Analysts pour cold water on Infor-Saleslogix deal

Former Sage CRM product has changed hands yet again, but onlookers remain unconvinced that new owner Infor can make a go of it

Analysts have given Infor's acquisition of Saleslogix a lukewarm reception, arguing that the product will need serious tlc if it is to become a genuine force in the SaaS CRM market.

Infor said it plans to make a "major investment" in Saleslogix as it announced that it had acquired the product from Swiftpage, which itself only bought the product from Sage 18 months earlier.

The business applications giant said the move will make it a "leader" in the cloud-based CRM market, and that it will invest in bringing increased scalability and added industry-specific functionality to the product.

Founded in 1988 and boasting 1,700 customers, Saleslogix has a chequered history, noted analyst firm Megabuyte.

"In purchasing Saleslogix, Infor has filled a CRM gap in its armoury, but with a solution that will require tlc to catch up with market leaders, such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics," the analyst said.

"All in all we view Infor as a better home than its previous two parents, but as shown by its under-investment in previous acquisitions, the company can often be seen as a place where a product can be laid to rest."

Angela Eager, research director at fellow analyst house TechMarketView, said the acquisition was reminiscent of the days before Charles Phillips joined as chief executive when Infor was in "frenzied buying mode and ended up with a scatter of unconnected products and no coherent strategy".

"Infor will have to pour significant investment into some of the fundamental aspects of SalesLogix to get it where it thinks it should be," she said.

"Infor is using this acquisition to enter the cloud CRM market but surely there were better candidates in the market with more modern SaaS architecture or better alignment with Infor."

Citing Gartner figures, Infor said the global CRM market is set to nigh-on double in size between 2014 and 2018 to be worth $42bn, although it said it expects even higher demand for CRM capabilities pre-built into industry suites.

The vendor said it expects to extend CRM with industry-specific attributes and processes integrated with Infor ERP applications, starting with Infor CRM Automotive, CRM Healthcare, CRM Public Sector, and CRM Manufacturing.