Australian and New Zealand businesses are rapid adopters of new technology, and, for example, cloud adoption is higher here than in the rest of the Pacific region, said Ryan.

So it's not surprising that ANZ customers "are very interested" in Infor's Coleman AI system, and that they can see the potential benefits.

One way the technology is likely to be of value is by involving casual users in processes without them having to log into an application or learn the details of using it.

Such capabilities would allow customers to get more work done in a day, said Ryan.

In practice, voice activation is likely to require some sort of access control. It's one thing when a child orders a $50 toy by speaking to a smart speaker in the home, but it's quite another if an unauthorised individual places an order for $250,000 worth of raw materials.

"Security is a massive issue for any company," he said.

Another way in which the company is trying to make life easier for users is Infor Go, a mobile app that serves as a front end for various Infor applications as well as custom applications running on the Infor Mongoose PaaS.

"It's the beginning of that journey" to make all the information that someone needs to do their job available in one place, he said.

When it comes to getting feedback from customers, Ryan said there are very strong user groups in ANZ, some organised around particular products and others that are industry focussed. Customer feedback is very important to Infor, he said.

And about 30 customers and partners from ANZ attended last month's Inforum conference in Washington DC, he said. The customers were drawn from the public and private sectors, including Thales, Nulon, and Styling Services.

Disclosure: The writer attended Inforum 2018 as a guest of the company.