Enterprise software provider Infor promotes Jonathan Wood to GM for IMEA

Global enterprise software provider and consultancy Infor has elevated experienced digital services leader Jonathan Wood to General Manager for the Middle East, India and Africa, with an aim to double its business revenues in the region within two years.

Leading the IMEA (India, Middle East & Africa) practice from Infor’s office in Dubai – one of the firm’s two in the Middle East including a second location in Riyadh – the newly installed GM has been tasked with overseeing the New York-based tech firm’s customer-centric strategy through the enhancement of direct customer relationships and formation of new strategic alliances – while leveraging Infor’s new digital transformations hub established in the UAE.

With a view to doubling regional revenues in the next two years, Wood will also be responsible for the continued expansion of Infor provisions beyond the firm’s cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) footprint, with software solution offerings in enterprise asset and human capital management, financial management technology, artificial intelligence, and business intelligence analytics. Wood will further focus on Infor’s Channel Partner Program as a key pillar of growth.

“Infor has demonstrated an ability to deliver mission critical cloud in every industry represented across the IMEA region. Demand for our solutions is growing exponentially as businesses recognize the value of deep industry-specific functionality, out-of-the-box. Infor is collapsing traditional implementation times from months or years to a matter of weeks allowing our customers to remain focused on their core activities,” Wood said.Reporting to Cormac Watters, Infor’s Executive Vice President and General Manager for EMEA, Wood has since joining in 2016, led the firm’s consulting services team in Europe as Vice President, Services, based out of London, prior to which he served as a vice president for four years with SAP’s Cloud and Innovation services line in the EMEA. Before joining SAP, Wood held a number of roles, including seeing to strategic alliances for InQuira – during which time it was acquired by Oracle.

Since its founding in 2002 under the original name Agilsys, Infor has expanded through a series of private equity-backed acquisitions to be described as the largest privately-held tech provider in the world, now operating in over 170 countries with a headcount of some 16,500 employees and a global customer base pushing toward the 100,000 mark. In 2016, the firm announced the creation of its IMEA business unit, with an existing staff of 2,100 and the aim of a fivefold increase in regional market share by 2020.

“With more than 5,000 existing customers, Infor already has a solid footprint across the region, but the growth opportunities are virtually limitless,” said then General Manager Tarik Taman at the time. “India is one of the few major economies worldwide still growing near double digits, the Middle East is transforming from oil-based economies to the private sector driving large investments in the cloud, and Africa is the last economic frontier - all factors that made creating a dedicated IMEA region a compelling decision for Infor.”

As the market for digital business transformations continues to heat up in the Middle East, with Deloitte for example establishing a Digital Delivery Centre in Saudi Arabia, several firms have made key personnel appointments in the region in recent times. In May, Accenture appointed IT business executive Khaled Al-Dhaher as Country Managing Director for Saudi Arabia to help drive the firm's local digital consulting strategy, while last month Indian IT firm Tech Mahindra recruited Murtaza Adil to role of Enterprise division Country Manager for Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.