Are We Ready for Lawson Smart Office?

To paraphrase Dean Hager: “This has been a ten-year dream for me; to deliver on the promise of a comprehensive all-encompassing Lawson user experience.” In short, Lawson Smart Office integrates and delivers all facets of Lawson applications in a seamless fashion, providing a comprehensive user experience for all things Lawson. Smart Office is built on 3 pillars: [...]

Customization: Risk vs. Reward

One of the realities of ERP is that organizations often feel they need to customize to meet their requirements. Customization is a tough choice to make and there really is no good answer. In this article, we’ll examine some of the reasons for customization of your Lawson S3 Applications, why to avoid it, and how [...]

Do You Agree With Harry?

Lawson’s CEO Harry Debes certainly isn’t afraid to speak his mind or express his feelings.  But Harry’s latest remarks deriding Software as a Service (SaaS) might just put him in the doghouse: “My prediction is that it’ll go the same way as the other two have gone–nowhere.” “People are stupid. History has shown it repeats itself, [...]

LWSN Expands Support Options as SAP Narrows

Over the past year or so, Lawson has been expanding their support offerings.  It used to be that you had just one option: “Maintenance and Support”.  This meant that everybody (presumably) was treated the same, had the same response time, etc.  Now Lawson offers four tiers of support as part of its “Total Care” package: Bronze: [...]

The Art and Science of Troubleshooting

“How do I fix xyz?” Thinking about how to troubleshoot reminds me of trying to fix my leaky shower. I want an “instant fix”.  My plumber knows better, realizing that you have to go through a systematic process of analysis.  In the end, of course, he is right. And after eliminating some of the variables, we indeed [...]

The Bendable Work-Week

Consider an organization which, up until now at least, has had 7-hour workdays.  And, not for all employees, but for most administrative staff, except IT.  To justify the exclusion of IT, they say “IT workers make too much money already”. Gee, how appreciative. But anyway. Most admin folks (like the Finance staff) get an 9:00-4:30 day, [...]

Pondering an Age Old Question

I think it goes something like this: “’tis  better to have loved and lost, or to never have loved at all?” To put a twist on it a bit, is it better to have competed and lost, or never to have competed?  That is the question. You see, I have a running banter with Eric Tu. You’ll [...]

LSWN: Your Full-Service Provider

An interesting comment in the recent FY08 earnings conference call, made by CEO Harry Debes: “I think some of our competitors in the case of Microsoft delivers no services, in the case of SAP and Oracle deliver a lot less services. It’s a strategy of ours to in fact be intimately involved with our customer not [...]

LWSN: It’s Time (to Reinvest)

Yesterday, Lawson released their fourth-quarter and fiscal year 2008.  To just read Lawson’s press release (http://www.lawson.com/wcw.nsf/pub/new_3CABF3), you can see that (according to Lawson, at least) everything’s rosy: “Company posts more than $100 million increase in annual revenues”. But, you then comes the Wall Street spin, which is, frankly, amusing: I’ve highlighted some of these, just to give you [...]

Oh, So This Is Why P-Cards Aren’t a Good Idea?

P-Cards are always a love/hate topic.  Some people swear by them as an easier-than-easy way to purchase goods and services without a lot of paperwork and process.  Others despise them as a way to bypass the entire purchasing process.  And as an invitation for fraudulent use.  Witness this gem: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/24/AR2008062401198.html In this case, a worker with the [...]