Attendees at Inforum 2006 were treated to general sessions and educational breakouts that promised to outline "Everything Essential" for doing business in an ever-changing global environment.

Inforum is the annual users' conference for software provider Infor.

The three-day conference, held in Las Vegas in early April, highlighted many challenges facing distributors, not the least of them being the rising pressures of competition, and keeping pace with new technologies.

"We are at a crossroads," said Infor's Chairman and Ceo Jim Schaper in his opening address. "You can confront the challenges or choose to ignore them, face them or fear them."

In an opening session for distribution, Michael Marks, managing partner of Indian River Consulting Group, advised distributors to, "build an IT vision, even if you have to hide it from executives."

"Most of you would be scared to death to have your lead executive enter an order into your system," he said, drawing laughter from the audience. "But there is opportunity in chaos. Success requires senior executives to understand and leverage technology to do new things."

Speaking on the mergers and acquisitions in the distribution software market, Schaper said, "Infor is of scale now that we will be invited in on every transaction. Every time we can add something to our stack, we'll certainly look at it."

Infor acquired SSA Global in mid-May, bringing the company's revenues to roughly $1.6 billion.

More than 1,030 of Infor's distribution customers and prospects attended the conference, according to Mary Trick, distribution general manager. Sessions included tutorials on using pricing tools, driving inventory performance, credit card interfacing, and generating general ledger statements.