The Workday killer
Infor recently pre-announced the launch of their HCM Cloudsuite, this is the combination of their HCM modules into a single cloud entity that can be delivered to the enterprise. While no direct comparison has yet been done between the two Scholl firmly believes that the $500 million spent on developing the platform will make it significantly better than Workday.
Interestingly Infor has already won four separate significant deals for the new HCM platform, in at least one of those it was a direct contest against Workday. Each of those is US based, but two are multinationals. Scholl confirmed that just by bringing this product into the market they have a strong set of sales leads and conversations around this new package. It is due to be launched in December 2015 and no doubt announcements about these business wins will be included once it is released.
The new application includes modules around:
- Core HR
- Talent Acquisition
- Onboarding
- Compensation
- Goals
- Performance
- Succession
- Development
- Learning
- HR Knowledgebase
- Case Management
- Talent Science
- Payroll
- Regulatory Support
- Teacher Contracts
- Time and Attendance
- Labor Optimization
- Analytics
- Workforce Metrics
That Infor are about to launch an in the cloud HCM app that can compete with Workday means that it will also make life a lot harder for SAP and Oracle, however there is more to come. Infor has a grand plan to deliver a new financial suite aimed at multinational companies from mid to massive enterprises.
A new born in the cloud financial suite
It was interesting listening to Scholl as he swatted “legacy app” players, without naming SAP and Oracle, dismissed Workday as just a version of PeopleSoft and believes that born in the cloud Netsuite is an old fashioned, 19 year old has been. Not everyone would agree one suspects.
This new financial application is being written from scratch and is due to be launched in around 10 months, in theory September, but expect to see it launched at Inforum in July 2016 which is being held in New York. This is ambitious and one hopes that the platform is stable enough and tested enough that CFO’s are willing to risk their data on it.
The financial software is not likely to be a complete package on day one but is aimed at the financial sector, Insurance companies and banks, the traditional heartland of SAP and Oracle. If neither of those two companies has something up its sleeve it becomes easy to see how Scholl believes that he can achieve his aim for Infor of being the No 1 ERP company although there is still a long way to go.
It is interesting that Scholl maintains that the strategy for multiple cloud solutions will be maintained and that the manufacturing financials will be retained with the traditional M3 and LN applications, so this is not a consolidation onto a single cloud platform. For large multinationals it may mean that the interface between their subsidiary vertical applications and their centralised finance platform, if they choose Infor, might just become a lot stronger.
Scholl feels this is a game changer though and interestingly the large SI’s previously absent from the channel portfolio at Infor are now lining up to join with them. Infor have been working with Accenture as the development partner for the new suite.
Scholl also believes that he has found another SI partner in IBM for retail.
The premise is that this will not impact their current income streams from existing business, however in the long term something will have to change.
In reality this change was initiated by Workday, both companies produce cloud software that has no modifications which means that the channel and the SI’s are delivering transformational consultancy rather than business analysis and development resources.
(More … Partners – who needs partners)
