5 Best practices in working with Managed Service Providers

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We have been working with dozens of clients over the years as their managed service partner (MSP), managing Infor applications. In 2020, we decided to make a list of some practices that have made our relationship with our clients more successful. You can employ these same practices with your MSP to achieve the same level of success.

  • Single point of ownership – Each member of our staff works with several customers on a daily basis. We often communicate with several managers, IT contacts, and dozens of users within dozens of clients. While this communication is highly efficient and facilitates progress well, it is imperative that communication regarding important decisions are handled by one key person on each side. The most successful model we have found is if one of our managers reports directly with a manager at the client’s end and all decisions regarding projects, progress, personnel, and money are made between those two designated people. Otherwise things my get approved by someone who doesn’t have the proper authority to approve the work, which is never a good thing.
  • Change control inclusion – Including the MSP in your change control discussions is extremely valuable. Your MSP is in charge of several applications and is often the only party within the organization that is aware of the impact of changes to certain applications. It is also important that your MSP understand your change control processes so as to not accidentally circumvent them.
  • Proper planning – Clients who meet with us on a quarterly basis to do forward budget planning and general forecasting have shown a higher level of satisfaction and derived more efficiency from our services. This usually takes the form of a one hour meeting each quarter to look back on the past quarter and look forward to the next three quarters with major milestones and projects in mind.
  • Clear the path – We work with many hospitals, banks, government organizations, insurance companies, schools and retail chains. Our clients have all agreed to a remote method through which we can manage their systems. However, these systems vary quite a bit and some cause more waste than others. Work with your MSP to determine if there is a method which suits their workflow better and that you can also accommodate.
  • Full transparency – Trust in a relationship is built over many years and can be destroyed within a short moment. That is why full transparency is vital to a relationship with your MSP. This spans all facets of your relationship. From proposals, to time sheets and invoices, we go out of our way to disclose every available bit of information to customer so they can have full visibility into our progress, work efficiency, and their overall financial commitment.

 

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Infor Launches Infor Workforce Management Express Program in China to Help Companies Tackle Business Continuity Challenge and Aid Recovery

Infor recently announced the launch of a special promotion program in China to help companies be operationally agile and ease the “back-to-work” phase as companies gradually re-open. The Infor Work Force Management (WFM) solution is a powerful tool with intelligent scheduling that makes it easier for enterprises to re-open their businesses strategically. With the COVID-19 pandemic ‘rushing’ many businesses to work around the clock to stay alive, many organizations are reviewing the options available to better manage and utilize their employees during these times. Per the press release, the Infor WFM express solution can help organizations provide efficient and effective staff scheduling procedures and provide ongoing workforce utilization efficiencies during an evolving pandemic. With Infor WFM, enterprises can build multiple hierarchies of team structure to meet requirements through strong rule-setting and data-separation capabilities. In addition, the Infor WFM shift workbench is embedded with eight predefined shifts, providing human resource function with a simple and unified management tool.

 

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Altaïr Group to Deploy Infor M3 for International Growth

Infor recently announced that Altaïr Group, a French chemical group composed of six leading companies in the field of cleaning products, fabric softeners, insecticides and repair pastes and putties, has decided to deploy the enterprise resource planning (ERP) application, Infor M3. It will become the standard system for managing processes and sharing information between the group’s various entities. Per the press release, Altaïr Group has entrusted Infor to support the deployment of the M3 solution and outsourcing the IT servers and setting up a data centre in Lille, France, to serve the various entities of the group. This will help centralize information, improve communication between subsidiaries and share best practices. Infor M3 will help manage operations related to purchases/sales, production (manufacturing of chemical formulas and packaging), logistics, quality control and finance.

 

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Setting Up IFS Bootstrap For LDAPS

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Our article “Configuring Lawson for LDAP Signing” takes you step-by-step through configuring your environment for the new LDAPS requirements being enforced by Microsoft later this year.  That article discusses how to configure IFS for LDAPS, but after we got a few questions about the procedure, we decided to clarify it further.

When IFS is installed, a “Bootstrap” parameter is created to link to the root of your active directory.  This parameter is only utilized to bring users from AD into Lawson.  It should look something like this:

To configure IFS for LDAPS, you will need to update your Bootstrap to use the host name of one of your domain controllers, and you will also need to provide the credentials of a user that has authorization to search the AD tree.  This bootstrap connection is not actually used for authentication, so it shouldn’t be a problem that you have multiple DCs.  It is only used to bring users into IFS from Active Directory.  As long as the user connecting to that DC has the ability to search the tree for users, you should be fine.

Your URL is going to look something like LDAP://server.company.com:636/DC=company,DC=com.  Essentially, you just need to add the server name and port to the bootstrap value.  Remember that the protocol is “LDAP” not “LDAPS”.  To change the IFS parameters, just click into the boxes, and start typing.  Click the “Save” button at the top when you are done.

To make sure your settings are working properly, click the “Test” button, and you should receive this message:

Working from Home: 4 ways to Optimize Productivity Using Your CRM

Even as lockdown measures are starting to ease up, many of us are still working remotely. Many businesses are still temporarily closed and managers must rely on their limited resources to stay open. Marketer Lauren Fowles shares an article on CustomerThink of the various ways to optimize productivity using customer relationship management (CRM) while working from home.

Ownership and Accountability. “When a new lead enters your CRM system, make sure that ownership of that lead is automatically assigned to a member of the team through an automated flow or use of a custom Power App. Lead ownership will ensure that none of your leads slip through the cracks and will make your whomever was assigned the lead accountable for the outcome of that opportunity.”

Activity Tracking. “By making sure that your team are logging all of their outbound sales activity (emails, phone calls, LinkedIn messages etc.) against the prospects profile on your company’s CRM system, you can better monitor their productivity. Having this transparency in activity will also ensure reaching daily outreach targets is at the forefront of everyone’s mind.”

Avoid Pipeline Decay. “To ensure that no lead remain within a sales member’s pipeline longer than it should, set a workflow within your CRM that flags any leads that can surpassed this average conversion period. Remember that during lockdown and as restrictions continue to be reduced, conversion periods may be more erratic than usual with radio silence followed by a sudden flurry of interest.”

Custom Dashboards. “By creating leadership boards on your CRM dashboard or through a tool within the same ecosystem like PowerBI, not only will you be able to see who your best achievers are – so will the other members of the team. If you wanted to further increase the competitive element, implement a reward system of the greatest number of sales.

 

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Simple Trends That Will Continue to Drive ERP

Darren Roos shares an article at Manufacturing.net about the impact that enterprise resource planning (ERP) has for organizations. When paired up with other strong technological players such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), open APIs and the cloud, ERP systems can be so powerful. Roos shares the following trends and their impact on ERP.

APIs Open for Business
“Open APIs allow a wide range of client-side functions to be integrated into systems easily and quickly. They allow development to happen at pace because there are no hidden complexities, and they permit inbound and outbound connections to the digital core with the greatest possible flexibility and speed.”

Success in the Cloud
“Only by going fully cloud can organizations really reap the benefits. In doing this organizations will allow themselves to take full advantage of the AI and open API trends already noted.”

At Your Service
“Expect the term ‘servitization’ to become much more widely known as the business approach it describes takes a firm hold. Traditionally, manufacturers make ‘goods’ which are sold to customers by intermediaries. That is changing, and manufacturers are moving closer to their customers.”

 

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Nucleus Research Recognizes Infor as Leader in Workforce Management in Latest Value Matrix

Infor Workforce Management (WFM) has been recognized as a Leader among WFM applications in Nucleus Research’s latest Technology Value Matrix for WFM. Per the press release, “At Infor, we are excited about the amount of time and innovation that has been put in to develop our WFM solutions and how they have the ability to drastically benefit our customers across multiple industries,” said Matthew Bragstad, Infor vice president of product management. “Our teams are proud of this Leader recognition by Nucleus Research, as it further validates this work and our commitment to workforce planning, execution and analysis.” Infor CloudSuite™ Workforce Management helps companies address relevant aspects of their labor compliance and performance functions with time and attendance, demand-driven scheduling, workforce scheduling, and absence management software tools. WFM can  be used to help mitigate the risk of potential compliance errors and help reduce costs, while encouraging employees to focus on activities that generate more value.

 

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Why You Shouldn’t Use Port 636 to Bind to LDAP Signing

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The normal LDAP Signing ports are 636 and 3269.  Port 636 is the default signing port, and 3269 is called the Global Catalog Port.  Here is why you should only use port 3269 (if possible) when updating your LDAP Bind for LDAPS.

The default port (636) is used for searching the local domain controller, and it can search and return all attributes for the requested item.  The Global Catalog Port also searches the local domain controller, but only returns attributes marked for replication to the Global Catalog.  If you don’t need all attributes to be searched and returned (and for Lawson binding, you don’t), then using Global Catalog can be much faster.

If you choose to use the default port, be aware that there might be some performance issues, and maybe even timeouts, when users are logging in.  This can impact you, even if you are authenticating AD FS, because some pieces of the application still authenticate using LDAP Bind.  For instance, IPA nodes that have to authenticate against the Lawson server (such as file access, Lawson Query, etc.)

If users are experiencing latency or timeouts when logging in, you may see a “connection reset” error in your LAWDIR/system/security_authen.log file, similar to the error below:

Another symptom of a slow default port search is IPA processes throwing a login error when trying to make a connection to Lawson.  You might see an error similar to this one in your Work Unit logs.  This exception was thrown on an RM Query Node:

The best course of action if you are experiencing these issues is to update your LDAP Bind to use port 3269 instead of 636.  Check out our article on Configuring Lawson for LDAP Signing for step-by-step instructions on how to update the LDAP Bind.

Infor Positioned as a Leader, for the Second Consecutive Time, in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Multienterprise Supply Chain Business Networks

For the second time in a row, Gartner Inc. has positioned Infor as a Leader in its Magic Quadrant for Multienterprise Supply Chain Business Networks. Infor was positioned in the Leaders quadrant for its ability to execute and completeness of vision. Per the press release, Gartner wrote in the report that, “Multienterprise supply chain business networks (MESCBNs) are an essential technology component to a successful high-maturity, digital transformation. Executives must understand that their company needs to operate within such networks to stay competitive – in other words, minimize risk, increase efficiency, reduce cost and capitalize on opportunities.” Heidi Benko, VP of solutions strategy for Infor Supply Chain Management, said, “Companies are looking for a new level of speed, agility and resiliency in their supply chains and multienterprise business applications (MEBAs). We believe this is where Infor separates from other network providers. Organically developed for complex multi-party, real-time collaboration and process automation, companies on our Infor Nexus platform can overcome typical business network challenges across the physical and financial supply chain.”

 

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5 Unique CRM trends to watch in 2020

According to the London School of Business and Finance, there are 5 customer relationship management (CRM) trends we should pay close attention to in 2020.

Catering to preferences. CRM systems categorizes clients based on their location, product choice, and purchase bracket or price preferences. This information helps allocate account managers to dedicated clientele groups, and allows them to understand their preferences for offering customized solutions and service options.

Cutting down sales costs. Customer acquisition can be costly – it requires consistent marketing efforts, advertising, and branding initiatives. To reduce new client acquisition costs, businesses often focus on cross-selling and renewal opportunities within the existing clientele base. Also, a CRM system helps in recognizing the right leads by identifying untapped or potential opportunities with existing customers.

Improving response time. As response time is greatly important in today’s business environment, CRM software helps send quick replies to enquiries through standard email templates. This also allows businesses to maintain a consistent voice across communication channels.

Integrating AI. Integrating AI with CRM will continue to be invaluable for automating manual and routine tasks, devising recommendations to improve marketing campaigns, and managing any customer complaints. AI integrated with CRM allows businesses to analyse client data through purchase preferences, previous calls, and by generating a client profile. This all allows sales reps to understand their clients better and have a more focused, individualized approach to their communication.

Bonus:

Mobile CRM. Mobile-based CRM solutions are becoming more important owing to the ever-changing work environment and a growing global workforce. With pressure to drive revenues, sales representatives will greatly benefit from mobile CRM solutions to access data without security hassles, gain access from various platforms, and make client interactions more seamless.

 

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