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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

Tip of the Week: 8 Common-Sense Rules for Inventory Management

Anthony Etzel 0 27697 Article rating: No rating

Common sense rules. We may not like them, but generally, they stand the test of time and should be followed. Here are 8 common sense rules related to inventory management published by Inbound Logistics back in 2007. They still hold true today. 

1. If you don' t know where you are going, no road will take you there. Enterprise resource management systems are designed to tell you about today' s inventory. With some work, you can also access information about past inventory. To manage inventory proactively, however, you must know projected inventory levels for the future.

2. Make what you can sell. An integrated Sales and Operations Plan will naturally take into account expected demand in its production plan. Inventory is not an independent variable - it is the direct result of demand and supply.

3. Sell what you can make. Too often, a disconnect exists between sales and marketing desires and the reality of production capabilities.

4. If you can' t sell it, stop making it. If demand for your product does not materialize, you need to identify that gap quickly to avoid a buildup of non-moving inventory. Numerous mechanisms can be put in place to identify such trends.

For tips 5 through 8 and more details into the other tips, click the button below to read the full article.

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Tip of the Week: 8 Common-Sense Rules for Inventory Management

Kathy Barthelt 0 41260 Article rating: No rating

Common sense rules. We may not like them, but generally, they stand the test of time and should be followed. Here are 8 common sense rules related to inventory management published by Inbound Logistics back in 2007. They still hold true today. 

1. If you don' t know where you are going, no road will take you there. Enterprise resource management systems are designed to tell you about today' s inventory. With some work, you can also access information about past inventory. To manage inventory proactively, however, you must know projected inventory levels for the future.

2. Make what you can sell. An integrated Sales and Operations Plan will naturally take into account expected demand in its production plan. Inventory is not an independent variable - it is the direct result of demand and supply.

3. Sell what you can make. Too often, a disconnect exists between sales and marketing desires and the reality of production capabilities.

4. If you can' t sell it, stop making it. If demand for your product does not materialize, you need to identify that gap quickly to avoid a buildup of non-moving inventory. Numerous mechanisms can be put in place to identify such trends.

For tips 5 through 8 and more details into the other tips, click the button below to read the full article.

Read Full Article

Crossroads RMC to Exhibit at Inforum 2016

Crossroads RMC 0 24654 Article rating: No rating

Inforum 2016  returns as a three and a half-day event of educational seminars and workshops focused on the future of enterprise software and your business. This event is Infor’s premier event for 2016, and Crossroads RMC is excited to sponsor the event! Come see us in Booth 173 to learn about Crossroads MES and Analytics Dashboard solutions for the shop floor, our Services for Baan/LN and BPCS/LX, and see a demo of our latest solution, Analytics Dashboard, which can be connected to any ERP to provide up to the minute sales analysis data.

    
 

If ERP is plumbing for the Enterprise - How do we unplug it and keep it from making a huge mess?

David Dickson 0 30206 Article rating: 5.0

I have been working with ERP in various roles for over 30 years, directly involved in over a hundred implementations, while my company has been involved with over 400 more. Of course, in many ways the systems we use today are completely different from what we used in the ‘80s – back then it was green screens, simple transaction entry forms, and cumbersome updates (at best) to link what one department did with all the other areas that needed access to that information. Then there were those planning programs that took all the information along with various parameters the users needed to set and told us what to do.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

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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

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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