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When is the right time to upgrade an ERP system?

Keeping an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system up to date is critical in maintaining an effective business process. Upgrading an ERP system can be just as daunting a task as selecting one, probably even more challenging. That is because with an upgrade so many things need change and so many pieces are changing at once. But, how do you know when the right time to upgrade is? How do you know if your current ERP system works just fine? Also, what are you upgrading for? These are just a few questions you need to consider when dealing with your ERP systems. Experts from SMC (formerly Solution Minds Consulting) outline some key questions in an article on consultancy.com.au that decision makers should ask themselves to understand when the right time is to upgrade their current ERP systems.

Is your business growing or going through change? “There are several critical events that signal when a business is ripe for upgrading their ERP systems. The most obvious is when an organization is experiencing significant growth or change. A scalable ERP platform will support profitable future growth – meaning you won’t need to increase headcount at the same rate as revenue growth.”

Are you keeping up with your competitors? “If your systems are not up-to-date and lacking in what are now standard features available in newer technology, you will be denied the associated competitive advantages.”

Has your vendor stopped supporting your current technology? “The enterprise software market is rapidly changing and sometimes when a vendor has sold their product there is a sunset clause and you are pushed to ‘upgrade’ to their flagship product, which may not be the best for you. These are signs you need to bite the bullet and take the necessary steps to evaluate your options and potentially upgrade your business systems.”

Are legacy systems expensive to maintain? “Legacy platforms are expensive to preserve and costs will continue to grow over time. Often it is very difficult to find people who can program old code and developers of today are mostly averse to working on antiquated technology when so much more modern technology is available on the market. Decision makers should be asking the question: if legacy software breaks down under a heavy load, how might the business be affected and specifically, can they afford not to upgrade?”

 

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Why organizations should upgrade their ERP systems

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are a part of the day-to-day operations of most every business. More and more enterprises each day are finding out the benefits ERP can bring. Even current ERP users know their legacy systems may need an upgrade and now is the best time than any to upgrade your ERP systems. Mark Vivian, CEO of independent Oracle Managed Services provider Claremont, shares an article on IT Pro Portal a number of elements to consider when enterprises upgrade their ERP systems.

  • New features – “Inevitably there will be new features to improve functionality in the latest releases of ERP systems. Additionally, there are a whole host of new features in each application to consider.”
  • Customizations – “Nearly all ERP systems are customized. Businesses need to be sure they understand the purpose of each customization, whether they can be retired or replaced by new functionality and what the impact of moving them to new releases will entail.”
  • Infrastructure – “As part of ensuring that the path to the “to-be” upgraded technology stack is understood, organizations need to examine what infrastructure they need to support the new version of the software.  It could be a prime opportunity to move “on premise” ERP solutions to an infrastructure cloud, in line with a “cloud first” strategy. According to Claremont’s latest managed services survey, 69 percent of Oracle EBS users currently host on physical servers rather an infrastructure cloud, but around 40 percent are looking to move to cloud to enjoy the flexibility it offers.”
  • Database – “If you are running Oracle Linux prior to version 7 then an operating system upgrade will be required before upgrading the database. With Premier Support for Oracle Linux 6 finishing in March 2021, many organizations will be looking to upgrade soon or will risk running on another unsupported platform.”
With multiple ERP systems to consider, now is a good time to start planning for the future and consider upgrades to server, database, infrastructure and vendor partners.

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AWS (Amazon Web Services) for Dummies

Whether you are a CIO or a SysAdmin, as the world moves to the cloud, all IT professionals need to understand the cloud and be able to speak its language. In this 1 hour webinar, get a quick primer of several of the services available through AWS. Some of the topics covered include:

EC2 – Virtual Servers in the Cloud
S3 – Scalable Storage in the cloud
RDS – Managed Relational Database Service
And several more (Lambda, DynamoDB, Redshift…)

 

Going Live with Lawson V10 By May 31 2017

In this short webinar we’ll show you our tried and true methodology for upgrading to version 10 as quickly as possible without making any compromises in quality. We’ll also leave a 30 minute QA session to answer all your questions regarding the upgrade process.

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Installing BSI TaxFactory 10 for Your New Lawson 10 Environment

System Preparation

  1. Get the latest BSI installation file and save to the Infor downloads folder on the server
  2. Run the executable to unpackage the installation files

Installing BSI TaxFactory 10 for Your New Lawson 10 Environment-1
Database Preparation

Create the TF10 database

  1. Open SQL Server Management Studio
  2. Create TF10_10X database
    1. Right click on databases > New
    2. Set the file locations under General
      Installing BSI TaxFactory 10 for Your New Lawson 10 Environment-2
    1. Options Menu
      1. Set collation to Latin1_General_Bin
      2. Recovery model = Full
      3. Compatibility Level = SQL Server 2008
      4. Keep the other defaults

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Create the TF10 user

  1. In SSMS, right click on the main Security server and select “new Login”
  2. Login name = tf10
  3. Use SQL Server authentication
    1. Password is usually tf10 unless the client request a different password
  4. Default Database = (your desired database name)
  5. Click OK
    Installing BSI TaxFactory 10 for Your New Lawson 10 Environment-4
  1. Add the user to your database
    1. Expand the database in SSMS
    2. Expand the security folder
    3. Right click on Users > New
    4. User name = (tax factory user)
    5. Login name = (tax factory user)
    6. Default schema = leave blank for now
    7. Click Ok

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BSI SQL Scripts

  1. Locate the SQL scripts within the BSI installation files (ServerInstall/SQL)
    1. crtschma.sql
      1. Creates the tax factory schema
    2. tf10sqv.sql
      1. Creates the table structure for tax factory
    3. noessqv.sql
      1. Resets BSI TaxFactory extended security to off

Adjust Database Permissions

Adjust db permissions now that schema has been created:

  1. Edit the database user on the new database
  2. Make the new schema the Default schema
  3. Click OK
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  1. Under Owned Schemas, select the new schema
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  1. Under “Membership”, select db_owner
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  1. Click OK

System Configuration

Set up ODBC

  1. Open the ODBC (64-bit) tool
  2. Go to the System DSN tab and click “Add”
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  3. Driver is SQL Server
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  1. Data source name = (meaningful name)
  2. Description = (meaningful description)
  3. Server = client’s database server name (SQL Server where you installed the database)
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  1. Use SQL Server authentication
  2. Provide the login credentials
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  1. Keep the defaults on the rest of the screens
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  1. Test the data source
    Installing BSI TaxFactory 10 for Your New Lawson 10 Environment-15Installing BSI TaxFactory 10 for Your New Lawson 10 Environment-16Environment Variables
  1. Create dataset environment variable
  2. Create the TF10_CONNECT_STRING environment variable using the login credentials for the ODBC data source you just created
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  1. Reboot for env variables to take effect

Copy application files

  1. Copy new tf10api.dll from the installation files (ServerInstall\server) to Lawson application server (C:\Windows\System32 & C:\Windows\System)
    Installing BSI TaxFactory 10 for Your New Lawson 10 Environment-19

Installation

Install Client Application

  1. Obtain BSI password needed for TF10 install from BSI Customer Services
  2. Install TF10 – TF10ClientInstall.exe on the BSI application server (adding a new BSI instance such as test, qa, test, etc)
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    Installing BSI TaxFactory 10 for Your New Lawson 10 Environment-22(password obtained from BSI customer services)
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    1. If prompted to install Web Server, refer to Apache Tomcat installation instructions
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  1. Select the Tomcat installation directory (will most likely default)
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  1. Select the JRE configuration file (will most likely default)
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  1. Choose the XML server corresponding to the system configuration
  2. Select a directory for the server base
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  1. Choose Install
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  1. Enter the corresponding system information and click Next
    1. Clicking on the MS SQL Server ODBC configuraiton will prompt the system to ass if you use Windows Authentication. Select “No”.
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  1. Can install up to 3 test instances on same server, but each one would have different WEB Server Service Port
  2. Repeat this section for the remaining test instances
  3. When you are finished with all instances, select the environments to be installed and click “FINISH”
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Test the install

  1. Open <server>:<port> for the initial test
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  1. Open the custom site that you installed and log in
  2. Check the System tools
    1. Regulatory bulletins should be 0
    2. Cyclic should be blank
  3. Log into server:port/ef10x/PRD
    1. Where “x” is the cyclical release and “PRD” is the environment
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Cyclical Data Refresh

  1. Back up new 10x database
  2. Back up the current 901 BSI database
  3. Restore the 901 data to the 10x database to preserve all the tax updates.
    1. NOTE: During db restore, be SURE to confirm the target db file names, will probably need to change.
    2. Kill the bsi services running on bsi xml server, then sp_who2 to kill any remaining processes
    3. Take db offline
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    1. Restore the database
    2. Restore of db disconnects users
      1. Assign the tax factory and db_owner schemas to dbo
      2. Delete and recreate tax factory user following instructions above
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  1. Log into the BSI site and verify that the Cyclical update inofrmation is now populated

Install Machine Key

As INFO: table containing the BSI machine key:
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  1. Install Machine Key – if/when we have it
    1. Generate from BSI site, Maintenance, Maintain Machine Key
    2. Bring up web client, System Tools, Database Tools, Install Machine Key
  2. Can skip the load regulatory bulletins, cyclic files, etc, since DB restore was performed

PRTFX

  1. Open LID
  2. Type in msgmnt
  3. Update Lawson PRTFX Message Definition, (change bottom TF90 to TF10)
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  1. Compile the prtf program, (needed after changing the TF90 to TF10 in screen above)
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  1. Test with LID
    1. Click Refresh Version
    2. Click “test TaxFactory US”
      1. Will generate a licensing error if the machine key isn’t installed yet
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  1. New jobs should start reflecting in BSI TaxFactory Product in Message Viewer

Apache Tomcat Installation

  1. Download the required installation files from the Apache website
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  1. Save the executable
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  1. Run the executable
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  1. Customize the Windows service name
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  2. Select the JRE path (will likely default)Installing BSI TaxFactory 10 for Your New Lawson 10 Environment-50
  3. Choose the install locationInstalling BSI TaxFactory 10 for Your New Lawson 10 Environment-51
  4. After the installation is complete, change the service to startup type Automatic
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A More Efficient way to Update Report Data Sources

During an upgrade, re-pointing all your LBI reports to your new database may seem like a daunting task. Never fear! You don’t have to do it manually (at least not all of them). Here are the steps to overwrite your data sources using a SQL update query:

  1. Create an ODBC connection on your LBI server that connects to your NEW database server.
    1. Don’t forget that you have to use the 32-bit ODBC tool for LBI data sources!
  2. Create your new data source in LBI
    1. Tools > Reporting Services Report Administration > Server Administration > New Data Source A More Efficient way to Update Report Data Sources_2
  3. Open SQL Server Management Studio (or whatever database management tool you use)
  4. Log-in to your LBI database server
  5. Navigate to the LawsonRS databaseA More Efficient way to Update Report Data Sources_3
  6. BACK UP YOUR ERS_REPORTDATASOURCES TABLE! (You should always back up the table or the database if you are making changes directly)
  7. Run a query to view all the reports for which you plan to change the data source: A More Efficient way to Update Report Data Sources_4
  8. When you are ready, run your update query using the same WHERE clause that you used when you viewed your reports in step 7
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    1. NOTE: you are updating RSDATASOURCE. This is so that the report data source will be overridden.
    2. If you have a new username & password for this data source, you will also need to update the DEFAULTUSER and DEFAULTPASSWORD fields as well.
  9. Now your reports should run against the new data source. There are a few cases in which you will need to manually reset the data source in Crystal and republish the report. They are:
    1. If your report mixes schemas (i.e. it uses tables owned by dbo, and views owned by xyz)
    2. If your report has subreports
    3. If your report has a command that explicitly defines the database name (and the database name has changed)
    4. There may be more, but these are the instances that I discovered on a recent upgrade!