Infor dEPM Reviews

• Ease of use
• Functionality
• OLAP capabilities

It has given us the ability to not only deliver key reports and metrics, but also to make them available on a self service basis. In addition to this, it allowed us to streamline key business process such as the budget process by capturing data from departmental managers globally to build budgets and forecasts from the bottom up.

The mobile offering and dashboards need work, however this has been improved upon in more recent versions of Infor BI.

I've used it for four to five years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

None at all as the product is very scalable.

It's good.

It's good.

No previous solution was used.

It's a very straightforward setup. The vendor guides you through the design and initial setup.

Initially we used a vendor team and then switched to an in house one. The vendor team's knowledge is excellent.

It takes approximately two to three years. We achieved an 80% ROI by year two through headcount reduction and process improvements.

Circa £360k for the three phases of a global project (this included all Hardware, Licensing and consultancy costs incurred). On-going maintenance costs are £25-£30k per year.

Yes, we also looked at Oracle BI Applications and IBM Cognos TM1.

Ensure you give the relevant thought to the initial design process and use the opportunity to re-evaluate the way you report.

Infor PM Q&A is fully integrated with SunSystems Financials software and is easy to use but provides flexible and dynamic reporting capability.

There are two main components of the Infor PM Q&A reporting suite. The Q&A XL function provides the user with an Excel add-in that facilitates both transactional and summary level reporting. It can be used to produce simple Journal Listings or high level management reports. There is also a Data Upload function which allows transactions to be posted into the SunSystems ledger via a simple template.

The Q&A Executive function is a stand-alone reporting tool that provides a more powerful management reporting capability with in-built functionality such as Drilldowns, Breakouts, Data Cubes and Charts. It is particularly useful for ad-hoc inquiries and navigation around the SunSystems ledger.

Aside from the obvious improvement in financial and management reporting capability the increased visibility of how data is processed also assists management in enforcing greater financial controls and audit compliance across the business.

A web-based version would provide greater usability and I believe is still in the development pipeline.

I am currently working at an oil company in Nigeria and the Infor SunSystems and PM suite has been used at this company for around two years. They are using Infor PM Q&A version 10.1 including Q&A XL, and Executive & Alert - installed alongside Infor 10 SunSystems Financials system.

Personally as a SunSystems/Q&A consultant I have used the product for 20 years in various iterations.

No issues with deployment.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

We implemented Infor PM Q&A as part of a wider Infor SunSystems implementation and used a SunSystems reseller with experience of both the product and the Oil & Gas sector in Africa. The customer service was very good.

Very good. We have reported very few technical errors since the implementation two years ago.

Yes, various versions of Sage were used in the formative years of the company. As the company rapidly expanded it was clear that it was no longer suitable to meet the complex reporting requirements of the business.

The main areas of complexity related to configuring the system to meet the unique Statutory and Tax reporting requirements of Nigeria. We also utilised the full range of Q&A XL functionality to facilitate the unique processes involved in Joint Venture accounting which is required in most Oil & Gas companies.

Through a 3rd Party vendor who were very experienced in SunSystems, Oil & Gas and working in Africa. All three are prerequisites for any successful implementation in this part of the world.

Sorry I don't have access to the original setup costs and the day to day costs are variable as we continue to develop the system. We will shortly be implementing the Infor EAM Asset Management module and B4B banking software.

I wasn’t involved in the original selection process of the Infor SunSystems and PM solution. I understand that it was chosen because it had been successfully implemented and used by the key project stakeholders at their previous companies.

Ensure you have clearly scoped your business requirements before implementing this or any other finance system. If SunSystems is the financial system of choice then Infor PM Q&A simply must be included as part of the solution due to the reporting functionality it provides. If Budgeting is a key element of your business the Infor PM Budgeting & Forecasting solution is also worth considering.

Integration with other software applications is so user friendly and also it's a single ledger designed system. Also, the multi-currency feature is superb as well.

It has really helped us in getting repo. With the integration of Infor Q&A application which is like a companion software with SunSystems, it has made it so easy to spool out report from SunSystems to a spreadsheet in Excel, etc.

The Inventory module is not so strong when compared with the other software applications in its category! The integration between the Inventory and the Purchasing module is not very "user friendly".

I've used it for more than five years.

I have not encountered any issue that has not been solved.

No issues encountered.

The software has always been capable of accommodating growth, so I have not really encountered any issue with scalability.

The level of customer services should be 75-80%.

Excellent 90%.

I not used any other solution but I have attended demos for many.

My first implementation was so straightforward because the client was implementing only the Ledger module which was so easy. However, afterwards, they decided to add another module which became a little complex.

We are vendors so we implement the software.

They should state out their requirements and expectations clearly.

The robustness of the Infocubes, and the possibility of integrating both strong data analysis characteristics with a pleasant aesthetic features.

The client where we implemented the Planning model in Infor PM previously used Excel spreadsheets for all of their Planning processes. Infor PM has brought the typical PM tools advantages in this space.

Flexibility to modify an existing Infocube, and better integration with other ETL tools on the market.

I used it for six months of deployment and then one year of support and developments.

Yes, due partly to lack of expertise using this product in my organisation and partly to the aforementioned areas for improvement.

No issues encountered.

Partially.

4/5.

I worked for a consulting company which implemented Planning solutions using different tools on the market, such as Board, SAP BPC, and Hyperion.

It was complex and required technical knowledge of Infor's native ETL language.

In-house team.

Dedicate time to the Functional and Technical Specs, given the low flexibility to change the model once it has been implemented.

It is a reporting solutions built around an in-memory OLAP database. For me, the most valuable features are the import master and application studio. They give you enough options to implement decent BI processes even if you have to compromise sometimes.

The Import Master allows you to extract data from virtually any sources and the Application Studio which allows you to report on OLAP sources (Infor) or any SQL database. It has a system of user actions which can add another layer of business intelligence.

If you are using only spreadsheets and have to download your data from various sources then you will have to reconcile these to build reports that make sense, this product will improve your life. You will spend less time building your reports and more time analysing the potential issues and gaps.

The following features need to be improved -

• The rule engine
• Application studio web-server
• The web-server, because it is still slow to load the reports which is why the designer has to simplify the reports that would work perfectly on the native application
• The gap between the web-server and the native application is large enough to force the designer to only focus on one or the other to avoid disillusions.

The company itself needs to improve on the way they share the information on the product. If you Google anything related to Excel for example, you will find enough discussions, forums, help, tips which will help you become an expert on the subject. If you Google anything related to Infor BI ION, however, you will find virtually nothing. This especially evident as best practices are obscure (especially when the model requires a certain level of complication). I would think that the more resources out there would convince more users to use the product.

I have been using it for the past four and a half years.

Each deployment is ad-hoc (very customized), the question here how much are you willing to compromise when complications will endanger performance.

The bigger the database with accelerators the more unstable it is, but without accelerators the model would not run.

Yes, a complicated model may seem to be working perfectly in the design stage but when several users are connected at the same time, the real time simultaneous calculations can endanger the performance.

It depends on the module -

• Application studio is top notch with Inforxtreme
• OLAP server and office plus is average with Inforxtreme
• Import master is low with Inforxtreme (but all you need with this is the documentation, if it is not in there nothing more will help you)

I previously used Excel. Even if after the first months Excel seemed more capable in terms of modelling (you can do virtually anything in Excel), in the end when your model is fully automated and an additional item or driver will not ruin your model the gain of productivity with INFOR BI is pretty decent.

An install takes 20 minutes max (client side or server side).

Compromises are key. Remember that it is a budgeting and forecasting tool, so you can't have a complex model that is simple to use, easy to maintain and fast all at the same time.