2 posts tagged “micorsoft dynamics ax”

Sometimes I sit here in front of the computer gathering my thoughts for another blog and I wonder if anyone is really interested. Well, clearly they are, as a few people have noticed I’ve not posted for a while and dropped me a line to see if I’m alright and when I’m due to post again. Well folks, thanks for your concern and more importantly for your interest.

The reason for the gap in blogs is that we were preparing and then exhibiting at the PPMA show at the NEC in Birmingham. You may recall that we have been appointed as a Partner to Shoplogix – and we were taking the show at the NEC as an opportunity to launch the product properly here in the UK.

As a business we have deep experience in delivering ERP – particularly Infor ERP LN / Baan and Microsoft Dynamics AX / Axapta but we took the Shoplogix product line on as it is absolutely suited to our target market of manufacturing companies.

If you take a look at our Shoplogix webpage you’ll see all about the product there. In short, if you haven’t read any of my previous blogs (and it still surprises me when you do) , (by the way, say hello) Plantnode by Shoplogix is a device that collects data on the status of your production machinery and allows your operators to collect data in real-time so you can improve efficiency.

Anyway we were at the NEC with my now famous Rolling Ball Sculpture which is what I use to simulate a machine (see the Video on Youtube!) and we had a great deal of interest.

I’ve been around ERP and senior IT management for a long time and I know how difficult it is to put a business case together for a serious investment in either large infrastructure projects or complex business systems. What is refreshing about the Shoplogix Plantnode product is that I can draw up a business case in a matter of minutes – it can deliver real improvement in performance and it’s easily quantifiable and I can demonstrate a rapid return on investment (ROI) within minutes.

Having spent years either justifying ERP or auditing other people’s business cases it’s a refreshing change when the document can be so concise. No calculating transaction value or cost to raise a purchase order required.... (though, I do enjoy the intellectual thrust of that).

On a couple of occasions last week I was also able to change some businesses view with a couple of focussed questions – which in the world of ERP I don’t think would simply be possible.

One person suggested that the Shoplogix product was perhaps too expensive for them. Not knowing the price this was quite an assumption – and he was certainly pleasantly surprised when told. The question I asked was ‘Why are you at the show?’ and the answer was (and a likely and probable answer given that is was a packaging and processing machinery show) that they were looking to buy another production line. I asked if they were happy with the efficiency of their current lines – and they said they couldn’t be sure because they didn’t know how efficient, or not, they were now. I have persuaded them to delay a significant investment into a new line until they have established this with a relatively low investment into a Shoplogix Plantnode unit. Likewise a company that was considering moving to two shifts is deploying Plantnode to see if they really need to do this. We reckon that we can improve their OEE from the region of 60% to, a still not World class, 75% which will allow them to delay a second shift by somewhere around 12 months.  A considerable saving and return on their investment.

 If only ERP were so easy to justify!

An important part of our business is providing a managed service to companies who use Microsoft AX (formally known as Axapta) and Infor ERP LN (formally known as Baan). This covers both technical support and functional consulting. We also, for a number of customers, provide support for all of their IT systems – we become the IT department.

Often businesses approach us because they are looking to save money on their internal resource, or realise that they are facing some risk in that the people that they employ could depart and leave them in a fix. It is not untypical to find that the people who work in IT, and who support the ERP system, have been around the business a long time. They have had the excitement of implementing the ERP system and are now lynchpins in the continued use of it.

There is a paper on our website ‘IT Support Options’ that discusses this in more detail – take a look and tell me what you think.

The challenge we always face when discussing our pricing with the potential customer is often centred around our estimates for the number of calls we believe we are likely to receive each month. We always suggest a higher number than the customer anticipates. For clarity we don’t just pick a number out the air – we will go on site and interview the users and look closely at how the systems are currently set up and used.

Why the disparity? Why do we always, in the eyes of the customer, overstate the number of calls (cases) that will be handled? We call it the ‘Not Jim Syndrome’.

‘Not Jim Syndrome’ is this: Where a long serving employee is in sole charge of IT and ERP the demand from the users decline in proportion to the user friendliness of Jim and how Jim feels valued by the organisation.

Actually I am being particularly flippant here and I don’t want to offend unnecessarily any Jims out there. It is obvious though that an internally resourced IT department of one, or two, is going to be limited by a number of things. Mainly time – there are just not enough hours in the day to solve all the problems, or importantly, take advantage of the features of your IT and, more particularly, your ERP system. It is also likely that the person just won’t have the breadth of knowledge about your IT and ERP to be able maximise the use of it. And finally, there’s history. I’ll expand a little more on this if I may.

The chances are that the user requests came in thick and fast in the early days of the ERP implementation and on some days Jim could, under the pressure of work, become a little tetchy. After a while people stop asking. They either accept that something can’t be done or start working round ‘the problem’. (See my other blogs on using spreadsheets for reporting).

Another issue is that it is often easier to keep fixing the symptoms of an issue rather than dealing with the underlying cause. Each day Jim ‘fixes’ an error rather than investigating and changing the system to prevent the error occurring in the first place. This is sometimes done for one of three reasons; one, they just don’t have the time to do the investigation. Two, they just don’t have the knowledge on how to solve the problem or three, they prefer it that way as it makes then ‘indispensable’.

Anyway, to return to the main body of this blog: Eventually, after some haggling we agree a managed service contract with our customer and we offer our helpdesk service. The calls start at a trickle and then, when people realise they are getting answers to their questions, and solving some long term issues, the trickle becomes a stream and then a river. Importantly they begin to ask about the functionality they are not currently using in their ERP systems and we help them investigate the use of that.

So, what conclusions could you draw from this? Well I’d suggest these; If you’re a business that is relying on one or two people to run your IT and ERP then you may not save vast sums by outsourcing but you will probably make greater use of the IT and ERP you already own – get better value from it. Or, if you are a Jim – then you might do your business a favour by contracting with some external resource to help you get the best out of your systems.

Tell me what you think…..

Hey, and I know I like my syndromes!