When I was researching SAP Nation, I was impressed with how many customers are swapping out software, moving to third party maintenance, “ring fencing” the core solution with specialist tools, and implementing two and three tier strategies – different solutions for headquarters, large and small subsidiaries. I presented a sample of case studies in the book.
I have been running a series of blogs following up on the book research - see earlier posts on UNIT4’s successes in the UK local government sector, Microsoft in two-tier settings, Rimini Street for third party maintenance and E2open in “ring-fence” scenarios.
Infor, as the third largest ERP software vendor, has been sharpening its message over the last few years with its micro-vertical strategy, a significant focus on UX and by leveraging Amazon’s formidable infrastructure cloud. It has also been integrating its own portfolio of software assets with its ION middleware. They obviously prefer to win customers outright, but I was impressed they shared with me a long list of customers where they co-exist with SAP and other ERP software in two-tier, surround and replacement settings.
Examples include Peters, the leading Australian ice cream maker. Upon being spun off from Nestle, they replaced SAP with Infor M3. Mahler, a Nestle sub in S. America, continues to use Infor supply chain and other functionality. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Kellogg, the cereal company both use Infor’s Enwisen for their HR shared services around an SAP ERP Core. Akzo Nobel, the global paint and coatings company and ABB Power Technologies AB have a variety of Infor functionality surrounding SAP.
I expect them to continue this momentum.
Individually, you could dismiss them as small cracks in the frozen tundra, but there are many such cracks if you use a wide angle lens. Over the next few weeks I will profile other such “snapshots” and show why I believe they are an indication of coming significant churn in the enterprise software market.
