4 Things Sales Managers Need From a CRM System

Even with the advancement in technology taking over almost every business, position, and process, there is still a need for strong relationships to develop organically – with human connection. A computer cannot build relationships by itself; you still need people for that. They’re the ones who feed computers intelligence. According to HubSpot, 58 percent of sales teams are increasing in size. With an increase in staff comes the need for experienced managers who know the value of face-to-face, personalized customer relationships. Sales managers are responsible for reporting to the board, managing technology needs, and of course managing people. Technology is perhaps unavoidable and integral to today’s business world, but often it seems that the tools that are supposed to help us end up making things overly complicated and not intuitive. Salespeople for example need a customer relationship management (CRM) system. It is essential to not only the sales team, but also the manager. The right CRM solution can save you time and money while helping close more deals. But it can also get in the way and end up being a hindrance to your ability to successfully manage people if it’s too difficult to use. Desitnation CRM suggests four things for mangers to look for and leverage in a CRM system as they run their sales teams:

  1. Workflow – A CRM system should aid workflow, not hinder it.
  2. Collaboration – A CRM system can fuel collaboration by giving each team member access to real-time data.
  3. Automation – A CRM should minimize your need to micromanage.
  4. Integrations – A CRM system should work seamlessly alongside the other tools your sales team uses, like email, contracts, and inventory.

Technology has the potential to improve a sales team and free up your time as a manager to focus more on helping you grow your business.

 

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Changing Prices on Reqs and POs

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Can’t Change Pricing on a Requisition or a PO?

There are settings in the Buyer (PO04) or Requestor (RQ04) setup.  It allows control over defaulting in pricing from any contracts or vendor agreements that you might have in place.  If you want a buyer or a requestor to be able to change the price on a PO or a Requisition, then consider the following changes:

 

PO04:

At the bottom of the Main tab in PO04 – you can setup a buyer to allow unit cost overrides from different costs.  In this case, the user can’t override a cost that defaults in from a vendor agreement or Strategic Sourcing (Contracts).  However they can override the cost on a PO line item if it defaults in from the last PO or Last Cost (Invoice cost or adjusted cost).

 

RQ04:

At the bottom of the Main tab in RQ04 – you have similar options.  This user does not have the ability to override any cost that might default onto a requisition.

Norled Sets Sail for Digital Transformation with Infor

Norled AS, one of Norway’s largest ferry and express boat operators, has invested in Infor CloudSuite Human Capital Management (HCM) to help reduce costs, instill greater agility in responding to staff changes, and expedite HR processes and improve compliance. Infor was chosen over 17 potential partners as it was the only provider to deliver full workforce management functionality to assist in the strategic scheduling of staff. Norled manages drastically different staffing requirements as each boat is effectively its own business, needing different competencies, skills and personnel. Their in-house software and pre-built Excel worksheets require a large degree of manual interaction, consuming time and exposing Norled to risk. By replacing these systems with Infor CloudSuite HCM and integrating workforce planning and scheduling into self-service facilities on each boat, Norled expects to realise cost management savings, be more agile in securing the right staff for a specific vessel when responding to staff illness and holidays, and ensure full compliance with strict Norwegian maritime regulations.

Norled expects to roll out their first phase and go live in early 2020.

 

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Importance of Creating a BRD

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Creating a new interface? Doing an Upgrade? Don’t forget the Business Requirements Document (BRD)

Often we go through the process of meeting and discussing different aspects of a project.  Those meetings are essential to understanding what is needed to be done.  A good BRD is basically a bible for all to refer back to during and even after the process to make sure that everything has been done at the level that was decided upon.

It is also a good way to make sure that everyone goes into the project with the same understanding. It is important to keep the BRD up to date with any changes that are decided upon.  This limits overlooking small aspects of a project that might have been referred to in – when did that email get sent again?

Based on client needs, we put together a BRD that reiterates what we think the client said.  When you review and approve it, it means we are both are working under the same premise.

It helps to eliminate those famous cartoon moments:

Considering a Divestiture? Here are a few things to consider

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Considering a Divestiture?  Here are things to consider:

History: How much data do you need to extract to send with the divested division/company?

Consider each module that currently has data and determine if there is a similar module in the new system. If there isn’t a similar module in the new system, then how will the data be accessed? Possibly a separate database that stores the information for lookups as needed.

Fixed Assets: Do you have assets that need to be moved with the divested division/company?

What are the criteria for which assets need to be moved with the divested division/company?

What date will these assets be last depreciated in your current system and how will the depreciation continue in the new system?

Will you keep the original in-service date and depreciation history and continue depreciating the same in your new system?

AP Payments:  How will you handle bank reconciliations and payment voids that occur after the division/company is divested?

Will there be on-going communication for this information to be sent?

Will there be a complete pay-off in the current system so that AP starts clean in the new system with no open invoices?

Do you have a consolidated AP process now that needs to be split into multiple AP processes? If so, when should you start this process of separation?  Especially important if you have any EDI or other interfaces to AP that will need separation as well.

Vendors: How will you notify Vendors that invoices after a certain date should be handled differently? Are your vendors even aware that there are two different divisions or companies that they are currently billing? It is very important to start working with your vendors and any 3rd party AP interfaces sooner than later.

Purchases: How will any open POs and/or requisitions be handled?

Make sure that you have enough inventory on hand for the divested division/company prior to cutting off standard replenishment.

 

 

How to Resolve Workunits Sitting in Ready Status

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Problem: Workunits for Infor Process Automation are sitting in Ready Status and not processing.

Solution:
1.  Via LmrkGrid (Grid Management), determine how many workunits may simultaneously process in your system. (see attached “DeterminingSimultaneous.docx”)

  1. Determine how many workunits are currently in a processing state.

NOTE:  Please refer to attachment “DeterminingSimultaneous.docx” for instructions on determining simultaneous processes.  In case you will need to engage support, you should screenshot this information to provide when you open the support incident.

 

– Command to count records in Ready Status:  dbcount <DATAAREA> -f Status=\”1\” PfiWorkunit

– Command to count records in Processing Status:  dbcount <DATAAREA> -f Status=\”2\” PfiWorkunit

– Command to count records in Completed Status:  dbcount <DATAAREA> -f Status=\”4\” PfiWorkunit

 

It is a good idea to monitor and take counts of these records periodically. Are the number of workunits in Ready status growing? Are the number of workunits in Completed status growing? Is the number of workunits in Processing status equal to the maximum number workunits that can simultaneously process?

NOTE: If the number of workunits in Ready Status is growing and the number of workunits in completed status is not, then either:

  1. You have workunits that processing for a very long time holding up the system; use the Grid Management UI to determine which workunits are processing so long and determine if those are stuck in a loop; or if they are just processing normally large jobs. Consider cancelling the long running workunits, and scheduling them to run in off business hours.
  2. If you are on Landmark 10.1.0.x, there was a bug in this version of Landmark that periodically caused Async to stop picking up new workunits. This issue was resolved by a re-write of Asnyc and LPA nodes in 10.1.1.x Landmark versions. If you are on Landmark 10.1.0.x you should restart the Async Node, and the IPA node.

NOTE: The workunits that were already queued to an LPA node will not automatically start back up;  the workunit polling frequency (default 30 minutes) will need to trigger before they are requeued to a new LPA node.

Acquiring a new Hospital? Here are some things you should consider…

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If you are acquiring a new hospital in the near future, below are 5 things to consider:

  1. Will adding the new hospital cause a difference in your GL structure?
    • Are there different management hierarchies that need to be addressed in the new departments/cost centers?
    • If you are using automated flows for approvals will the current structure work for the new location as well?
  2. Localized vs. Centralized purchasing and AP
    • It is often thought that just centralizing purchasing and AP is the norm when acquiring a new hospital. This is often more difficult to achieve then it seems on paper.
    • There are item number differences – how will those be handled? Is there some normalized data in the item master that will allow for consolidating the item master? Does the new hospital provide specialty services that requires adding many more items into the item master? Who will maintain the new items?
    • There are long term contracts in place at both locations – often different prices and terms – Will these stay separate or renegotiated?
      • Different locations often have different sales reps for the same suppliers. How will these relationships be affected? And what affect will it have on the local service if the local rep is no longer involved?
  3. What kind of reports are used at the new location that are not used currently in-house? Are the reports necessary? If these are not canned reports- how will the reports be created and maintained?
  4. What amount of history is necessary to bring over to the new system for each module that is being transferred to your ERP? How will older data be accessed when needed?  Will the old data be available for research?

Schedule a ProcessFlow to Run Every Other Week

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You can schedule your ProcessFlow to run on a weekly schedule by using the ProcessFlow scheduler. Recently, a client had asked if there was a way to schedule it bi-weekly. Great news – there is a way, and it’s easy to set up.

In Rich Client, Start -> Applications -> My Actions -> My Scheduled Actions -> Double click action you wish to modify

In this next screen, scroll down to Scheduling Details and click on Week Number

In order to schedule a process to run biweekly, you would want to use Even Weeks in the “Select Week Number” field and specify the day you want it to run (in this case, Monday)

Now you can have your ProcessFlow running every other week.

 

For a step-by-step guide to Scheduling a Process in IPA, check out this related article: Scheduling a Process in IPA

Troubleshooting: Rich Client workunit log too large to extract

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Depending on the process run, Rich Client workunit logs can grow extremely large. So large in fact that you may not be able to extract the full log from the Landmark Rich Client.

If a workunit log grows too large you may not be able to extract the full log from the Landmark Rich Client,  in this case you can use the following command to extract the log from a Landmark Command Prompt.

What Is the Landmark Command Prompt?
The Landmark administrator will perform many tasks from a command prompt. When you are instructed to use a Landmark command prompt, you should be sure you are in the Landmark Environment that you want to use, and that all environment variables are set correctly.

Setting Environment Variables
Before you startBefore you perform this procedure, be sure that the /etc/lawson/environment/environmentName/config.sh file contains the appropriate settings for environment variables.

 

Use this procedure to export the appropriate environment variables for your Landmark Environment before issuing commands from a Landmark command prompt.

To set the Landmark Environment variables

At a command prompt, type

. cv landmark-env-name

Where landmark-env-name is the name of the Landmark Environment.

Resolution:

dbexport -C -f “PfiWorkunit=####” -o . -n <dataarea> PfiWorkunit

Example:

dbexport -C -f “PfiWorkunit=7000” -o . -n prod PfiWorkunit

Best Way to Document Your Interfaces

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Is documenting your interfaces challenging? Do you find yourself confused as to what you should focus on and how to best format things? Do you feel that the work you’re creating is not going to get used and you are not sure where to store it all? Join our webinar to get answers to all those questions and learn a new way to create accurate, valuable and well written documentation for your team. We’re going to cover a host of topics including:

  • How documentation of your interfaces will impact things
  • What you should include in your interface documentation
  • How to effectively create a document that has value to the organization
  • How to store your documents for best value, retention, correctness, and accountability
  • Q/A

 

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