|
 |
News from the Kore
|
|
Holidays 2002 Issue
|
Kore Team Members from left to right:
Paul Trebbien, John Bosley, Chuck Verran, Frank Kertai, Mark Dobransky, Ken Dickinson, Frank Busalacchi,
Paul Bressler, Eric Yarbrough, Andy Blanchard, and Rob Morrison. Not pictured are Bob Bottomley, Pam Williams, and Clare Conroy-Bott.
|
|
|
 |
|
Tech Tip: What Version am I running?
“What version am I running?” is
often the question you need to answer before you can start talking to someone
about a problem with your software or about making changes to your software.
Given that question’s importance, we decided to collect into one
document all of the “how to’s” for the different version questions associated
with your software – and then put that document on the Web. For
those of you who already know how to get this information for Unix, NT, Universe,
Unidata, wIntegrate, DataFlo, and Kourier, feel free to go on to the next
article. For everyone else, you can use the following as a quick
reference guide on how to easily answer the question “What version am I
running?” for every part of your software:
What version of UNIX am
I running?
To get the version of Unix on your server, go into the korn shell
and enter the 'uname' command with an 'a' option.:
>uname -a
HP-UX bmd350 B.10.20 D 9000/831 2011043966
64-user license
This example shows HP-UX running
the 10.20 version.
What version of Windows
NT am I running?
To get the version of Windows on your server for all releases of
NT4.0, execute the command ‘status’ at TCL within the Universe environment:
>STATUS
You are logged onto XYZ running Windows NT 4.0 (Build 1381 Service Pack 6)
What version of Universe
am I running?
To get the version of Universe on your server for all recent
releases of Universe, edit the ‘RELLEVEL’ file in your VOC file:
>ED VOC RELLEVEL
0001: X-type - The RELEASE LEVEL of this account
0002: 9.6.1.3
0003: ADMIN
0004:
0005: 9.6.1.3
In
this example, the release is 9.6.1.3.
What version of Unidata
am I running?
To get the version of Unidata on your server for all recent releases
of Unidata, execute ‘VERSION’:
>VERSION
Unidata RDBMS......................3.3.2 Yes
Recoverable File System............1.1 No
Transaction Processing.............1.1 No
UniData OFS/NFA....................1.3 No
UniServer..........................1.3 Yes
UniDesktop.........................1.3 No
USAM Monitor Profile...............1.3 No
USAM Print.........................1.3 No
USAM Batch.........................1.3 No
USAM Journaling....................1.3 No
33265
The
actual Version of UniData is 3.3.2.65 (last line).
What version of
wIntergrate am I running?
For all releases of wIntegrate, start a session and click on the
<Help> pull down menu and choose the "About" selection.
You will see the version of wIntegrate. Note that wIntegrate98 is the
also known as wIntegrate4.x.
What version of Preview
am I running?
The easiest way to get your Preview version is to execute the
command ‘Preview’ at TCL within the Universe/Unidata environment:
>PREVIEW
PREVIEW v3.0.2
File Name:
This
is obviously version 3.0.2. Hit <cr> to get out of the file
name prompt.
What version of DataFlo
am I running?
For those of you who are on DataFlo, it is easy to find out which
version of DataFlo you are on. If you are on releases before 5.5,
edit the file “WELCOME” in STAT-USER at TCL within the Universe/Unidata
environment:
> DataFlo release 5.4 (example shows 5.6 G6):
ED STAT-USER WELCOME
001: \RULER L
A A A
A CZ
002: ðð D A T A W O R K S C O R P O R A T I O N
003: ððððð+-----------------------------------------+
004: ðð | T H E D A T A W O R K S S Y S T E M |
005: ðð | R E L E A S E
5.4 09-25-92 |
006: ðð | R E V I S I O N
G6 06-10-98 |:
The
example here is Release 5.4 G6.
For
those of you who are on versions of DataFlo that are 5.5 or higher, look at the
version record in STAT-TABLES:
>ED STAT-TABLES VERSION
0001: 5.7.8
0002: 10-31-00
0003: 1998/1999/2000
The
example here is version 5.7.8.
What version of Kourier
am I running?
This list wouldn’t be complete without including how to get your
Kourier release. For versions of Kourier that are version 3.0 or
higher, the easiest way to get the version is to execute the command
‘KMK.VERSION’ at TCL within the Universe/Unidata environment:
>KMK.VERSION
Kourier by Kore Technologies
Version......: 3.1.1
Release Date.: 05-23-2002:
The
example shows the Kourier version is 3.1.1.
Avante,
InfoFlo, Manfact, E by Epicor, and others, how can you tell what release level
you are running? Please let Paul know, pault@koretech.com. Also, please let us know what other
techniques and tips you would like to see featured here!
|
Old Friends Become Partners: Kore Now an Epicor DataFlo VAR
After a lot of work by both Epicor
and Kore, we are pleased to announce that Kore has become an Authorized
Consultant and Value-Added Reseller (VAR) for DataFlo and the associated Epicor
Value-Chain solutions. Since every member of the Kore Team has a strong
association with Epicor – we average over 15 years of experience with Epicor
and its products per employee – the opportunity to have a formal relationship
with Epicor was particularly attractive! With this agreement Epicor and Kore
have further underlined their commitment to the DataFlo community, and have
established what promises to be a very strong partnership.
Kore’s goal has always been to
provide best-in-class products and services to our customers, and we see this
agreement as an opportunity to provide even better service to our
customers. Now, we can offer everything
our customers need to optimize their ERP investment: services by the most
experienced DataFlo consultants, Kore products, and the entire broad suite of
Epicor products and services available to DataFlo customers. Moreover, now that Kore is an Epicor partner,
we are in an even better position to help our customers get the most from their
CSP dollars.
By developing the relationship
with Kore Technologies, Epicor not only benefits from having more people with
strong product knowledge actively selling their products, but also gains a
partner who is committed to helping mutual customers continue to gain value
from their Epicor investments.
“Kore maintains a strong relationship with their customers, and has great technical
expertise. Because of that, our customers that work with Kore are
typically in a great position to take advantage of the new capabilities we are
offering. This partnership looks like a win-win-win for us, Kore, and
our mutual customers. We are pleased to bring another company of talented,
experienced people – back(!)– into the Epicor family.”
-- Mollie
Hunter, Vice President of Epicor’s Manufacturing Solutions Group.
Epicor and Kore Technologies see
this agreement as the first step in a new era of broader cooperation. One area that we will both be looking at
immediately is product development. By sharing new product development plans Epicor and Kore can
minimize the overlap between the products the two companies are developing. These
discussions will ensure that mutual customers will have available the
broadest set of off-the-shelf solutions to meet their requirements!
It sounds like the start of a
beautiful relationship!
About Epicor
Software Corporation:
Epicor is a leading provider of integrated enterprise and eBusiness software
solutions for midmarket companies around the world. Founded in 1984, Epicor has
over 15,000 customers and continues to deliver end-to-end, industry-specific
solutions that enable companies to immediately improve business operations and
build competitive advantage in today’s Internet economy. Epicor’s comprehensive
suite of integrated software solutions for Customer Relationship Management,
Financials, Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management, Professional Services
Automation and Collaborative Commerce provide the scalability and flexibility
to support long-term growth. Epicor’s solutions are complemented by a full
range of services, providing single point of accountability to promote rapid
return on investment and low total cost of ownership, now and in the future.
Epicor is headquartered in Irvine, California and has offices and affiliates
around the world. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.epicor.com.
|
|
|
Kore’s Customer Survey Results:
Kore Provides Best-in-Class Products and Services
We were very pleased by the results of our first ever customer survey,
so we hope you won’t find it too self-serving that our success story for this
month is Kore Technologies! We want to thank Optimal Connections
(see below) for doing such a great job. They were a pleasure to work
with, and we expect to work with them again. We particularly want to
extend our thanks to all of the companies who took the time to respond to this
survey. We deeply appreciate your votes and comments. It’s
also our pleasure to announce the winner of the survey prize drawing: the new
Handspring PDA goes to Greg Allen of Goer Manufacturing
Company. Thanks to everyone.
Lake Forest, CA – November 15,
2002 – Optimal Connections, LLC, an independent consulting firm specializing in
customer surveys and support marketing, just completed the first ever customer
satisfaction survey for Kore Technologies of its customers. The results have been tabulated, and
Optimal’s verdict is that the results were outstanding!
Every company with whom Kore has
done business was invited to rate Kore and its products and services. Respondents from 50% of all of the companies
took the time to answer the 29-question survey. The survey was conducted
over the Internet during a nine-day period at the end of October,
2002. Highlights of the survey include
- Every respondent gave Kore an overall rating of good
or higher, with more than three fourths rating Kore as very good or
excellent.
- More than 90% felt Kore’s technical support was very
good or excellent
- Every customer thought Kore’s products overall rated
good or better, with nearly three fourths rating Kore products as very
good or excellent
- More than 85% rated this Newsletter as good or
better!
“My first surprise was Kore’s
decision to ask me to survey every customer: companies often try to
improve results by excluding sensitive accounts,” noted Paul Dooley, President
and General Manager of Optimal Connections. “I was also surprised by the high
rate of response: a 20-30% response rate is about as high as one can expect,
particularly in a survey that is being done in such a short time frame. When I
got the results back, I understood: Kore has very satisfied customers!”
Although Kore is pleased with the
vote of confidence they have received from their customers, they still see a
lot of work ahead. “We won’t be satisfied until every customer sees
us as providing excellent services and products across the board,”
commented Frank Busalacchi, Vice-President of Customer Service. “Although
we are gratified with the good results, we appreciate even more the
constructive feedback we received.” Kore’s management team will be
taking appropriate action on every suggestion provided by its customers.
“Kore has clearly demonstrated that highly-focused, experienced
personnel can create great products and provide effective services. I
have been involved in customer satisfaction surveys for a number of years, and
many of these results are the best I have ever seen!”
-- Paul Dooley, President and General Manager of
Optimal Connections.
Customers who would like to know
more about the details of the survey are welcome to ask Frank Busalacchi at
805-687-5679 or e-mail him at frankb@koretech.com.
About Optimal Connections, LLC: is a
consulting services company based in Lake Forest, California. Our senior consultants have experience in the
areas of customer, partner and employee surveys, product and service marketing,
and customer services and support. Are you interested in conducting
a fast, easy, cost-effective Web-based customer survey? Find out
more about what Optimal Connections can do for you at www.optimalconnections.com.
|
|
|
Recently,
some of our customers have been asking our opinion about whether it makes sense
for them to consider moving to another ERP platform. One fact continually shows up in these
discussions: our customers often don’t recognize how much they have benefited
from the lower cost of implementation that companies typically experienced in
implementing Epicor manufacturing software. One can get an idea of the
total cost of implementing another system by using the descriptions of
successful implementations often found in trade journals, and then
calculating the cost of those implementations based on the information
provided. One particularly dramatic example appeared in an article
in ComputerWorld
some time ago. In this article a chemical company and its ERP vendor
were announcing a “VERY successful implementation” (at least that’s the way the
customer viewed it) of one of the major ERP applications. The
company and its vendor completed this implementation in “only” 12 months. The most startling statistic, though, was not
the “speed” of implementation, but the total cost, i.e. hardware, software,
consulting, programming, and implementation resources, which worked out to be
between $200,000 and $300,000 per seat (not an error). This cost per seat exceeds the cost of most
DataFlo implementations, regardless of the number of seats!
Of course, this
example is on the very extreme of per seat costs. However, when all of the costs in a typical ERP
implementation are added up, they typically range between eight (8) and fifteen
(15) times the ERP software cost. (Not all of these costs go to vendors, i.e.
some of these costs are for personnel that have to added, temporaries, overtime,
and lost flexibility, but your business bears these costs nonetheless. However, in the
example above more than two-thirds of the cost was out-of-pocket expenditures
to vendors.) Thus, for a typical application where
the cost per seat for the software alone is between $2,500 and $8,000 dollars
per seat, one should expect that the total cost of implementing a 32-user
system would be at least $640,000 and possibly more than $3,500,000! If
your existing Epicor solution is working for you right now,
what kind of a change in the productivity of your business would be required in
order to provide a positive three year return on an investment of $640,000? How
about an investment of $3,500,000? And, if you had a “VERY successful
implementation” like the one described above (the equivalent of 32 users for
more than $8 million), would you ever be able to recover from it?
Of
course, there are legitimate reasons to look to replace your current ERP
system. For example, your company may have changed so fundamentally
since you acquired your ERP system that it is no longer a fit, e.g. you started
out as a manufacturer, and now are primarily involved in
financing. It might also be that your business has grown to the
point that your ERP system no longer supplies the right model, e.g. your system
has minimal international capabilities, and now you are a major international
organization. Or, it might be that your
ERP system runs on hardware and software that is no longer available, e.g. you
are running on a DOS-based system. When it is right for your company
to change, change! But, brace yourselves ahead of time for an
unexpected level of expense: most companies just haven’t put the emphasis
Epicor has on minimizing implementation costs.
As an
Epicor partner, Kore was able to attend the Epicor “Perspectives” user conference last
month for the first time. We found the conference to be very
worthwhile, both for Kore and for Kore’s customers. One announcement of particular note was the
introduction of Epicor’s forward product, “Sonoma” (see press release). Epicor has promised its maintenance (CSP)
customers that this product will be available to them on the most favorable
terms possible: module-for-module, user-for-user credit for your existing
product and no cost for technology to move over. They also said that Epicor manufacturing
solutions customers will be able to move at their own pace – Epicor will
continue to maintain and enhance all their existing manufacturing systems as
long as companies are on maintenance with those products. This
dramatic announcement and the apparent stabilization of Epicor’s finances make
the choice to remain on an Epicor ERP platform much easier than it might have
seemed a year ago!
If you
would like to discuss your forward ERP direction, and take advantage of the
deep experience that Kore has in ERP systems, feel free to call me at
805/687-5679 or drop me a line at frankb@koretech.com.
|
|
Kourier version 3.3
We have continued to extend Kourier,
enough so that we felt it appropriate to bundle the new capabilities as a
release, version 3.3. The key enhancements surround XML exports, allowing
nested tags and support for literals. We also improved the debugger
to make creation and implementation of services easier.
KommerceServer
version 3.3
In order to
better showcase KommerceServer’s capabilities at “Perspectives” we significantly enhanced the look and feel of
KommerceServer: KommerceServer now supports flexible header and style sheets to
make customizing your Web site even easier. Since we were showcasing
webTeam, we upgraded its presentation, too. We also added multi-level BOM
display, add-on discount/markup capabilities for webSales,
and flexible inventory availability (Quantity-on-hand, ATP, or Lead-time-based
availability).
webTeam NOW
We are continuing our
promotion of webTeam, offering aggressive pricing until the end of the
year. This promotion applies both to webTeam as a hosted
application, and to webTeam as an in-house application.
WebConfigurator
We are continuing to enhance our configurator prototype, and are getting
some good feedback. We are still putting
together the development group to take it to the next level, please contact
Frank Kertai (831/402-0095) or Frank Busalacchi (805/687-5679).
Don’t close that window
Having trouble with your users closing
out their wIntegrate sessions and leaving a process hanging? We have
developed a simple, inexpensive modification that keeps them from doing
so. If you are interested, let us know at sales@koretech.com or call us at 858-678-0030.
|
We’re in the middle of remodeling
the insides of our house. Boy, what a task! It seems like
it is taking forever. We started off with a little drywall project –
ceilings in 3 rooms and 2 walls. First, we had our daughter’s boyfriend
do it, then hired another fellow who had good references to fix it, and then
hired a professional drywaller to get it right.
It seems I had to learn that same old lesson again: start with the
‘professionals’ to get the best results at the best price: I would have saved
more than a thousand dollars on that job -- as the drywaller
was kind enough to inform me!
One of my customers called the other
day and wanted to learn about the Preview Report Manager. They realized that
since future reports will be written with it, they might as well get used to
it. So, I gave him a quick little lesson on how it works, and told
him to get back to me if he needs additional assistance. I haven’t
heard back from him, so it seems that in the computer world a little
“professional” advice is sometimes enough!
DataFlo Programmers: Here’s
something real nice you can do for accounting. In the Classic Chart of
Accounts entry screen, a Master type account can be created. This
type of account is used to distribute dollars to other accounts. For
example, you could enter one line item on the journal for rent and have that
distributed to various department rent accounts on a percentage
basis. So, how about changing the Line Item Percentage field to
default to the remaining Percentage amount? Note that there should always
be a total of 100 percent. Here’s the code:
Editing ==>
Before Input Time For Element 9
0001: * REV
KORE - Default left over Percentage into field.
0002:
IF CITEM<AMC,VMC>="" THEN
0003: PERCENT.TOTAL=0
0004: CNT=DCOUNT(CITEM<AMC>,@VM)
0005: FOR KT=1 TO CNT
0006:
PERCENT.TOTAL=PERCENT.TOTAL+CITEM<AMC,KT>
0007: NEXT KT
0008: IF PERCENT.TOTAL > 0 THEN
CITEM<AMC,VMC>=10000-PERCENT.TOTAL
0009: END
0010: * END REV KORE
If you need further help with
this, you can reach me at Kore Technologies.
Perspectives: What a great time I had, lots of
people to meet that I’d talked to from the DataFlo Tech Support. Thank you for the questions you had, I put
them into this edition of Kore News and I hope the answers will help
others. In one of the seminars I went to, the Epicor representative
discussed Epicor’s new software platform, Sonoma. He showed slides
comparing the current packages and what was planned for the new platform. I was totally proud of ‘my’ DataFlo! Slide after slide, module after module,
showed that DataFlo has the best functionality. Sure, there were a couple
of modules that showed DataFlo wasn’t the best, and there were a couple of
modules that DataFlo was missing, but overall, slide after slide… DataFlo still
holds up very well in functionality – against any product.
Please
remember, “Great Service to your Customer is always rewarded”.
Paul’s Questions and Answers
Well, I
have not received much for Questions this time. Please, everyone, if
there’s a question you have on how something works, email it to me – pault@koretech.com.
Question: I am running
DataFlo. How can I tell what modules are installed in the Live
account?
Answer: The only good way I
know of is to go to TCL and enter the SHOW.ACCTDEF command. Not only does this show a list of the modules
but also the locations of the software accounts and Plant information if the
Multi-Plant module is installed. Check it out, you’ll like it.
Question: My users sometimes have to enter a lot of
repetitive things on many records in a screen, is there a way that you can
setup a function key to help?
Answer: Yes, in the wIntegrate
‘Setup’ pull down menu click on the <keyboard> choice. Choose
to see the Function Keys (radial button). I never change the F1 to
F8 function keys as Preview sets them for specific conditions. Let’s set F12 as an example, so in the
Key-Macro-Definition list I choose F12. Now in the ‘Definition’ box I’m
going to enter what I wish F12 to do. So, let’s say I’m in a screen, and
am going to set up a function key that will always start at the “Control” prompt.
I would like to do the following: go to field 10, enter XX, field 11,
enter YY, field 12, enter ZZ, and then file the screen. First you need to know that ‘\r’ (backslash
r) is a carriage return in wIntegrate’s
Keyboard. Now we need to enter our ‘Definition’ as: ‘10\rXX\rYY\rZZ\r.C\rFI\r’ and
simply click <OK> (note: this is not a Macro). The function key will do 10<cr>XX<cr>YY<cr>ZZ<cr>.C<cr>FI<cr>, that is, fill
in fields 10, 11, and 12 then file the screen. If you wish to save this
function key setting then you need to save your wIntegrate session.
|
|
April
6-8, 2003 – Forum 2003, Las Vegas, NV
Kore will once again be participating in this
year’s Epicor User Group event, “Forum 2003”. We will be participating in
the vendor area, and also plan on speaking on a topic of general usefulness to
everyone. We will also be looking forward to seeing all of our friends in
the Epicor community again. Plan on being there – it will be both
useful and fun.
See www.Epicorusers.org
for more information.
|
|
|
|
|
