Are
all of your critical business processes accurately mapped,
controlled, and costed? If you’re like the majority
of INFIMACS users, the answer is “no”. Certainly,
basic purchasing/bill paying, sales order/invoice processing,
MRP/work order processing, and project accounting are all
managed within standard INFIMACS ERP. What about the processes
that make your business unique? Is your company dependant
on refurbishing returned goods, developing new products, settling
warranty claims, managing R&D efforts, installing major
capital equipment, or other non-standard activities? Most
companies struggle through these processes with a motley collection
of CAD drawings, MS Project Gantt charts, MS Excel worksheets,
and MS Word documents. Each of these serves a vital function,
but are scattered, isolated from each other and disconnected
from your ERP system of record. Do you know the current status
of every important process and the location of all critical
documents? Do you even know who to ask or where to look?
Now you will be able to look for yourself,
any time, and anywhere with a suite of new web-based modules
from Relevant. The core module of the group is Activity Tracking
(AT) that works in parallel with standard INFIMACS. AT allows
users to define tasks, group them into templates for recurring
use, and assign default users. When a procedure order is created
from a template, the tasks are pre-assigned. As each user
completes his or her task, the following task becomes available
to the next user. Managers and users alike always know “who
has the ball”.
There are currently five function-specific
add-ons available for the AT system: quality, requisition,
item, document, and change order approval. These deepen the
relationship with standard INFIMACS by allowing specific AT
tasks to actually regulate processes within the ERP system.
One example would be the holding of purchased items in receiving
until certain quality tasks have been completed. Another example
might be the requirement for multiple signoffs on requisitions
depending upon dollar value.
Product Data Management allows users to
store, track, and retrieve revisions of any file type and
associate it with any entity or entities in INFIMACS. Users
might establish associations of CAD drawings to an item, videos
to a process, or contracts to a sales order. These are stored
on a single server of record giving all users access to up-to-date
documents. PDM can be used independently, but is built upon
the same zero client architecture as AT.
In this issue of the newsletter, we will
look closely at the AT module and follow up with the others
in upcoming issues. In the following illustrations, you will
get a sense of the look and feel shared by all the new modules.
We have chosen to show the basic screens for setup and management
of Activity Tracking, just as we might in a brief in-person
demo. We have highlighted those things we would point out
during a first pass through the process. The AT module is
a lot like a Swiss Army knife – it was not designed
for one specific purpose, but as a multi-purpose tool. We
welcome your inquiries about how this tool can be used to
serve your purposes.
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