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

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Infor ERP Tips & News from the Experts

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

What are the biggest struggles manufacturers face with regard to tax compliance?

George Moroses 0 31141 Article rating: 5.0
  • Tracking thousands of SKU numbers that cross taxability rules or vary in taxability based on state
  • Getting the rates right and filing the reports correctly
  • Surviving an audit (which in this business is inevitable)
  • Keeping track of all the smaller jurisdictions and their special districts
  • Ensuring a seamless process that is audit-able
  • Figuring out what is taxable and what isn’t
  • Tracking use tax

As with other manufacturing processes, having a repeatable, consistent process with sales and use tax compliance means automation. Automating sales and use tax compliance with a solution that ensures that consistent, accurate process means a solution that delivers:...

Infor LX & BPCS: What are your production orders telling you?

George Moroses 0 30719 Article rating: 5.0

Measure what you want to improve.

Six simple words, but put together they convey a powerful concept that can transform manufacturing companies. It’s a basic concept that’s hard to argue with: Collect data, see where the data leads you, and make changes that have a positive impact on the data. Repeat often.

If your company is manufacturing a product, you’re more than likely creating manufacturing variances. These variances tell managers...

Is Your Infor ERP System the Elephant in the Room?

Crossroads RMC 0 33781 Article rating: 5.0

The Infor ERP Elephant in the Room That Must Be Addressed

In a recent survey of Infor ERP customers, we discovered that 50% of respondents said that they did not know whether or not their ERP system had the features and functionality required for their business.  50%....1 out of every 2……not good.

Why is this the case? Well, the causes can be traced back to one of the following reasons:

  • A key-person has retired or left the company and their knowledge left with them.
  • Systems were implemented based on how the previous system worked.
  • Upgrades and implementations were viewed as a “technical upgrade”, meaning that the upgrade was done to get off an old or outdated platform. The new version wasn't researched, its functionality was unknown and no one was trained on it.

You may say “So what? Who cares if our team doesn’t know what else is available, or how the rest of the ERP system functions? Does it really matter?”

Yes - It matters more than you think.... 

Infor LN & Baan Tip of the Week: Year End for Finance

Kathy Barthelt 0 64872 Article rating: 5.0

Year-End is always a busy time!

So busy that it's easy to forget things that must be done in your ERP system to close out the year properly and set you up for a good start to the following year. Here are some things to add to your to-do checklist.

The year-end close process provides an opportunity to:

Finance Specific Items:

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

Tips: LN | Baan

Kathy Barthelt
/ Categories: Infor LN & Baan Tips

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Product Configurator - Part 2

Baan Tips

Who gets involved?
  1. Most commonly Engineering is involved in writing the rules, creating the bills and routings.
  2. Sales or Customer Service determines the questions and the order they are asked in.
  3. Sales or Customer Service determines the rules for the pricing.
  4. Sales, or Customer Service, and Engineering work together in determining the part number, description and text.

What are the steps?

  1. You must start by defining the features and options (questions and answers) and the order in which these are asked. We work this out first using sticky notes and large easel paper. Normally during the process we find that we want to move these questions around. Setting them down on paper makes the process of getting the data into Baan much more efficient. We also then have a record of what decisions were made prior to entering the data. This is normally a joint effort of Engineering and Sales. This is required and must be the first step.
  2. Constraints for features and options. These are the rules for determining what questions are asked and which options are allowed. This is generally done by Engineering or whoever is responsible for the configurator. This is required.
  3. Generic Bill of Material. All possible bill options are entered here and constraints are written to determine which options are selected based on the answers to the questions. This is generally done by Engineering or whoever is responsible for the configurator. This is a required step.
  4. Generic Routing. Similar to the bill of material, but used for generation of the routing steps. This is generally done by Engineering or whoever is responsible for the configurator. This is optional.
  5. Generic Item Data. This consists of creating custom item numbers, descriptions, text, material, size or standard fields in the custom item master. This is generally done by Engineering or whoever is responsible for the configurator though Sales may have some involvement. This is optional.
  6. Generic Pricing. This is used to calculate the selling price based on the answers to the questions. This is normally a responsibility of Sales or whoever determines the pricing. This group is also trained on writing the constraints for this section only. This is optional.

What other modules will be affected?
  1. Quotes, sales orders and projects.
  2. PRP planning for the configured items.
  3. Managing changes to the configuration. Who, what and when?
  4. Variant statistics.
  5. MPS and generic items.
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Kathy Barthelt

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