Infor Birst vs Phocas

Birst is Infor’s business intelligence solution, offering data integration and visualization capabilities. Birst BI includes pre-built connectors, customizable dashboards, and reporting tools. It's designed for complex data environments but requires a data analyst to navigate and fully utilize its features. Birst is a BI product only, it does not have financial analysis capabilities.

Phocas Analytics is a human-friendly BI product that pulls data from your ERP or any other source directly into one centralized platform. It's fast, accessible and empowers everyone to visualize data in seconds, freely explore any variable, pivot and drill into transactional data, and create and customize reports. Plus, with Analytics being Phocas' BI foundation, you also have additional product capabilities that help you manage rebates, build budgets and forecasts, and create dynamic custom financial reports.

Infor offer the Birst reporting tool as a free add on to existing CloudSuite Distribution ERP customers. All other Infor ERPs are required to upgrade to CloudSuite. This upgrade requires heavy involvement from IT and can be a lengthy and intricate process, often requiring a significant time investment.

Birst deliverables include basic analytics and reporting, catering to experienced technical users. Creating new reports and customizations requires technical support. If managed by Birst, all additional development may be charged at an extra cost.   

Phocas is designed to implement seamlessly with ERPs like Infor, including CloudSuite, SX.e, A+ and FACTS. In fact, if you're currently on SX.e for example, you don't have to migrate to CloudSuite first. You can move straight to Phocas with all your historical data in approximately 8 weeks (for a mid-size business). This includes a full needs assessment and tailored implementation managed by Phocas.

A one-time fee delivers a pre-built solution with a human-friendly interface, empowering everyone with easy data exploration - not just the data experts. Full training is provided along with ongoing global support, offering not only technical support, but also guidance that aligns with wider business objectives to help generate a fast return on investment.   

Birst BI is promoted as providing the ability to create, customize and share reports. When compared to Phocas reporting capabilities, Infor's Birst reporting tool is much more complex. Non-technical users require a data analysts to create new reports or customize existing templates. If this resource is unavailable in-house, Birst may charge additional fees for every add on or customization.

Phocas is designed to free IT and finance teams from a never-ending backlog of reporting requests by empowering all users with a human-friendly data analysis product. Customizing existing reporting templates or creating new reports is logical and straightforward. There's no hand-holding required. The result; teams can independently view, understand and share results, helping them confidently make changes that work.

Phocas customers who had previously used the Infor Birst analytics and reporting tool reported that while support was knowledgeable and helpful, reaching theses services was often a challenge. Delays in response times can be a point of frustration, particularly when immediate assistance is needed to resolve an issue. Considering reports and dashboards require a high level of expertise to create or customize, this could lead to lengthy waiting times, not to mention the additional costs incurred should further development be required.

Like Phocas' human-friendly platform of products, customer support is people-centric. An initial needs assessment ensures our products are the right fit for your needs right out the gate. A dedicated implementation team then supports you every step of the way. From there, Phocas employ dedicated support teams located in offices globally providing support that goes beyond just solving issues. We guide you through understanding your data, offering a helping hand whenever you need it. Through liaising with customers we also gain insights into ways we can push product development even further. Plus, our continued support is all rolled into our product pricing structure, so you won't need to worry about escalating costs.