Modernizing ERP Systems: Innovative Strategies With Infor

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems manage an organization’s core data structures and integrate various business functions. ERPs are complex systems and tend to attract interest primarily from those who need them or specialize in them. One such tech giant, Infor, continues to show how effective and critical ERP’s functionalities in every aspect of business. Robert Kramer, VP & Principal Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, recently sat down with Infor CEO Kevin Samuelson to explore how Infor continues to distinguish themselves with their commitment to innovation. In a recent Forbes article, he discusses Infor’s commitment to innovation, industry-specific solutions and customer retention as well as the role of data management in its strategic framework.

 

The Modern ERP System
Traditional ERPs were installed on-premises or in house, keeping enterprise data on-site. In the modern setting, ERPs are being hosted in the cloud, which allows accessibility and scalability as well as lower costs. Additionally, Kramer adds, modern ERPs feature user-friendly interfaces that enhance engagement and reduce the learning curve for new users, and are mobile-compatible which provides remote access applications and interfaces for smartphones and tablets. Modern ERP systems are engineered to be more agile, effective and conducive to supporting digital transformation with today’s global organizations.

 

Infor’s Architecture
Over the years, Infor has strategically focused its acquisitions on manufacturing and distribution verticals to meet customer needs. Samuelson’s vision has helped position Infor as a modern ERP provider. During his discussion with Samuelson, Kramer asked him what Infor’s most significant differentiation is. Samuelson said, “Tactically, it’s important not to try to cater to everyone—Infor has strategically chosen to focus on select industries, providing solutions already tailored for specific verticals.” These modern, cloud-based solutions are in contrast to much of the ERP industry, where many solutions start as general platforms and are then customized. Once these systems are customized, Kramer notes, upgrading and integrating with new technologies can become challenging. Though Infor’s approach aims to avoid these issues.

 

Infor’s Modern Capabilities
Kramer shares in his article, “Infor OS is the foundation of its cloud platform, supporting Infor’s suite of enterprise applications. It enhances enterprise operations with its advanced cloud technology and integration capabilities. Infor OS integrates AI and ML to automate routine processes such as predictive maintenance, which forecasts equipment failures, and supply chain optimization, which anticipates disruptions. Additionally, it utilizes AI to analyze large datasets, revealing trends and enabling financial forecasting based on historical data. The platform features pre-built APIs for connecting Infor and third-party systems, and an app designer that allows users to create customized applications easily through a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. Infor OS enhances data management, accessibility and quality with its data fabric feature, which integrates data from various sources into a unified environment. Additionally, the platform addresses governance and compliance to meet legal and regulatory requirements by monitoring operations, managing risks and enforcing operational guidelines.”

 

The Modern ERP Ecosystem

Like Infor, partnerships and expansions are what most ERP organizations are doing to build their ecosystem. Kramer points out that partners and alliances can provide integration tools, consulting and implementation services, training and support, compliance and security solutions and analytics and reporting tools. “These all play important roles in ensuring the ERP system operates efficiently, complies with regulations and provides valuable business insights.” Infor has channel partners that implement and support its systems. And they also have alliance partners that co-sell with Infor, consult with customers and provide services to support the portfolio. Additionally, Infor has partnered with AWS as its main cloud hosting service. Kramer notes that this partnership provides Infor with access to AWS’s global network of regions and availability zones, helping address the specific needs of Infor’s customers.

 

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Five ERP trends for 2024: what to expect from the market

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems help companies manage and analyze their business processes all in one place. ERPs cover everything from inventory to accounting to personnel management. Sejal Desai, IT expert and application designer and developer, shares an article on LA Progressive along with experts from Light IT Global forecasting five interesting ERP trends we can expect from the market this year to improve efficiency and sustainability.

Expansion of industry-specific solutions. “Previously, companies had to spend considerable time and resources customizing universal ERP systems to their individual needs. Now, there is a trend in the ERP market towards creating systems that take into account the specifics of individual industries. They are already pre-configured with the specific functions of their business. These can be, for example, accounting functions adapted for construction, retail, or manufacturing. Thus, companies get a system that initially meets their operational requirements. This speeds up the start of work with the system and reduces the risks associated with its adaptation. Moreover, by using ERP functionality tailored to specific needs, companies can respond more quickly to changes in the industry.”

Mobility. “According to our consultants from Light IT Global, in 2024 there is even better adaptation to the needs of modern business. In particular, mobile ERP systems allow managers and employees to efficiently manage the business from anywhere in the world, providing access to data in real-time.”

Promotion of sustainable development and ESG. “Companies are also recognizing the importance of integrating sustainable practices into their business processes. They are increasingly incorporating features into their ERP systems that contribute to sustainable development. These features help companies manage their carbon footprint and compile environmental reports. Managing carbon footprint through ERP allows companies to track and analyze carbon dioxide emissions at all stages of production and logistics. This enables them to optimize processes to reduce their environmental impact. Environmental reports integrated into ERP provide detailed information on the company’s impact on the environment. These reports contain data on resource consumption, waste management, and energy use.”

Artificial intelligence and process automation. “Artificial intelligence is transforming the way businesses operate. It automates routine tasks, allowing employees to focus on more complex tasks. AI can process large volumes of data quickly and with high accuracy, helping to make informed decisions. One of the important applications of AI in ERP is data management. AI can analyze sales data, inventory, or customer behavior, predicting trends and optimizing inventory. Generative artificial intelligence opens up new possibilities for content creation. For example, it can automatically generate reports, texts for marketing campaigns, and even analytical materials, reducing the time and effort required for these tasks. AI also helps in decision-making: based on the analysis of past data and current trends, systems offer recommendations from which people choose what they need.”

Integration of the Internet of Things. “There is significant potential in integrating IoT and ERP to improve various aspects of business, from manufacturing to logistics and quality management. These systems allow for the automatic collection of data from a variety of devices and sensors, which contributes to improved management of production processes, resource optimization, and reduced downtime.”

 

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PO140 – Program Information

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Purchase order PO140 – program information has some useful functions. For instance, you can run Receiving Release and Delivery (PO140) to release receivers and are able to print a list of all released receivers as well as a list of unreleased receivers with errors. PO140 is also able to create and print Delivery and Putaway tickets. Additionally, it can also update the ARRIVAL file for Mobile Supply Chain Management) tracking. Once the delivery ticket is printed then it will update the delivered quantity in the POLINESRC table. This is what Mobile Supply Chain Management, or MSCM, uses to update the Quantity On Order.

Infor Named a Leader in 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems

Infor today announced that Gartner has positioned the company as a Leader – for the sixth consecutive time – in its 2024 Magic Quadrant™ for Warehouse Management Systems (WMS). Infor was positioned in the Leaders Quadrant for its ability to execute and its completeness of vision. Per the press release, Infor WMS, enables agile fulfillment and combines advanced warehousing capabilities with highly configurable rules, built-in labor, task, and inventory management, as well as 3D visualization, in a single intuitive solution.  This unified approach lets businesses holistically assess requirements, incorporate value-added services, prioritize tasks, and eliminate bottlenecks. In this way, Infor enables perfect order fulfillment, while improving throughput and costs. Vishal Minocha, Infor vice president of product management, comments, “Leading organizations around the world rely on their warehouses to keep the supply chain moving as customers continue to have elevated expectations around service and value. Market dynamics, evolving product portfolios, growing complexity, and a changing labor force challenge companies to leverage automation and better utilize assets to fuel profitable growth. It is more important than ever to leverage cloud technology to consistently deliver on availability, cost, and speed. We believe this Leader positioning for Infor further proves that the company is a market leader with a strong vision for its WMS solution and the benefits it can bring to customers.”

 

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How to restrict or grant access to a function code in Lawson Security

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For this example, we will be granting access on a restricted function code on GL45.1. The function code is the Q – Quick Post.

 

On the Lawson form to get more information, select the function code field and press CTRL + SHIFT + O

 

We care about LINE-FC and parent column DT0.

  1. In LSA create your security class and click add rule.
  2. Grant all access to GL45 system code:
  3. Now expand GL45.1 and search for column DT0, then expand it.
  4. Find LINE-FC and select it
  5. On the right, select the Unconditional Access for Action and click in the blank white box, you’ll see a list of codes you can grant access to. For this example select Q for Quick post.
  6. Now click Apply and you’re done.

You can also restrict this by creating a Conditional Rule Access.

Good luck!

What Will The Future Of Cloud Bring Us?

Cloud computing today lies at the heart of most information and communication technologies (ICT). Because of its importance, many of our business systems and process are cloud-based. Claudio Saes, partner and telecom practice leader at Bell Labs Consulting, shares an article on Forbes forecasting what the future of the Cloud will bring such as better databases, development platforms, software and cutting-edge generative AI. Mainly, it’s about evolution. Saes emphasizes the the movement toward cloud-native applications – programs designed for cloud computing architecture. “Many existing private clouds are open source and need help to cope with public clouds’ feature explosion and parity, he states, “The truth of multi cloud and hybrid clouds is that they require replicating tools, skills and organization across clouds, which is becoming more complex and costly… Skills will shift from generalist to specialized knowledge to support super clouds and autonomous services, affecting employment trends in the cloud sector.” There are of course challenges in moving towards a fully portable and cost- cloud strategies and the escalating costs associated with running intensive AI applications in the cloud. “As the cloud computing industry unfolds, the emergence of superclouds offers a glimpse into a future where cloud services are commoditized, and enterprises can navigate the complexities of cloud environments with unprecedented efficiency,” notes Saes. “As enterprises grapple with the evolving dynamics of cloud services, the development of superclouds and autonomous services will play a critical role in shaping a future where cloud computing is integral to every facet of technological advancement and economic growth.

 

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What Is Cloud Provisioning?

Cloud technology, what was once a questionable avenue, is now the way of housing and communicating business systems. It’s a seamless and more accessible route, almost easy to maintain your systems and data. Technology journalist Adrian Bridgwater says it best: Clouds start up. Actually, cloud computing services are usually said to ‘spin up’ into life – it’s ready to use. He further explains, “As instantaneous as cloud spin-up is, like any vigorous exercise it’s best to warm up first. In cloud land, this is a practice known as cloud provisioning. It is the process of readying a cloud for its intended tasks by making sure that it has the required attributes and performance characteristics. The trouble is, as automated as so many of the technologies in this space are, cloud provisioning can be quite a chore.” Bridgwater shares an article on Forbes, with the help of other tech experts, on the importance of cloud provisioning and while it is a chore, it is a necessary one.

Keeping tabs on tags. “‘In the cloud, tagging allows users to add important and descriptive metadata (tags) to cloud infrastructure to identify resources or values like staging, development, or production,’ Brial says. ‘Good tags drive good decision-making but, in a rapidly growing cloud environment, you need to be keeping track of what is happening across a lot of different areas like cost, usage, availability, performance and security in what is a constantly transforming cloud infrastructure.’ Additionally, Omar Abi Issa, cloud specialist at OVHcloud, believes that that cloud provisioning does include a large number of administrative tasks, so like going to the gym, habit (and perhaps the repetitive logic that comes from muscle memory) is key – so in this case, that means automation.”

Bang for your (cloud) buck. “‘Public cloud is usually more automated than using dedicated servers and a lot of the provisioning is taken care of by the Cloud Services Provider (CSP),” said Issa. ‘Whereas with dedicated servers, end users are responsible for everything themselves – but dedicated servers will give you more processing power for your buck.’ Issa further notes that from a user perspective, choice of automation tools can also make a difference. For example, with public cloud service providers, organizations tend to use Terraform to automate infrastructure and network deployment or switch to services like Ansible or Puppet for OS and other software deployment.”

Instant access factors. “Dave Chapman, chief cloud evangelist at Capgemini has been through more cloud provisioning consultations than he cares to remember (but in a good way, with good customers). He says that cloud provisioning is a huge step onwards from pre-cloud infrastructure provisioning in the era before we had the always-on pipe of the web-connected cloud to draw from.”

Distributed cloud, distributed provisioning. “According to Jay Jenkins, chief technology officer (CTO) for cloud computing at Akamai, much of the hard work that’s been done to migrate to DevOps practices (Developers & Operations teams) can be reused in the realm of cloud provisioning. His reference relates to methodologies and practices including Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and Continuous Integration & Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) today, which are argued to be essential for repeatable deployments – and, in the distributed environments that typify enterprise cloud, it simply means that you have more targets.”

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM). “Saumitra Das, vice president of engineering at Qualys, states that the technology industry has become better at security around cloud provisioning from the time that Amazon S3 buckets (a public cloud storage resource on AWS) being public was so common. ‘There are several more ways to deploy this now, with more and more automation possible to make this a scalable process. Tools like the Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmarks help maintain industry standards and they can be applied at different points in the software development lifecycle. It can be done all the way shifting left by applying build time controls to Infrastructure as Code (IaC), to on the right after deployment using Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools. However, there are still too many organizations that still have deployments done from the cloud console that are hard to maintain and verify,’ said Das.”

In other words, Bridgewater sums up, cloud provisioning has been a chore at times in the past, but in our increasingly automated infrastructure future, cloud provisioning will have been provisioned and provided for.

 

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ISS: IDENTITY record failures in the sync

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Problem:

After running an Infor Security Services (ISS) sync, I have found the errors related to the failed IDENTITY records.

 

Resolution:

Determine which system, Lawson System Foundation (LSF) or Landmark (LMK), the identity record failed in by reviewing the following:

security_provisioning.log(s). All transactions completed in ISS related to user maintenance, federation, and synchronization, are logged in the LAWDIR/system/security_provisioning.log(s). Please note there may be several security_provisioning.logs with different naming conventions that contain the information that rolled out of the main security_provisioning.log and you may need to review all the updated logs to find the information you need.

Open the most recent provisioning log and go to the bottom of the log. If nothing has been done in ISS since the sync completed you should see a message similar to the one below followed by a list of records that failed:

Thu Apr 26 16:56:01.282 CDT 2023 – default-457261151: Sync Analysis for object type IDENTITY completed with status=true

Thu Apr 26 16:56:01.282 CDT 2023 – default-457261151: Sync Analysis successfully completed for object type IDENTITY

Thu Apr 26 16:58:52.073 CDT 2023 – 1360326122: Sync Execution successfully completed for Task ID[4,963] with failed transactions for Sync Records:

The list of records that failed is limited to one section of the sync. You will see a list of either roles, actors, services, domains, endpoints endpoint groups or identities, depending on which section of the sync had failed records. This is because once the sync completes the analysis or execution of the section with the failed records the sync process will not continue. You must address the failed records to continue the sync.

Alternately you can search the log for the word “completed” to find the most recent section of the sync process that completed. There will be a completed message for each section of the sync.

To find the exceptions for the failed records you will need to search within the log(s) each failed record. For each failed record you will search for the value from the list without the semicolon at the end of the line:

For failed record ACTOR=user1; you would search for “ACTOR=user1”

After finding the exception in the log, scroll up in the log until you see a message such as this:

Wed Dec  4 12:19:45.528 EDT 2023 – default-137596214: Getting resource from INFORBCLM01.INFORBC.COM;9906;9907;LANDMARK

or

Wed Dec  4 12:13:24.761 EDT 2023 – default-1973664225: Getting resource from INFORBCLS01.INFORBC.COM;6626;6627;LSS

or

Wed Dec  4 12:19:43.440 EDT 2023 – default-1973561960: 1973561960 Processing record #4,996 of LSF

or

Wed Dec  4 12:19:43.440 EDT 2023 – default-1973561960: 1973561960 Processing record #4,986 of LANDMARK

Messages that reference LSS or LSF indicate the issue is in LSF and the record should be reviewed in that system. Messages that reference LANDMARK indicate the issue is in LMK and the record should be reviewed in that system.

 

Central Highlands Water Taps Infor for Digital Transformation

Infor today announced that long-time customer Central Highlands Water will deploy Infor CloudSuite Public Sector to transform it into an agile, data-driven digital utility with streamlined budgeting and reporting. Per the press release, this new platform replaces five core legacy on-premise systems, including Infor Public Sector, and covers a wide range of business processes, from financial accounting, budgeting and planning, asset management to procurement and work order management. The benefits of cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) are expected to be far-reaching, the article states, and include improved data governance, enhanced ability to integrate, share, analyze and process data, a more robust security posture, and improvements in user experience. It will also enable Central Highlands Water to handle the increasing complexities of managing assets through partners and third parties. Terry Smagh, senior vice-president and general manager, Infor Asia Pacific and Japan, notes, “Infor has a proven track record of helping organizations digitally transform to meet internal objectives, regulatory requirements and customer needs. Modern utilities require agile, secure, and data-driven, industry-specific Infor CloudSuite systems to deliver customer excellence, maximize financial resources and consistently achieve operational efficiency. As a trusted partner, Infor is pivotal to their success.” Moreover, Infor has been instrumental in the digital transformation journeys at a myriad of public sector entities, including Riverina Water in New South Wales, Australia, six of the 18 water corporations across Victoria, Australia, New Zealand’s largest water authority, Watercare and Waikato Regional Council, and leading U.S.-based water authority Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District.

 

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Lawson Can’t Find lacobrts

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There can be many symptoms when Lawson can’t find lacobrts.  For example, Batch jobs will run and die without failing. When this happens Ladb.log will show the error below (insufficient netexpress licenses).  These all can be red herrings that point to an issue with the LAW_COBRTS_PATH setting in laconfig.  This is either due to the permissions on the directory can be incorrect, or the path itself can be incorrect.

To check the path, open a command line window and set the environment variables.  Then type command “laconfig”.  Choose your environemtn.  Make sure LAW_COBRTS_PATH points to the Micro Focus install directory, subdirectory bin64.