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Combilift Boosts Equipment Uptime and Customer Service with Infor Coleman AI-Driven Parts Recommendations

Infor recently announced that Combilift, the largest global manufacturer of multi-directional forklifts and a leading provider of long-load handling solutions, is successfully utilizing Infor Coleman AI-driven parts recommendations combined with Infor CloudSuite Industrial to boost equipment uptime and customer service while increasing employee satisfaction. Per the press release, the company seized on the opportunity to leverage Infor Coleman AI with Infor CloudSuite Industrial to further improve the customer and employee experience by having the AI system generate the right set of parts for service quotes. As Combilift rapidly grows, Coleman AI is not only improving the efficiency and accuracy of parts recommendations, it is also going to scale the service quote process to help reduce stress on staff and can help ensure first-time fixes for customers. Additionally, Combilift is using Infor homepage services to help deliver more efficiency and accuracy to the production department responsible for production KPIs (key performance indicators). Going forward, Combilift’s key initiatives will be vendor performance tracking with Infor Coleman AI to help improve their supply chain.

 

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Lawson Users – How to change the default application in Lawson Mingle

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When logging into Lawson Mingle as a user, by default, you load into the Infor Mingle app but maybe you want to load into Lawson Business Intelligence or Lawson Portal by default always.

 

To change the default application, first login to Infor Mingle

Once, logged in, open the waffle icon on the top left

You should see all the Lawson apps you have access to here

Infor Lawson gives access to Lawson Portal and very common. In order to make that the default application, click and drag that icon to the left of the Infor Ming.le App and drop:

The first icon in the top left will always load by default.

Now reload the page and watch it load Lawson portal first.

Hope this little tip was helpful!

Three Guiding Principles For Leaders Using Digital Technology

Digital technology, while not new to the business world, has made significant changes since the start of the 2020 pandemic. The impact could be found mainly in business operations and strategies – remote work, virtual meetings, and increased customer engagement to name a few. Benjamin Laker, expert commentator on global affairs, shares an article on Forbes describing key principles for leaders to utilize digital technology efficiently. the key for leaders to effectively use digital technology, Laker explains, it to find balance between what works and what is excessive. “It is important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all solution — what works for one leader may not work for another,’ Laker points out. Instead, he explains, leaders must experiment and find what works best for them and their teams. Below are Laker’s three principles that can guide leaders using digital technology.

  1. Be intentional with your communication. “Leadership must be more intentional about communication. In the past, leaders could rely on face-to-face interactions to build relationships with their teams. However, leaders must be more deliberate about communicating with their teams in a digital world.”
  2. Create a digital rhythm. “Leaders should focus on creating systems and processes that help their teams thrive. In the past, leaders could rely on in-person interactions to structure and support their teams. However, in a digital world, leaders must be more intentional about creating systems that help their teams succeed.”
  3. Always look out for burnout. “The always-on nature of digital technology can lead to burnout if leaders are not careful. So leaders must ensure they take breaks and disconnect from work regularly.”

It is the digital age and digital technology will continue to take over every aspect of business. Business leaders need to find effective ways to stay afloat.

 

Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2023

Gartner, Inc. recently announced its list of 10 top strategic technology trends of 2023 at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo™. Frances Karamouzis, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, explains their list to be strategic, and is “built around three themes — optimize, scale and pioneer — where technologies can help organizations optimize resilience, operations or trust, scale vertical solutions and product delivery, and pioneer with new forms of engagement, accelerated responses or opportunity.”

The top strategic technology trends for 2023 are:

Sustainability
“In a recent Gartner survey, CEOs reported that environmental and social changes are now a top three priority for investors, after profit and revenue. Oganizations need a new sustainable technology framework that increases the energy and material efficiency of IT services, enables enterprise sustainability through technologies like traceability, analytics, renewable energy and AI, and deploys IT solutions to help customers achieve their own sustainability goals.”Pioneer
Metaverse
“A metaverse is persistent, providing enhanced immersive experiences. Gartner expects that a complete metaverse will be device-independent and won’t be owned by a single vendor. It will have a virtual economy of itself, enabled by digital currencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).”Superapps
“A superapp combines the features of an app, a platform and an ecosystem in one application. It not only has its own set of functionalities, but it also provides a platform for third parties to develop and publish their own mini-apps on. By 2027, Gartner predicts that more than 50% of the global population will be daily active users of multiple superapps.”

Adaptive AI
“Adaptive AI systems aim to continuously retrain models and learn within runtime and development environments based on new data to adapt quickly to changes in real-world circumstances that were not foreseen or available during initial development. They use real-time feedback to change their learning dynamically and adjust goals. This makes them suitable for operations where rapid changes in the external environment or changing enterprise goals require an optimized response.”

Optimize
Digital Immune System
“CIOs are looking for new practices and approaches that their teams can adopt to deliver that high business value, along with mitigating risk and increasing customer satisfaction. A digital immune system provides such a roadmap. Gartner predicts that by 2025, organizations that invest in building digital immunity will reduce system downtime by up to 80% – and that translates directly into higher revenue.”

Applied Observability 
“Observable data reflects the digitized artifacts, such as logs, traces, API calls, dwell time, downloads and file transfers, that appear when any stakeholder takes any kind of action. Applied observability feeds these observable artifacts back in a highly orchestrated and integrated approach to accelerate organizational decision-making.”

AI Trust, Risk and Security Management 
“Organizations must implement new capabilities to ensure model reliability, trustworthiness, security and data protection. AI trust, risk and security management (TRiSM) requires participants from different business units to work together to implement new measures.”

Scale 
Industry Cloud Platforms
“Industry cloud platforms offer a combination of SaaS, platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providing industry-specific sets of modular capabilities to support specific industry business use cases. By 2027, Gartner predicts that more than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms to accelerate their business initiatives.”

Platform Engineering
“The goal of platform engineering is to optimize the developer experience and accelerate product teams’ delivery of customer value. Gartner predicts that 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams by 2026 and that 75% of those will include developer self-service portals.”

Wireless Value Realization
“Gartner predicts that by 2025, 60% of enterprises will be using five or more wireless technologies simultaneously. As networks move beyond pure connectivity, they will provide insight using built-in analysis and low-power systems will harvest energy directly from the network. This means the network will become a source of direct business value.”

 

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AS400 Lawson IBMDB program CDRIVER

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On the iSeries/AS400, A CDRIVER is a Lawson IBMDB program written in “C Language” and runs on the System i platform.

Its primary use is to retrieve data from DB2 using Structured Query Language (SQL)/Call Level Interface (CLI) Application Program Interfaces (APIs).

Furthermore, Lawson Jobs are using CDRIVER. Each Lawson Job has its own CDRIVER per Data Area or Product Line. Its purpose is to run SQL commands to retrieve database records requested by the job connected to it. The job name will be automatically registered in the CDRIVER joblog and the job that is attached to it may change if REUSE is set to “ON” in the ladb.cfg.

Chuo Spring Leverages Infor ERP to Drive Further Business Efficiencies and Standardization

Infor Japan K.K. recently announced that automotive components manufacturer Chuo Spring Co. Ltd. has rolled out Infor SyteLine, Infor’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for the discrete manufacturing industry, to its base in the United States. Per the press release, this roll-out follows a global standards-based model approach with results of faster implementation at its U.S. base, as well as improved accuracy of inventory management. Since its implementation of Infor SyteLine at its Indonesia base in the latter half of 2019, Chuo Spring achieved real-time visualization and improved operations from the head office. In addition, Infor SyteLine has improved operational efficiencies, with the linking of electronic data interchange (EDI) data to order and shipping data resulting in savings of 50 hours per month. Further, as the company moves forward with Infor SyteLine, mutual adoption of initiatives between overseas subsidiaries will lead to the increased competitiveness of overseas bases and the group as a whole.

 

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Benefits of Infor’s Multi-Tenant Cloud

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With Microsoft’s end-of-life for Windows 2012, and Lawson’s end-of-life coming up in 2026, many organizations are considering a move to a cloud solution.  And Infor’s Multi-Tenant cloud is a true contender.  Here are just a few of the benefits of choosing to move into the Infor Cloud.

Flexibility

Once per year, customers have the ability to request a swap in Infor products.  Swappable Infor products include any multi-tenant products that the customer has subscribed to for at least one year.  Talk about flexible!

If you are already in the cloud, and looking for a technology swap, contact your Infor Account Executive today!  Your AE’s contact information can be found in the Contact widget on your Concierge home page.

Transparency

Pricing for storage, additional non-production environments, and programmatic access can always be found on Infor’s web page.  Non-production environments can be used temporarily as-needed (a minimum of 6 months) to save on costs.  Storage can be requested subject to a minimum amount and time.  Programmatic access, or the interaction between Infor products and third-party programs, will use the Infor OS service and is priced separately.  Again, this pricing is always available on the Infor Docs website.

Support

Severity 1 issues are covered by customer support 24x7x365.  Response times are within 30 minutes from Infor’s receipt of the logged request, and they are working to decrease that SLA all the time.  They are currently working toward a goal of increasing support for Severity 2 issues to 24×7.  And they are improving their response templates to make sure customers are receiving the most accurate and detailed information possible on each ticket.

Availability

Infor offers credits if the Multi-Tenant cloud availability dips below a specified threshold.  This credit would be calculated by the month.

Infor refers to these ideals as the customer’s “Bill of Rights”.  And as great as they are, Infor is constantly working toward improving on these “rights”.  Stay tuned!  More good news is coming!

 

How Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Will Reshape Enterprise Technology

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are a universal staple in many in consumers’ lives, from streaming service suggestions of what to watch next to GPS route options based on your past behavior. AI can emulate human decision-making from the algorithm-driven foundation of ML that enables the former. We see automation as something that would better our lives by limiting our choices. Whereas in a larger sense, these automation technologies can be used by companies in many aspects of the business – from transporting products to warehouse workers for packing, processing invoices, to assisting with many other repetitive business tasks. It’s clear that AI and ML has made a huge impact in enterprise technology. Tech-driven solutions from these automation tools have helped companies reduce costs, create a more efficient logistics chain, and free up employees to add value to their organizations in other positions. Nate Farshchi, media and telecommunications senior analyst with RSM US LLP, shares an article on BuiltIn – the online community for startups and tech companies – indicating that plenty of strong signals indicate that AI, ML, and automation will play an important role in the future of business. Accenture notes that, currently, “only 12 percent of enterprise applications are utilizing AI and ML at a maturity level which results in a significant competitive advantage.” IDC has also estimated that “90 percent of enterprise applications will be supplemented by artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI & ML) by the year 2025.” Farshchi notes that adopting AI and ML applications is also becoming less expensive and faster because of lower training costs and quicker training periods for their employees. The future of AI, ML, and automation, Farshchi concludes, appears to be bright and has a very high ceiling. Businesses should act now to get ahead with this enterprise technology.

 

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5 ways ERP can minimize the massive cost of power outages

Power outages can happen any time. Depending on your environment, they can be predictable. However, in any power outage, any business is at risk. Productivity comes to a standstill and you have the horror of losing any unsaved on-premise data. One of the easiest solutions to the latter problem is to have your business information on the cloud, especially your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Cloud ERP can be accessible over the internet anywhere and in times like sudden power outages, almost everything is stored safely in the cloud for you to recover. BusinessTech, the largest business news website in South Africa, knows that their area is no stranger to power outages. While you may not experience as many power outages where you live, they can still happen and at any time. Experts at BusinessTech share 5 ways that an ERP can help minimize risks and costs when you are in a power outage situation.

  1. Reduced risk of data loss. “When ERP data is in the cloud, this mitigates the risk of data loss, downtime from hardware failure, and malware attacks.”
  2. High availability. “Public cloud offers high availability, which is one of the key goals of moving to the cloud.”
  3. A secure platform for business. “Cloud providers tend to have high-level security technology and practices in place. These should include access-and identity management, multi-factor authentication, and Intrusion Detection.”
  4. Secure access to important data. “Among the major advantages of ERP software is the customizable dashboards that provide an understanding of business operations. With drag-and-drop visual elements, users can quickly interpret data to make informed decisions.”
  5. Business continuity compliance. “Backing up data is the first step to any successful business continuity plan, and this is certainly made easier – and more dependable – with the cloud. In addition, one of the key advantages of using the cloud for business continuity is that applications can be accessed from anywhere.”

If you’re not already in the Cloud ERP space, now may be a good time to look into it instead of later on when it may be too late.

 

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