Infor: The fish that swallowed SSA Global

A year after ERP provider Infor bought rival SSA Global, we checked in to find out how the combined companies are going to market with supply chain execution and supply chain management solutions.

By Bob Trebilcock, Editor at Large -- Modern Materials Handling, 3/23/2007

If you can remember high school without the help of a therapist, you might recall those food chain posters where the little fish is eaten by a big fish only to be swallowed by an even bigger fish.

If so, you understand what happened last year in a move that had editors’ heads spinning.

First: the little fish.

Provia Software, a small-but-respected best-of-breed provider of warehouse management systems (WMS) was swallowed by the big size fish, enterprise resource planning (ERP) provider SSA Global. In the supply chain execution space, SSA already owned EXE Technologies, once the second-largest provider of WMS solutions on the planet.

No sooner had we clicked the send button on our stories when SSA was gobbled up by an even bigger fish: Infor. It was the latest acquisition by a company that in five years has grown from a start-up to one of the 10 largest providers of ERP solutions with $2.2 billion in revenues.

So who is Infor today? And will they continue to play the role of even bigger fish in the supply chain software food chain?

We put those questions to Andrew Kinder, Infor’s person in charge of product marketing for supply chain management. Our conversation came just about the time that Infor announced the release of its latest WMS solution.

Some figures:

70,000: Number of ERP customers Infor serves on a global basis.

1,600: How many supply chain management customers Infor counts, including seven of the top 10 brewers, more than 200 third-party logistics providers, and more than 22 of the top retailers using Infor’s WMS and transportation management (TMS) solutions.

$100 million to $2 billion: Annual revenue of the majority of Infor’s customers.

25%: Portion of the company’s business coming out of Asia, including a fast-growing presence in China.

According to Kinder, Infor sees itself as an ERP provider of best-of-breed applications to manage the supply chain from concept to customer. The goal is an integrated set of solutions covering everything from product and network design to warehouse and transportation management to product lifecycle management (PLM).

While PLM might not traditionally be thought of as a supply chain problem, Kinder says it reflects changes in the way companies manufacture, distribute and service their products today. Case in point is Brightpoint, a third party distributor of wireless and mobile devices like cell phones. We recently wrote about Brightpoint and its “Path to best-in-class distribution."

“Brightpoint doesn’t just distribute,” says Kinder. “They work with the big wireless manufacturers to design and ship products to their distribution centers in a common form. Then, they customize and package mobile devices for the end user at their facilities. After the sale, they’re managing returns, repairs and warranty issues for the manufacturers. That’s all part of how they manage the supply chain today.”

As to that new WMS, Kinder says the solution has been re-architected to follow emerging service oriented architecture (SOA) standards. That makes it easier to connect the WMS to planning and ERP solutions outside the four walls and easier to upgrade in the future.

Going forward, Infor will continue to be even a bigger fish, looking for best-of-breed applications to expand its suite while investing in current solutions.

“We’ll support our channel of Infor ERP customers and compete against SAP and Oracle,” says Kinder. “But we’ll definitely market against RedPrairie and Manhattan. That’s the way we’ve invested and set up the business.”