Infor "unintentionally" sold to the customer of PLM instead of EDMS

The producer of the medical equipment Paragon Medical, being many years a software user of Visual ERP company which Infor purchased a few years ago, last week took district court of the USA with the claim to vendor.

At the end of 2009 - the beginning of 2010 the Paragon company began selection process of the platform for creation of a document management system. The company told all potential suppliers that a system should correspond to the legislation of the USA concerning production of food and medicines (FDA) on which also Paragon relies. The software had to work with the Microsoft Visio files and have an opportunity to place watermarks of Paragon in documents "as a part of FDA - compatible control procedures", said in the statement of claim.

At the same time the Paragon company discussed upgrade of the Visual system with Infor, but did not consider vendor as the potential supplier of software of management of documents. Infor used a situation and provided PLM8 software as EDMS. After transfer of the requirements of Infor, representatives of vendor assured Paragon that its wishes can be satisfied. Afterwards Infor and Paragon signed delivery contract PLM8.

Long-standing partnership of the parties allowed Paragon to trust Infor, said in the statement. Otherwise, Paragon would not agree to license PLM8. But, lawyers of Paragon said as it appeared: "PLM8 it not the software for management of documents", the representative of Infor told after the conclusion of the transaction.

PLM8 system which on the website of Infor company is designated as Infor10 PLM Discrete is described as the software of product lifecycle management intended for the companies which make a difficult technique. Among other opportunities the central mass storage for "collecting, exchange, management, tracking and document storage, tasks and information on a product", said in the statement of claim enters it. Nevertheless, after a set of requests from Paragon, Infor could not provide a customer feedback or specify any examples where PLM8 is applied only to management of documents.

Also it is said in the statement that Paragon "cannot even browse the documents" in this system. Infor created the patch transforming Word documents, PowerPoint and Excel to a PDF format that does them readable. However this correction "added several additional steps for viewing documents that does its use within business structure of Paragon absolutely inapplicable as the majority of documents requires consideration by several persons, a possibility of adjustments, a statement and execution".

Paragon also experienced permanent difficulties with printing of documents through PLM8, despite attempts of Infor to apply different patches. One of them in PLM8 code it was implemented by software from Oracle, said in the claim, and it is added: "Instead of drawing reliable printing from PLM8, Infor recommended to Paragon to change its business processes. According to the recommendations of Infor, Paragon it is necessary to use several flowers and diagrams in its documents, to create documents well and in general to print less often".

At last, PLM8 "cannot work with files of Visio in any way", according to the lawsuit. Paragon would never license "almost useless" software if it knew about its limitation, it is also specified in it.

The company filed a lawsuit against Infor for agreement breach, unreasonable enrichment, fraud and negligence. She demands from Infor of return of the charges paid for software licenses and services and also indemnification.

Infor considers that from Paragon Medical there are no bases for claims, and intends to be protected, the representative of Infor Dan Barnhardt said.

The analyst Ray Wang, the CEO of Constellation Research company considers that clients can not have enough technical knowledge independently to answer questions or to solve problems therefore they trust suppliers. In a case with Paragon company "it looks so as if there was a misunderstanding of the parties concerning what was expected that was required also what was delivered", - he told.