approval steps?
• Bottlenecks: Which steps in your procure-to-pay or hire-to-retire process take the longest? Where do things get stuck?
• Rework loops: How often are purchase orders being rejected and resubmitted? How many journal entries require correction?
• Compliance gaps: Are segregation of duties being maintained? Are required approvals happening in the right sequence?

2. RPA and Intelligent Document Processing

The automation layer of Infor Velocity Suite targets the manual, repetitive tasks that persist even after a CloudSuite implementation:

• Invoice processing: Automatically extracting data from PDF invoices, matching to POs, and routing exceptions
• Data entry reduction: Automating manual data entry for transactions that can't flow through standard integrations
• Report distribution: Automating the generation and delivery of routine reports
• Employee onboarding tasks: Automating the creation of user accounts, access requests, and equipment orders when Infor HCM records a new hire
• Reconciliation: Automating bank statement reconciliation, intercompany eliminations, and period-end tasks

3. AI-Driven Optimization

The AI component of Velocity Suite uses generative AI and machine learning to provide ongoing optimization recommendations:

• Anomaly detection: Flagging unusual transactions, duplicate payments, or fraud indicators
• Process improvement suggestions: AI-generated recommendations for streamlining workflows
• Predictive insights: Forecasting processing times, identifying potential bottlenecks before they occur
• Natural language queries: Using generative AI to let users ask questions about their business data in plain English

Who Is Infor Velocity Suite For?

Not every CloudSuite customer needs Velocity Suite today. Here's my honest assessment of who should and shouldn't be looking at it:

Good Candidates

• Post-go-live organizations: You've been on CloudSuite for 6-12+ months and have stabilized. Now you want to optimize. This is Velocity Suite's sweet spot.
• High-volume transaction environments: Organizations processing thousands of POs, invoices, or payroll transactions per month where automation has meaningful ROI.
• Process improvement-oriented cultures: Organizations with continuous improvement programs (Lean, Six Sigma) that will actually act on the insights process mining provides.
• Organizations with significant manual workarounds: If your team is still doing manual data entry, spreadsheet reconciliation, or copy-paste tasks despite having CloudSuite, Velocity Suite can automate those gaps.

Not Ready Yet

• Still migrating from Lawson v10 or Lawson v9: Get your CloudSuite implementation stable first. Adding Velocity Suite to an in-flight migration creates too much complexity.
• Small organizations: If you process a few hundred transactions per month, the ROI of process mining and RPA may not justify the investment.
• Organizations without change capacity: Velocity Suite surfaces insights, but someone has to act on them. If your team is already overwhelmed, more data won't help.

How Velocity Suite Fits with CloudSuite Modules

The Infor Velocity Suite is designed to work across all CloudSuite modules. Here are the most impactful use cases by module:

The Velocity Suite Approach: Diagnose, Automate, Optimize

Infor structures Velocity Suite engagements in three phases:

1. Diagnose (4-6 weeks): Process mining analyzes your actual CloudSuite data to map current-state processes, identify inefficiencies, and quantify improvement opportunities. This phase produces a prioritized list of automation and optimization opportunities with estimated ROI.
2. Automate (6-12 weeks per process): Based on the diagnosis, RPA bots and intelligent document processing are configured to automate the highest-value opportunities. Infor provides pre-built automation templates for common CloudSuite processes, which significantly reduces implementation time compared to building from scratch.
3. Optimize (Ongoing): Continuous monitoring using AI to detect new inefficiencies, measure automation effectiveness, and suggest further improvements. This creates a virtuous cycle of ongoing optimization.

Infor Velocity Suite vs. Generic Process Mining and RPA Tools

You might be asking: why not just use Celonis for process mining, or UiPath for RPA? It's a fair question. Here's the comparison:

• Pre-built CloudSuite integration: Velocity Suite comes with out-of-the-box connectors, process maps, and data models for CloudSuite. Generic tools require months of custom integration work to understand CloudSuite's data structure.
• Industry-specific templates: Infor provides pre-built process templates for healthcare, education, public sector, and other industries that align with CloudSuite's industry editions.
• Single vendor support: When process mining reveals an issue in CloudSuite, you're working with the same vendor for both the insight and the fix. No finger-pointing between vendors.
• Vendor lock-in: Velocity Suite is CloudSuite-specific. If you run a multi-vendor ERP landscape, a generic tool like Celonis might provide broader coverage.
• Maturity: Velocity Suite is a newer offering. Generic process mining tools like Celonis have been in market longer and have broader feature sets for complex process mining scenarios.

Getting Started with Infor Velocity Suite

If you're considering Velocity Suite, here's the practical approach I recommend:

1. Start with one high-value process. Don't try to boil the ocean. Pick your most painful or highest-volume process—usually procure-to-pay or hire-to-retire—and run the Diagnose phase on that single process.
2. Measure the baseline. Before process mining, document your current metrics: processing time, error rates, manual touchpoints, cost per transaction. You need a baseline to prove ROI.
3. Engage your process owners. The insights from process mining will challenge assumptions. Make sure the people who own these processes are involved from day one and bought into acting on the findings.
4. Plan for change management. Even automation requires change management. When you automate someone's manual task, their role changes. Prepare for that transition.
5. Build the business case from the Diagnose phase. Use the quantified opportunities from process mining to justify the investment in the Automate and Optimize phases.

The Bottom Line

Infor Velocity Suite represents Infor's vision for what happens after go-live. For too long, ERP implementations have been treated as projects with a finish line—you go live, stabilize, and move on. Velocity Suite recognizes that the real value comes from continuous optimization of the processes running on your ERP platform.

Is it right for every CloudSuite customer today? No. But if you're past go-live, processing significant transaction volumes, and looking for the next level of operational efficiency, Infor Velocity Suite is worth a serious look. The pre-built CloudSuite integration alone saves months of work compared to generic alternatives.

After 26 years in the Infor ecosystem, I've seen many “next big things” come and go. Velocity Suite feels different because it addresses a real gap that every CloudSuite customer experiences: the distance between a technically successful go-live and actually realizing the full business value of your ERP investment.