Infor releases mobile CRM tool with social networking and BI capabilities

Infor has entered the mobile software market with two new applications, including a mobile version of its customer relationship management (CRM) software, Infor10 Road Warrior, which boasts embedded business intelligence (BI) capabilities.

Infor said the BI capabilities will enable users to gain rapid insight from data-heavy screens, highlight problems quickly and compare current and historical order volume while on-the-go.

The CRM product will also integrate with Skype and FaceTime so sales personnel can easily communicate with customers using the social networks.

Additionally, location-based querying will let users know when their customers are nearby.

Nick Borth, Infor Motion product manager, described Infor's first launch into the mobile CRM market as 'CRM lite' because he said the firm will continue to build out the application's functionality.

Borth told V3 that, while Infor is late to the mobile market, Road Warrior should do well because the firm had seen where its competitors went wrong.

Borth added that Infor's approach had been to build a mobile CRM application from scratch, rather than adapting existing on-premise applications to the mobile world.

"It is a smart device product release. We looked at what our customers wanted to use when they were travelling in the back of a taxi," said Borth.

"We have integrated social media and metrics into the release and, unlike other companies, we are not using a proprietary platform as middleware."

Road Warrior will be integrated with Infor's ION middleware, released last September, so that mobile applications can be plugged into different back-office systems, like enterprise resource planning (ERP) or supply chain management.

The ION suite integrates data from Infor and non-Infor applications, including information that flows from social media streams.

Infor has also released the ION ActivityDeck, which allows business executives and managers to approve requests and respond to tasks while on the move.

"We asked customers which mobile services they wanted and we went with their top two choices – the ActivityDeck and Road Warrior CRM," said Borth.

Both new products are part of Infor10 Motion, the company's cloud-based mobile platform, also released today.

Infor told V3 in November that it would make a major push into the cloud market by making a raft of its core applications available as dedicated cloud offerings.