Vendor Analysis
published on Jul 04, 2019
Report Overview:
This NelsonHall assessment analyzes Infor's offerings and capabilities in Next Generation HCM Technology.
Who is this Report for:
NelsonHall’s HCM Technology Vendor Assessment for Infor is a comprehensive assessment of Infor’s HCM platform offering and capabilities designed for:
- Sourcing managers monitoring the capabilities of existing suppliers of HCM technology and identifying vendor suitability for HCM technology RFPs
- Vendor marketing, sales, and business managers looking to benchmark themselves against their peers
- Financial analysts and investors specializing in the HR Technology sector
- HR and payroll decision makers.
Scope of this Report:
The report provides a comprehensive and objective analysis of Infor’s Next Generation HCM Technology offering, capabilities, and market and financial strength, including:
- Identification of the company’s strategy, emphasis, and new developments
- Analysis of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, and outlook
- Revenue estimates
- Analysis of the profile of the company’s customer base including the company’s targeting strategy and examples of current contracts
- Analysis of the company’s offerings and key service components
- Analysis of the company’s delivery organization including the location of delivery locations.
Key Findings & Highlights:
Infor, founded in 2002 and headquartered in New York, NY is a provider of enterprise software solutions. Infor is owned by a group of investors including Golden Gate Capital, and Koch Industries, Inc., both of which continue to invest in Infor collectively; in January 2019, the firms committed to investing an additional $1.5bn in the company.
Originally founded under the name Agilysis, it built its portfolio of ERP offerings primarily through several acquisitions including Infor Business Solutions (February 2004) and began focusing on industry-specific solutions. Infor changed its name from Agilysis to Infor Global Solutions in September 2004.
Infor began expanding its portfolio to include workforce management capabilities with its acquisition of Workbrain in 2007 (a leading workforce time and attendance and scheduling solution at the time). Infor continued to acquire additional human capital management solutions over the following ten years.
In 2012, Infor launched 'Hook and Loop', an innovation lab located in New York City, with a team of UX designers, developers, researchers, and strategists to develop an enhanced, unified user experience to bridge across its portfolio of offerings.
In 2014, Infor began shifting toward cloud solutions, with the acquisition of PeopleAnswers and the launch of its Infor CloudSuite, which integrated its offering of vertical-focused enterprise software solutions. In December 2016, Infor launched Infor CloudSuite HCM (the specific focus of this profile.)
In November 2016, Infor announced that it had received a $2bn investment from Koch Equity Development LLC (KED), an investment subsidiary of Koch Industries. This investment marked the largest single investment in KED's history. Infor expects to leverage the investment to support its growth and innovation initiatives.
Today Infor has ~17k employees supporting ~90k clients across >200 countries.
Infor's HCM offering, Infor CloudSuite HCM, is a part of its overall Infor CloudSuite platform, which offers several business platforms including ERP, CRM, HCM, Finance, and Supply Chain, and numerous vertical-specific offerings (including: automotive, healthcare, industrial, retail, public sector, and hospitality).
Infor provides both on-premise and cloud versions of its HCM solution, although some of its edge applications are offered purely as cloud only (e.g. Talent Science); as of April 2019, ~60% of its HCM clients were deployed in the cloud. Infor also offers both private and public cloud options for adopting its platform. The focus of this profile is exclusively on CloudSuite HCM.
Infor's CloudSuite HCM includes the following modules and high-level features:
- Global HR
- HR service delivery
- Payroll
- Pay and deductions
- Workforce management
- Talent management
- Team Flight Risk
- Learning management
- HCM analytics
- Talent science.
Infor's CloudSuite HCM is a Java-based platform developed on Amazon Web Services cloud platform; its modules are a mix of internally developed and acquired solutions. However, Infor is nearly finished with a multi-year project to move all of its modules to the same platform; payroll is in the final stages of re-platforming with completion expected by the end of 2019. Workforce management, and talent science, although integrated remain separate by design as standalone offerings.
Infor CloudSuite HCM is sold as on-premise and cloud; its "core bundle" is required to have add-on modules:
- Core bundle: includes global HR + talent management + HR service delivery + talent science + learning management
- Add-on modules: payroll, workforce management, and HCM analytics
Infor also offers industry vertical solutions across many of its platforms, which supports the nuances of various industries; for HCM these healthcare, public sector, manufacturing, hospitality, retail.
NelsonHall estimates that, as of April 2019, Infor was supporting ~5k on its HCM platform; ~60% on its cloud solution (~3k clients), with the remaining ~40% on its on-premise solution.
Infor targets organizations across a range of market sizes for its CloudSuite HCM solution and has clients ranging from 500 employees to ~1m employees.