I’m not a golfer. How do I know this? Because I tried to be. Practice, regular play, lessons – I tried it all. What I heard over and over again as a professional tried to correct my version of a golf swing was this: The swing I’m teaching you is going to feel funny at first.
The upside to buying enterprise resource planning (ERP) that is not custom-written exclusively for one company is the economy of scale. Since it is written for the masses, the cost per user plummets. Microsoft Office certainly costs much more to develop than the few hundred dollars it costs to license. One of the other upsides is thousands or tens of thousands of users create a robust community that quickly flushes out weaknesses in functionality, helping the software become stronger.
Every month, I talk with people looking to buy an ERP system; and I also talk with customers who have been using ERP for years and years. I am exposed to the entire ERP spectrum. At one end are potential customers who articulate the issues they are experiencing by not having an integrated ERP system; and what they want the new ERP system to do for them. On the other end are customers who have an integrated ERP system that is working very well for them. In the middle are customers who aren’t getting the most they could out of ERP because the users either don’t understand what ERP could do for them, or they don’t know how to set it up to give them what they want.
When was the last time you thought about your data strategy? I hear people talking about data almost every day, but I rarely hear people articulate their data strategy. If there is no strategy for your data, that leaves hope; and hope isn't a strategy.
I spent the first two days of November working with the VISUAL Focus executive committee developing the agenda and breakout sessions for the VISUAL user conference organized and hosted by Visual South, Synergy Resources and BizTech. The conference will be held October 21-24, 2018 at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando, FL.
At a very high level, the goals of an equipment rental company and ISM are the same: to manage assets and customer relationships. The company needs to have assets customers want to rent; it’s also important for those assets to be maintained properly to reduce downtime. If either of those needs are not met, valuable sales opportunities may be lost forever.
Infor Service Management’s functionality is aligned to help companies meet these goals. Let’s start with the most important aspect of ISM: It’s one system, one database.
The roots of today’s ERP systems were pretty humble. They were originally designed to take and ship orders, figure out what had to be made and bought, track who owed who money, and produce financial statements. Today, an ERP modules list covers all of that and so much more.
One of my blogs dealt with problem solving. In a nutshell, I discussed the need to fully understand what the root of the problem is before trying to solve it. Once you know the cause, get ideas on how to fix it. Talk to people. Google it. Figure it out.
I've always remembered three lessons I learned trying to solve problems at my manufacturing job back in the 80's. I was a Supervisor at a manufacturing plant and I took over two departments that were in desperate need of leadership.
