Thought-Provoking Commentary for the Lawson Software Community
It’s an interesting dilemma. A Lawson client asked me why they should continue to use Lawson for their HR software. While they use for Lawson for Financials, they really don’t utilize much of the HR suite:
During the 7.2 -> 8.0 Applications upgrade cycle, Lawson introduced “Upgrade While Active” (at CUE 2003 I think…). This changed the upgrade process to reduce the downtime required to move the data from between application product lines as part of the upgrade.
The 8.0 -> 9.0 Applications were rewritten to use the Java-based sqldbcopy, and table data is copied between product lines/databases directly on the database server rather than the previously-used dump/load method. This, of course, speeds things up dramatically. Read more of this post
Nothing says “we don’t care” better than lousy customer service. This was the “greeting” I received this morning on Lawson’s Support site when trying to open a case:
Maybe I’m just a little unreasonable, but this was on a Monday morning at 8:25am EDT. Read more of this post
It’s a complaint I hear often, although not as often as I used to hear it. The upgrade programs/process was re-worked to take advantage of sqldbcopy, which solves some of the speed issues for copy jobs (i.e. tables which don’t require conversion). For those, the copying is done directly on the database server. However, some of the pre-jobs, loads, and post-jobs continue to be a bottleneck. Read more of this post
First Hyperion gets acquired by Oracle (see http://www.oracle.com/hyperion/index.html).
Now more big news this week: http://www.businessobjects.com/news/press_release.asp?id=20071007_005046. The question I’m getting from a lot of you in the Lawson community is: “Where does this leave Lawson?”. And, of course, the answer is, “well, of course, I don’t know”. But I have my opinions/ideas. Read more of this post
Despite the upbeat quarterly report, I’m hearing a lot of grumbling from the troops. In particular that the company is being decimated in the name of cost-cutting, and that the focus has shifted away from long-term R&D to short-term billable/maintenance revenue. Also that all intellectual properties, etc. (e.g. Architects) are now being offshored and that St. Paul will be only a shell, if it even survives as the HQ. Lastly, that Landmark apps are on the back burner.
Last summer’s reading included a significant and highly-relevant book, “The Change Function: Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn” (see http://www.amazon.com/Change-Function-Technologies-Others-Crash/dp/B000NA6U2O) by Pip Coburn. As I was reading, I naturally started to draw some parallels to some Lawson initiatives. Read more of this post
I recently wrote (see https://lawsonguru.wordpress.com/2007/09/26/applying-the-change-function-to-lwsn/) about Pip Coburn’s book “The Change Function: Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn” (see http://www.amazon.com/Change-Function-Technologies-Others-Crash/dp/B000NA6U2O) and how it can be applied to Lawson. I want to expand a bit on how I think it applies to Landmark. Read more of this post
A number of years ago, I wrote a LawsonGuru Letter article titled “Lawson’s Quality Crisis”. I really had high hopes that Lawson was turning the corner on these problems as part of their various initiatives (including their adoption of better CMM practices, the Xansa partnership, etc.)
I was copied on this email from a Lawson client, who was addressing their concerns to Lawson: We are getting conflicting information from Lawson on this subject.
1. Is Concur a Lawson Partner?
2. Is Lawson using Concur internally for Expense Reimbursement?
3. Does Lawson plan to use Concur internally for Expense Reimbursement in the future?
If the answer to any of these is “yes”, can you please explain why and what the plans are for the Lawson Time & Expense module?
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