Industry-vertical applications are Infor Inc.’s theme this year, but the company didn’t arrive there just by marinating in a few hand-selected industries.

“We dive very deep into key industries, but then we look at them holistically,” said Dan Barnhardt (pictured), vice president of corporate communications at Infor.

Infor cross-pollinates knowledge gleaned from diverse industries across its business apps, Barnhardt explained today at Inforum 2017 in New York.

Solutions for certain verticals sometimes pop up in far-off and unlikely places, he told Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. (* Disclosure below.)

“We can apply the lessons learned by having that industry specialization into other industries and help them realize potential that they weren’t aware of,” Barnhardt said. For instance, Infor runs in 70 percent of large hospitals in the United States, he explained. Some of Infor’s best ideas to help healthcare operations run faster and smoother came from the retail industry.

This horizontal-to-vertical shape shift is mirrored in some of Infor’s latest technological offerings. Its GT Nexus supply chain platform pulls in the 80 percent of pertinent business data that originates outside an enterprise’s four walls, Barnhardt stated. Pooling it in one place allows businesses to make keener judgments about what steps to take in specific areas, he said.

Infor’s new artificial intelligence robot Coleman can help all kinds of businesses work faster, according to Barnhardt. For example, it can complete information search and gather jobs that might take up 20 percent of the work week for some.

Infor’s customer roster currently includes Bank of America Corp., Foot Locker Retail Inc. and Koch Industries. The latter has invested $2 billion in Infor and plans to modernize its own human resources and financial operations with the Infor CloudSuite of industry apps.

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