Whether creating work boots for use in the field of combat, in the world of manufacturing, or just to make a fashion statement, Red Wing Shoes' innovations have made the company a global footwear success. As the company established a growth plan to expand its reach, it added an enterprise resource planning system that could integrate enterprise applications and keep the company abreast of all operations from manufacturing to shipping product to customers.

Red Wing Shoes is a $500-million privately held company, with more than a century's worth of experience. The company was founded in 1905, and within 10 years, Red Wing Shoes was producing more than 200,000 pairs of boots annually. It was also the primary company manufacturing footwear for American soldiers fighting in World War I and World War II.

The company continued that tradition; it still features Red Wing-brand work and steel-toe shoes and also designs a casual line in three domestic factories as well as one overseas. The company recently augmented its portfolio with a garment division that creates flame-retardant clothing for oil and gas workers.

"We had an expansion plan on our docket for quite some time to jump into garments, and we also eventually want to add 125 more stores over five years," said Joe Topinka, the company's CIO. "Simultaneously, we're supporting a growing wholesale e-commerce operation. We went from no customers to 2,500 in a short period of time. This made us push the envelope on customer service."

What makes the company unique, however, is that Red Wing Shoes' business model starts with raw hides. The company tans the leather, manufactures the footwear, and then sells it in one of its 400 stores (half company-owned, half dealer partnerships), throughout retail partners' stores and online through its wholesale division.

It is imperative for the company to track the flow of raw materials from rawhide to finished goods, a process that can be tedious. By adding an ERP system five years ago, the company gained insight into the entire supply chain, from raw materials to finished goods, as well as within its own manufacturing and retail operations.

The company chose an ERP system from Lawson Software, St. Paul, Minn., to handle, and streamline, its operations. The platform is linked to the retailer's AS400 computing platform, and it pulls all item movement data from store-level point-of-sale and e-commerce transactions into a common database.

The solution is also linked to an EDI system, which monitors placed orders and vendor payments. As the company receives raw and finished materials inventory from suppliers, they are scanned into the system upon arrival at one of the warehouses, using a mobile scanning system.

Information from all business functions is integrated, including sales forecasting, which contributes to inventory optimization; order tracking, from acceptance through fulfillment; revenue tracking, from invoice through cash receipt and the matching purchase orders; inventory receipts for arrivals and costing based on vendor invoicing.

Looking ahead, the solution will support the company's expanding "stores on wheels" initiative, which includes launching "mobile stores," or pop-up locations that are "where the workers are," Topinka explained.

The company is also launching the newest version of the solution this summer, and expects that "to fuel tremendous productivity benefits as well," he says, adding that the company will begin the implementation this fall.

In addition, the chain is in the early stages of a new POS upgrade, as well as exploring an e-commerce initiative that enables customers to pick up merchandise at a store. "The success of these programs and upholding customer service includes integrating all applications within our ERP system so all item movement remains visible," Topinka said

Infor, a leading provider of business application software serving more than 70,000 customers, announced the acquisition of new product lines from Single Source Systems, Inc., an Infor solution partner and leader in service management solutions. The acquired product lines include Service Management Plus (SM-Plus), SM-Plus Mobile and Workbench Suite. The addition of these products to Infor's solution offerings will benefit dealers, distributors and manufacturers primarily through a direct relationship with Infor and closer alignment of Single Source and Infor products.

Infor has acquired complementary new product lines from Single Source Systems, an Infor partner and leading provider of service management solutions, including:

• • SM-Plus - enables service-centric companies that make, distribute and service high-value or complex equipment to manage the entire service life cycle of that equipment.
  • SM-Plus Mobile - allows field technicians to use a laptop or mobile device to remotely access critical supply-chain information such as unit configuration, incident history, service history, service contract status, and parts availability while still in the field.
  • Workbench Suite - allows users to consolidate several role-related screens, performance gauges, navigation shortcuts, process flow guides, and advanced search/report tools in one easy-to-access location.

Following this acquisition, Infor intends to deliver significant product enhancements and to integrate these key solutions with a number of core Infor platforms, providing even greater synergies between the Single Source product lines and existing Infor product offerings. Several of the acquired SM-Plus products were specifically designed to work with Infor10 ERP Business (SyteLine) and were developed using Infor's Mongoose software development toolset.

Customers that had previously been working with Single Source will also benefit from the strength and stability of partnering with Infor, the third largest enterprise applications provider in the world, with a focus on product innovation and customer value. Customers will also benefit from unified support from a single vendor, reducing critical response time and streamlining access to product support.

IT systems and services provider Cambridge Online has extended its ERP capability by partnering with manufacturing SME enterprise software giant Infor.

Cambridge Online CEO Ray Olds explains that the company will now offer Infor10 ERP Business (SyteLine) to discrete manufacturers across a broad range of industries, including metal fabrication, industrial equipment and machinery, high tech electronics and automotive manufacturers in the UK.

"We need to be partnered with a manufacturing software provider with long-standing specialism in handling the pressures associated with discrete, custom manufacturers," explains Olds.

Choosing Infor SyteLine, he says, is about recognising the importance of agility and responsiveness for such manufacturers. "Infor10 ERP Business is the right product for this environment," he adds.

Cambridge Online will provide sales, installation, integration and support, with immediate effect.

In the meantime, the firm retains its Microsoft Gold partner status, says Olds, insisting that it will continue to offer Microsoft Dynamics NAV to existing customer-base and in other markets.

"Infor's channel strategy is key to our growth and generates 24% of license revenues globally," comments Jean-Philippe Pommel, Infor's vice president of channels, EMEA.

"Establishing partnerships with the right quality organisations is key to capitalising on this growth, so recruiting a proven channel partner like Cambridge Online is key to executing on this strategy."

By 2015, 40% of SAP's business will come from alternative channel partners, as the company seeks to accelerate growth and its global footprint.

This is according to Eric Duffaut, SAP global president of ecosystem and channels. Duffaut was speaking during a roundtable at SAP's Sapphire Now conference, in Madrid.

Duffaut said SAP is driving its channel partner network, and has grown its small and medium enterprise (SME) segment by 42%. Currently, 76% of SAP's customers are SMEs, at 90 000 out of 150 000 customers.

Duffaut explained that 80% of SAP's mobile applications come from partners. "Today, we can only effectively compete by building a strong channel network. Our success depends on how we embark on developing this channel ecosystem."

He added that co-innovation is a key part of SAP's strategy; working closely with partners to develop applications.

Luis Murguia, SAP senior VP of ecosystem and channels for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, concurred. "After the SAP acquisition of Business Objects, we had a much wider choice of solutions for our customers, and had to re-think how we could address the market and reach the right customers.

"SAP has started the new partner ecosystem and channel to embrace all of its partners to drive a much more holistic approach compared to the past; which was segmented."

Uwe Bohnhorst, COO of itelligence, a SAP partner, pointed out that the partner ecosystem means it now has new revenue streams and the ability to make its business model more robust, scalable and profitable.

"Now, with SAP moving towards platforms, we as a partner have the ability and duty to understand our customers' business and co-innovate with partners in a system that provides real value."

SAP recently acquired e-commerce firm, Crossgate in a deal that closed on 1 November. The Crossgate platform has enabled SAP's customers to connect electronically in the cloud with thousands of partners and extend a company's business processes to its community.

According to the company, participation in this business network will eliminate the need for costly point-to-point integration, helping reduce complexity, while enabling its partners to scale up.

Recent partnerships, which have expanded on-demand solution options from SAP and extended its ecosystem, include Amazon Web Services, Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Virtual Computing Environment coalition and Verizon.

Infor, the provider of business application software, has launched Infor10, which features a consumer-grade user experience, complete industry-specific software applications and Infor10 ION Suite, a lightweight, middleware technology that changes the way enterprise software is managed.

"Our customers today already enjoy best-in-class applications with deep out-of-the-box functionality across a variety of highly specialised industries and micro-verticals. Infor10 sets a new standard for how work gets done. People at work have come to expect the same user experience they encounter in their everyday lives as users of Twitter, Facebook and Google. Infor10 and the Infor10 ION Suite bring that to the workplace," said Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor. "This unique combination provides our existing customers the opportunity to dramatically upgrade and extend their investments in Infor applications and it gives new customers the next wave of enterprise software innovation they've been seeking," he said.

The Infor10 ION Suite is at the heart of Infor10. ION connects and integrates Infor and non-Infor applications, storing information in a common format and repository. ION allows information that flows among applications, analytics and social media streams to be accessed by users from their desktops, laptops and mobile devices.

Unlike conventional middleware, the lightweight ION technology is not layered on top of existing applications, but infused into them. As a result, ION makes integrations quicker, simpler and more reliable. "ION creates the mobile, social and flexible enterprise," said Soma Somasundaram, senior vice president, Global Product Development, Infor. "Because it's lightweight and built using open standards, ION installs much faster than heavy middleware and allows customers to get up and running quickly and efficiently so they can focus on their core business," he said.

ION enables new and existing Infor and non-Infor applications to work as a holistic solution, helping to create streamlined workflows and end-to-end business processes, while improving system performance speed and upgrades.

The last major upgrade to SAP's core enterprise resource planning (ERP) product was released in 2005, so how is the company achieving record growth? Warwick Ashford reports

SAP reported record third quarter software revenue and notched up the seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth in software and software-related services.But if ERP is no longer the big push for the German enterprise software house, what are its customers actually buying?

The answer lies in the business software's company's strategy laid out by co-chief executives Jim Hagemann Snabe and Bill McDermott since taking over the helm at SAP in early 2010 and their emphasis on non-disruptive innovation.

Snabe points out that while there has been no major single upgrade in SAP ERP for some years, the company's switch from painful upgrades to continual enhancement means that ERP and other core products in the SAP Business Suite are still evolving to meet customer needs.

"Since we announced accelerated innovation of Business Suite on a quarterly basis, we have seen double-digit growth in our core products," he says.

While SAP believes its own ability to innovate is key to long-term success, it acknowledges that acquisition can be an important part of an innovation strategy if focused on gaining technology rather than market share or customer databases.

Through its acquisition of analytics technology with BusinessObjects in 2007 and mobile technology with Sybase in 2010, SAP is now in a position to capitalise on the two major challenges facing business of mobilising the enterprise and making sense of the vast amounts of data being generated.

"We are seeing the huge benefit of integrated analytics software with the core process software, which are designed to fit together, which gives companies better analytics on what's going on in the business , and enables them to react quickly to changes, which is very valuable in uncertain times, and driving strong growth in that part of the business," says Snabe.

A year after the acquisition of Sybase, SAP is using the technology to enable innovation take a leading position in moving business applications to mobile devices.

This means that the just-completed quarter in the first in which SAP is able to compare results with the same quarter in a previous year.

"We are seeing organic growth of 32%, which means we are exceeding the business case for acquiring Sybase," says Snabe.

He says SAP is also well on the way to achieving its goal of generating €100m in revenues from its mobile business within the first year.

SAP's growth is also being driven by company's innovation around in-memory computing that centres on SAP's High-Performance Analytic Appliance (HANA) that provides a boost in performance by holding data to be processed in RAM instead of reading it from disks or flash storage.

SAP is again aiming at a target of €100m in sales in the first year for HANA, but is well on the way to exceeding that, having already closed deals worth €60m. "Considering HANA was released only in June 2011, this is pretty significant; probably the fastest growing product in our history," says Snabe.

Customers are interested in adopting this technology, he says, because it dramatically increases their ability to predict the future and analyse in real-time what is going on in the business, and at the same time reduces cost of hardware infrastructure.

Despite the interest in HANA, other technology suppliers have not failed to notice the growing demand for real-time analytics and have begun offering competing products and services. What makes SAP's in-memory computing offering different to its competitors?

Snabe claims SAP was the first to move in this area. Three years ago, he says, SAP set out to challenge the assumption that data needs to be stored on a disk in a complex relational database.

"At the time our main competitors said we were out of our minds, and while today most companies will talk about in-memory computing as the future, few have it right," says Snabe.

SAP's believes that in-memory computing is the future infrastructure of business software and is therefore going for a pure model.

Consequently, says Snabe, HANA has no moving parts, no relational database structures; it is purely in-memory. All competitor attempts to claim they also have in-memory computing, he says is really a cobbling together of existing stuff, including some in-memory stuff, but that increases complexity rather than reducing it.

"HANA takes complexity away; it simplifies the data structure, and that is why the hardware we run on is significantly cheaper than the competition," he says.

Snabe believes SAP is 18 to 24 months ahead of the competition. The next update for the technology, due in November, will enable HANA to run an entire business data warehouse in main memory and do away with the relational database entirely.

Given this perspective, SAP's growth in what remains an economically challenging climate for most businesses, is not that surprising.

SAP is achieving success by enabling its customers to do more and cut costs with through evolution of its core products and innovative application of new technologies.

Software vendor, SAP, is aggressively targeting the SMB market and wants to recruit more resellers to aid its ambitions.

The vendor recently launched its CRM product, Starter Pack for Business One and is looking for new channel partners to come on board to help deliver it to the SMB market. The product directly competes with MYOB in the small business space.

The Business One Starter Pack aims to meet the needs of the small companies, implemented at a fixed price, and it is sold only through channel partners.

It has volume-based, value-add resellers (VARs) and small IT services companies in its sights.

SAP Business One channel sales manager, Vince Cordi, said it lowered the barrier to entry for resellers that target the SMB market.

"It's a volume recruitment strategy, and as long as they're in that target market, we're happy to have them on-board," Cordi said.

"We're looking for partners that have an existing business with a competitive product, certain competencies within the organisation that address our target market, and we're lowering our traditional bench marks."

The vendor plans to provide information sessions to help introduce partners to the SAP fold and the Business One Starter Pack.

"All businesses eventually outgrow accounting software from companies like MYOB, and even small businesses can gain big efficiencies by linking functions like customer records to order entry to inventory," he said. "SAP's Business One Starter Pack is ideal for growing companies that need more than standard accounting software, are limited by spreadsheets or non-integrated business software, and want to get efficiency, visibility, and control that a fully integrated business management solution delivers."

SAP AG has updated its portfolio of on-premise and hosted business management solutions for small businesses with the release of 8.82 version of the SAP Business One application.

The latest version offers new capabilities for campaign management and material requirements planning, as well as business partner, infrastructure and inventory enhancements. With SAP Business One 8.82, starter package availability is expanded to include all application localisations. SAP Business One 8.82 is available through starter packages and subscription-based hosting options.

Some of the key enhancements that come with SAP Business One 8.82 include:

• • Extension of customer relationship management (CRM) functionality. Powerful CRM functionality enables businesses to create, maintain and analyse multi-channel marketing campaign information. Businesses can manage the entire life cycle of a campaign by creating and maintaining target groups, using the campaign generation wizard, managing the campaign data, generating leads and sales opportunities directly from a campaign, and analysing results based on the campaign list report.
  • Greater control and visibility over serial managed items. Users can allocate serial numbers to items for sales orders, accounts receivable reserve invoices and inventory transfer requests – allowing for better control, greater visibility and increased flexibility with inventory allocations.
  • Pick and pack process simplification. Serial and batch numbers can be allocated to items throughout the pick and pack process. Businesses achieve better management and support for back-order functionality. Deliveries are automatically created and invoices can be manually developed. Customers benefit from cost savings due to efficient consolidation of deliveries and streamlined selecting operations.
  • Powerful and flexible material requirements planning (MRP) processes. The enhanced MRP module has a more powerful and flexible MRP wizard, informative recommendation reports, new options for calendar week display and improved forecasting capabilities. The new inventory transfer request document recommends transfer between warehouses before initiating purchase or production orders. Businesses have greater control over MRP parameters and can better plan inventory levels with sophisticated calculation capabilities.
  • Effective long-term business planning. Businesses can now record blanket agreements to reflect long-term sales or purchasing agreements that have been negotiated with business partners. Sales and purchasing documents can be linked to blanket agreements and used as a basis for expected revenue forecasts, quantity reservation and capacity planning. Furthermore, blanket agreements are involved in cash-flow calculations, MRP runs and the procurement process.
  • Simplified configuration. The new express configuration wizard guides users through the essential settings in the various application areas and allows them to compare configuration settings that have been previously saved in order to detect changes to the configuration that may cause errors.

Infor, a leading provider of business application software serving more than 70,000 customers, announced it has acquired the ENXSuite product line. A natural complement to Infor10 EAM's convergence of energy and asset management, ENXSuite is a cloud-based energy performance management (EPM) platform that provides actionable energy intelligence enabling companies to continuously plan, analyze, and manage their entire energy and sustainability footprint. This acquisition further strengthens Infor's position as a leader of enterprise solutions for energy management and sustainability, helping customers manage and control energy costs, as well as operational and environmental compliance.

The ENXSuite product line is a sophisticated energy data integration platform and energy consolidation product that augments Infor10 EAM's demand reduction and conservation capabilities by enabling organizations to transform their energy, carbon, water, and waste assets into measurable and manageable financial assets.

Infor10 EAM is a comprehensive enterprise asset management and sustainability solution that monitors and manages the design, commissioning, performance, energy efficiency, and maintenance of company assets, helping to reduce energy consumption and related costs by as much as 20 percent while helping to ensure optimal asset performance.

The unified view of energy sources provided by coupling ENXSuite and Infor10 EAM capabilities will help organizations determine the causes of energy waste and expense. This enhances programs targeted to prevent waste by integrating energy intelligence, visibility, and management controls into the organization's day-to-day business processes.

Ralph Rio, ARC Advisory Group, commented, "The combination of Infor10 EAM and ENXSuite provides both the operational controls needed for technicians, and the business intelligence needed by executives. Bringing these technologies together, Infor will provide companies the tools needed to plan, execute, monitor KPIs, and report the financial benefits of their sustainability program."

New research published by Intact Software found the 61 percent of their respondents were using one of three ERP systems; SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, or Sage. But this research found that users are not happy with 75 percent experiencing problems and many want to replace their systems, which is far higher than other surveys this year. The major issues highlighted by the respondents appear to be the ever increasing maintenance costs, cited by 33 percent, underperformance, cited by 23 percent, and the systems inflexibility, 19 percent in this research, 58 percent of survey respondents said that a main reason ERP implementations fail is because the software fails to match the business processes and 37 percent said the software is not fit for purpose. However, in many instances companies who implement ERP systems try to make the new system fit old and outdated processes or fail to implement any efficiencies that that the ERP systems offer.

A successful ERP implementation is far more than changing software, it requires a change in the way a company does business by adopting best practices throughout the enterprise