iTK Technologies
Self-Healing ERP Systems For Superior Performance

Mathew Palmer, Principal at iTK Technologies, had established a breakaway goal for his company back in 2003. Palmer knew that maximizing the utilization and investment in ERP applications is not an easy feat. “Most ERP consultants fail to give seamless support for implementations, upgrades, consulting, and customization,” mentions Palmer. Upon realizing the difficulties in managing the ever-increasing complexities associated with the leading ERP platforms, including Infor Lawson, Palmer spearheaded the development of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)-based ERP solution technology suite. By combining the experience, knowledge, and commitment, the solution created by iTK Technologies helps organizations drive more value and usability out of their ERP systems to stay competitive.

iTK’s started its journey in 2003 by delivering support across both the application and technical infrastructure of ERP systems. A few years later the company expanded its business operations in North and South America by forming a technical team in Brazil with qualified and some of the most experienced professionals in the industry. The company grew significantly during this period. iTK established offices in Atlanta, Boston, Cupertino, St. Paul, and Sao Paulo to serve Infor Lawson clients across the nation. Today, iTK’s clientele includes organizations from theretail, manufacturing, services, healthcare and government sectors that utilize Infor Lawson ERP platforms.

In addition to offering innovative AI and ML based products and professional services for Infor Lawson, the company provides managed services, upgrades, implementation services, and system performance analysis. Since 2017, the company has broadened its capabilities leveraged on earlier technology investments to serve finance and risk management professionals across ERP platforms. All these developments which began around2010 are centered on its AI and ML-based ERP solution that enables clients to leverage the Infor Lawson system effectively. The goal is to armfinance professionals with the tools necessary to improve productivity with fewer labor hours.

Overcoming the Performance and Productivity Challenges with AI

For organizations, it is vital to ensure that their ERP is performing at an optimal level all the time. Assessing the root cause for the decline in performance is an important step in this. “We bring talented and experienced Infor Lawson consultants that listen, learn, design, and implement projects and systems that meet the client needs and takes the performance/reliability of an ERP system to the highest level,” mentions Alex Geraldo, Co-Founder, Chief Technologis at the firm.

We are good at gathering data and are equally good at building data models that predict the future

Today, the core of iTK’s performance and productivity management tool is an AI-powered analytics engine, RTM 10. As a tool optimized for Infor Lawson solution, RTM 10 monitors and manages the ERP platform to maximize performance and productivity across the entire technology stack. There are many critical processes and operations in both IT and finance that require continuous supervision. RTM 10 is fine-tuned to cater to such processes efficiently. Outlining the technical side of their performance tool, Geraldo says, “Our agent-based JAVA client extracts and loads transactions into our ML platform that analyzes business data.” iTK’s proprietary tools also leverage data analytics to find the solution for performance-related issues of the ERP platform.

RTM 10 has an ultra-fast, cloud-based compute engine that can analyze millions of data elements generated by the ERP system in real-time. Unlike traditional BI systems that analyze information based on SQL queries on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, RTM 10 can sense and respond to changing conditions immediately. “We are great at gathering data and are equally great at building data models that predict the future,” Geraldo mentions. For instance, iTK has integrated its ML platform with Google TensorFlow to transform raw business data into insightful and meaningful intelligence.

Additionally, iTK helps organizations design and implement effective performance dashboards, custom analysis, reporting, and alerts. These functionalities help companies measure the performance and improve productivity of the ERP system in real-time, while delivering the results directly to the stakeholders who can make a difference.

Improving IT operations is yet another facet in performance management. RTM 10 includes analytic tools that help improve IT operations. It also brings the best of breed automation to manage many critical IT and finance processes.

Beyond performance optimization, for organizations that fail to protect their critical software assets—mainly companies that place some functionality outside of the firewall—iTK’s technical prowess ensures unprecedented features and functionalities for managing cyber threats. RTM 10 make use of embedded AI-based predictive analytics to detect and resolve security threats and vulnerabilities in real-time.

Built for the Customer Productivity

iTK realizes that new business models thrive only when their ERP system continuously learns. “That’s one of the greatest disparities between what an AI-powered ERP platform can perform and where its legacy counterparts are today,” asserts Palmer.

Moreover, legacy systems fail to provide user friendlyoptions for customizing applications to improve productivity and usability. iTK offers seamless and user-friendly options for tailoring applications. Geraldo illustrates the way they customize their managed service offering through an example. For the CFO of a company, thinking strategically about cash management, working closely with every department, and making paymentsfor various expenses (account reconciliation) is often an uphill task. Geraldo questions, “How can the CFO really manage cash flow if one fails to reconcile the accounts quickly enough?” iTK offers a quick and permanent remedy to thesechallenges. The firm automates and standardizes the reconciliation process to support high quality and accurate financial statements. Moreover, the solution drives accuracy in the financial close by providing accountants with a streamlined method to verify the correctness of the balance sheet without needing to navigate through multiple spreadsheets.

In order to illustrate the significance of their AI based managed service offerings further, Palmer outlines how they can improve cash flow. The company customizes its offerings for detecting duplicate invoices. Powered by intelligent algorithms, the solution detects potential payments before and after the funds are released to the vendors and employees. “iTK’s offerings helped us solve the duplicate payments problem which improved our company’s bottom line besides reducing the cost of our procure-to-pay process,” says one of iTK’s happy customers.

Success Driven by People
According to Palmer, it is not just technology that sets iTK apart from its competitors. Although the company brings sophistication while offering managed services, their technical staff makes a difference in the delivery of the services. iTK’s principals have an experience spanning decadesworking with ERP products. The company combines its deep technical expertise of application specialists and AI trained software engineers to understand the crux of the Lawson ERP application. This unique blend of technology and experience enables them to proactively dig deeper and find both current and potential issues that affect application, performance, and reliability. Be it upgrade, implementation, or optimization, iTK is focused on providing each client with a customized solution to maximize the utilization and investment in ERP applications.

"We bring talented and experienced Infor Lawson consultants that listen, learn, design, and implement projects and systems that meet the client needs and takes the performance of an ERP system to the highest level"

Citing the company’s future, Palmer says, “Our overarching plan is to continue to put human and machine intelligence together and continue focusing on the AI-first initiative in order to bring tangible productivity improvements to the business.” The firm has successfully built the technology framework to implement the same. iTK also plans to continue leveraging the wave of big data analytics, and ultra-fast, cloud-based compute engines to create industry leading ERP system deployments that improve business productivity.