Infor/Lawson M3 ERP review by Inspector Jones

Infor/Lawson M3 (Make, Move and Maintain) ERP is a solid ERP for medium-to-large companies. It includes the functionality you need in an enterprise-grade ERP - Customer Services, Sales, Manufacturing, and Financial.

First, Lawson was acquired by Infor in early 2012, and we’re still not entirely clear on the future of the product. While we like the Infor/Lawson M3 product, be aware that Infor own a number of competing ERP solutions, and we aren’t clear on their priorities for development and support.

Second, Lawson M3 has some industry-specific strengths. While the ERP is a good generic solution, it has particularly good strengths in a few industry verticals - chemicals, distribution, equipment services/management/rental, fashion, food and beverage.

Third, Infor have released Infor ION - a purpose-built middleware solution. This is used to integrate other systems and data in your organisation, manage events and workflow. I’m really pleased to see this, and I think it’s a great addition.

Finally, Infor offer a large variety of hosting options. You can run the software yourself, in their facilities (which we’re told are hosted by Velocity) or on the Amazon EC2 cloud. All of these bring different security measures and different risk profiles, so I recommend you review your chosen architecture carefully.

I recommend Infor/Lawson M3 if you’re looking for a specific food and beverage, fashion/textiles, or equipment services/management/rental ERP. You may also want to consider Epicor, Microsoft, SAP and Oracle on your shortlist.