BPCS ERP LX --- my 60,000 foot point of view

Hi ...

I've recently had an opportunity to look at an SSA presentation of LX
functionality. It was a fairly good look over a three day period. The
objective of SSA in this presentation was to persuade a potential upgrade
candidate that LX addressed a long compilation of needs identified by that
company (a company that currently is at the v4 level).

Here are my general impressions and opinions, in no particular order:

a. It's all GUI. To tell you the truth, green screen looks prettier. The

are anything but attractive ... certainly not easy on the eyes.

b. More on the screen display .... SSA uses, at most, 5/8ths of the vertical
dimension of the screen. The bottom of the screen is wasted white space that
just holds a small box for function keys. Net result: a display with
multiple lines of information requires lots of screen paginations to see
anything.

c. Last on the screen display: not so user friendly on the field labels.
The field on one A/R report specification screen is labeled "Curr."  Well,
if you know the fields in the database, you could guess that Curr meant
"currency" ... but if you're less savvy, you might think it meant "current."
There's more than enough room on that part of the screen to spell out
"Currency Type" .... but what shows up is plenty of white space and just the
four letters "Curr."  This issue is prevalent in all BPCS modules.

d. Functionality distinctions between v6 and v8 for modules that already
exist in v6 are pretty minor. Examples include longer field lengths for some
things (like customer PO number and item class and/or type). Cost accounting
functionality is identical to v4.05CD (except for the GUI presentation).

e. The new functionality has mostly arrived in the form of bolt-ons and a
generous percentage of those don't run on the iSeries platform. They are
pieces of software that SSA has acquired and re-branded as part of "LX"

f. They have a nice financial budgeting bolt-on which looks to be well
integrated with the BPCS G/L. It's an application of Cognos. My opinion is
that a BPCS user could get the same functionality on v6.x if they wanted to

   By the way, integration with non-G/L parts of BPCS isn't there
   and isn't claimed. Oliver Wight, if he was alive, could write a book
   on the integration possibilities into non-G/L parts of BPCS that
   have not been exploited.

g. LX comes with a package of hundreds of pre-programmed reports and/or

wanted to run your business.

   Example: I've seen customer service level defined many, many

   time to go through all these reports/metrics before using them, then
   you could do this yourself on v6 or even v4 ... if you had a Cognos
   license.

h. Examples of other bolt-ons include sales forecasting/demand planning,
logistics planning, and rule-driven/constraint-savvy manufacturing planning.
My impression is that if a company needed this kind of functionality to run
their business better, then that company would be well advised to do a
software selection analysis within each specific software market segment
rather than just presuming that SSA had acquired the IP for the "best of
breed" in each of those segments.

    Here's my strongly-held opinion about these bolt-ons:

        BPCS v6.

       That seems like it would help the enterprise more/faster than SSA's
       idea of buying v8.3/LX.

       would really generate an ROI (e.g. logistics planning).


i. SSA claims to have made some effort to clean up the RPG code generated by
AS/SET. AS/SET is gone.

    In response to a question about this, the SSA presenter showed us
    screen shots of part of the code for one RPG program. Someone who
    knew RPG in the room was able to find a place where in line 2500x a
    value was assigned to a variable but before that variable was used, the
    value was replaced in line 2500x+2 with something else.

    So, in my view, the maintainability of the v8.3 RPG code should
    not be considered a fully resolved issue. Anyone who has seen the
    cryptic nature of AS/SET-generated RPG code will probably want to
    review an ample, randomly-selected sample of LX RPG source
    before arriving at any firm maintainability opinions.

j. They've added hundreds of "exit points" in the source at places where
they believe users might want to insert customizations. It's like
pre-inserted subroutine calls that can either be used or ignored.  The
intent is to keep the virgin code un-mingled with BPCS customizations so
that adoption of future upgrades is not impeded by the customizations. It's
new, interesting, creative and it might work for quite a few things. .

k. In LX, ELKE has been re-named (EAM? I forget) and it looks like the

     Example: planned production machine maintenance time period info

     that my memory on that detailed point isn't as good as it should be.



This is way too long already, so I'll stop.
If anyone wants to talk about this subject, please give me a call.

Warm regards and peace to you,
Milt Habeck
Managing Partner
Unbeaten Path International

(888) 874-8008
www.unpath.com



+++++++  +++++++  +++++++  +++++++  +++++++  +++++++  +++++++
From: Robert M Gauthier
To: BPCS-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 3:48 PM
Subject: Re: [BPCS-L] BPCS ERP LX or BPCS 8.02

         I would like to try this one more time.

         We are on Version 6.01.01 and are planning an upgrade, SSA is
telling us we should go to BPCS ERP LX.
         They are telling us that there are two Customers using LX and that
there are 14 Users in the process of converting???????

Are there any BPCS Users out there running BPCS ERP LX or are in the process
of testing ERP LX and if so, could you please contact me off line and answer
some concerns we have

Are there any BPCS Users out there running BPCS 8.02 or are in the process
of testing 8.02 and are converting from 6.01.01 if so, could you please
contact me off line and answer some concerns we have

Your Cooperation will be greatly appreciated.

Bob Gauthier
Marietta Corporation