Executive Summary

  • This article is part of our honest vendor series, which is one of the only ratings of vendors rather than applications.
  • The vendor quality is critical to the decision making process as software purchases have a high long term involvement by the software vendor.

Introduction

Infor has several products of good quality. While Infor’s products often score well for functionality, Infor as a company scores poorly for implement ability and maintainability. It’s apparent that Infor has acquired itself into a very confusing situation and it is a software vendor with a very complicated storyline regarding its applications. This is a software vendor with 13 different ERP systems.

It confusing enough to profile Infor’s applications, and how Infor salespeople are supposed to cover all of these applications, and how support is supposed to support all these applications is a mystery to us.

Infor is an unusual acquirer because unlike Oracle that lets its acquired applications languish into obsolescence and JDA, which actively pares the weaker applications that it acquires, Infor seems to attempt to keep all of its acquired applications ready for sale and support.

Infor, like the mega software vendors, would like to perform solution architecture work for its clients. That is providing a complete solution from its various acquisitions, using the argument that Infor may not have the best application in each area, but that buyers should buy from them because then all of the applications will be “integrated.” However, doing this will lead to poor outcomes; in fact, it always has been the case in enterprise software regardless of the software vendor that is being discussed. Each of Infor’s applications must be evaluated on an application by application basis.

Infor’s management has a reputation for being a bit too financially oriented. Financial oriented is excellent for Wall Street but is not as good for customers. Another problem is Infor’s constant acquisitions, and it cuts in several directions as is listed below.

  1. Acquisition heavy firms lead to too many people managing and speaking to customers about products for which do not have authentic knowledge.
  2. As an employee of a software vendor, one of the worst things that can happen to you. Such a large number of people who work for Infor, who used to work for independent software vendors and were far happier in these other companies is a recipe for bad moral.
  3. Infor exacerbates this problem by having one of the higher employee turnovers of the ERP software vendors.
  4. It is a problem when so many of our client interviews are centered around problems that arise from too many acquisitions. Infor most likely needs to do what JDA has done, which is to cull its product database. But again, Infor does not follow JDA’s model. And they do deserve credit for reinvesting in the product after an acquisition.

Quality of Information Provided

Infor has a sales commission structure that escalates. This means that Infor does not pay a competitive commission until the salespeople meet cumulative goals. This is not a great way of managing sales commissions. While this might be considered useful for Infor to motivate its salespeople, it puts a concern on the reliability of the information that comes from Infor salespeople precisely because of this motivation. If the buyer runs into a salesperson towards the end of their measurement period who’s entirety of the bonus is related to closing the final deal – or making no bonus, one could expect the quality of information to be provided by this salesperson to be quite weak. This is a general criticism related to incentives. 

Consulting and Support

Infor has the same issue as Epicor in that due to fairness issues in terms of compensation (too much compensation going to the top and too little for those that will be working on your account). Infor does have a problem with employee morale, and this negatively affects both the motivation of implementation consultants and support personnel. Infor’s margin on its employees is too high in our opinion, and the employees have figured this out. One reason for this is that Infor has many ex-Epicor as well as ex-Oracle employees and executives. Not surprisingly, Infor scores poorly on both consulting and support.

Internal Efficiency

Our research has to lead us to conclude that Infor has weak management. Many of their policies and approaches are elitist only designed to benefit the executives in the company. This is an entry for buyers, but one would wonder why people, aside from executives, would want to work for Infor. Infor prefers to repeat common management mistakes.

Innovation

Infor’s continual growth by acquisition strategy leads to the same problems faced by Epicor in terms of product quality. For instance, Infor lists 14 different ERP systems on its website. Quality problems are doubly a risk for Infor as they have created a corporate environment, which will generally not promote innovation. Innovation is promoted from stable work environments that allow the developers to work to long-range goals from a perspective of security. 

Vendor Scores

Honest Vendor Ratings

Search for the vendor in this table using the search bar in the upper right of the table. Shortening Key: 
  • VC = Vendor Consulting
  • VS = Vendor Support
  • QIP = Quality of Information Provided
  • IE = Internal Efficiency
  • I = Innovation
  • C = Category
  • ACS = Average Category Score
VendorVCVSQIPIEICACG
Average Score for the BI Heavy Software Category6.45.35.14.54.4BI HeavyCategory Average
Average Score for the BI Light Software Category7.76.756.36.8BI LightCategory Average
Average Score for the CRM Software Category5.24.44.33.43.4CRMCategory Average
Average Score for the PLM Software Category7.37.56.36.26.3PLMCategory Average
Average Score for the Production Planning Software Category7.36.765.25.7Production PlanningCategory Average
Average Score for the Small and Medium ERP Software Category7.36.76.36.75.9Small and Medium ERPCategory Average
Average Score for the Supply Planning Software Category7.56.76.15.55.6Supply PlanningCategory Average
Average Score Score for the Demand Planning Software Category7.76.96.66.16.1Demand PlanningCategory Average
Average Score for the Big ERP Software Category4.73.82.72.22.6Big ERPCategory Average
Actuate77865BI HeavyApplication Specific
Arena Solutions91010810PLMApplication Specific
AspenTech43437Production PlanningApplication Specific
Base CRM88997CRMApplication Specific
Birst8888.59BI HeavyApplication Specific
Business Forecast Systems991098Demand PlanningApplication Specific
Delfoi888.548Production PlanningApplication Specific
Demand Works99101010Supply PlanningApplication Specific
ERPNext888.5109Small and Medium ERPApplication Specific
FinancialForce10109109.5FinancialApplication Specific
Hamilton Grant89.589.58PLMApplication Specific
Intacct1010999.5FinancialApplication Specific
Intuit88966.5FinancialApplication Specific
JDA3.53422Demand PlanningApplication Specific
Microsoft45211Small and Medium ERPApplication Specific
MicroStrategy87777BI HeavyApplication Specific
NetSuite65644CRMApplication Specific
OpenERP788.587Small and Medium ERPApplication Specific
Oracle52111ManyApplication Specific
PlanetTogether91081010Supply PlanningApplication Specific
Preactor787.533Production PlanningApplication Specific
ProcessPro1089109Small and Medium ERPApplication Specific
QlikTech87589.5CRMApplication Specific
Salesforce73866CRMApplication Specific
SAS971077Demand PlanningApplication Specific
SugarCRM44553CRMApplication Specific
Tableau101091010BI LightApplication Specific
Teradata98.58.568BI HeavyApplication Specific
ToolsGroup1010999Demand PlanningApplication Specific
SAP53111ManyApplication Specific