Infor slams SAP’s move into manufacturing SMEs

“One has to wonder if SAP truly understands the mid-market or whether this strategy is solely an effort to detract attention from the slowing growth of their Fortune 500 base,” said Jim Schaper, CEO of Infor which now has some 70,000 SME customers. “Medium-sized customers do not want all-in-one products that need massive customisation efforts to address their line of business. That approach is a relic of the past, when ERP implementations were akin to corporate open heart surgery.” Schaper makes the point that instead, business-specific functionality and best practices are already built into Infor’s solutions, “which speeds implementation and lowers total cost of ownership.” That’s true, but in fairness, both SAP’s All-in-One and its recently enhanced Business One systems also lay claim to best practices and vertical industry accommodations built-in – the latter in particular by SAP’s partner commuity. Meanwhile, he also makes a play for Infor’s “lowest total cost of ownership” as judged by “industry experts” – and again there’s some truth in that too. Analyst Aberdeen Group, for example, recently ranked Infor best for total cost of software and services per user. However, Aberdeen also cited SAP as the number one for the most functionality used, while SAP tied with Lawson for the highest number of modules used. It also found Lawson number one for providing lowest total cost per percentage point of functionality actually used, as well as lowest cost per user. And QAD took top honours for providing manufacturing users with the lowest total cost per percentage point of performance gain and the best average performance improvement. Nevertheless, Schaper is strident: “Infor has built a strong growing company on delivering solutions with industry experience already built in. The bottom line is that customers want more functionality, less complexity and the lowest total cost of ownership. That is not the plan we see from SAP.”