Just six months after Infor announced it was ‘nailing its colours’ to the Microsoft mast the world’s third largest ERP vendor has launched the first fruits of its new strategy. Infor FMS SunSystems Enterprise has had an extensive Microsoft makeover and the new product was unveiled to a packed user conference in London last week. But as Bruce Richardson, Infor’s chief strategist explained to FSN, it is not just the products that are getting a shot in the arm. Several big hitters have been hired from Oracle to help transform Infor from a successful portfolio company managing 70,000 mid-market customers into an innovative full-service software house.
Last year, Jim Schaper, formerly CEO and now chairman of Infor started to set about creating the conditions for the next phase of Infor’s development by recruiting a new CEO to replace him, but as Richardson puts it, “there weren’t that many places to look for a CEO of a $2bn software house with hundreds of products in its portfolio.” The search ended in October 2010 with the well publicised appointment of Charles Phillips, ex-President of Oracle Corporation. In December 2010, Phillips brought on board four other senior colleagues from Oracle, positioning them in key product, marketing, sales, services and operations roles.
The new team set about reviewing the business from top to bottom, examining the products and re-shaping the organisation for innovation. “It wasn’t just about technical innovation,” says Bruce Richardson, “it was also about making the organisation more responsive, revising its ‘go to market’ strategy and its products,” he added. One outcome of the review was to add another 400 heads to the development staff bring the total to around 2,200 staff or 25 percent of the workforce. “In the next 12 months we expect to roll out 47 new products, and over 600 product enhancements,” Bruce told FSN.
Much of Infor’s rapid progress can be attributed to the Microsoft technology stack that can rapidly breathe new life into older products. For example, in the case of Infor FMS, the innovation embedded in the product amounts to the most significant change for the product in more than a decade. But Tim Truesdale, head of product marketing for Infor FMS and a veteran of SunSystems with around 15 years experience of the product told FSN, “It’s not a scary upgrade for customers. In my opinion, going to version 5.0 was far more challenging for customers but deploying Microsoft functionality within the product gives it a familiar feel and new functionality that is easier to use and that customers will appreciate instantly.”
Bruce Richardson, previously an industry analyst before being asked to join Infor 18 months ago agrees. “The Microsoft platform is ideally suited to the mid-market. There is no mystery about what you are getting, it is simple to use and can be maintained by in-house IT teams without recourse to hordes of external application consultants,” he comments.
The focus of the changes so far has been on the user interface, business reporting, connectivity (integration) and offering users the choice of on-premises deployment, cloud deployment or a hybrid of the two. (Infor FMS SunSystems Enterprise is likely to make its Cloud debut sometime next year).
The importance of the user interface is frequently under-appreciated yet it can make a huge difference to user productivity when working with business applications. Infor have wasted no time in making Infor FMS SunSystems Enterprise web deployable – some would argue that this was long overdue, but they have also recognised that business users habitually work in a multi-application environment – especially with SunSystems which is primarily focussed on financials. SunSystems Enterprise has a new Windows user interface but there is also an optional new ‘Workspace’ environment - effectively a ‘container’ for other applications which is independent of the SunSystems’ user interface. This makes use of tabs or icons to navigate between Infor (and non-Infor applications) – all apparently with a single sign-on.
But from now on all of the applications will progressively share the same interface, cutting down on the learning curve for users and enhancing staff mobility so that organisations can smooth out the peaks and troughs in their workload. Also, by leveraging Microsoft SharePoint, the user interface will in due course accommodate ‘web parts’ or ‘info parts’ i.e. snippets of context sensitive business intelligence (dashboards, alerts, actions, KPI’s) delivered through separate panes in a user definable home page.
Microsoft SharePoint also provides the framework for increased collaboration, for example, using workflow and alerts. Truesdale is positively effusive about workflow in Infor SunSystems. “This enhancement alone adds very significant capability to SunSystems,” he told a packed London audience keen to hear the detail of the newly released Infor FMS SunSystems Enterprise version.
Business reporting and publishing to the web has been refreshed through new user-configurable reporting tools and Infor is stepping up its investment in mobile. Bruce Richardson challenges the wisdom of delivering dashboards to smart-phones with a two inch display but is excited about the prospect of surfacing critical information on iPad technology which has reasonably sized screens.
Integration, provided courtesy of Infor ION is a crucial part of delivering the strategy, but Infor have taken a simpler and perhaps more dependable approach than some competitor offerings. The integration is at the document level, for example, an ‘invoice’or a ‘requisition’ rather than at some deeper technical level involving database tables. A drag and drop interface within Infor ION allows users to define the relationships between applications and maintain interfaces with only limited IT involvement. The result, says Infor, is that applications are easier to connect, do not require extensive ‘surgery’ and are less likely to break.
Infor users will be encouraged by the London launch of Infor FMS. Infor is clearly delivering on its Microsoft strategy and appears committed to sustained innovation. In a sense Infor’s own metamorphosis reflects the deep level of change being experienced by its mid-market customers all around the globe. Coping with change requires a robust yet flexible architecture that is amenable to change without massive business disruption and cost. Infor FMS SunSytems with its 30 year old pedigree is one of the best examples in the industry of how good application design, innovation and timely investment can provide an enduring solution.
