RE: We go live one month from now...

Konrad,

You make some very good points, and Rel 6 isn't all peaches-and-cream. I
certainly didn't apply cumulative 3196 due to the bad reviews on this panel;
I waited and applied 3196 and 4140 together and have been mostly happy with
the results.

Your point about in-house versus third-party makes sense for your company.
My situation is totally different. Prior to MAPICS, we had a home-grown
system written in some proprietary RPG-code generator package and running on
a Burroughs, and when I was hired it was because they were trying to
implement a package written in Business BASIC running on a RISC-6000/AIX
box. My AS/400 and RPG experience at that time had been classroom only - I
was a BASIC and COBOL programmer by experience. My assistant has been hired
by me - he has classroom experience on the AS/400 and RPG, but he is mostly
my network admin and PC/ACCESS guru. So our in-house RPG and AS/400
experience is not really there (although after five years, I do get around
on the 400. I can do simple things in RPG when necessary, but I certainly
couldn't duplicate a $45,000 MAPICS module!). So writing in-house would be
as much of an expense (in creating the positions and hiring RPG programmers)
as paying maintenance on selected third-party packages and running
everything as vanilla as possible.

Michael makes a vaild point, also - you will find problems with every ERP
system available - maybe not the ones you are having with MAPICS, but
certainly just as big and just as frustrating. As I have said many times
before, at least 75% of the problems we have here with MAPICS are end-users
trying to do things "the old way" instead of using MAPICS the way it was
intended. Strong upper-management leadership can change this attitude; but
when it is the upper-management who are refusing to change...

         -- Joan

-----Original Message-----
From: Konrad Underkofler [mailto:kdunderk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 9:19 AM
To: MAPICS ERP System Discussion
Subject: RE: We go live one month from now...


Joan,

It was Cheerios and they did taste a little funny :(

Strangely enough I found R4 to be more stable than R6. The 4800 ptfs in R6
have mostly succeeded in making MAPICS different not more stable or
functional. Some of the "enhancements" were unwelcome and not defeatable.
One thing is better about R6 and that is EDPM, we are still at ptf 2624 and
unsure about going to ptf 4000 whatever since the number of bad fixes and
good fixes seem about equal these days. The rest of the client apps have
issues at our level that will hopefully be resolved someday, but right now
we are happy enough to avoid the client app training curve and not have to
cope with the issues.

Getting rid of the third party applications has helped as well. Our in house
applications have the benefit of support (us), incur no license fees, and we
don't have to worry about the enhancements that never come. We do still use
Paperless and Powerledger since they do have real function and support.
There may be other worthwhile third party applications out there that we
just do not have.

Source does have a lot of purpose other than correcting the code issues
MAPICS either does not recognize or does not want to fix (ie the inability
to calculate a correct ship date). It is useful for subsetting reports,
chosing better defaults, requiring fields be filled in, creating auto
schedule jobs, etc. In many cases it can be used to avoid buying one of the
add on packages at great cost. We created our own mini-ISL to shift demand
between our two plants. Why pay $$$$ per year when all you need is purchase
orders in one warehouse converted to customer orders in another warehouse?

BTW The latest Gartner report I have rates MAPICS XA as the worst of the 3
MAPICS products and categorizes them (all 3)as niche players. I am always
curious about the evaluation process in selecting a new package and in an
application environment that has been marked by lack of new product and
innnovation over the years external forces are usually at work in the
selection as Geoff has indicated. 

And yes the other users and some of the better vendors and consultants are
the best form of support. I have been thinking for awhile that it would be
nice to establish a non-MAPICS, MAPICS XA website devoted to answering
questions, sharing experience, sharing code and enhancements. Anyone else
think that is a good idea? 

Regards 

Konrad

  
-----Original Message-----
From: McCready, Joan [mailto:Joan.McCready@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 9:29 AM
To: 'MAPICS ERP System Discussion'
Subject: RE: We go live one month from now...


Sheesh, Konrad... Who's been putting vinegar on your Wheaties lately?

Geoff, be grateful you are going live with Rel 6 - we went live with Rel 4
almost five years ago, total novices to MAPICS, had no idea it had so many
bugs. Every time I applied a cumulative PTF tape, MAPICS was almost unusable
for a couple of weeks while we found all the "new" bugs. I was told last
year by a MAPICS support line person when we were upgrading from 4 to 6,
that MAPICS Inc would be totally relieved when everyone was off of Rel 4!
Rel 6 is to Rel 4 like Win2K is to Win95 (IMHO)...

There are a few gotchas, but this list is a good place to find them... BTW,
apparently neither PTF level 3196 nor 4140 includes the logical files
created in SH61688.660 (ptf 3501), but they do include the new level of
program AMM53 - which we found out last night when the MRP run bombed!
Fortunately, I finally know how to apply a patch like this one without
getting dedicate mode! Not that we dare run MRP before tomorrow morning at
3:00 am (after backup) now...

We do run a few third-party add-ins (MDCC being the most important one), and
we have not had any problems. We run pure-plain-vanilla MAPICS - don't have
the source and don't want it! (If I had it, my users would demand that I
"tinker" with it so MAPICS "works" like the old system, even 5 years
later!!!)

Best of luck to you, Geoff  - Joan

Joan McCready, IS Manager      phone:  636-479-4499
MetalTek International         fax:  636-479-3399
The Carondelet Division        www.metaltekint.com
8600 Commercial Blvd
Pevely, MO  63070                      


-----Original Message-----
From: Konrad Underkofler [mailto:kdunderk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2003 12:02 PM
To: MAPICS ERP System Discussion
Subject: RE: We go live one month from now...


Geoff,

I am curious on the choice of MAPICS overall? Forced on you by a parent
company?

As far as implementation goes be aware of the gotchas all over the place in
functionality. Lots of gaps and bugs cripple what was a good design 15 years
ago. Most companies have developed in house code to shore up the weaknesses
or adopted third party products to patch things over. Given the declining
state of the third party providers and MAPICS Inc's relationship with them,
go with the in house solution if at all possible. 

And of course.............GET SOURCE you will need it for many reasons.

Good luck!

Konrad

-----Original Message-----
From: Geoff Richardson [mailto:grichardson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2003 10:49 AM
To: mapics-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: We go live one month from now...


Hi to everyone on the mailing list.

My name is Geoff Richardson and my company have spent the last 22 months
preparing to implement MAPICS XA 6.0  We are finally ready to go live at the
first sites.  I don't really have a specific question for y'all, but I would
be very interested to hear your memories, lessons, experiences and advice
relating to the implementation and roll out of MAPICS at your companies...

TIA,
Geoff

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Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
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_______________________________________________
This is the MAPICS ERP System Discussion (MAPICS-L) mailing list To post a
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Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
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