Mid-market enterprise software supplier Infor (Alpharetta, GA) this week released a new enterprise asset management (EAM) suite built around pre-configured modules that is said to speed deployment and offer improved usability.
Infor EAM Business Edition, available now, aims to help a company oversee the landscape of assets that spans the enterprise -- from trucks in a delivery fleet to desks in an office. The Business Edition EAM product has modules for management of a manufacturer's maintenance work orders, its purchasing activities, asset inventory, and preventative maintenance. Typical end users are the managers in maintenance and engineering departments.
The front end of EAM Business Edition is a Web interface, but for now, the product is only available via on-premises installation. According to Marty Osborn, Infor's vice president of product marketing, another release in January 2007 will offer manufacturers the choice of traditional installation or an on-demand version that is hosted by Infor. Likewise, the January release will add support for Oracle databases; the current release supports only Microsoft's SQL Server or SQL Server Express (which is included with the product for companies that do not currently have a database).
The EAM Business Edition, Osborn said, is basically a stripped-down version of the Datastream 7i enterprise product that Infor picked up when it bought the product's namesake in January. The two offerings share the same code base.
"We have a very robust product in Datastream 7i," Osborn said, "but there's a whole market out there that says, 'I just need something easy. I need something to be able to put my assets in, create work orders, do preventative maintenance, track the spare parts. But I don't have a lot of time to build complex rules and work flows. I just want something out of the box that's easy.'"
Osborn said Business Edition's wizard-driven set-up and preconfigured KPI and reporting capabilities answer this kind of request. Those preconfigured functions allow for an average implementation time of two to three weeks, he said.
With improved ease of use, however, comes a certain amount of rigidity. The product, Osborn explained, is not rich in industry-specific functionality. "The reason we chose the term 'Business Edition' is [the metrics] are more geared around manufacturing and ... cut across multiple industries," Osborn said. Those measures includes things such as PM [preventative maintenance] compliance and time to work order, for example. Future releases, he said, will offer industry-specific presets, though he said there is no set timeframe for when those will appear.
At its core, enterprise asset management is about bringing structure to the process of managing a business's possessions. A forklift in a distribution center; a robot on the paint line; an HVAC system that regulates a production plant: all have a productive lifespan that can shrink if they are not maintained properly. And with thousands of assets in a typical manufacturing business, managing maintenance schedules for such assets can prove daunting without an automated process.
Over time, the scope of EAM products has increased tremendously, most recently in response to the expansion of ERP products to include similar capabilities. Just this month, IBM announced its intention to buy MRO Software, a leader in the EAM space, for $740 million. MRO itself courted Datastream in 2001, but was rebuffed.
Additions to EAM capability in recent years have included multi-site asset management and the inclusion of mobile workforce devices. Compliance requirements can be part of an EAM solution, too. In this climate of expanding functionality, some specialty EAM vendors have found the small to mid-size markets to be a haven, since the adoption of ERP in those areas lags that of their larger counterparts.
Infor is no exception. Although the company is an ERP heavyweight in its own right, especially since its recent acquisition of SSA Global, it is betting that companies in the mid-market that do not spring for an ERP package will look to Business Edition for their EAM needs.
Infor received a big boost in the EAM market with its January acquisition of Datastream. Datastream's products added a broad range of functionality to the company's asset management portfolio. Osborn said Infor is now building into its EAM products a standard that allows for integration with the company's ERP suites, but indicated that best-of-breed products like EAM will remain stand-alone offerings. Infor's more recent purchase of SSA Global, according to Osborn, did not deliver much in the way of EAM capabilities.
The Datastream acquisition also brought Infor the MP2 client-server-based EAM product. Osborn, who also arrived at Infor via that acquisition, said Datastream's plan prior to the Infor takeover was to sunset the MP2 line. Infor's philosophy, though, is to maintain existing product lines.
Osborn said he thinks that once customers experience EAM Business Edition, many will prefer it to MP2. "We just think we can give our clients an upgrade path so if they want some of the newer features of screen designers and drag and drop ... we can offer it." But those who are more comfortable on the MP2 platform, he said, are free to stay. Currently, Infor has 6,000 MP2 customers on support, and Osborn estimated the number of purchases of the product over the years to be between 15,000 and 20,000. "Our goal is to let the best survive."
Osborn said pricing for the new release would be about 60% of the cost of the 7i enterprise product, but declined to be more specific.
In general, the EAM market is expected to move along at a healthy clip through the end of the decade. The analyst firm ARC Advisory Group (Dedham, MA) predicts growth of 5% through 2010, a rate that would produce a $2.8 billion market