LawsonGuru Blog
Thought-Provoking Commentary for the Lawson Software Community
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: 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:
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 to mitigate the risks if you do customize.
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:
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”.
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.
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, with the requisite 30-minute lunch (which naturally gets stretched to an hour, right?).
Being a non-profit, they “just can’t afford the salaries offered by other for-profit companies”, so they compensate in other ways such as offering up better benefits like more vacation and the 7 hour day. Which is being taken away.
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.
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 just to sell them software, we don’t think of ourselves as a software publisher. We think of ourselves as a solutions company and that involves services.”
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:
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:
LawsonGuru Blog 