When you own a set of companies that offers customer solutions to diverse industries, such as construction, mining, oil and gas, agriculture, and power, you can count on having plenty of competition. For the Zahid Group, this meant reaching out to Infor Inc. for scalable applications critical to the heavy equipment industry with the goal of modernizing a key part of its global business.

“We strongly believe in technology and the digital transformation that is sweeping the world. You have to have the right data in place, the right organization in place and the right mindset to lead the organization to compete in the new market space,” said Nasser Bayram (pictured, right), director of the Commercial Vehicles Division at Zahid Group and Zahid Tractor.

Bayram visited the set of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and answered questions from co-hosts Rebecca Knight, (@knightrm) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), during Inforum 2017 in New York. He was joined by Barig Siraj (pictured, left), information technology and enterprise resource planning director of Zahid Group and Zahid Tractor, to discuss the implementation of Infor’s technology and the importance of new metrics to remain competitive. (* Disclosure below.)

Needed to replace legacy application

Zahid Group has just launched Infor’s M3 solution for EJAR, Zahid Group’s equipment rental arm. The company had a legacy application that was built over 30 years ago and could not reap the benefits of data mining, according to Siraj. The M3 software provided applications such as warehouse mobility, financial accounting and sales management that could benefit the Zahid Group’s operation across the business.

Infor’s Implementation Accelerator allowed Zahid Group to go live with 77 percent of processes inside the rental equipment company. “That enabled us to have EJAR’s implementation go much smoother,” Siraj said.

The implementation of new scalable applications also meant that Zahid Group would need new metrics to measure key elements of the business. “You have to look at customer behavior, customer analytics, price and positioning, and where you are going forward,” Bayram stated.

By taking one of the Zahid Group’s five companies live with the M3 solution, Bayram and his team learned a lot about the challenges of change management, data migration and data cleansing. “It’s a vast learning curve to overcome. The success is the learning experience,” Bayram concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Inforum 2017 event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Inforum 2017. Neither Infor Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE