I am working with an organization that is looking at weighing options about upgrading to V11 or moving to another ERP. Of those who have upgraded to CloudSuite V11, do you like the new environment? How are your end users adapting? Any regrets?
THANKS!!!
To split hairs, there is technically no v11. v10 will be the last release of the Lawson ERP. While some terms and concepts may be familiar in the next offering by Infor, it is a completely different product. Aptly so, the foundation is now named Landmark and built on Java (versus Lawson being built on COBOL). Those running IPAs in Landmark 10 will be familiar. But even beyond that Landmark 11 is significantly different than Landmark 10. Within Landmark 11, the modules have new names. What I would call the core components are split between Global HR which includes things like HR and Benefits and CloudSuite Financial which contains GL, Payroll, AP, Supply Chain, etc.
The company I work for attempted to implement Global HR (GHR). I say attempted because we spent 1.5 years working with Infor resources to try to get it to function how our users wanted. If you're coming from a completely different ERP, Global HR wouldn't seem that bad. But if you're accustomed to the stability and speed of Lawson, you're going to be disappointed by GHR. Screens in Lawson take maybe a second to populate. The equivalent screens in GHR would take anywhere from 5 to 10 seconds. In addition to Infor, we had a 3rd party review our entire stack all the way from the desktop, network connectivity, data center infrastructure, and the database itself. Also, if you're accustomed to the transactional speed of Lawson, you're not going to get that with the IPAs in Landmark. As I stated, Landmark is built on Java which is slower than COBOL. I could write a wall of text explaining all of the issues that we encountered that still aren't corrected in CUs that we're constantly applying. The IT people I work with have joked that we were working on something new, then it was bleeding edge, then it became beta testing, and finally we feel that we're helping Infor develop. I would wager that anyone that has worked with these areas in depth would agree that HR/Benefits should be relatively simple compared to things like Supply Chain and Payroll. After the fun with GHR, we don't even want to think about CloudSuite Financials (CSF).
As of now, our management has suspended the implementation of Global HR. So to anyone asking if they should go with GHR/CSF, I'd say "absolutely not".
hi Cindy,
We're on-prem for all of our Infor products. If memory serves, Infor cloud hosting is on Linux. So it should be down less for OS patching, etc than what Windows would require. But do keep in mind that if you go with multi-tenet in the cloud, you would be subjected to application and environment CUs which come out monthly. The downtime should be minimal. But you would have to invest resources to test, etc.
Hope this helps,
Kidd
Hi all, my corporation is currently moving from V10 to V11 in the cloud. As Kidd mentioned, these are 2 totally different products. We took a massive leap and could have benefited by using the stair-steps provided by Infor Lawson prior to upgrading.
Hello All,
We are currently exploring out options for another ERP system as well. Right now we are interested in the architecture of the V11 Cloud Suites, and are curious as to what database type they use (SQL Server, etc). We are also concerned with the database structure and if this changes drastically from v8, v9, v10. Do we still have the same system codes and the same table structure in addition to new enhancements of course for v11?
Thank you so much,
Cathy
We have been on Global HR for about 5 years and still use S3 HR for benefits and payroll. There is a Lawson interface LT111 that keeps the S3 HR data in sync since we use GHR as the master record. We're on premise and performace is actually very good. I just tested opening the GHR Resource screen which took less than 2 seconds, and searched on an employee record that came back in under 1 second. When we went live around 2014 speed wasn't as good, and after our last server migration in 2016 performance improved. We're on Landmark 10.1.1.74 and GHR 11.0.0. We upgraded out test environment to Landmark 11 and GHR 11.0.1 and performance decreased, but we tuned Landmark to accommodate the Grid changes to get it back to an acceptable speed. Each update of Java generally improves performance, and server power and memory are important. Network speed and data storage performance are also key. We run Oracle for the database. We've also implemented Employee Space (850) users, Manager Space, Performance and Goal Management, and Compensation Management. The longer I work with GHR the more I realize the power and improved architecture. It does take some time to get used to GHR coming from S3.
It was a challenging implementation for the base GHR and we worked with Ciber. We did not bring over history as recommended by Ciber as the tools were basic or lacking at that time.
We have no reservations moving to Cloudsuite applications and we're currently starting an assessment project to review our strategy - whether to go Multi-tenant Cloud, what to do about archiving, what order for application implementation, business process review, etc.
If you are on GHR v10 then GHR v11 tables or business classes are very similar. The Landmark GHR and Finance/Supply Mgt applications are new and the database tables are also new. Theres an Employee business class/table in GHR but it's not going to match up to the S3 table structure for Employee.
Linda,
We have upgraded from on-prem v10 to cloudsuite v11 for or HR data. Coming on January 1, we are adding payroll, benefits and WFM to go live. I would enjoy connecting with you and goving over our experiences and maybe even ask a few questions.