Crossroads RMC Welcomes Robert Brown, as a Sr. Business Consultant!
Bob brings 30+ years of shop floor and project management skills to Crossroad RMC. He is a self-starter that has progressively mastered the Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Finance modules within Infor LX. Bob will get started with EDI/ECM set up for new trading partners and within the Supply Chain ranks. Bob is a great addition to the Crossroads RMC team, and we look forward to his leadership expertise on implementations and upgrades in the near future.

Did you implement your ERP system 5 years ago… or maybe 20 years ago? At the time, it was like a brand new car… sleek, fast, top-of-the-line, and fuel-efficient. And although it may have needed a few minor “adjustments”, overall you were very pleased. Fast forward to today. Does it still have that new car smell? Does it run as efficiently as it used to? Do you know how to fix a problem when it occurs?

While ERP systems are certainly designed to last, over time, your business changes, your customers’ needs change, employees change and you are left with a system that may run “fine”, but you certainly don’t feel the same way about it as you did when it was brand new.

So the good news is that you CAN restore that “new car smell” with a utilization review, or business process review.

What is a Utilization or Business Process Review and Why Do I Need One?
Simply put, a business process review is an...

Did you know that the average cost of a cyber attack is $2.6 million? Here is a recent article by Anthony Green - FoxTech, discussing the top threats for 2022 and what to do to prevent an attack on your business.

The HR Director: Top cybersecurity threats for 2022 and how to protect against them.

Companies are collecting oceans of data, and struggle with transforming it into usable information. Most businesses focus on two methods of sharing data - the report and the dashboard. While these two terms mean many things to many people, it is important to understand what these terms mean and how the report and dashboard have similar features but they are not the same thing.  

What is a Report?

A report is meant to be used to gather detailed intelligence on the operations within an organization, thus a report can be either very broadly covering a wide scope of related information, or narrowly focusing on details of a single item, purpose, or event. All of this information, while presented in a report, is meant to be a snapshot in time.

Quite often, a report is built within the ERP system itself and often is constrained by the graphical and user limitations within the ERP. More often than not, large amounts of data are exported to Excel where added features allow for better manipulation of the data to a format that is digestible by users. Regardless, the data is only valid for that moment and time.

What is a Dashboard?

A dashboard is a graphical interface that provides at-a-glance views revolving around answering a central question. For example, an executive may ask you for up-to-the-minute details on "how the business is doing?". The answer to that question is as complex as the organizational structure of the company, but it is probably very simply measured with approximately 10 metrics. Those 10 metrics can likely be analyzed in chart form, and can and should be combined into one chart when the numbers are relatable or are on a similar scale. All these things should be considered when building a dashboard.

Dashboards, similar to the one in your vehicle, display critical data. Imagine driving down the road and having to push a bunch of buttons to find out how much fuel you have left, or having to pull over and pop the hood to check the oil pressure. It would be dangerous and a waste of your precious time. Your car's control panel or dashboard displays the most crucial information in an easy-to-use, graphical way.

How do Dashboards and Reports differ?

Infor Customer Meeting: 
Live Webinar for all Users

Wednesday, April 20
11:30am - 12:00pm EST

Please join Infor leadership, who will discuss the exciting future strategy for our LX, XA, and System21 customers in the Americas. In this session, we will cover our stated direction, product future, and how this will positively impact your business.  Additionally, we will discuss the driving forces behind these changes and how our study group of customers has been reacting.  Whether you are a long-time customer or a relatively new customer of Infor’s, we welcome you to join this brief update of the future of your ERP solution and introduce you to the Infor team that will service and support your organization.

Our GM of the Americas, Bill Vellante, and VP of the Americas, Jay Allison will host this 30-minute session.

RSVP now

Join Event

Spreadsheets are often the tool of choice for many organizations to store and arrange information for financial planning, analytics, compliance, and more. Ironically, for many business processes that involve managing data, it creates the exact opposite effect––silos of information and inefficiency. And because it stores organizational data in a readily sharable way, there is a high risk of exposing confidential information.

Read this Infor best practice guide to discover the top five business processes that a modern data and analytics architecture can automate and deliver far more value than spreadsheet-driven techniques.

Infor Best Practice Guide: 5 Ways Modern Analytics Reduces Spreadsheet Risk and Inefficiency

Nearly 70% of workers say that the biggest opportunity of automation lies in reducing time wasted on repetitive work.

Which repetitive tasks would workers most like to see automated? A recent study by McKinsey Global Institute found that there are three productivity killers that workers are eager to automate:

1. Data Collection: Eliminate human error and manual data entry by automatically collecting, uploading, or syncing data into a system of record (55%).
2. Approvals: Become more efficient by automating approvals, sign-offs, and confirmation requests (36%).
3. Updates: Reduce wasted time by automatically requesting status updates and other information (32%).

Workers believe that automating these tasks will reduce wasted time (69%), eliminate human error (66%) and recover hours lost to manual, repetitive tasks that could be automated (59%).

Too expensive you say? Too big of an effort to make it happen?  Not necessarily...

MARCH… "in like a lion and out like a lamb"

Problems = Risk

Boy, it sure seems like we’ve seen our fair share of March “LIONS” over the past few years, wouldn’t you agree? Those lions have manifested mostly as external global problems outside of the control of any given person or manufacturing operation. As we know, problems = risk.

So, how do businesses respond to risk, specifically when it comes to their ERP system? We all deal with risks in our jobs every day. It is our response to the risk that makes all the difference. Creating short-term, midterm, and long-term response strategies ensure that a company can not only handle a fast-changing situation or emergency but also make the investments needed to seize opportunities and become more resilient.

To create these response strategies, manufacturers should examine:

• How did we get here?
• Where are we now?
• Where are we headed?
• What to do about it?

In order to really dig into each of these areas, our customers have successfully partnered with us to review a particular part of their business that they feel is at risk and sometimes have asked us to review everything…soup to nuts. This review is done through an ERP Utilization Review. In this review, we can dig into such things as...