Infor, the third-largest provider of business application software with 70,000 customers and annual revenues estimated at nearly $2 billion (USD), is reinventing itself under the direction of new chief executive officer (CEO) Charles Phillips, who joined the company from Oracle in October 2010. Observers agree that Phillips has his work cut out to build a strong challenger to giants SAP and Oracle, given Infor's checkered past. But observers also agree that if anyone can transform Infor, it's Phillips, whose track record at Oracle was stellar.
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A Look at the Beginning
Founded in 2002, Infor has developed a reputation over the years as the "place where ERP systems go to retire," as a result of dozens of hit-and-miss acquisitions. Despite its reputation, Infor actually started out as a neatly run company. Infor was frugal, paying less than two times revenue for acquisitions. It also added significant maintenance revenue streams and aggressively controlled its costs. As a result, the company enjoyed a strong cash flow and ability to pay down whatever debt it had.
However, Infor's disciplined approach began to go off track with the acquisitions of MAPICS (2005), GEAC (2006), SSA Global (2006), andWorkbrain (2007), which generally came with higher price tags but also brought a host of product quality issues, questionable management practices, and cultural challenges.
For example, SSA Global may have doubled Infor's size but it caused major heartburn and indigestion. The overall fit of the two companies was hampered by SSA's legacy management issues and certain practices that alienated customers, including those on IBM System i. In addition, the performance-draining practices that ensued among Infor and SSA exacerbated the situation. For instance, product teams got into turf wars, and the overall company goal seemed to be to subordinate growth and innovation, stop enhancing many products, and squeeze maintenance revenues from the increasingly agitated customer base.
Continued Transition and Confusion
In the late 2000s, customers were not pleased to be "nickeled and dimed" for hardly any new differentiating functionality from Infor, and neither were partners, who may have received much better treatment from the previously independent companies.
Next, the pressures of the 2008 recession led to numerous restructurings at Infor, with both quiet and not-so-quiet management departures. When cost containment and headcount cuts followed, product development inevitably suffered, and many industry observers doubted that the company could ever recover, especially without a focus on product innovation.
Infor's management attempted to achieve a breakthrough with a distinct value proposition, but it was without lasting effects. Even a marketing campaign touting how Infor was not like the "Big ERP" guys fell flat.
Meanwhile, product direction meandered. At first, Infor's ambitious Open SOA platform strategy was to do everything itself based on open standards, but that strategy was soon abandoned because it consumed too much time and financial resources. Then in 2009-10, Infor modified its platform strategy and declared Microsoft technologies as the preferred (which has since changed again). Of course, each failed attempt or abandoned initiative led to another wave of departures and more muddling through.
The Arrival of Charles Phillips
In late 2010, Infor CEO Jim Schaper found a successor who seemed fit for Infor's next phase. Indeed, former Oracle president Charles Phillips had orchestrated and overseen Oracle's growth from about $10 billion in the mid-2000s to more than $35 billion today. Phillips was at the center of blockbuster acquisitions, such as PeopleSoft, Siebel Systems, Sun Microsystems,BEA Systems, and Retek. He was also at the center of the Oracle Fusion Applications (OFA) convergence strategy and has probably seen what works and what doesn't in that major (and still ongoing) feat at the software giant.
With him, Phillips brought along other Oracle seasoned executives, most notably Duncan Angove, current president of Infor. At Oracle, Angove set up and ran full profit-and-loss operations for Oracle Retail, Oracle's first industry global business unit. Oracle Retail became the largest and number one provider of software to the retail industry (read more).
In addition, Pam Murphy, now corporate senior vice president (VP) of operations, has an extensive background in field sales and consulting operations. During her 11-year tenure at Oracle, she was responsible for a variety of operational and financial functions. Murphy has deep operational experience in global organizations and has worked in Europe and America in a variety of roles. Prior to Oracle, Murphy worked at Andersen Consulting and Arthur Andersen.
Stephan Scholl, now executive VP of global field operations, runs Infor sales, consulting, alliances, and channels globally. Scholl was general manager of the Utilities Global Business Unit at Oracle where he was responsible for sales, development, and marketing for the vertical. He was instrumental in generating significant growth for Oracle and a leader of the company's successful Green Strategy. Prior to that, Stephan ran Oracle's North American consulting group, the company's largest organization. Before Oracle, Scholl was in consulting and sales management roles at PeopleSoft.
In the spirit of innovation, Infor announced in November 2011 a relocation of its headquarters to New York City, now planned to open in the autumn of 2012. The new office will feature an Innovation Center where software engineers and graphic designers will focus on building out Infor10's intuitive graphical user interface (GUI), and lead the integration of social applications into the enterprise.
This move reflects a big shift in development strategy and even political power within Infor, which can only be a good thing. By tapping into the New York City creative mindset and potentially the financial community, Phillips can use the new Innovation Center to help drive Infor10 to become a leading-edge solution.
Infor's newly espoused strategy outlines a product-driven company with services for a complete application, containing localization, analytics, integration, industry-specific content, social media, and mobility. To back up that strategy, the company is making significant investments in product development, with more than 500 software engineers added in 2011 and announced plans to hire an additional 75 developers in its New York Innovation Center.
In 2011, Infor reportedly shipped 69 new products (e.g., Infor10 Sales and Operations Planning), 1,904 new features, and 2,001 customer enhancement requests-an increase of more than 70 percent from the previous year. Infor10 Financials Business (SunSystems), the company's global financial management system (FMS) saw a major new release in 2011, and was reviewed in Business Intelligence software solutions.
Blueprint for the Future: Infor10
Over the course of its history, Infor has acquired more than 40 companies, with more or less strategic importance. The company's latest strategy includes a common UI, analytics, reporting, workflow, event management, master data management(MDM), localizations, mobility, and packaged integration for all of its applications. Rather than having each product line development team work on these functions, a dedicated central team attending to all Infor applications works on each of these functions. The objective is to enable software from multiple acquisitions to function like one big application as much as possible.
To that end, in the fall of 2011, Infor unveiled Infor10, its next-generation enterprise software, which offers an enhanced user experience and industry-specific functionality. As indicated earlier, on the front end, Infor10 Workspace, which incorporates Microsoft SharePoint, provides customers with a single sign-on, common navigation, and common look and feel across multiple applications. Infor10 Workspace is designed to deliver a consumer-like user experience and change the way the average enterprise user has traditionally done his or her work. The UI unifies and presents all relevant information for each user on one screen, including role-based workflows, task and alerts, in-context business intelligence (BI), event management, social media collaboration, consumer-like search capabilities, and business activity streams.
ION: The Infor10 Workhorse
The Infor10 ION Suite is at the heart of Infor10. As a lightweight middleware technology, ION connects and integrates Infor and non-Infor applications, storing information in a common format and repository called Business Vault. ION allows information that flows among applications, analytics, and social media streams to be accessed by users from their desktops, laptops, or mobile devices.
ION software provides middleware (and open-source enterprise service bus [ESB]) for cross-application integration, workflow automation, machine-to-machine business process management (BPM), and shared data reporting. The tool thus enables new and existing Infor and non-Infor applications to work as a holistic solution, helping to create streamlined workflows and end-to-end business processes, while considering system performance speed and upgrades. It uses standard XML business document for data transfer.
ION Suite is a new generation of business middleware that is lighter weight, less technically demanding to implement, and built on open standards. It is designed to meet the needs of the business, and the needs of the chief information officer (CIO) in containing information technology (IT) costs. But there's more to ION Suite than just easy-to-use connectivity. With ION Suite, businesses get common reporting and analysis, workflow, and business monitoring with one, consistent architecture. In addition, ION Suite uses event-driven architecture (EDA), so it proactively pushes data, work activities, and exception notifications to users. Users don't need to go to the system to get the information they need-ION Suite makes sure the information comes straight to them.
What it Does
ION Suite includes the following four services that are easy to install and configure:
1. ION Connect-Allows applications to operate together easily, enabling the seamless execution of business processes, and allowing for quickly bringing new partners and customers onboard, as well as reusing business functionality to realize a quick return on investment (ROI).
o Easy setup. Infor applications operate with a standard business language so ION Suite setup is easy. Businesses don't need to do any translation or mapping-two of the biggest integration challenges.
o Easy operations. For those companies running a portion of their business in the cloud, ION Suite can exchange data working in a hybrid model. Companies don't need a second, separate integration stack to maintain this hybrid environment.
o Easy connections. ION Suite includes a library of "connectors" to integrate to third-party applications, so businesses can quickly integrate non-Infor apps into their system.
2. ION Business Vault-A single, optimized, unbreakable business repository where ION Suite stores enterprise data. This unifying source for all the data that flows through ION Suite makes it a robust platform for reporting, BI, and analytics.
o Up-to-date data. The Business Vault uses an event-driven model for synchronization, so that data is synchronized as soon as a transaction occurs in the originating system.
o Easier search. Enterprise search is easier, as data resides in one place-so there's no need for a business to index their transactional systems.
o Better reporting. The Business Vault features a master data reference for better reporting and integrations scenarios.
3. ION Event Management-Allows users to monitor the status of tasks in relation to promised completion or established service level agreements (SLAs), and automatically receive alerts about exceptions and potential non-compliance.
o Make the rules. ION Event Management detects exceptions based on business rules that users define. Notifications and alerts can be triggered by Event Management and directed to the appropriate users with ION Workflow. Also, ION can detect exceptions within a single source system.
o Detect non-events. Event Management can also detect non-events-things that should have happened, but didn't-for example, a shipment to an important customer that missed its due date or time. Sales or Operations Management can be immediately alerted, so they can address the business issue.
o Provide better service. Event Management can also be used to monitor SLAs, so businesses can meet their performance levels and maintain good customer service.
4. ION Workflow-Allows for directing work activities, events, and business documents to any user so that business processes can be executed quickly and accurately.
o Create quickly. Workflow modeling is graphical and based on Business Process Management Notation (BPMN 2.0) standard. This makes it easy to create even complex workflows, and know that they'll work across applications.
o Automate approvals. Allows for creation of simple to more sophisticated workflows to automate document routing and approvals across departments and office locations worldwide.
o Manage centrally. All tasks and alerts generated by Event Management and Workflow are managed through the Tasklist, which features an Activity Stream-based UI. And because ION Tasklist can run stand-alone or in a portal, users can work the way they want to work. Infor will be adding support for mobile and tablet devices at a later time to enhance flexibility.
The Infor10 release also provides flexible deployment options, including the Infor10 CloudSuite platform (formerly Infor24), to increase business speed and agility. Customers can run their entire solution on Infor10 CloudSuite or can keep core enterprise systems on premises, while running other applications or services in the cloud. The Infor10 CloudSuite platform features a unified user experience and security, and enables two-tiered, hybrid cloud and on-premises deployments. Whether customers access functionality from a software-as-a-service (SaaS; cloud) model or on-premises deployment, they should get the same functionality and look and feel. The only difference is in how users connect to core applications. Customers can even move from one deployment model to another, as the same application code is used for all deployment models.
The Infor10 Motion Platform
For the cloud and mobility, Infor recently launched Infor10 Motion applications to provide fast and reliable connections to back-office systems, regardless of location, through smartphones and tablets, such as the Apple iPhone and iPad. The idea is to accelerate productivity and help users work smarter and faster. Infor10 Motion is built with a loosely coupled architecture on the Infor10 ION framework, meaning that Infor10 Motion applications can plug into different back-office systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), expense management, and supply chain management(SCM).
Unlike the tightly packaged solutions on the market today, which often require customers to buy more products in the hopes sap hana training online of extending solutions, Infor10 Motion provides native rich applications that leverage the data that already exists in enterprise deployments. Security is built into Infor10 Motion to help address the threat of theft and data loss, allowing customers to retain control over critical business data.
Infor10 Motion applications take into account differences between devices, such as tablets versus smartphones. Because it is core product independent, Infor10 Motion is able to adopt a consistent user experience across back-office applications. Infor10 Motion applications are further differentiated by being "app aware," which means that they enhance the user experience by detecting when another app on the device could provide additional functionality, including consumer apps that would work in the context of the enterprise. An example of this is the Infor10 Road Warrior app, which incorporates Skype and FaceTime within a customer's contact record so salespeople can more seamlessly access consumer collaboration tools.
Infor10 Motion is cloud based, and the Infor10 Motion App Manager (IMAM) provides a single location for companies to deploy Infor10 Motion applications quickly within their existing IT infrastructure. In contrast, many other mobile platforms require an add-on solution to centralize the effort of multiple deployments. Once a company has gained access to IMAM, it is ready to begin using Infor10 Motion applications. IMAM also allows managers to determine which users have access to specific information and to be able to change those settings at any point.
Infor has immediately made available two applications-one is Infor10 Road Warrior, a mobile CRM application with embedded BI. Infor10 Road Warrior empowers sales productivity by sending mobile alerts, approvals, and tasks-allowing users to make decisions faster and turn what was previously considered downtime into a tool to outpace the competition. This connectivity is coupled with embedded BI to provide an overview of data-heavy screens, helping users make sense of data more rapidly, highlight problems at a glance, and compare current and historical order volume-reducing the amount of time spent searching for information (including voice recognition).
The other application is Infor10 ION ActivityDeck, which helps solve critical problems that arise when users are on the road and have no visibility into pressing issues going on in the office. ION ActivityDeck provides users with the ability to remain connected to the back office so they are able to respond to important tasks, receive real-time alerts, and approve pending requests-keeping the business in motion. Similar in function to Twitter, ION ActivityDeck provides the ability to define filters based on almost anything, helping users address questions before they become issues.
Infor10 Road Warrior and Infor10 ION ActivityDeck are available for secure installation through the Apple iTunes Store. Additional Infor10 Motion applications are expected this year and will serve a variety of critical office functions, such as creating orders or quotes, approving expense reports, and reviewing key business metrics from anywhere.
The Infor10 Motion mobility platform, which is based on Java and some open-source tools, could be used by even Infor's ancient ERP solutions, as those apps are already available in the cloud. In contrast, the Infor10 Workspace UI cannot be deployed until the old ERP system is Web enabled. Workspace is a shell, aiming to unite Infor's multiple products into a solution using their existing UI. Motion is about creating consistent UIs that draw from style and technology for a consistent (solution) approach. For more intricate mobility tasks in the field service and asset intensive industries, Infor has established relationships with Blue Dotand ClickSoftware.
It's About Industry Focus, After All
ION software also makes it possible to connect the rich functionality of leading ERP and best-of-breed solutions from Infor and affiliate Lawson Software for specific industries. Infor10 suites are targeted for aerospace and defense; automotive; chemicals