STORIES & SOLUTIONS FOR THE MODERN BUSINESS USER

Last week, I did something crazy: I called my cable company. Now, now, people, calm down. I predict that everyone who just read what I wrote will agree with me that my action was unhinged. If you’re my age, you think it’s insane to call the cable company because they have a reputation for hating their customers and one would only call them if one is filled with self-loathing. If you’re a youngster, you think it’s insane to call the cable company because you don’t know what that means (“Call? Like talk on the phone to another human?” “What is this thing, this ‘cable company’ to which you refer?”) Anyway, I threw caution to the wind and called them.

Innovation! Creativity! Collaboration! Who doesn’t want to spend their day focused on fun and interesting work?

An ERP implementation is unlike any other project. The stress is enormous, the process is unfamiliar, and once you start, there is no going back. It should not come as a surprise, then, that existing human resource policies rarely are prepared for many of the ERP team issues that arise, and often, HR questions are left for the project manager to sort through. What follows is not a guidebook on how to handle these issues; just a few examples of things you will run into, and why they get complex quickly.

My high-school-aged son is taking a personal finance class, and he recently asked some good questions about my retirement plans and investments. Since I’m a super-smart adult and knowledgeable about all things, I confidently answered his initial questions. Then he started asking more involved questions, and I was forced to fall back on my go-to answer: “I don’t know, actually, but I’ve got a guy for that.” (Since my retirement advisor is male, I’m ok with the guy terminology, but from now on, I’m sticking with person.)

This article was originally published in Training Industry Magazine.

While millions of college students head back to school for the new semester, many institutions are focused on innovations and changes in the higher education ERP industry. We asked our Workday Student team at Avaap to look into their crystal ball and share predictions on the role ERP and technology will play in higher education in the upcoming year.

For healthcare organizations that are seeking to improve productivity, increase efficiency, and reduce costs while improving care quality, a cloud-based ERP system is the perfect move to kick off your digital transformation strategy. Organizations that haven’t made the move to cloud yet are likely to be running a newly implemented EHR that is only partially, if at all, connected with your legacy ERP.

Hospital and medical dramas are ubiquitous on TV (For some of my younger readers, I’ll point out that TVs are things that we used to use to watch Netflix and Amazon Prime shows back before we had Netflix and Amazon Prime shows. See my OK Boomer! post for more details.) A staple of the hospital drama is the attending physician wearing scrubs and a white coat running into a patient’s room during a Code Blue. Most of us know that Code Blue (or for the cool and hip among us, simply a “code”) is an alert that goes out throughout the hospital notifying clinicians that a patient’s heart has stopped beating. When a code is called via the overhead speakers, assorted clinical folks rush into the room to start CPR, insert a breathing tube, and give medications to try to revive the patient. It’s quite intense.

According to the most recent McKinsey Global Survey on digital transformations, more than eight in ten respondents say their organisations have undertaken such efforts in the past five years. Digital transformation provides a valuable opportunity to move away from manual processes, increase productivity and efficiency, and allow leaders to focus on more strategic initiatives.

I’ll admit it. I’m just gonna put it out there: I’m an Apple fan boy. Ok? It’s out there. I love everything about Apple: their no-nonsense aesthetic; their hardware and software connections; even their headquarters building in Cupertino, California. I think Apple is cool. Does my fascination with all things Apple mean that I overlook their warts and sub-optimal output from time to time? Yeah, to some extent, that’s exactly what it means!