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TUG veterans and first time participants both find solutions at TUG Connects.

Nem_160214_084851The rave reviews keep pouring in for TUG Connects 2016, with participants talking about the knowledge they took away from conference sessions and the tips and advice they picked up from their colleagues and peers.

From first-time participants to TUG veterans, we keep hearing how much value participants received from the conference—and how certain they are that they’ll be back next year.

Jumping In With Both Feet

Logan Smith of Alaska Industrial Hardware first heard of TheUserGroup.org a couple of months before the conference. “That first day, I probably read hours’ worth of TUG posts,” he says. “I saw issues we didn’t even know were issues until then, so we were sold.”

The company initially decided to register two staff members for TUG Connects. “Then we started putting checkmarks to every class we wanted to go to, and realized there were more classes than there were enough of us to attend. By the end, we had four full-time employees there for the entire conference,” and “none of us were prepared for how much we learned in those four days.”

Solutions That Work

Before the conference, Smith was looking for a solution to a problem with substitute items coming in from vendors. A simple process in Alaska Industrial’s legacy ERP system seemed to require manual entry in SX.e—until Smith and his team began talking to their colleagues at TUG.

“The first day there, we met someone from another IT department who had the same issue,” Smith recalls. “Not only did he offer to help. He showed us the solution he’d come up with. That was our first impression—two hours into TUG, we had met a group of users who all had the same issue, and one person who was able to share his solution with everyone.”

Another discussion brought an unexpected solution for stock orders in a distribution center running under TWL. Smith says a simple process change will save his company five to 10 minutes per order on a volume of 300 orders per day.

“We were wasting hours of staff time just trying to get orders shipped,” instead of using the counter sales system that already worked well for AIH’s eight retail outlets. “We didn’t know our process was broken,” he says. “We would have just continued on the way it was.”

21 Years of Content and Networking

For Jeff Focke of Shealy Electrical Wholesalers, it’s no news that TUG Connects! is the place to be to get the most out of his distribution software. He’s been attending the conference for 21 years and has no plans to stop.

“What keeps me coming back is the excellent content, and the networking with my fellow users and peers that I’ve worked with over the years,” he says.

Someone recently asked Focke what he gets out of the conference when he’s a regular presenter each year. “I answered by quoting Confucius,” he recalls. “’Only the wisest men and the stupidest men have nothing to learn.’ I always have something to learn and people to share ideas with, to hear about things we may not have considered. It’s just a first-rate forum.”

‘The Business is Always Changing’

TUG Connects! 2016 focused on the transition to the Web UI, but Focke says every year’s conference features state-of-the-art content on the latest industry issues.

“The distribution business model is nothing new, but the business is always changing and evolving,” he says. “So there’s always something new to do, a new way to do it, a new feature set. It’s always something we haven’t thought about before, something new on the horizon that’s going to challenge us and push the limits of what we know, or of what we think we know.”

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White’s Legacy: TUG Emerges as Distribution Thought Leader

David White
David White, President of Kyana Packaging and Industrial Supply stepped down as Chairman of the TUG Board in June of 2016

The last couple of years have left TheUserGroup.org with a stronger relationship with Infor, a higher profile as a distribution thought leader, and several Special Interest Groups that are shifting their day-to-day to work to a broader, more strategic focus.

My term as TUG Chairman has gone by in a blur, but as I look back over the last 24 months, I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve all achieved together.

Infor Partnership Delivers New Enhancement Request System

All relationships take work, and the partnership between TUG and Infor is no exception. We’ve been paying a lot of attention, Infor has, too, and I really think the relationship is stronger now than at any other time since I became involved with TUG about a decade ago.

We communicate clearly, honestly, and frequently. Infor executives are very responsive to our needs. And TUG is fulfilling its role as a vehicle for the user community to speak to Infor as one, rather than 450 disparate voices belonging to different companies.

The new Enhancement Request System that Infor released at TUG Connects 2016 gives our Special Interest Groups a direct conduit to Product Management, enabling us to make the case for the features we need to move our businesses forward. It’s taken a lot of time and effort to get this done, and it’s a huge milestone! Until now, it’s been very difficult to track enhancement requests once they were submitted. Now, anyone can log in and get a clear picture of a request’s status, who thinks it’s a good or bad idea, and whether it’s getting any traction at all.

That’s just one example of what happens when a user group like TUG and a company like Infor can build open, transparent lines of communication.

Thought Leadership: Focusing on What’s Next

It’s been very important to me to build TUG’s standing as a distribution thought leader. TUG members all operate in different industries, but at the core, we have a lot in common as distributors, particularly as distributors of a certain size. Our executive track at TUG Connects has helped our members focus on what’s next. As a result, I think many of us are running better companies than we may have been two or three years ago.

The executive track covers a mix of different topics, but succession planning is a great example of a big, looming issue that many of our members haven’t had time—or made the time—to properly address. All of our employees want to know their jobs will still be there when the owner decides to retire, so we should all be trying to train our replacements. The reality is that none of us is indispensable, and it’s up to us to make sure our companies continue to thrive when we pass the torch to the next generation.

In addition to the executive track, we’ve held some useful webinars on how to set up training plans and mentor tomorrow’s leaders. And we’ve been practicing what we preach, working with our SIG leaders to improve their presentation skills. Leadership development has been a major theme for us across the board, and I would expect to see that continue.

Special Interest Groups: Changing the Conversation

The last couple of years have seen a few of our Special Interest Groups shift their work and develop beyond a narrow niche, focused on a particular product. The Storefront SIG is a great example.

Storefront is still one of our most important groups, but we’ve also seen members form an e-Commerce SIG to look at the wider universe of platforms that interact with our back-end ERP systems. And it’s amazing to see how that has changed the conversation: Instead of talking about where a particular widget should be on a Storefront page, it’s all about how we move our businesses forward in an e-commerce world.

In much the same way, the EDI SIG has morphed into the Business Process Automation SIG, moving beyond its earlier, more narrow focus to talk about how we automate our business processes and minimize the number of touches on every transaction. Because fewer touches means driving costs out of our businesses and making them more profitable.

It all adds up to a pretty good return on your investment in a TUG membership.

Lots to Look Forward To

I’ll be staying on the TUG Board as Past Chairman, and I’m looking forward to contributing over the next two years. We’re very fortunate that Don Green is taking over as Chairman—he’s a high-energy guy, he’s just full of great ideas, and he’ll be backed up by a good, solid board filled with very bright people.

My company will still be heavily involved with TUG because it’s a great resource that brings value to the business and value to our people. Really, I struggle to picture where we would be today without the user community to support us.

David White is about to finish his two-year term as Chairman of TheUserGroup.org. He is President of Kyana Packaging Solutions in Louisville, Kentucky.

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TUG is Your Gateway to Infor’s Enhancement Request Process

By David White
Chairman, TheUserGroup.org

The new year dawned with Infor putting the finishing touches on a more streamlined, technology-enabled enhancement request process that relies on the TUG portal as a gateway for distribution businesses.

As TUG’s representatives on Infor’s Customer Experience Board since the spring of 2013, Past President Suzanne Minard and I have had a window on the development of the company’s new Enhancement Review System (ERS). Its purpose is to do away with the spreadsheets that all of our Special Interest Group (SIG) leaders have worked so diligently to maintain, just to keep track of the requests members had put forward for different Infor products.

A Universal, Interactive Request System
Through the Customer Experience Board, we learned that the challenges with the previous enhancement process were not limited to distribution: Around the world, and across multiple industries, Infor product managers were constantly trying to manage and balance a continuing flurry of requests, with little transparency for the users whose needs they were striving to meet. So the Customer Experience Board agreed on an audacious goal. Working with Infor, we set out to create a universal, interactive system for all enhancement requests that would be transparent to all licensed users of Infor products.

It took a lot of time and hard work. But as of February 9, SX.e users have access to a system that:

  • Brings all enhancement requests together on a single platform
  • Creates a space where users can comment on current requests
  • Gives TUG members a one-stop platform to help Infor deliver solid products and enhancements that will help keep our businesses viable for decades to come.

The system is available for SX.e and Infor SyteLine during the initial rollout. It will be extended to all distribution ERPs later this spring.

Volunteering: The More You Give, the More You Get Back
With TheUserGroup.org actively searching for volunteers to serve as committee members and chairs, the saga of the Enhancement Review System has really reinforced my sense that the more you contribute to your user group, the more you get back.

It’s a hard message to swallow when you’re scrambling to fit 10 hours of work into an eight-hour day. But when I look back on my years of involvement with TUG, I know that the professional network I’ve built—with my peers across the industry, and with dozens of key contacts at Infor—is a cornerstone of my ability to work smarter and faster, more globally and more profitably.

Your active participation in TUG gives you the knowledge and exposure to help your company get the most out of its investment in Infor products. And your contact with other volunteers is a constant opportunity to learn what they’re doing in their businesses, giving you ideas that you can bring back to make a difference in your own work.