As a $3 billion-dollar company, Infor, Inc. is certainly an up-and-comer in the enterprise world these days. With strong growth and a respectable balance sheet, what makes it different, where is the company going, and what can we look for from it in the future?

Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor, sat down with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and George Gilbert (@ggilbert41), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during Inforum 2016 at the Javits Center in New York City, to talk about Infor’s uncommon strategy, what the company’s doing and where it will go from here.

Infor’s business model unique to enterprise

Starting as a straightforward technology vendor, Infor has undergone somewhat of a metamorphosis within enterprise. While still formally an enterprise vendor, the company is innovating on the business side and has gotten into everything ranging from customer website design to brand development to business strategy. The company believes that the customer relationship is equally as important as the platform it is delivering, and this redefinition of its business and realignment is winning the company a ton of new business.

“That is exactly what customers are looking for us to do,” Phillips said. “They see all this great technology and [they ask], ‘What should I do? How does it apply to my business? What should I be doing next? Who’s going to talk me through that?'” said Phillips. “So we have to have an industry hat and a technology hat when we go in, and then be willing to talk that change.”

Why New York?

While Silicon Valley would have been seen by some as the logical choice for major tech company, Infor chose to set a different precedent and moved to New York City from Atlanta in 2012. This was done for several reasons. First, the company believes when you work with customers, you need to be around those customers. Most of Infor’s customers are either based in New York or they have reason to go there.

Additionally, the talent pool in the city is huge, from design schools to media schools, all have tech tracks, and Infor hires those graduates directly. Finally, the company is able to hire employees that prefer living in New York City to Silicon Valley.

“We can hire from Europe and move people here; we can hire from Israel. They don’t mind moving here. This is close enough and familiar to them,” Phillips explained. “They don’t want to move all the way to California.”

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

Photo by SiliconANGLE