Focus on user experience to get the most out of investing in an ERP system like Infor M3. Because if the system is not used or is misused, it loses its value.
My name is Jens Kleist, and I have worked as a business consultant for 12 years during that time, I have worked as a solution manager for user interfaces in about 20 projects and still work with Infor on user interface development. One of my latest assignments was implementing maintenance and inventory management in Infor M3 Cloud, and there was a holistic approach to the processes based on the user experience. The focus was that it should be easy to navigate, to get important information without having to look, when you need to look, it should be easy to search and find information, and that it should be easy to perform the tasks required by the role.
At Navcite, our focus is (among other things) to help companies maximize their ROI using Infor M3
It’s self-evident. Simple, easy-to-understand processes reduce training efforts, help ensure compliance with processes, and provide reliable data that can then be analyzed and used to drive improvements – the list goes on and on.
How does this work in practice? When it comes to user-friendliness in ERP systems, I usually divide it into two parts. The first part is that the processes in the ERP system must reflect what the processes look like in reality. Then, of course, you need to clear that picture, which is only sometimes obvious. What does the process look like from start to finish? Do the steps to be performed in the system reflect the activities that take place in reality? What are the different roles that have an interest in the process? Who is the executor? Who is interested in the outcome of the process?
The second part is about making it easy to run the processes. To put it bluntly, if it is difficult, it will be wrong.
Infor has for some time made, and continues to make, significant investments in user-friendliness in and around M3. The goal is clear: they want to create the world’s most user-friendly business system. It’s possible with the existing tools and the roadmap in and around M3. Stay tuned until the end, and I will share some concrete tips from Infor’s toolbox.
Understand your processes and bring them into the business system
As I wrote before, it is not self-evident that you have the whole picture with all processes transparent. Therefore, you need to start by mapping them and then get them into the business system so that it reflects reality as much as necessary.
Map the processes
Draw the processes from start to finish. You need both the objective perspective and the system perspective. They should be the same, but this is only sometimes the case. Clarify who or what role performs tasks. Document what information is important for stakeholders involved in the process but also information that is important for stakeholders not directly involved in the process. Examples can be KPIs, concepts that must be searchable in different situations, or reports that may be compiled manually or semi-manually in Excel on the side. If there are administratively heavy parts, note it down.
Let the business system reflect reality
This part results from the process mapping finding discrepancies between what the process looks like in practice and how it is run in the system. This can be due to many things, for example, that the process has changed in reality but has yet to keep up with the system or that the process has not been designed based on the actual situation for some reason. This may be justified, but to make it easy for the executor of a process, there should be harmony between what happens in reality and the tasks that must be performed in the system.
Analyze whether it is possible to blur the differences or make them smaller somehow. Perhaps it is only possible to change the process, or you can automate something in the background that makes it appear to the person running the process that it is the same in terms of the system as in reality.
Make it easy to run the processes
This section aims to make it easy and intuitive to perform their tasks in their role.
Here, you should look at Infor’s toolbox of aids to facilitate the user experience, which has concrete tips on what to do.
- Define role-based home pages with important content to get an overview and starting point for the various tasks intended to be performed in the processes you are involved in. In the Infor world, we talk about workspace or homepage depending on the M3 version. On your homepage, you should have a menu that reflects your work role. You should get an overview of the tasks you have to handle, and some tasks should be able to perform from the homepage without having to navigate into M3. Spend some time building widgets that offer this. The standard widgets that Infor delivers go a long way here, but it is also relatively easy to build your widgets to make it easier to perform specific tasks. Remember that widgets can be run directly via the Infor Go app on the mobile phone.
- In M3, spend some time personalizing the important features for the role and tasks you will be performing. Use all the tricks in the toolbox, self-built shortcuts, language management in lists and panels, status translations, conditional links, scripts, hiding unimportant selections, etc. Focus on the core programs so you can always have a few programs as a starting point when you are in M3. Consider keeping a common thread in what you do so that similar functions look similar to create a recognition factor.
- Focus on making it possible to search for the information you want to find every day. Use the possibility to start functions from the menu where selections are made, and use enterprise search where appropriate.
- Take advantage of the opportunity to build applications via Experience Designer and H5 SDK, where you see an extra benefit in fully customized features.
- Build workflows to avoid losing essential tasks where multiple roles are involved.
Tips from the Infor toolbox
FACETMI and transaction LstFacets to count the number of records. Requires that the table is indexed in enterprise search and that there are defined facets for what you want to count.
Example of a widget showing the number of orders per type.
How to run FACETMI
Example of a bookmark link from the list that opens the text block on the order.
This is what the bookmark looks like
bookmark?program=MOS100&panel=T&tableName=MMOHED&source=Web&option=2&keys=QHCONO%2C%2CQHFACI%2C%2CQHPRNO%2C
%2CQHMWNO%2C%2C&includestartpanel=false&panelsequence=T&LogicalId=lid://infor.m3.m3
Example images from Infor M3
Workspace for Maintenance Planner
Personalized screen for work orders
Experience Designer App – Equipment Master
Search and select script
Contact us at Navcite to learn more about user-friendliness in Infor M3.
