Infor M3

"Proven, mature ERP is getting modern UI at last"

Comments: I have worked with M3 for a number of organizations, and besides effectively managing the material plan and production schedule, it has also served well for the management of multiple business units which require monthly consolidation, multi-currency financial operations, and the complete life cycle of business processes.

Pros: M3 is a stable, robust, proven ERP system that fits a wide variety of industries well, handles international business requirements and has the flexibility to support both the front office and the back office. In recent years, this has been supplemented with a modern UI toolset, allowing for workflow design and management, along with browser-based homepages and widgets that present users with the information they need to act on, focusing on exceptional situations instead of repetitive, routine tasks.

Cons: The basic user interface for functional programs is still designed in the old AS400/RPG style, with a series of panels and a method of proceeding from panel to panel and program to program which can seem counter-intuitive to the user. Output management (for forms such as customer invoices or packing lists) has long been a weak spot but that is being addressed with new tools being developed. API's are available for many programs which allows for the development of custom user interfaces via Infor OS Homepages and Widgets, but there are significant gaps where API's have not been published.

"Pros and Cons"

Comments: Over all Infor has continued to serve the needs of our organization. As our business has increased over the years, the software has allow us to make processes more efficient therefore, we can do jobs with less people. As we have associates leave, there is no need to replace them

Pros: M3 is a system that is configurable to almost any circumstance. It seems is you can think of a process that you would like to have the system perform, Infor has though of this also and there is a way to make it happen inside of me

Cons: The system has so many options and programs making it a hard to know what all you can do or how to do or navigate.

"M3 a 100 miles an hour"

Comments: I have been solving a lot of different Business scenarios with the Suite provided, and since it also allows us to expand on functionality without Modifications, the necessity to modify the code is mostly not necessary.
Despite this, sometime there are no alternatives, so it is highly appreciated that this option still exist though. Even coming into Cloud with M3 Extensibility instead of MAK and the ability to create your own Custom Api's, where we can even wrap existing Standard API to create functionality that would have been hard to accomplish by just calling the API's by themselves!
Some of the solutions/enhancements I've been able to create using base M3 functionality and integrated tools are:
- Integration with MES System
- Web based QA Application integrating with M3 QMS through Standard API's and Events/MEC Processes
- Automated US/Canadian Tax Rate updates through third party Tax Rate Tables (monthly subscription)
- Enhancing Planning by calling Google Maps to estimate Transportation Times based on Driving Distance between our Warehouses and Customer Warehouse for better Planning capabilities This list can go on and on and I am still working on new ideas and solutions to improve processes and experience for our users.
To conclude, I am an avid fan how the capabilities and also very active in the M3 User Community.

Pros: The M3 Product and the related Suite of Products are mostly very intuitive once you get to use it.
People tend to get hesitant when initially introduced, but after having used M3 for a while, expanding into additional areas becomes fairly easy since it is consistent in the way everything looks, feels and behaves.
There have been iterations of the side product (i.e. Mashups) that have been replaced without a fully viable replacement, but mostly there are only improvements that expand on current functionality or introduces new and exciting functionality (and sometimes even provided without any extra cost as part of your current licensing).

Cons: There is a lack of intuitive development documentation and especially when it comes to setting up your own development environment, it is sometimes quite cumbersome, although once you pass this hurdle it is, almost, always worth the effort.

"Must be heavy on the dev side."

Pros: The ability to customize your experience is almost limitless assuming you have the resources on the dev side to do so.

Cons: In order to make the system work for our business, it requires full time staff and constant work arounds. Not ideal for a business tool.

"Incredibly powerful and sophisticated"

Comments: We moved off of an in-house application to M3. Once integrated with our existing systems and processes, we are able to better track and use our product data.

Pros: We are running the 13.4 on premise version of M3. M3 is able to be configured to about any business process. The ability to run multiple lines of businesses with different business processes is tremendous. The product isn't intuitive but it easy to use once it is set up properly. The implementation of the product is a process that needs to be carefully thought out and executed. Infor and their business partners are a huge help in that.

Cons: Because the software is so customizable, it is extremely complex. This can cause problems if the person configuring it does not understand all of the processes and how they work. Transitioning from an in-house product to packaged software is always challenging but Infor was helpful in the process.