A recent survey from advisory firm
The survey asked about what functionalities of their respective ERP systems they have deployed, and found that 78.6% of Infor users said "finance and accounting." In contrast, 32% of SAP users, 42.5% of Oracle users and 45% of Microsoft users said the same.
Panorama believes this comes down to the target market for these respective solutions. In the case of Infor in particular, the report noted that "many mid-market organizations are using Infor to manage operations, quality and field services. ... As they grow, they're finding that implementing core financials on the same platform is more beneficial and cost effective than integrating with a dedicated financial application."
Other systems had their own favored use cases. For Microsoft, the most common functionalities implemented by customers were warehouse and inventory management along with reporting and analytics, tied at 58.7%. For SAP it was sales and customer relationship management (64.5%), followed by reporting and analytics (54.8%). In the case of Oracle, the most common functionality was also sales and customer relationship management (62.5%), followed by enterprise asset management (60%).
The survey found other differentiating factors between the products. Beyond use cases, it found Infor users were most likely to prefer cloud solutions versus on-premise and most likely to prefer SaaS hosting models over the host/managed service hosting model.
Oracle users, meanwhile, were most likely to have implemented mobility. "Oracle's strong focus on customer experience ensures that customers have an intuitive, familiar, repeatable interface across all devices," said the report.
Meanwhile, SAP users were most likely to say they have already adopted and implemented AI. The report noted that SAP was an early adopter of the technology, and "their customer base of larger and more complex organizations lends itself to a need to implement AI."
Finally, Microsoft users were most likely to have customized their experience to fit their process. The report pointed out that "Microsoft has adopted a model that encourages value-added resellers (VARs) and system integrators (SIs) to develop industry specific knowledge and IP. These implementors often help clients adopt additional functionality to meet the deep and robust requirements of specific markets." (Infor users customized the least, according to the survey).
Finally, the survey examined the all-important metrics of time and money.
In terms of money, the survey found that — when taking into account the number of licenses or users purchases as well as the total cost of the project — Microsoft users spent the most ($5.4 million) on their overall implementation project, which the report said is "a reflection of the broad, yet primarily standard, functionality of the Dynamics products" that "rely on VARs to provide additional industry-specific functionality and IP which requires configuration and integration time."
"It's likely that many of our respondent organizations chose to configure and enhance their applications by working with various channel partners," said the report.
Conversely, Infor users spent the least ($1.8 million). "It's likely that many of our respondent organizations adopted out-of-the-box processes while changing internal processes to align with the software. In these cases, the cost of implementation decreases significantly," said the report.
Meanwhile, in terms of time, Microsoft users spent the most time on their projects (155 months), while Info users spent the least (55 months), largely for the same reasons: Infor users tend to adopt pre-configured roles and processes while Microsoft users tend to turn to VARs for industry-specific functionality.
Overall, the report said it's not so much that any one ERP system is better than another, but that the choice of ERP is largely contingent on specific business needs.
"SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and Infor each have a variety of systems that can improve operational efficiency and adapt to dynamic environments, but you must understand your organization's specific needs," said the report's conclusion.
