LawsonGuru Blog

Entries categorized as ‘Lawson’

Lars, You Need a Cause

June 24, 2009 · 2 Comments

I’ve recently noticed some interesting ads, focused on brand loyalty and awareness:

  • Tide’s Loads of Hope.  In a nutshell, Proctor & Gamble outfitted a truck with washers and dryers, and they deploy into areas affected by natural disasters, and people line up to do their laundry:

    What an awesome idea.  Think about it.  If you were one of those people, wouldn’t you become life-time Tide customer?

  • AT&T is undertaking an initiative to replace it’s vehicle fleet, with energy-efficient, American-made vehicles.
  • Wal-Mart is trying to repair its reputation of being an aggressively employee-unfriendly place to work. Part of its lower-price strategy over the years has translated into horrible public relations.  A new CEO is trying to fix that.  A recent advertisement pledges that Wal-Mart “won’t be 100% satisfied until every American has quality, affordable health coverage”.

In Marketing 101, we learned that these are examples of institutional advertising, intended to build awareness and generate goodwill, not to promote a particular product.  Which brings us to Lars, the animated avatar from Lawson.

Lars is cute and the videos are obviously well-produced.  But the message just isn’t compelling.   Lawson should be using this opportunity to tie their products into some meaningful community service; saving cats just seems so irrelevant.  Given our economic situation and all that we face, how about tackling a serious problem, like expanding into electronic health records (EHR), or tracking your carbon emissions?   Sure, it’s cool to have a mascot/avatar, but it needs to be more than just a cartoon.

Categories: Lawson · Lawson CUE · Thoughts

What’s Your VUE?

May 7, 2009 · 1 Comment

imageLawson has announced an interesting service offering, VUE ‘09, targeted at those of you who weren’t able to make it to their recent CUE ‘09 conference in San Diego.

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Categories: Lawson · Lawson CUE · Thoughts

CUE 09 Descends On San Diego

April 27, 2009 · 10 Comments

When Lawson CUE was held in San Diego this past April, Lawson invited some software industry bloggers to attend the annual event.  I’ll let you read their reviews:

Unlike the LawsonGuru Blog, which targets you—the actual Lawson customer, each of these bloggers targets the larger enterprise software marketplace.  But, hey, it’s Lawson’s conference, so they have to right to invite whomever they want.

Alas, I stayed home.

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Categories: ERP · Harry Debes · LWSN · Landmark · Lawson · Lawson CUE · Lawson M3 · Lawson S3

We All Knew This Day Would Come

March 27, 2009 · 2 Comments

Your Paper, Sir?

Dog Fetching Newspaper Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the newspaper industry is in a serious decline.  Maybe that’s not strong enough.

Newspapers, as we’ve known them, are on their deathbed.   And it’s a sad reversal of fortune.  Gone are the glory days of The Washington Post’s Woodward and Bernstein.

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Categories: ERP · LSF9 · Lawson · Lawson S3 · Support · Thoughts · Upgrades

There’s Simply No Excuse

March 3, 2009 · 4 Comments

image

Yes, I know.  I’m taking a cheap shot.

But this is just ridiculous, and this is not an isolated incident:

And Lawson’s new CIO has been on the job for almost a year.

Categories: Lawson · Support · Thoughts

Are You Recession-Proof?

January 28, 2009 · 2 Comments

The economy is on practically everyone’s mind these days.  We know we’re in for a bumpy ride over the next several months, and perhaps even years.  Everywhere we turn, organizations are “battening down the hatches”, learning to do more with less.  One way to do that is to evaluate our tools as well as our approaches to some of the routine tasks that we perform.

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Categories: Consulting · ERP · IT · LBI · ProcessFlow · Thoughts

Are We Ready for Lawson Smart Office?

November 18, 2008 · 4 Comments

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: intelligence, productivity, and personalization. As Dean says, Smart Office facilitates what Lawson is calling “The Process of Me”.

I agree that it’s slick. In fact, it’s gorgeous. It utilizes all the latest Microsoft technologies. But you know me—I’m the skeptic. So, let’s examine a few questions:

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Categories: Lawson · Lawson M3 · Lawson S3 · Thoughts

Customization: Risk vs. Reward

October 15, 2008 · 4 Comments

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 to mitigate the risks if you do customize.

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Categories: Customization · ERP · Lawson · Lawson S3 · Thoughts

Do You Agree With Harry?

August 28, 2008 · 2 Comments

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:

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Categories: ERP · Harry Debes · LWSN · Thoughts

LWSN Expands Support Options as SAP Narrows

August 14, 2008 · Leave a Comment

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”. 

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Categories: ERP · LWSN · Lawson · Support