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Infor LX Tips, Infor LN Tips, BPCS Tips, Baan Tips, Infor M3 Tips & Infor ERP News

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Infor ERP Tips & News from the Experts

Infor LX | Infor LN | BPCS | Baan | Infor M3

Manual Processes Are Killing Your Productivity

Manual Processes Are Killing Your Productivity

Infor LX | BPCS | Infor LN | Baan

Nearly 70% of workers say that the biggest opportunity of automation lies in reducing time wasted on repetitive work.

Which repetitive tasks would workers most like to see automated? A recent study by McKinsey Global Institute found that there are three productivity killers that workers are eager to automate:

  1. Data Collection: Eliminate human error and manual data entry by automatically collecting, uploading, or syncing data into a system of record (55%).
  2. Approvals: Become more efficient by automating approvals, sign-offs, and confirmation requests (36%).
  3. Updates: Reduce wasted time by automatically requesting status updates and other information (32%).

Workers believe that automating these tasks will reduce wasted time (69%), eliminate human error (66%) and recover hours lost to manual, repetitive tasks that could be automated (59%).

Too expensive you say? Too big of an effort to make it happen?  Not necessarily.

Crossroads RMC consultants have delivered valuable integrations and automated processes to manufacturers just like you at a fraction of the cost of other providers. Whether you’re running ION on the latest version of Infor LN or Infor LX or using Baan IV or Baan V or BPCS with no integration platform in place, there are benefits to automation and system integration for every area of your business:

Finance:
Say goodbye to typos that lead to huge problems, like paying invoices late or charging the wrong customer. That means you’ll have accurate data in your system, month-end processes run smoother and your employees are freed up to do more important tasks.

Customer Relationship Management:
When it comes to keeping customers happy, speed is crucial. You can automate invoicing, customer reports, and more to ensure that customers always have what they need. Automate report delivery from your system to ensure you always have the right information at your fingertips. And even without automating report delivery, your ERP system brings together all the information in one place, and automated data entry and extraction means it’s accurate.

Supply Chain Management:
Set up automated alerts to the right people. With ERP automation, you can trigger an email when a product has low stock or is overstocked. Keeping inventory levels just right is essential to be able to fulfill orders but not waste resources by having too much on hand.

Manufacturing Resource Planning:
Say goodbye to appending data manually. Let’s say you get a shipment of inventory that is a different color than you’d planned, which means they need different SKUs. That means you have thousands of SKUs to update, but an automated process can append data in the system unattended in a fraction of the time it’d take a person to do it.

Human Resource Management:
It might not be that hard to pull the sales data to calculate commissions for one sales rep manually. But multiply that by a growing sales force every pay period, and you’ll be grateful you automated your ERP system. Integrate with HR platforms to manage data transfers for calculating sales and commissions, even setting up triggers to do this automatically at the same time every week.

These are just a few of the possible ways that your ERP system can be simplified to produce results that save time and money. Learn more about integrations and automation from Crossroads RMC.

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

TECHNOLOGY: Facility Security Ranges

Previously, a user could complete the Cost Transfer (CST920) process for any range of facilities regardless of their security settings established in SYS600. This enhancement verifies the user security settings set up in SYS600 before processing cost transfers for a range of facilities in CST920. If the user has authority for a facility range, but there are facilities within that range that are not authorized, the program skips those facilities and completes the cost transfer process.

FINANCE: Expiration Date for Quotes and RMAs

A Cancel-by-Date has been added to the Quote Header and RMA Header panels. This optional field can limit how long a quote or authorization to return items for credit is valid.  

For quotes, this enhancement provides an optional end date for the quote. For RMAs, it provides an optional date by which the customer must return the items to receive the credit listed on the RMA.

The Cancel-By-Date prints on the Order Acknowledgement and RMA Acknowledgement to inform the customer of this important limitation to the quote or return authorization. 

An Order Entry user cannot copy the quote to create a new order if the Cancel By Date has caused the quote to expire.

OPERATIONS: Default Split Salesperson to Customer Orders

Sales commissions are based on combinations of the Primary, Split, and Line-Level salesperson and the commission codes defined for the customer and item. You can now define the Split Salesperson in the same master files as the Primary Salesperson. While the Primary Salesperson is mandatory, the Split Salesperson is optional. It defaults during Order Create using the identical hierarchy as Primary Salesperson. Using Split Salesperson provides more flexibility in the calculation of sales commissions. The ability to define a default Split Salesperson improves the accuracy of sales commission qualification and calculation and reduces maintenance and adjustments necessitated by corrections.

Previously, a user could complete the Cost Transfer (CST920) process for any range of facilities regardless of their security settings established in SYS600. This enhancement verifies the user security settings set up in SYS600 before processing cost transfers for a range of facilities in CST920. If the user has authority for a facility range, but there are facilities within that range that are not authorized, the program skips those facilities and completes the cost transfer process.

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Tips: LN | Baan

Often, multiple items are interchangeable even when these are purchased from various vendors. You can use any of these items as material in a bill of material (BOM). If a shortage of a standard material is expected to delay a production order, LN can automatically select one of the alternative materials. You can define up to nine alternative materials for any material in a BOM.

The use of alternative materials has the following advantages:

  • LN can handle material shortages for some items without user intervention.
  • The use of alternative items can reduce the average inventory level.

I know a lot of our customers are considering virtualization projects. I came across this, and thought it might be useful:

The advantages of virtualization include the following:

• You get more out of your existing resources. Pool common infrastructure resources and break the legacy “one application to one server” model with server consolidation.

• You can reduce datacenter costs by reducing your physical infrastructure and improving your server to admin ratio. Fewer servers and related IT hardware means reduced real estate and reduced power and cooling requirements. With better management tools, you can improve your server to admin ratio so personnel requirements are reduced.

• You can increase the availability of hardware and applications for improved business continuity.

• Securely back up and migrate entire virtual environments with no service interruptions. Eliminate planned downtime and recover immediately from unplanned issues.

 

• Gain operational flexibility. Respond to market changes with dynamic resource management, faster server provisioning, and improved application deployment.

The disadvantages of virtualization include the following:

• Virtualization adds overhead to the CPU, memory, IO, and network.

• Virtualization adds an additional layer to the hardware and software stack. Therefore, additional complexity is introduced in the following circumstances:

  • When sizing the physical server.
  • When planning VM capacity.
  • When planning multiple VMs on the same physical server.
  • When investigating performance issues.

 

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