re- Real World Benefits to Mapics 7+ upgrade

We upgraded from rel 3 to rel 7 in March.  We have a fair amount of
custom code (especially in COM). Our items and bill of materials are
created by a stand alone program and imported into XA. We were able to
cutover from rel 3 to 7 on the green screens pretty smoothly (only a few
gotcha's like the ITEMBL format name changing causing IWP to bomb, and
the logic changing in the way some fields were being calculated in COM).
As far as enhancements, you will see very little difference on the green
screens, especially if you are already at rel 5 or 6. For us the biggest
benefit on the green screens is the support that we can get from Infor.
Unless you are going to move to the PowerLink applications, support is
probably the only gain.

PowerLink has many improvements and advantages and is worth aiming for.
But it is not an easy transition if you have modifications. There are
always going to be some users who embrace the new screens and are
willing to make the effort necessary to switch. But there are also those
that try to resist as well. The trouble that I have with this is that
some areas of PowerLink are still incomplete. (In COM you still have to
go to green screen for the pick pack and ship functions. You still have
to go to green screen for most IM transaction processing.) It is hard to
convince those users to switch between the two systems depending on what
they are doing. Because of our modifications to COM there are other
functions that we cannot use in PowerLink yet due to the shared user
exits. Any user exit program that tries to display a green screen bombs
in PowerLink. I am having a hard time figuring out how I am going to get
this group of users switched over at this point. This brings up another
problem that I have here. The PowerLink essentials package was purchased
here before I came on board. We do not have Integrator. Integrator is a
must have program if you want to incorporate your modifications or stand
alone programs into PowerLink. Unfortunately, Infor wants more money for
Integrator than they did for the whole essentials package. This is
making it very hard for me to try to justify this to my management.  BIG
TIP - MAKE SURE YOU GET INTEGRATOR NEGOTIATED IN WITH YOUR OTHER APPS. 

On the positive side, the Purchasing department is using PowerLink
almost exclusively. When I first trained the department I had 3 users
that tried using it from day 1 and 3 users that were more comfortable
with the green screens and didn't want to change. I allowed the most
advanced user to make public templates, views and subsets which he
shared with the others. This helped them to see the advantages in
Procurement. After all users were trained, I was able to turn off
authority to the maintenance functions in the green screens. This was
justified because of the great job PowerLink does of retaining logs of
all maintenance changes. It keeps a record of every change and what was
changed as opposed to the green screens which have a last changed user
and date only. This forced the other users into using PowerLink for some
task. They eventually switched to PowerLink full time and now like the
extra flexibility they have. 

Support has been slightly slower on some problems. It seems that it has
to go to a second level a little more often, but they do get results.

The other area that I wish could be improved is more information from
Infor on what is coming and some better technical information. I have
seen a time line from early this year, which went into detail on the
enhancements Infor was expecting to roll out. It showed enhancements to
some of the areas I talked about above. Rel 7.8 with these enhancements
was due out the 4th qtr of this year, according to that document. When I
ask Infor support about this, they tell me they don't know anything more
than I do about when or what is coming from development.

In my area (Chicago area) we have not had an active user group in
several years, and I don't know of any other customers at Rel 7.  It
sure would be nice if there were others that I could share issues and
discoveries with.

 

            Kevin