9 Ways in Which Innovation is Changing ERP Technology

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software has become more than its initial function of managing day-to-day business activities. ERP is more pervasive, responsive, and adaptable than ever before. An article on MacSources notes the evolution of ERP and how its rebirth has been a decade-long process that has resulted in a more versatile and multifaceted instrument that has assisted businesses of different sizes in re-inventing their company strategy. Being utilized in many aspects of business and across mobile, social and traditional channels, this technology has since evolved thanks to the latest innovations integrated with ERP systems.

Cloud-based Solutions. “Currently, everything ERP has to offer may be run on the cloud or on-premise, but this may change in the coming years. The development of Industry 4.0 necessitates more intuitive business software and rapid access to data on the go, which the cloud platform is better suited to.”

IoT.  “Without a doubt, the Internet of Things has enormous potential to improve the corporate sector. IoT has enabled commercial organizations to follow and study the flow of information as well as computing processes in real-time. The analytics enabled by IoT have provided immediate access to specialized company knowledge, allowing management to make well-informed, timely judgments and choices.”

Wearable Technology. “The integration of ERP software development and wearable technology has numerous advantages. This integration allows the transmission of real-time data, which can help to reduce errors and losses by tracking shipments in manufacturing businesses. Additionally, data reduplication can be greatly reduced with real-time data access. Wearable technology and ERP software will also allow for faster decision-making, allowing top authorities to purchase critical goods quickly by utilizing portable devices.”

Big Data. “Big Data and ERP software can be very effective if used concurrently. For example, it can help assess the current pattern of customer behavior by examining data that is already available as well as data gathered by automated devices.”

AI. “Customer service is the primary area in which AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ERP software can be combined to create a more successful and helpful software product. AI-enabled ERP technology can be beneficial to the HR department, for example, it can assist HR in identifying the vulnerabilities of inefficient employees who are unable to complete tasks on time.”

CRM, SCM, BI, and ERP as One Solution. “When all four technologies are used together, an organization can produce enormous revenues by enhancing its work efficiency. Almost all large-scale industries now use ERP-based solutions. Many firms now provide supply chain management software that includes ERP-based functions designed to execute specific tasks. And not only SCM but also the majority of CRM and BI solutions are deployed using ERP software.”

RFID. “RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is one of the most commonly used terms in the market for automatic identification and data collecting. This technology allows users to identify, monitor, and detect practically any object. It is most commonly used in inventory and warehousing, distribution, access control, and asset tracking. An ERP and RFID system has three primary advantages: tracking of goods and materials in real-time, dynamic updates of information on a box or label, and hands-free and quick product information scanning with no human interaction required.”

Mobile ERP. “Industries have recognized the value of allowing their managers and staff to access data in real-time on a mobile device or tablet and collaborate from any location. Employees can use mobile ERP to manage orders, quotes, and prepositions while working on the pitch from any device, improve customer service with full access to client history, contracts, and product-specific information, have access to all corporate information while working away from the office, and enter all important information as it is collected in the field, avoiding the need to retype it into the back-end system.”

Social ERP. “Social ERP is an excellent step toward consumer collaboration and engagement. It is unnecessary to integrate your ERP systems with external social networking platforms. Instead, you can use social ERP to imitate the functionality of, say, Facebook. The only difference is that it will be safer and more secure within your ERP system.”

Today, ERP has made a presence in almost every aspect of the business environment, creating a shift in how firms employ ERP systems. The article concludes that ERP innovation will allow you to make more effective decisions both in the short and the long term.

 

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3 Ways Technology Can Upskill Your Workforce

Thomas Publishing Company’s recruitment writer Laura Ross identified a weak spot in the Industrial workforce. This industry in the last decade has had 2.4 million unfilled jobs. These talent shortages cost the US economy $2.5 trillion, with many companies failing to reach peak operational efficiency. Ross suggests by upskilling your existing workforce, you can address many of the challenges associated with today’s talent market. Investing in your employees not only makes for an increase in talent and skills, but it also promotes a happier and motivated synergy within a company. This can result in increased productivity and higher retention rates. Additionally, Ross points out that upskilled workers can fill existing and future skills gaps, saving your company money in the long run over having to recruit and train new employees. A strategic way to upskill your workforce is by taking advantage of the wide range of technologies available to further your employees’ skills. Ross recommends the following technologies to upskill your workforce:

  1. Remote Skills Development. “Gone are the days when an organization would gather its entire workforce in a function room to deliver core training modules or fund a week-long overseas conference. Instead, industrial businesses should make provisions for employees to earn qualifications via online courses, demo new technologies from the comfort of their own homes, and broaden their knowledge via webinars, live-streamed seminars, remote mentoring programs, and podcasts.”
  2. Gamification. “Employees are not always engaged or even compliant when it comes to learning and development courses. This is particularly true when they are expected to take time out of a busy working day. Technology can seamlessly gamify the process of learning, as training software can log who has completed particular courses or modules, rate and rank users on their engagement and performance, and nominate high-performers for additional recognition and reward.”
  3. Virtual and Augmented Reality. “E-learning software increasingly features simulation-based training, which provides employees with an immersive and realistic on-the-job experience. Rather than relying on academic theory or online tests, workers can put their skills to practice in real work scenarios. Using simulation training, it’s possible to quickly upskill large groups of people, teach complex skills, and closely monitor employee progress and performance. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) also have broad applications for industrial businesses, enabling employers to inform and train their workforce in a controlled and safe environment.”

 

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How to Mass Delete Lawson users using Loadusers

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If you ever come across an instance where you need to clean up your system from old or faulty data, you can use the loadusers utility to mass-delete users, roles, or groups. The loadusers utility accepts input from an XML file that you create. You can simply populate any attributes that you want to delete.

The following is an example of an XML file from the Infor LSF Documentation guide that has been used to delete users, roles, and groups. The roles and groups in this file would only be deleted if they were not assigned to any other users than the ones being deleted.

Sample XML file

<?xml version=”1.0″ encloding=”ISO-8859-1″?<XML><ROLEDATA>    <ROLE ID=”Test1″>   <ROLE ID=”Test1″></ROLEDATA><GROUPDATA>    <GROUP ID=”Test1″>   <GROUP ID=”Test1″></GROUPDATA><USERDATA ProductLine-“APPS900″ SSOPPASSWORD=”temp”>    <USER ID=”cssttst100″/>   <USER ID=”cssttst101″/>   <USER ID=”cssttst102″/>   <USER ID=”cssttst103 RMID103″/></USERDATA><IDENTITIES></IDENTITIES></XML>

Command syntax for loadusers when used to delete users

From the command line, type

loadusers -f filename -u

where

filename = the XML file that contains the user data to be deleted

Infor Hospitality Expands Partnership with Oliver Hospitality

Infor recently announced its expanded partnership with Nashville-based hotel and restaurant management company Oliver Hospitality, committing to offering engaging and thoughtful spaces for its guests. Infor HMS has previously been implemented at five properties to enhance guest stays, and unify and refine hotel operations. Oliver Hospitality has decided to expand its work with Infor for its new Marconi Conference Center location outside of Marshall, California. Per the press release, choosing to expand the organization’s footprint with Infor Hospitality was decided in part because of Infor’s knowledge of the hospitality industry and proven track record with deployments. Through the Infor Hospitality suite, Oliver Hospitality is able to provide a rich experience for all users. Specifically, Infor HMS has provided the organization with a reliable hub for operations, and helped to establish a solid foundation to consistently deliver a superior guest experience. This decision to modernize the organization’s HMS will also help internal teams work easily and more successfully to eliminate many timeworn manual processes so Oliver Hospitality can streamline daily operations and deliver a personalized hotel stay.

 

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How to add or edit Smart Notification related Info to an existing Smart Note in LBI

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First lets login into LBI and open smart notifications:

Once open, go to Notifications Tab:

Select edit on the notification you want to modify:

Go to the Related Info >> Links >> Enter a Name and Web Address >> Add >> Save Updates:

To edit an existing related info link, simply select edit under “My Custom Urls”:

Make sure you Save Updates!

These related Info Links show up at the bottom of the report the user receives as shown below:

This type of work is typically done by a Lawson technical resource. Organizations often hire a Lawson consultant team who offer managed services at a fixed monthly rate. These Lawson teams have a wider range of expertise and knowledge and are ideal for larger organizations but also are great for smaller ones that don’t need a dedicated Lawson employee on-site. Nogalis does offer this as a service so feel free to reach out to us via our contact page.

Infor Launches New Application to Combat Nurse Shortage for Healthcare Industry

This month Infor launched a new application – Infor Clinical Science – as part of the Infor Work Management suite as a move to help combat nurse shortage in the healthcare industry. Per the press release, this application measures the workload of each patient via evidence-based methodology to provide leaders with a complete picture of labor requirements for each shift, unit or department, all based on documentation already occurring in the electronic medical record (EMR). By measuring the workloads at the task/activity level, this provides healthcare leaders with deeper insights into the work being performed and can adjust and adapt scheduling in real time to directly address and combat the ever-present healthcare worker shortage. Clinical Science uses EMR documentation to provide insights into patient care requirements and helps decision makers efficiently deploy available staff needed across the organization. Additionally, Clinical Science provides deep insights into each patient’s unique care needs and, by evaluating individual patient workloads, room proximity, and continuity of care, helps inform the nurse-patient assignment process to ensure fair and equitable patient assignments. This application can also support departments with mandated staffing ratios by ensuring the assignments are fair and equitable and can help leaders determine units or departments that may need additional support. Further, Clinical Science accounts for the differences between patients to ensure optimal patient care, while maintaining any mandated ratios. With this new application Infor is now the only solution that offers an end-to-end experience deployed in a single cloud solution for healthcare labor planning and tracking, including alignment with patient workloads and the assignment of patients to nurses to ensure safe, high-quality patient care.

 

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The Top 5 Education Trends In 2023

The modern classroom looks very different than how we spent our time in traditional classroom setups. Many education systems have embraced the available technology to make learning more interactive, current, and accessible. Bernard Marr, international best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a strategic business & technology advisor, shares an article on Forbes about the educational trends we should see in 2023 and beyond.

Artificial Intelligence. “Artificial Intelligence (AI), described as the most transformative technology of the 21st century, is reshaping every industry and field of human activity, including education. According to UNESCO, AI has the potential to help tackle some of the toughest challenges in education today, including addressing inequalities in the way schooling is provided around the world and improving access to knowledge globally. However, it also creates challenges of its own – with effort required to ensure that the rollout of this highly disruptive technology is done in a way that is fair and doesn’t itself contribute to those inequalities.”

Remote, Online, and Hybrid Learning. “The global Covid-19 pandemic forced schools, universities, and course providers to develop the capabilities to deliver education at a distance. But even before this, a revolution was taking place in the domain of online learning, with massive online open courses (MOOCs) exploding in popularity. In schools, remote and online learning means that educators can reach students no matter how isolated their communities are. This could mark a huge step forward in providing equality of access to education in a world where nearly 270 million children do not go to school due to living in remote or rural locations.”

Not Just College. “In 2023, high schools will increase resources dedicated to preparing students for future paths that lead to places other than traditional college courses. Vocational and technical courses teaching a diverse range of skill sets are likely to become more popular as schools work with employers to develop new solutions to problems caused by the skills gap… As the demands of the new labor market shift away from seeking purely college-educated graduates and towards developing a workforce with the necessary skills, we can expect to see this change in the future.”

Virtual and Augmented Reality. “Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are two forms of extended reality (XR) that are becoming increasingly important within education systems. VR allows users to step into a virtual world, and there are a vast and growing number of “experiences” that let us do everything from step back in time and experiencing history through our own eyes to training for difficult and dangerous tasks such as conducting repairs in hazardous environments. Augmented reality still requires a device (e.g., a phone, tabled, or a headset) but is different from VR, as it involves superimposing computer-generated images onto what the user is actually seeing. The advantage here is that it can provide real-time information – for example, warning a trainee in a manufacturing environment that a piece of machinery may be dangerous. This is possible thanks to computer vision algorithms that analyze the images captured by cameras in the headset. In schools, AR textbooks are becoming available that contain images, and models that “come alive” when looked at through a smartphone camera, enabling students to get a closer, more in-depth look at anything from ancient Roman architecture to the inner workings of the human body.”

Soft Skills and STEM. “Soft skills include communication skills, teamworking, creative thinking, interpersonal problem-solving, relationship management, and conflict resolution. They will become increasingly important in a world where AI takes on many of our routine and mundane technical responsibilities. According to HR experts, soft skills are increasingly important to company success but far harder to measure and assess than “hard skills” such as mathematics, engineering, and computer programming. In 2023 we will see STEM education placing a growing emphasis on these vital skills, as well as increased efforts when it comes to measuring and assessing organizational capabilities in this area.”

 

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Unable to Save Changes in LSA Federated System

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When making a change via the Lawson Security Administrator (LSA) tool like adding or removing a role for example, saving the changes make get an error saying it cannot make the change.

 

“Unable to change object(RMidValue), change failed. Original Exception: null”

 

How can I resolve this?

 

Steps To Reproduce:

 

Duplicate this in a “Federated” setup, Lawson System Foundation (LSF) is federated with Landmark

 

You would need to have a lock situation with the write.lock file for the Infor Security Services (ISS) Search index (Lucene Index), example message from the LAWDIR/system/security_search.log:

 

org.apache.lucene.store.LockObtainFailedException: Lock obtain timed out: NativeFSLock@/lsfprod1/law/system/search/index/resource/DEFAULT/index_2/write.lock

 

 

 

at org.apache.lucene.store.Lock.obtain(Lock.java:84)

 

at org.apache.lucene.index.IndexWriter.init(IndexWriter.java:1060)

 

at org.apache.lucene.index.IndexWriter.<init>(IndexWriter.java:882)

 

at com.lawson.lawsec.search.lucene.LuceneIndexManager.<init>(LuceneIndexManager.java:45)

 

at com.lawson.lawsec.search.lucene.IndexWriterRegistry.initForTenant(IndexWriterRegistry.java:131)

 

at com.lawson.lawsec.search.lucene.IndexWriterRegistry.lookup(IndexWriterRegistry.java:196)

 

at com.lawson.lawsec.search.lucene.LuceneIndexServiceFactory.createLucenenServiceForRM(LuceneIndexServiceFactory.java:69)

 

at com.lawson.lawsec.search.lucene.LuceneIndexServiceFactory.createIndexServiceForRM(LuceneIndexServiceFactory.java:34)

 

at com.lawson.lawrm.search.RMIndexManager.updateIndex(RMIndexManager.java:244)

 

at com.lawson.lawsec.server.events.ServerRMDataAccessEvent.processRMResource(ServerRMDataAccessEvent.java:699)

 

at com.lawson.lawsec.server.events.ServerRMDataAccessEvent.processRMDataEvent(ServerRMDataAccessEvent.java:173)

 

at com.lawson.lawsec.server.events.ServerRMDataAccessEvent.process(ServerRMDataAccessEvent.java:92)

 

at com.lawson.lawsec.server.SecurityEventHandler.processEvent(SecurityEventHandler.java:634)

 

at com.lawson.lawsec.server.SecurityEventHandler.run(SecurityEventHandler.java:377)

 

 

 

Log into the LSA tool

 

Go to User Management

 

Go to User Maintenance

 

Search for a user

 

Right click on the user’s record and choose “Edit RM Information”

 

double click the Role field to show the roles available and assigned

 

add or remove a role from the list and hit finish.

 

Go to the Edit menu and choose “Change”

 

You should receive the error in the status bar of the LSA tool

 

“Unable to change object(RMidValue), change failed. Original Exception: null”

 

Work Around:

 

Try rebuilding the ISS Search Index, this is not guaranteed to work;

 

ssoconfig -c

 

enter your password for ssoconfig

 

option 20 –  Manage Search Index

 

option 2   –  Build Monitoring Full Index

 

When this finishes, then next;

 

option 1   –  Build Resources Full Index

 

This step may take a while, you can monitor the status of the rebuild in the LAWDIR/system/security_search.log file. When this finishes then;

 

option 4   –  Refresh Server Index

La Maison Camus Chooses Infor for Global Digital Transformation Plan

Recently, Maison Camus, one of the leading French spirits companies worldwide, has chosen Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage as part of their digital transformation plan. Per the press release, La Maison Camus aims to provide the cognac with a modern, structured tool to manage all activities from manufacturing to sales administration, including accounting and financial management, as well as procurement and stock management, all with increasingly demanding quality monitoring. Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage is a comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution designed to help food and beverage companies meet changing customer expectations, better manage their supply chains and reduce waste. This solution, with the help of their partners Hetic3 proposing to have all the business and functional expertise in this sector, was decisive in the choice in terms of their ability to support the cognac manufacturer in optimizing and accelerating its activities, without sacrificing any of the level of quality demanded by its customers. The solution will be deployed in January 2024 in a multi-tenant cloud environment powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and will allow the 120 employees dedicated to the cognac activity to concentrate on higher value-added tasks.

 

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How Integration-As-A-Service Could Be The Missing Link For People-Centric Organizations

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems act as an organization’s central hub for data, transactions, logistics, and almost every aspect of your business. In modern people-centric organizations, lots of time and money is invested in ERP systems, yet even with all the manpower, there is still so much needed to get the most out of your systems. This is where automation can come in handy. More specifically – integration-as-a-service. Claus Jepsen, Forbes Councils Member and CTO at Unit4, shares an article explaining how much of a difference maker integration-as-a-service is for people-based organizations. According to Jepsen, Integration-as-a-service offers an opportunity to realize their ambitions of automation—and make time and cost savings. This can be especially time-consuming for professional services organizations (PSOs), says Jepsen. PSOs require a multitude of applications in their software ecosystem since no ERP provider delivers all required capabilities in one suite. ERP vendors can offer a suite that includes turnkey integration flows. Even better, they can offer “integration-as-a-service,” removing the burden of integration by not only delivering the integrations but also maintaining and updating your company’s whole ecosystem of integration flows on an ongoing basis. However, Jepsen points out, integration alone isn’t a full solution; it’s what you do with that data that really matters. Below are three ways, according to Jepsen’s industry insights, that you can utilize integration-as-a-service to create new value by offering new opportunities and greater efficiencies for PSOs.

  1. Cut down on manual work. “Automation ensures data consistency and accuracy, and it can free up your people to do the things that add real value to your organization. At a time when finding and retaining talent is a challenge, this could be a vital tool for attraction and recruitment.”
  2. Keep up with the pace of legislation. “It takes a highly knowledgeable team to take care of data privacy and cybersecurity, but that’s a costly investment. With integration-as-a-service, you can hand the job over to your supplier, saving yourself time and money.”
  3. Prevent disruption to business-critical systems. “It’s possible for your service to be disrupted whenever an application integrated with your ERP system updates its API or software. This can be a significant issue for any business-critical system. An ERP supplier that proactively monitors these updates will change its whole service in advance, preventing disruption for all customers.”

Jepsen concludes that integration-as-a-service could be the missing link within your people-based organization as it’s an effective way to realize the potential of your ERP and the potential of your employees talents across your organization.

 

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