Infor, Inc. is one of those unique tech companies that creates end-to-end digital transformation solutions for its customers in many different verticals. Under the leadership of CEO Charles Phillips, for the past five years, the company’s growth trajectory has skyrocketed through strategic acquisitions and using a philosophy of growing its very own ecosystem one vertical at a time. For his contributions to technology, education and diversity, theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, chose Phillips as its Guest of the week.

During theCUBE’s coverage of Inforum 2016 at the Javits Center in New York City, Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and George Gilbert (@ggilbert41), cohosts of theCUBE, spent time with Phillips reviewing the past five years of Infor’s success and the tactics he used to grow what began as an assortment of various acquired companies into one of the most influential technology companies across many industries.

The right people for reinvention

The interview began with the Vellante and Gilbert asking Phillips a simple question: How did you do it? He described his team and their philosophy.

“I had a great team that came with me. We all joined the same day in December 2010, and these were colleagues of mine from Oracle, who focused on industry business units and knew [the] industries. So I had to pick the right people, number one, had to have your team. [Then] what we saw at Infor through the course of those acquisitions, there were nuggets of specialties, of industry expertise that was there. That industry expertise and those customers were still there, and we knew we could rewrite the applications, re-innovate and take the company forward.”

Transparency and value

Vellante commented that for a private company, Infor is very transparent and shares a lot of financial information. Phillips explained that while the equity shares are private, the company runs as if publicly traded.

“We do have publicly traded bonds; we report earnings. We have earnings calls; we follow SEC filings. The equity is private, but we run it like a public company. Last quarter we had 35 percent software growth, year-over-year cloud plus licenses, and we’ve added 700 customers [in the] last quarter. It’s all about growth; it’s been changing. It helps when you have something like 70 million subscribers in the cloud on Amazon [Amazon Web Services (AWS)], and that’s from almost nothing three years ago. This has been a new business we created.

“[We have] 90 thousand customers and growing. That’s almost twice the size from when we got here. Five and a half years of growth and investment, [we] spent $2.5 billion in R&D, which normally doesn’t happen in a private company. We took the time to rewrite the applications, and that’s what we concluded upfront. We told the investors when we came in, this is going to take five years, it’s going to cost a lot of money but it can be done, we see the value here but we need time and if you’re willing to invest. We can fix this.”

Taking away the heavy lifting

The conversation about the company’s growth revealed a modular strategy for growth. Phillips discussed this and explained how the Hook and Loop merger (Hook and Loop is now Infor’s internal creative agency) worked to develop a product that benefits the customer and allows them to focus on business.

“We had to make some technology decisions, so the first thing we did was uplift the [user interface], take the integration off their hands and take the localizations off their hands. We actually moved a lot of things they have been doing, because when you try to do everything yourself, you do nothing really well. So all they had to do was focus on core industry processes. Almost everything else that surrounds the application had a shared service that did that for them. We had to find a way to get efficient.

“Then, secondly, let’s not do things that we can rely on the industry to do. I don’t want to build data centers; I don’t want to build a lot of other infrastructure. If Amazon can build it for me, I’ll use it.”

Knowing the customer’s industry

Gilbert talked about Infor and the company’s ability to help the enterprise turn technology into something that’s differentiated for that customer, and then Info can help quantify the business value. Phillips expounded on the customers’ needs in this area.

“That’s exactly what customers are looking for us to do. They see all this great technology, and they are not sure how [it] applies to business. ‘What should I be doing next? Who’s going to talk me through that?’

“I don’t want just a generic person talking to them, you have to understand [the] industry so I know what’s relevant so they can translate it for me. We have to have an industry hat and a technology hat when we go in and be willing to talk about change. That’s why we use the word assembled. So we have some of it that is custom for that customer … [to] assemble technologies to meet their strategy, but we want to reuse a lot of what we already built.”

Ahead of the diversity curve

Vellante remarked about Phillips’ profile by Fortune magazine that highlighted diversity. Phillips explained that his location and choice of schools is part of the formula for success.

“I think we are much further ahead in our company than most companies. Partly it’s because where we are located; partly it’s an effort. We hire a lot of veterans … also when we do these internship programs with these universities, we’re going to different universities. Everybody [in tech] is going to the same 10 universities; we’re not. We’re going to CUNY; we’re going to Pace — places that tech companies don’t recruit from. They have good students too, and we take them and place them in the businesses that are our core to our corporate cause.

“You’re getting an intern; if it’s free they’ll take it, and they just happen to be more diverse than you’re used to because we get to pick. That’s the way you are seeded. Start sending interns — once they see their [abilities], they want to hire them when they graduate.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Inforum 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE