We know that AI is no longer a question of “if” for most distributors. The question is where it pays off and how to roll it out without breaking what already works.

To dig into what that looks like inside CloudSuite Distribution, we sat down with Nick Perry, Account Manager for Technology at Infor, and Omar Jeelani, Solutions Consultant at Infor. Both led customer demos for Velocity Suite, Infor’s cloud-based AI and automation package built for its Infor CloudSuite Distribution ERPs.

In this Q&A, they cover what Velocity Suite includes, how process mining and AP automation work in CSD, what generative AI is live today, and what AI agents will do next.

Q1: What is VelocitySuite, and how does it fit with CloudSuite Distribution?

Nick: When we started building this about two years ago, we talked to our customer base and heard the same three things: 

→ They didn’t know where to start with AI. 

→ They didn’t have the staff — most don’t have machine learning engineers sitting around.

→ And they had tried AI before and didn’t see the return. 

Velocity Suite is our answer. It’s a package, all-inclusive, with unlimited use. Whether one person or fifty are running it, the price is the same.  

It has three parts: process mining to diagnose how work moves through your business, automation to handle the manual steps, and generative AI to optimize. 

The key thing to know is that Velocity Suite is built by Infor specifically for our cloud ERPs, with use cases tailored for CSD. It’s not a third-party add-on. It runs inside CloudSuite Distribution. 

Q2: How much of it is pre-built versus custom work? 

Nick: About 80 percent comes out of the box. We built the use cases based on what CSD customers told us they wanted to fix. The remaining 20 percent is for your configuration, because every distributor is a little different. So you’re not reinventing the wheel — you start with something that already works. 

Q3: What does process mining actually do? 

Omar: Process mining is our north star. It pulls data from how your team uses CSD day to day, and it surfaces two things: where users are straying from the best path, and where they are getting stuck. 

Take procure-to-pay, as an example. We can show every variation of how users complete the process — where they skip steps, add steps, or do things out of order. We attach a time metric, so you see the average end-to-end cycle for your whole company. In one demo, it was 35 days. From there you can drill in by buyer, vendor, warehouse, or company. 

The best part is the conformance analysis. It maps every variant path against the best practice and shows the cost. If a buyer is creating a back-order line where they shouldn’t, the system flags it and tells you how much time it’s adding. 

That’s the input that tells you where to automate next. 

Q4: How does AP invoice automation work? 

Omar: Let’s say a vendor sends an invoice as a PDF to your AP inbox. Behind the scenes, the bot reads that inbox, finds the unread email, and downloads the PDF for you. From there, it pulls out the key fields — invoice number, PO, line items, and so on — using generative AI. The nice part is there are no templates to maintain. It adapts to different invoice formats on its own, so you’re not setting up rules for every vendor. 

Once the data is extracted, the system checks it against CSD. For example: Does the PO exist? Has it been received? Are the quantities in tolerance? Those are checks that an end user might normally spend a few minutes on per invoice. Now the system handles them automatically. 

If everything checks out, the invoice flows straight into CSD and Infor Document Management. Anything that fails a check is sent to a workspace where your AP team can review it. 

Nick: And you set the schedule — hourly, daily, whatever fits your operation. Your team gets a notification when invoices come through and only steps in for the exceptions. Everything AP-related lives in one workspace, so they’re not jumping between screens to track it down. 

Q5: What generative AI is built into CSD today? 

Nick: We call them embedded experiences — a chat panel inside CloudSuite. The difference between this and a ChatGPT is that it has access to your ERP data. So instead of clicking around to find what you need, you can prompt it to write a dunning letter, summarize a vendor, or translate an invoice that came in another language. 

Omar: Two quick examples—a credit manager can pull up a customer with a past-due balance and generate a dunning letter with one click. The system uses the balance, the risk category, and the history to draft it. You can edit it if you need to, but you’re not starting from scratch. 

The product advisor is another one. Say you’re newer on the customer service team and a customer asks about a PVC pipe. The advisor pulls the product details and gives you a summary — common installation issues, defects, limitations. It gives you a leg up on the call. 

Behind the scenes, everything runs over a secure connection, and your data is never used to train the AI model. 

Q6: What is coming next with AI agents? 

Nick: Two big things. First is the GenAI Assistant with Knowledge Hub. Today, finding a specific document in Infor Document Management is still a manual hunt. With the Knowledge Hub, you can prompt the system — “show me all invoices over a certain amount from this vendor in the last three months” — and it surfaces them. 

The second is AI agents. Instead of prompting AI and waiting for an answer, agents go out and act on your behalf. They gather information, reason through it, make decisions, and come back with the result. 

We’re also rolling out an agent factory. We’ll ship pre-built agents, but if your use case isn’t covered, you can build your own. It’s more hands-on, better suited to a technical user, but it’s there if you need it. Infor is moving fast in this space, and we’re open to co-innovating with customers who bring us a specific use case. 

Watch the full Velocity Suite webinar

This six-question Q&A only scratches the surface of what’s available and to come. In the full session, Omar demos process mining on a live procure-to-pay cycle, walks through AP invoice automation end to end, and shows generative AI running inside CSD. Nick covers the full Velocity Suite catalog and the AI agent roadmap.