Three Steps Companies Should Take To Implement The Right CRM Strategy

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Customer relationship management (CRM) has become more than just a simple list of names and basic customer information. Today’s CRM systems allows you to track allows you to track every interaction with a particular customer, every product or service they buy from you, your next-action items and other information that helps you serve them. It takes time to get the most from your CRM so patience is necessary, but the return on this system is worth it. Forbes Councils Member Sayer Martin suggests the following steps to take to implement the right CRM strategy for your company.

  1. Start With A Series Of Questions. To master the basics, first ask yourself a series of questions. Involve others, and establish buy-in across teams on the answers.
  2. Involve All Stakeholders And Get Their Buy-In. It’s important to get all possible stakeholders involved. Allow each team to provide input. Give them adequate time to voice opinions and be heard. Integrate this feedback into the system you design and your justifications for choices you make.
  3. Understand Your Company’s Unique Needs. Answers to your questions will help you figure out what you need versus simply going with what others are using. One organization’s best practices may not be best for you. If your needs are unique, you have large ambitions for growth and want it all information in one place, a robust platform makes more sense. If not, more basic, purpose-built or turnkey solutions may be more effective for your business.

 

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Tips for Preparing for Infor Patch Bundles

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For Infor Cloud customers, Infor periodically releases patch bundles that keep their cloud applications up to date. There are typically dozens (or hundreds) of patches applied during these bundles, to all the Infor applications hosted in the cloud. This can be an overwhelming prospect for users and IT staff who are tasked with testing and validation during these patches.

Here are some quick tips for preparing your organization for a patch bundle:

Preparation

  • Release notes: Infor always provides release notes on the patch bundle that they are implementing. These bundles are cumulative, so the notes on Lawson for instance, will describe ALL of the CTPs that are available for your version of Lawson. So, to make it more manageable, compare your last bundle’s release notes to the current one, and determine which patches are actually going to be applied. Then, save off the html files for those patches and review them.
  • Security: Occasionally the bundles will impact Lawson Security, and even more frequently they will implement new forms/fields/tables/columns that need to be secured. Run some security reports before the bundle so that they can be compared to the same reports after. Also, search your html release notes for any tokens that will be added, and determine if your organization needs to secure them.
  • Reports: Run reports or queries for data validation, but also search the release notes for database changes, and make sure that you are ready to update any reports that are impacted by those changes.

MSCM

  • Certificate: If you own MSCM, it is almost always going to be updated as part of the patch bundle. There is often an issue with the certificate after this update. Either the certificate is no longer valid, or it wasn’t generated during the patch. After the update, make sure you go directly to the CAB file location and that you see a valid certificate there (it’ll be named like your server). If you don’t see the file, or if you get security errors when trying to connect, open a ticket with Infor letting them know you think your cert is not valid.
  • CAB files: It is best practices to delete all your CAB files from the handhelds and reinstall them after these major updates.

IPA

  • Interface validation: There is a high probability that one or more of your IPA processes will be impacted by the patch bundle. It is important to test every single interface end-to-end.
  • IP Designer: The IP Designer version MUST match the Landmark/IPA version exactly. So, after a patch bundle, you WILL have to download a fresh version of IPD.

Testing

  • What to test: You are most likely going to need to test everything. Daily, weekly, monthly, and annual processes should be included in your testing.
  • How to test: Provide users with test scripts for each function, and have a central location for users to log the results. We like to use Jira as our central repository for testing.

Validation

  • You can use LID to validate data counts. You should also compare pre-update reports to post-update reports in all applications, including security.

Mount Sinai South Nassau Kicks Off Interoperability Transformation with Infor Healthcare

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Mount Sinai South Nassau (MSSN) has selected Infor Cloud Cloverleaf™ to increase interoperability across its network of healthcare services and providers. MSSN has migrated to the newest cloud-based iteration of Infor Cloverleaf to further bring patient information to the point of care, and assist clinicians to make more effective and informed decisions. Infor Cloverleaf will enable data interoperability and integration across many systems by support of proprietary and traditional data formats and protocols as well as newer web-based API (Application Programming Interface) standards such as FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources). Per the press release, MSSN will be able to focus more time on care and business outcomes, spend less time managing servers and applications, begin leveraging FHIR and API-based data exchange, and benefit from being on the latest version of Cloverleaf with routine upgrades.

 

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Mobile ERP – 6 perks to having software in your pocket

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Enterprise resource planning (ERP), once thought of as a slow-moving system, is now a must have, fast moving vital tool for your business. In a time of real time access to information, today’s mobile workforce expects their enterprise software to be accessible anywhere and on any device. Mobile ERP gives executives and employees access to real-time information as well as customer communications. Tech HQ shares 6 perks to having a mobile ERP.

  1. Flexibility – “Mobile-based ERP provides unrivaled convenience in data logging by making it easy for workers to enter all relevant data accurately, whenever the need arises, without re-keying the data into backend systems when they’re back at their desk.”
  2. Quality Data – “Mobile-based ERP can be designed to capture bad data and erase it from entering your ERP system, thus helping you to collect data more easily.”
  3. Greater Productivity – “Mobile-based ERP helps to use that time more productively by providing mobile workers all the right tools, materials, and information to eliminate downtime significantly, giving companies who implement this technology that extra edge over competitors.”
  4. More Visibility – “Tracking activities in multiple areas has never been easier with mobile-based ERP. If there is a need to monitor business operations in different locations, this can be done at the tip of their fingers with ease.”
  5. Agile Systems – “For most users of the mobile-based ERP, it will allow them to simplify strenuous and time-consuming processes that would have been tedious and repetitive.”
  6. Improved Quality of Service – “With instant access to relevant information regardless of where mobile workers may be, mobile-based ERP enables any queries to be resolved and data to be provided to customers immediately. This serves to help boost sales prospects to customers who would otherwise have had to wait.”

 

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Infor Customer Cloud Migration Continues to Gain Global Momentum

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Infor continues to gain significant global success for its CloudSuite solutions, which helps customers recognize time-to-value faster and can help them become more agile, resilient and competitive. These industry-specific applications developed for sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare, distribution, public sector, retail and hospitality have contributed to Infor now having more than 14,000 customers in the Infor Cloud. Recent customers include Burton Snowboards, Frederick County (Maryland), Midwest Wheel Companies, Cloetta, Saarioinen, and Auckland Transport. Infor’s goal is to deliver unmatched multi-tenant cloud capabilities, as well as best-in-class data management and analytics capabilities through the Infor DatBirst a Lake and Infor Birst. In the past 12 months, Infor has made significant industry-specific product updates in human capital management (HCM), enterprise asset management (EAM) and supply chain management (SCM), that are designed to help customers better manage three important assets in their businesses: people, physical assets, and supply chains.

 

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Infor Support Ending for Internet Explorer

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As of October 31, 2020, Infor is no longer going to support Internet Explorer as a browser for accessing Lawson applications. According to Microsoft, the end of life for IE will coincide with the end of life for Windows 10, so this is not a notice for the end of life for IE. This just means that any future Infor patches will not be developed to function with Internet Explorer.

 

Lawson has been stable in Chrome since the later releases of version 9. It is also supported on Microsoft Edge Chromium and Firefox. There are some things you will want to consider before moving to a different browser:

Impacted Applications

  • Infor Lawson System Foundation (LSF) 10.0.X.0 release
  • Infor Landmark Technology Runtime 10.1.1.X and 11 releases
  • Lawson for Infor Ming.le 10.0.X.0 and 10.1.X releases
  • Infor Lawson for Ming.le Content Lawson applications 10.0.X release
  • Infor Lawson Requisition Center 10.0.X.0 release
  • Infor Lawson Smart Reconciliation 10.0.X.0 release
  • Infor Lawson Procurement Card Self-Service 10.0.X.0 release
  • Infor Employee and Manager Self-Service 10.0.X.0 release
  • Infor Lawson Contextual Applications 10.0.X.0 release
  • Infor Lawson Mobile Supply Chain Management (MSCM) 11.X release
  • Infor Lawson Point of Use (POU) 11.X release
  • Infor Lawson Business Intelligence (LBI) 10.X.0.0 release
  • Infor Business Intelligence for Lawson (IBI) 10.X.0.0 release
  • All Infor Human Capital Management (HCM) products, including Infor Global Human Resources (GHR) and Infor Talent Management 10.1, 10.2 and 11 releases.
  • Infor CloudSuite Financials & Supply Management (CSF) 11 release

Design Studio

  • Design Studio 10 (the application) is going to continue to be supported in Internet Explorer
  • Design Studio forms might need some updates to make them compatible with a different browser. Design Studio relies heavily on JavaScript, and some of the syntax is browser-dependent.  Make sure you test all of your design studio forms before having users switch browsers.

MSCM

  • MSCM 10 is not compatible with Chrome. Infor will continue to support Internet Explorer with MSCM 10 installations until the end-of-life for MSCM 10.X.
  • MSCM 11.X (base, POU, and SIM) is compatible with Chrome, and it is recommended that you get to v11 as soon as possible! Contact us if you need help upgrading.

Recommendations

  • Switching browsers should be pretty seamless. Just have your users spend a week performing their daily tasks in your organization’s chosen browser, and log any issues that arise.  If they hit a wall, they can always move to IE until a workaround is provided.
  • Upgrade MSCM! If you own licensing for MSCM, the update should already be available to you.

 

As always, check the Infor Lawson compatibility matrix to get the latest information in application compatibility.

5 Tips for a More Organized Real Estate CRM

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When buying season gets busy, it’s easy to neglect your day-to-day operations and customer relationship management (CRM) duties in the real estate business. However, real estate CRM is the heart of your business and it’s important to stay on top of this when it comes to managing this area of your business. Simply taking some time to get your systems in order and organize contacts and leads, you’ll have a smoother run business. RIS Media shares an article, written by Buffini & Company, to help get your real estate CRM in successful order.

Sort and Qualify Relationships. “While this may be time-consuming, sorting and qualifying your database is the best way to make sure you’re marketing to the right people and spending your time efficiently.”

Input Your Goals. “The best CRM software should include space for income and lead generation goals so that you know what you’re working toward.”

Complete Your Daily To-Dos. “Your real estate CRM should populate daily lead generation tasks for you to complete, giving you an idea of what needs to be done that day to stay in line with your goals.”

Update Your Tracking. “Be consistent about adding new relationships to your database and updating your CRM when you send a client a personal note or chat with a new lead.”

Take Advantage of the Mobile App. “Get familiar with the different features, and consider watching tutorial videos. This will allow you to master every part of your real estate CRM so you can take your lead generation on the go.”

 

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Cloetta Finds Digital Sweet Spot with Infor

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Cloetta, a leading confectionery company in Northern Europe, has selected Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage to support digital transformation and drive innovation across its operations. The nature of the confectionery sector is that most purchases are impulse driven and experiential. Thus, Cloetta needs to keep in pace with demand whilst ensuring quality is paramount to its success. Already an Infor M3 customer for many years, Cloetta selected Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage because they were impressed with the deep industry functionality in Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage, which supports the nuances and dynamics of its business, including aspects such as quality control, recipe management and traceability.

 

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Securing a website using IIS

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If your organization has custom websites that need to be secured quickly and easily, you can use the IIS internal authentication and authorization rules.

First make sure that your host server is set up to utilize Windows Authentication.  In Roles and Features  > Server Roles > Web Server (IIS) > Security, install “Windows Authentication”.

Once Windows Authentication is installed, select your site in IIS and select “Authentication”

Set Windows Authentication to enabled

Go back to your website, and select “Authorization Rules”

From here, you can give access to individual users or Active Directory groups.  The users will be presented with a Microsoft credentials dialog, and they will log in with their Windows credentials.

 

 

 

Posti Takes to the Cloud with Infor

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Infor recently announced that Finnish postal and logistics leader Posti has begun its migration to Infor CloudSuite WFM (Workforce Management). With a need to address key business process improvements, Infor CloudSuite WFM will simplify the shift planning process and offer an improved user experience, including mobile access, while decreasing running costs and enabling seamless upgrades. Currently, Infor WFM handles the scheduling and fully automated time-and-attendance related to sorting, transportation and delivery of mail and parcels for Posti. In addition, it handles complex, Posti-specific pay rules and more than 20 collective and local agreements. Infor CloudSuite WFM will continue to support all this existing functionality. as well as cover five new employess groups and enable inegration with other Posti systems. Per the press release, these new capabilities built on a cloud deployment will provide employees with the flexibility they need to quickly adapt in today’s environment.

 

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