Choosing an Infor CloudSuite Consultant in the Southeast: What to Look For

Selecting the right Infor CloudSuite consultant is one of the highest-stakes decisions your organization will make during an ERP modernization. The consultant you choose will influence your architecture, your timeline, your budget, and ultimately whether the implementation succeeds or fails. After 26 years in the Infor ecosystem—including time at Infor Corporate and decades of independent consulting across the Southeast—I have seen the full spectrum of consulting engagements: the ones that deliver real value and the ones that leave organizations worse off than when they started.

The Infor Consulting Landscape in the Southeast

The Southeast—and the Atlanta area in particular—has a unique position in the Infor ecosystem. Infor's own offices have a presence in the region, and Atlanta's concentration of healthcare systems, public sector organizations, and large enterprises means there is a substantial installed base of Infor customers. This creates a consulting market that is both deep and varied, which is good for buyers but also makes it harder to distinguish genuinely qualified consultants from those who are merely available.

You will generally encounter three categories of Infor CloudSuite consultants in the Southeast:

The Big Firms

Deloitte, Accenture, PwC, and similar large consulting firms all have Infor practices. Their strengths are organizational capacity (they can staff large, multi-module implementations), structured methodologies, and brand credibility that makes executives comfortable. Their weaknesses are cost (rates of $300 to $500+ per hour are common), reliance on junior staff for day-to-day work, and a tendency to apply generic ERP implementation frameworks that do not account for Infor-specific nuances.

I have seen Big 4 teams staffed with experienced project managers who have never touched Infor CloudSuite. Their SAP and Oracle experience is extensive, but they treat CloudSuite as if it is the same product with a different logo. It is not. Infor's architecture—the ION middleware layer, the Infor OS platform, the industry-specific design—requires consultants who understand the specific product, not just ERP concepts in general.

Mid-Size and Boutique Firms

There are several mid-size consulting firms in the Southeast that specialize in Infor or have dedicated Infor practices. These firms often offer a better balance of expertise and cost. Their consultants tend to have more hands-on Infor experience, and because their reputation depends on Infor work specifically, they are often more invested in implementation success.

The risk with mid-size firms is capacity. If your implementation requires 15 consultants simultaneously and the firm only has 20 Infor-experienced staff total, you may end up with some team members who are learning on your project. Always ask specifically about the team that will be assigned to your engagement, not just the firm's overall credentials.

Independent Consultants and Small Practices

Independent Infor consultants in the Southeast are often the most experienced people in the market. Many have 15 to 25+ years of dedicated Infor experience, have worked at Infor itself, and have deep knowledge of specific modules or industries. Their rates are typically lower than large firms, and you get the senior person's attention directly rather than paying senior rates for junior execution.

The limitation is scale. An independent consultant cannot staff a 20-person implementation team. But for architecture review, strategic advisory, project turnaround, or supplementing a larger team with deep Infor expertise, independent consultants often deliver the highest value per dollar in the market.

What to Look For in an Infor CloudSuite Consultant

Regardless of firm size, here are the qualities that separate effective Infor consultants from the ones that will cost you time and money:

Green Flags:

Infor-specific experience, not just "ERP experience." Ask how many CloudSuite implementations they have completed. "We have done SAP and Oracle and are now adding Infor" is not the answer you want.
Industry expertise that matches yours. An Infor consultant who has done 10 healthcare implementations is far more valuable to a hospital than one who has done 10 manufacturing implementations. Infor's industry-specific CloudSuites are different enough that industry experience matters enormously.
Technical depth, not just project management. Can they discuss ION architecture, Infor OS configuration, data migration strategies, and integration patterns in detail? Or do they only speak in project management terms?
References you can actually call. Not a logo slide of past clients, but named references at specific organizations who will tell you what it was actually like to work with this consultant.
Willingness to tell you uncomfortable truths. A consultant who agrees with everything you say during the sales process will agree with everything your project team says during implementation—including the bad decisions.

Red Flags When Evaluating Consultants

In 26 years, I have seen organizations choose the wrong Infor consultant for predictable reasons. Watch for these warning signs:

Warning Signs:

They cannot name specific CloudSuite modules they have configured. Vague references to "Infor implementations" without specifics about FSM, HCM, WFM, SCM, or other modules suggest a lack of hands-on experience.
The people in the sales meeting are not the people who will do the work. This is the classic bait-and-switch. Senior partners present during the pitch, and junior staff appear on day one of the engagement. Ask explicitly: "Will the people in this room be on my project?"
They guarantee a timeline before understanding your environment. Any consultant who commits to a go-live date before conducting a detailed assessment of your current systems, data quality, and organizational readiness is either naive or dishonest. Neither is acceptable.
They have no experience with your version of Lawson. If you are migrating from Lawson v9 or v10, the consultant needs to understand both the source and target systems. A consultant who only knows CloudSuite but has never worked with legacy Lawson will struggle with data migration and process mapping.
They downplay change management. Any Infor consultant who treats change management as optional or secondary to technical configuration is setting your project up for the kind of failure I see too often.

Why Proximity Matters for ERP Projects

In an era of remote work, you might assume that your Infor consultant can be based anywhere. For many phases of the project, that is true. But there are critical moments in any ERP implementation where physical proximity makes a real difference:

Executive workshops and design sessions: The foundational design decisions for your CloudSuite implementation are best made face-to-face, where body language, whiteboard sessions, and sidebar conversations lead to better outcomes than video calls.
Go-live support: When your organization flips the switch to a new ERP system, you want your consultant on-site. Go-live issues need to be resolved in real time, and the ability to walk to someone's desk, look at their screen, and troubleshoot together is invaluable.
Stakeholder management: Difficult conversations with reluctant department heads are more effective in person. A consultant based in the Southeast who can drive to your office in Atlanta, Savannah, or Augusta for a critical meeting brings a responsiveness that a consultant three time zones away cannot match.
Time zone alignment: For Southeast organizations, working with a consultant in the Eastern time zone eliminates the scheduling friction that comes with West Coast or offshore teams. Status calls at 8 AM instead of 6 AM may seem minor, but over an 18-month project, it matters.

The Value of Someone Who Has Been Inside Infor

One differentiator that is often overlooked is whether the consultant has worked at Infor Corporate. This matters for several reasons:

Product roadmap understanding: Someone who has been inside Infor understands how the product evolves, what features are genuinely on the roadmap versus aspirational, and how to work with Infor's product and support teams when issues arise.
Internal relationships: When your implementation hits a technical wall, a consultant with relationships inside Infor can get answers faster than one who is navigating the standard support channels.
Architectural perspective: Understanding why Infor designed CloudSuite the way they did—the reasoning behind ION, the multi-tenant architecture decisions, the industry-specific design philosophy—leads to better implementation decisions than treating the product as a black box to be configured.

Practical Advice:

Ask your prospective consultant: "Tell me about a time you had to engage Infor's product team to resolve a technical issue during an implementation." The answer will tell you whether they have the relationships and technical depth to navigate the inevitable challenges that arise during any CloudSuite project.

Structuring the Engagement for Success

How you structure the consulting engagement matters as much as who you choose. Based on what I have seen work across dozens of implementations:

Start with an assessment, not a full implementation contract. A 4-to-6-week assessment engagement lets you evaluate the consultant's capabilities, communication style, and technical depth before committing to an 18-month relationship. If the assessment goes well, extending to a full implementation is straightforward. If it does not, you have lost weeks, not months.
Separate advisory from implementation if possible. Having an independent advisor who is not the same firm doing the implementation creates healthy accountability. The advisor can provide an unbiased perspective on whether the implementation is on track. I have written about what happens when projects go sideways in my article on ERP implementation rescue.
Define success metrics upfront. Not just "go live on time" but specific, measurable outcomes: time to close monthly financials, procurement cycle time, employee self-service adoption rates, integration error rates. Hold your consultant accountable to outcomes, not just activities.
Insist on knowledge transfer. The best consultants make themselves unnecessary over time. If your consultant is building a system that only they can maintain, you have a dependency problem, not a solution. Ensure that training and documentation for your internal team are built into the engagement from the beginning.

Making Your Decision

Choosing an Infor CloudSuite consultant is ultimately about trust. You are trusting this person or firm with a project that will affect your organization for the next decade. The lowest bidder is rarely the right choice, and the biggest name is not always the best fit.

Look for deep Infor experience, relevant industry knowledge, technical substance beyond project management, a track record of honest communication, and the ability to be on-site when it matters. If you find someone who checks all of those boxes and is based in the Southeast, you have found a partner worth investing in.

The organizations I have seen succeed with CloudSuite implementations are not necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones that chose consultants who told them what they needed to hear rather than what they wanted to hear, and who had the experience to back up their recommendations with proven results.