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Infor LX Tips, Infor LN Tips, BPCS Tips, Baan Tips, Infor M3 Tips & Infor ERP News

Crossroads Connections

Infor ERP Tips & News from the Experts

Infor LX | Infor LN | BPCS | Baan | Infor M3

We're excited to unveil our revamped BPCS/LX Technical Staff Augmentation Services

George Moroses 0 13306 Article rating: 5.0

We're excited to share some updates about our BPCS/LX Technical Staff Augmentation Services. At Crossroads, we're refining our staff augmentation structures to better cater to specific job descriptions. This enhanced offering is designed to provide our clients with the opportunity to seamlessly maintain product-level support (BPCS/LX – RPG) and development assistance. What sets this program apart is its ability to offer significant cost savings compared to traditional time and material arrangements. We aim to make staff augmentation more accessible and customizable to meet varying budgetary needs.

As part of this agreement, Crossroads will allocate a dedicated BPCS/LX technical resource for a set number of hours per week. The exact hours will be mutually agreed upon during the sourcing requirements discussions, ensuring that the support arrangement aligns perfectly with your needs.

Key Features of the Technical Staff Augmentation Service:

  • Flexible Hours: Tailored to your specific needs, we'll collaborate with you to determine a fixed number of hours per week that best aligns with your requirements.

  • Duration Options: Choose from flexible prepaid agreement durations of 3, 6, 9, or 12 months.

  • Remote Accessibility: Our technical services are primarily remote, but onsite assistance can also be discussed and arranged during the project kickoff phase, ensuring comprehensive support regardless of location.

  • Expertise Spectrum: Our dedicated BPCS/LX technical resources boast a comprehensive skill set, including proficiency in RPG, thorough documentation practices, design capabilities, familiarity with IBMi system foundations, job scheduling expertise, SQL proficiency, CL development capabilities, and more.

  • Scope Clarification: While our agreement primarily focuses on technical support and development assistance, application support falls outside the defined scope and can be considered separately upon request.

This innovative approach to technical staff augmentation is designed to streamline your operations, enhance system reliability, and empower your team to maximize the full potential of your BPCS/LX environment. Let's embark on this journey together, customizing technical staff augmentation solutions that precisely align with your business objectives and budgetary constraints.

Request a phone consultation or Learn

Introducing VJES (Visual Job Execution Software)

Kathy Barthelt 0 18949 Article rating: 5.0

You would be hard-pressed to completely miss the stories in the news recently about quality issues in manufacturing. The crux of the issue has been a complete focus on production and a lack of focus on quality. Yes, it is a wonderful thing to get the goods out the door, but when you’re sacrificing quality, what good is it really?

There are specifications for production for a reason. Engineering exists for a reason. If products are not built according to exact design specifications, scrap is likely to go up, rework goes up, customer returns and/or service requests go up, and customer satisfaction and overall customer confidence in your product plummets.

Is all of that worth it to get the good out the door in the shortest amount of time possible?

Every manufacturer relies on a few core measurements to manage their operations. Measurements like efficiency, productivity, capacity, labor and equipment utilization are used by manufacturers across the globe to benchmark performance and assess the effectiveness of processes.

Quality needs to be part of that mix. Because measurements like efficiency and productivity don’t necessarily mean high quality, incorporating ways to ensure quality from the start can help to eliminate waste and rework.

Manufacturing quality is achieved through quality control using documented, repeatable, and measurable processes.

What if you could incorporate quality control in every operation, at every work center to not only ensure high-quality finished goods but also simultaneously train high-quality operators?

Introducing Crossroads’ ERP independent solution, VJES (Visual Job Execution Software)...

Infor LN & Baan Tip: Performance improvement by setting the First Free Number Cache (tcmcs0651m000)

Kathy Barthelt 0 26870 Article rating: 5.0

Many transactions in all kinds of modules use order numbers or serial numbers. These order numbers are most often automatically generated. In the Number Groups (tcmcs0151m000) session you can define groups of order numbers used for dedicated areas. A Number Group is a group of the first free number series that you can assign to a specific use. All the numbers that Infor LN generates in the number groups that are dedicated to the same purpose are unique.

All the first free numbers are stored in the table tcmcs050.

As many different processes can request a free number from the number groups, we often see delays in the performance, due to locking on the first free number records. This locking issue can have a severe impact on the performance of huge batch-type transactions, but also on the performance perceived by individual users in many areas in LN.

For example:

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: Automated Approach to Your Cash Application Process with ARP

George Moroses 0 20628 Article rating: 5.0

Advanced Remittance Processing, ARP, provides an automated approach to your cash application process. ARP works together with Accounts Receivable to save valuable time and resources by automatically applying incoming payments to open receivables during daily batch processing. You can easily and efficiently resolve unapplied remittances online.

Advanced Remittance Processing (ARP) is an automatic cash application process that allows you to perform the following functions:

Revamp Your Productivity: Discover Crossroads RMC's Ultimate Solution

Crossroads RMC 0 12731 Article rating: 5.0

In the dynamic landscape of life hacks and evolving routines, finding new ways to enhance productivity is always on our agenda.

Enter Crossroads RMC – your secret weapon for multiplying productivity effortlessly! Imagine elevating your team's output by integrating just ONE additional member, available on-demand. What sets this apart is the convenience of access—our specialists are ready to assist you 24/7, even during weekends and holidays.

Introducing Tailored Staff Augmentation Services by Crossroads RMC:

  • Access to functional and technical support around the clock.
  • In-depth expertise as an Infor Partner across all Infor LN / Baan and Infor LX / BPCS versions.
  • Centralized, dedicated support ensuring quick response times and thorough follow-up.
  • Varied communication channels including phone, text, email, online portals, Microsoft Teams, web meetings, and in-person visits.
  • Transparent monthly reports to monitor service utilization.
  • Comprehensive ERP disaster recovery solutions.
  • Specialized ION support.


Kickstart with a complimentary 1-hour consultation to explore our customizable staff augmentation plans. These plans are crafted to simplify case logging, usage tracking, meeting scheduling, live chatting, Infor resource reviews, and much more...

Infor LX / BPCS & Infor LN / Baan Tip: A New Wave of Cyber Attacks: Five Actions to Take Now

IndustryWeek 3/7/2024

Crossroads RMC 0 18468 Article rating: 5.0

In the ever-evolving landscape of manufacturing, cyber threats have become a formidable challenge, with a notable spike in ransomware attacks catching many off guard. These sophisticated attacks deploy tactics that are often new and bewildering to manufacturers, pushing the boundaries of what we thought we knew about cybersecurity in the industry. Let's dive into how these advanced threats are reshaping our approach to digital defense in manufacturing.

https://www.industryweek.com/technology-and-iiot/cybersecurity/article/21284176/a-new-wave-of-cyber-attacks-five-actions-to-take-now

Streamline Your Audit Process: How Crossroads RMC and Avalara Ensure Compliance and Confidence

Crossroads RMC 0 12934 Article rating: 5.0

Be Audit Ready with Crossroads RMC and Avalara

Managing reports and preparing for audits can be incredibly time-consuming and laborious. It involves extracting data from multiple sources, consolidating information, and rectifying any discrepancies. These tasks often drain resources away from revenue-generating activities.

Fortunately, Avalara offers a comprehensive solution with robust reporting capabilities, drastically reducing the time required for these processes from weeks or months to mere minutes...

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

Tips: LN | Baan

Anthony Etzel

How to Improve Customer Shipments With OTTO - A Case Study

Setting Industry Service Standards

Shenandoah Manufacturing, a $20 million producer of poultry-raising equipment (heaters and brooders), had been having difficulty for some time shipping orders to customers in a timely manner. They had successfully implemented a popular ERP system and had been using it for more than 3 years, yet the situation didn't improve. 

Customer Service Representatives were complaining about the frequent backorders and late orders. Employees were giving it their best effort, but were frustrated, and customers were threatening to take their business elsewhere.

The company considered installing an APS system as a possible solution, but found implementation would be difficult, expensive, and running the system might be a challenging task as a number of key business practices would have to be changed. A consultant familiar with OTTO suggested they look at that product as an alternative to APS. Several OTTO aspects cited by the consultant convinced them to consider a cursorily review. Specifically:

  • The non-intrusive nature of the product.
  • It's relative inexpensive initial investment.
  • The low overall total cost of ownership.
  • The integration with their ERP system.

The initial demonstration was impressive. OTTO was installed on Shenandoah's server within 45 minutes of arrival and, most impressively, it was fully functional with their real “live” data immediately. Needless to say, the demo was well received. Even more importantly Shenandoah was able to “test drive” the software to prove its applicability before making any dollar commitments.

According to Mark Shank, Information Systems Manager, some baseline measurements were made last year, and it was determined that approximately 50% of their customer orders had shipped on time. As they began using OTTO, on-time order performance rose to 90% for the month. And Shenandoah caught up on its entire backlog and started working ahead on February's orders. In February on-time shipment performance jumped to 92% and subsequently on-time performance has ranged somewhere between 98.3% and 99.5% — well above the 96% goal set by Management.

OTTO provides the means for keeping the whole production organization focused on the few things that have to happen as the ship date approaches to get each order shipped on time. Components that have the potential for delaying an order are identified so they can be managed. Shenandoah's staff, a precious and limited resource, now concentrates on analyzing information and managing the right things at the right time rather than digging out date. To quote one production control individual: “what use to take hours now takes seconds.”

According to Roy Hackett, Plant Manager: "Knowing the right things to pay attention to at the right time — information provided by OTTO — has allowed on-time shipping to be improved by 40 percentage points in less than one month and a lead time reduction from 3-4 weeks to 1-2 weeks on the most important products"

Guessing at what and how much of the work being processed is for real customer orders versus planned orders is eliminated which is especially important when capacity is short during the heavy portion of the business cycle. 

“By focusing on the right things at the right time, production expedites and interruptions are far fewer, production flow is much smoother and productivity is significantly improved.”

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Anthony Etzel

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