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.

The calendar is fresh, the resolutions are made and the opportunities are endless!

So, it is time to dive right in and start tackling your to-do’s?

Right??

...Not just yet!

First, you need to take the time to think about your ERP strategy.

What’s an ERP strategy?

We are proud to announce that Tim Baker, Crossroads RMC Senior Solutions Architect & Project Manager, has become a member of the Infor LX User Community Board of Directors!

Tim brings 32 years of experience to Crossroads RMC and takes pride in offering exceptional leadership and expertise to achieve the goals and objectives of his clients. It is this level of experience that will make Tim an excellent representative for the Infor LX Community going forward as a member of the board.

At Crossroads RMC, Tim serves as a Senior Solutions Architect and Project Manager for Infor LX and Infor ION implementations. He has been a Senior Manager of Software Development and Support, Senior System Analyst, and has managed software development team objectives and projects, which included planning, installation, and software modification of BPCS, Infor LX (ERP LX), I2, DC Service, and web development software. Additionally, he has managed a multitude of projects and led analysis, design, training, and development efforts across multiple ERP verticals.

Please join us in congratulating Tim and wishing him well in his efforts to help the Infor LX User Community!
Infor User Communities allow you to network with other customers and discuss any of Infor’s software solutions. 

Not currently a member of the Infor LX User Group?
The LX User Group has moved to https://concierge.infor.com. All access requests require approval by your organization's support admin. Once you have access to https://concierge.infor.com, click on the Communities box, and join the LX - User Group - LX. 

Don’t laugh! I know, I know…many of our customers say that after 7-10 years they are finally settling in after the implementation! We have seen many a customer stretch out the lifespan of their ERP system to 20+ years. That sounds great for the company’s bank account, but is it good for the business?

An outdated ERP system hurts your business in many ways, not just with slow performance. The best-of-breed functionality is now 2 decades old, and obsolete technology can't leverage newer technology. Lack of integration leads to siloed data that hurts communication and your internal teams feel the pain, and your customers are noticing. Poor visibility into your operations makes it nearly impossible to achieve industry-based regulatory compliance and meet financial auditing requirements. Not to mention the sheer size of Big Data that is being collected today vs. 2 decades ago or the fact that your vendor is no longer supporting your ERP version.

Let’s scrap it all and start over!...

After a week of blocking the Suez Canal, the now-famous cargo ship, Ever Given has been freed from the 27,000 cubic meters of sand and mud that were surrounding the ship. Supply chains are flowing again. I for one am very glad to hear that the ship has been freed since coffee, toilet paper and a whole host of other items were being held up! In all seriousness, it was and is a crisis that will have ripple effects on the global economy.

As I often do, I started to relate this crisis to the world of ERP that we live in. Although we are not responsible for dealing with a situation like what happened in the Suez Canal, we all deal with problems in our jobs every day. Some of these problems are small, and some are not so small. Some problems are caused by human error, some by prevailing winds that blow us in a particular direction, and some by circumstances out of our control. It is what we do about the problems we encounter that make all the difference. We could bury our heads and hope the problems somehow go away on their own, or we can take action and do something to bring about the change necessary to get past the blockage.

I see “blockages” every day in working with my customers. Sometimes it is a lack of understanding of best practices in a given department, or a reliance on tribal knowledge that determines how and why something is done in the system, or inefficient manual processes destroying a company’s efficiency, or hundreds (or thousands) of customizations standing in the way of an upgrade, or employees labeling an ERP system as “no longer a fit” when their company is only using 10% of the available functionality in the system.

So, maybe today we could focus on what it would take to remove the “blockage” that we have in our way. What benefits could we realize if we worked together to bring about incremental change? Could we actually get that upgrade done? Could we start operating based on industry-leading best practices? Could we increase our market share? Could we decrease our costs and boost our revenue? All of this is possible.

Contact me today so that we can begin to work together to solve the problems that stand in the way of your progress.

solutions@crossroadsrmc.com or 800.762.2077

We all remember our school days and the nervousness that we felt when it came time to get our grades. Even if we were doing well, we were still nervous. Sometimes we experienced that same nervousness when it came time for a performance review in our job. Nervousness…sometimes dread…knowing that our performance maybe was not what we wanted it to be, or others expected it to be. 

Somehow I think the feelings that we felt in our past often find ways to creep into our present. I have seen this recently when I suggested an ERP system review to one of our customers. They immediately became flustered and thought about every possible problem that they knew existed within the software and how they were currently using it.

An ERP system review or more specifically a Utilization Review is NOT a personal report card, or performance review showing how well a particular individual does his/her job, nor is it an attack on the team that implemented the software. 

An ERP Utilization Review will:

Product taxability may seem straightforward because there are generally only two options: taxable or exempt. Yet that seemingly simple contrast fails to truly capture the inherent complexity of sales tax compliance. In fact, it’s a multistep process that starts with determining where a business has sales tax nexus. Knowing whether the products or services one sells are taxable or exempt is critical to the compliance process, from start to finish.

The good news is that you don’t have to be a tax expert, nor do you need to stay up on the latest tax rules and regulations in each state or country where you do business. Avalara handles all of this for you and Crossroads RMC provides the integration to Infor LN, Infor LX, Baan, and BPCS to make staying compliant a no-brainer.

Want to learn more?...

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...