Infor, a provider of industry-specific cloud software and enterprise applications, has expanded its Infor Industry AI architecture and introduced the next evolution of Infor Velocity Suite. The updates include personalized user experiences, new governance capabilities and additional AI agents designed to address the operational requirements of specific industries.
The announcement accompanies the second edition of the Infor Enterprise AI Adoption Impact Index, a proprietary survey of more than 2,000 business decision-makers across seven markets. The research found that 68% of businesses said off-the-shelf AI does not adequately address their industry's needs, highlighting a gap between AI adoption and the results organizations expect to achieve.
“Everyone has the same AI models now. What matters is what those models know about your business,” said Kevin Samuelson, CEO of Infor. “Customers keep telling us that general-purpose AI doesn't get the details of their world, like how a food manufacturer traces a bad lot back through its suppliers, or how a distributor has to reprice when freight costs jump. Our agents have access to our deep industry context to deliver precise and valuable outcomes.”
Infor expands industry-specific AI capabilities
The expanded Infor Industry AI architecture is designed to give AI agents access to industry-specific processes, terminology and business context. The company aims to help organizations coordinate agents across enterprise systems rather than deploying isolated tools that lack a consistent understanding of business operations.
The architecture is organized around four areas. Under Precise Outcomes, Infor is expanding its portfolio of AI agents with specialized knowledge for specific industry segments. The agents draw on Infor Industry CloudSuites, Industry Process Catalogs and industry-specific language models developed from the company's industry expertise. Infor says customers using this layer are processing shipments up to 60% faster. The Infor GenAI Knowledge Hub, now generally available, also allows customers to build custom AI agents using the company's application and industry knowledge.
The Open & Connected pillar focuses on interoperability. The platform connects with non-Infor applications and existing orchestration and analytics tools, allowing organizations to work across their existing technology environments. Agents coordinate through Infor IQ, a semantic layer designed to give them a consistent understanding of business information. The platform includes more than 350 preconfigured use cases.
Under Easy to Use, Infor's Adaptive UX assembles information relevant to a user's role into a single view. Instead of switching between multiple applications to review information such as bills of materials, quoted prices and delivery dates, employees can access the details needed to make decisions in one place. Users can work through the Infor GenAI Assistant or other AI assistants they already use. Infor reports time savings of up to 90% across procurement, supply chain, manufacturing and sales workflows.
The fourth pillar, Governed, adds security and governance capabilities across the platform. These include human-approval workflows, agent permissions, audit trails, explainable AI logic and immutable logs of agent actions. Infor says customers are seeing up to a 90% reduction in auditing costs associated with access management.
Customer feedback points to the importance of connecting AI capabilities to operational needs. Team Air Distributing, an HVAC distributor serving contractors, uses Infor technology to support its business operations.
“AI only matters when it creates real value,” said Alicia Thompson, CTO of Team Air Distributing. “Infor has kept pace with our ambitions, pairing Infor Industry AI Agents with Forward Deployed Engineers who understand our industry and work as an extension of our team. Together, we’re reducing manual work and turning operational challenges into practical improvements, building trust one process at a time.”
Research identifies gaps in enterprise AI adoption
The Infor Enterprise AI Adoption Impact Index also found differences in the pace of AI deployment and reported efficiency gains across markets. Compared with the first edition in April 2026, businesses in the United States reported faster deployment and greater efficiency gains, while Germany remained steady on both measures. In the United Kingdom, deployment increased slightly as reported efficiency gains declined.
Globally, 59% of businesses expect to increase AI investment over the next 12 months. More than half of business leaders surveyed, 54%, said they were comfortable with autonomous agents executing critical business processes without requiring human input at every step. Only 11% preferred humans to make high-stakes decisions without any AI input.
The research also found that accountability for AI remains distributed across organizations. Twenty-three percent of respondents identified the CEO or executive leadership as primarily responsible, while 22% pointed to the CIO or CTO, 15% to an AI committee or governance group, and 10% to individual department heads. Another 15% said no single person had primary responsibility or that accountability was unclear. Chief AI Officer roles remain relatively uncommon, with just 10% of respondents reporting one.
Data security, sovereignty and compliance were cited by 33% of respondents as the single greatest barrier to advancing their AI strategies.
“The next phase of enterprise AI will be defined not by access to models, but by how effectively organizations apply AI within the context of their industry and business processes,” said Shashi Bellamkonda, Principal Research Director at Info-Tech Research Group, an IT research and advisory firm. “Infor’s focus on industry-specific intelligence, interoperability, and embedded governance addresses several of the practical barriers organizations face as they move from AI experimentation to trusted, measurable outcomes.”
The industry-specific findings reinforce that challenge. Across the seven markets surveyed, 73% of manufacturing respondents said off-the-shelf AI does not meet their needs. The proportion reached 76% among distribution businesses and 69% in retail.
Infor's expanded platform is intended to address these differences by combining AI capabilities with industry-specific business knowledge, connections across enterprise systems and governance controls designed to help organizations deploy AI in operational workflows.
