What is our primary use case?
Infor CloudSuite Industrial is an ERP software designed to be used in industrial engineering and for retail, representing trading purposes. It's also useful in aviation, aerospace, automotive, and other industries, including high-tech electronics.
How has it helped my organization?
We are a consulting company that works alongside Infor for their solutions, requirements, implementation, enhancements, and customization. We work with them to come up with solutions for our end customers.
In the past, we sold to almost 25 to 30 customers, and during my 10-year tenure, I had around 25 to 30 customers. We are currently working with around 8 to 9 customers.
What is most valuable?
As a cloud solution, Infor CloudSuite Industrial simplifies our work. From a product perspective, it's more lenient and suitable for using features in finance, such as reconciling our payments, accounts payable, accounts receivable, etc. We can also easily see our warehouse items and materials for manufacturing. On the side, we can use an analytics application that provides a dashboard for sales, profit loss, employee debits, credits, etc. It's an artificial product that gives us one view of both.
On the manufacturing side, we have more flexibility in designing the plan - how to plan for multiple years or what to manufacture for a specific item. Bill of material (BOM) routing and the last material have been easily bounded. One of the best features we have in the cloud soup industry is the ability to have any number of BOMs, whether there are multiple BOMs or not specified. How could we find that? Let's say I want to manufacture 20 to 30 pieces of an item. I don't need to create one BOM for everything. I can have a separate BOM for each day that can be mapped to a separate location. For example, if I have a manufacturing plant in London and another in Amsterdam, five locations in the UK, and three locations every month, all of these can be picked up by one logistics company. And I have different finance programs in different offices, such as in India and Singapore. So different times are involved.
Moreover, Infor CloudSuite Industrial has a separate application for sales. The sales application, Infor Birst, provides a comprehensive dashboard that helps sales teams to manage their pipeline, monitor their performance, and track their progress against targets. It also offers advanced forecasting and analysis capabilities. As an analytics tool, it provides a dashboard on sales, profit loss, employee debit and credit, and other key financial metrics.
What needs improvement?
In terms of improvements, we can add new features that customers are demanding, such as service and quality improvements. For instance, we could have a model to predict the expected quality, which can be imported and developed as a new feature.
We can improve quality features, and there is room for enhancement. Additionally, we can also improve service-related features by adding new functionalities. Each department has its workflow. But there is a hierarchy for pricing, and managers should be approached in such cases. So, there can be a more stabilized way of having a single point of contact to approach at any time. It is already there, but some more enhancements would be good.
Regarding integration, specific third-party tools are not accepted, for example, on the old version of IBM or Oracle. Some more workloads need to be done to integrate those tools, and we can have some enhancements on integration. ION is a very good tool, and we use web services already. The old system of using RESTful APIs has been eradicated, and the super approval trial is good. So, this tool is a refined way of working with services where it integrates any third-party tool. But, some of the older versions may need additional adjustments to integrate properly.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for five years. I am using the latest version一 10.7.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of the solution is good. If the process is followed correctly, there is no issue.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a very scalable product. You can have any number of data in it, you can even easily access, retrieve, archive, and deploy data from multiple locations around the world, giving you ample space to work with your data.
How are customer service and support?
The customer service and support is good. It's called Extreme Support, and it comes with an add-on for customers to raise tickets and exchange information. The response time is based on the complexity of the issue and is connected to the customer. The issue will be escalated to us, and based on the customer's approval, the ticket will be closed. Extreme Support has been successful globally for Infor CloudSuite Industrial, and it's considered very good in terms of technical support and functionality.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward. Sales, purchases, and financial reports are easily generated in Infor CloudSuite Industrial. Each department has its own set of reports. Creating a report in the Infor application doesn't take much time when you map it correctly for the business partner and revenue. You can easily take monthly reports on how much intake, money is in doubt, and revenue generated. Everything is reportable and informative. Deployment time depends on the specific implementation and requirements.
What about the implementation team?
Infor follows a very good technology in their methodology for implementing everything or any migration for operating conversion to version. So the methodology can be changed based on the application's behavior, and there shouldn't be much change in the methodology, as it is awesome.
For technical deployment, the business data will be moved from the older version to the newer version. There are two sides involved, one is the business side, and the other is the data side.
If we consider data migration, it's not much, but the system gets migrated at the back end with new features. It's version 11.10.7 with a feature called site functionality. It was previously called enterprise units, which have now been transformed outside. It's a single site that can map through finance or refinance, and we can map through a single refinance.
So, it's that number where five to six locations can have different currencies and can map to one site, that is, one company. As an example, since I have offices in London, I have three to four locations around London and then in the US and India, but I can close my books in one currency, with my primary pricing in pounds. All of these can be mapped to us.
Therefore, the functional thing was introduced in version 10.7 also. If I want to use that feature, I need to upgrade my system technically and personally. So this is called my migration. But on the data section, where my historical data, all the warehouse logistics, and every data is already deployed in the system will be enabled with the new feature. So for this, you can take that in a period of one or two months, but it depends upon customization. There is a term for customer relations where the customer customizes the feature for it through this week.
For example, if I need customer finance, and I want to ask for the bill for a thousand pounds, if I get that advance from a customer, fifty percent off, I will never allow that for you to be enabled. So these customizations are based on the customer's demand. With these customizations, everything should be moved to a standard day or opt-in for us advised. Therefore, it depends upon the complexity of the customization, and it will take one month, whereas optimization and migration will take two months.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
On the licensing part, Infor is too expensive. But people still prefer it because, though it is highly costly, it is very hard and price-sensitive. People prefer it because their business needs are connected to it. So, for example, if I create a customer in the Philippines, it may cost around $82,000, which includes the ION and WMS modules that allow them to manage the warehouse through the application. The cost of importing Infor M3 is typically between $120,000 to $150,000. The CloudSuite package will include multiple applications like factor track, factor taxes, and tools to manage employee availability, such as attendance and punch times. This package can be renewed annually. In addition to finance and operations, it also includes manufacturing, logistics, quality, sales, service, and project management applications.
Everything has a set of applications in that. So you'll get the operating systems, you'll get first, and you'll get finance, manufacturing, logistics, quality, sales, and service projects. It's the entire, complete suite you'll get in Infor, not only one. So whichever you want, you'll get everything combined; a bundle of items in one application.
What other advice do I have?
If you want to use the latest technology and enjoy the best applications for your business needs, Infor CloudSuite Industrial is the best option because it covers the entire business. It doesn't only have application features but also has different features depending on the line of business. It can be used for retail, industrial engineering, and high-tech electronics and maps the system to that business. The business and the application speak well together, so the R&D of Infor is very strong because the people who sit in R&D know the industry and how it works. They design the applications specific to each vertical space.
Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.