Self Service Implementation Options

We want to implement the Employee & Manager Self Service and had considered outside consulting vs Lawson. The cost is so high that we are considering the fact that we could hire someone to work full time for TWO years at a very good salary and still save money.

Does anyone have advise for us in this regard? Is it feasible that we could find a proprietary consultant that would want to do this for us at a lower cost? It this a complicated implementation?

Would the fact that we will have to move to Lawson 9.0 in the next few years be an issue that would impact the decision to implement the self service now?

I don't have an answer but am in a similar quandry. Did you speak with Lawson certified consultants? They can be almost half the cost of actual Lawson employed consultants.

As a standard implementation, self service is what I feel an extremely easy project. As a Lawson employee in a past life, I would definitely be partial to Lawson for consulting services, however, it seems lately it's been very difficult to secure services in a timely manner. The best I can suggest if you decide to go to a proprietary consultant, be sure to thoroughly interview them and definitely obtain and check the references that they provide. Because of lack of availability of Lawson's consultants, we've been forced to use some outside companies, and I've been pleasantly surprised with the quality of work that we've had performed, particularly since I've worked side by side with organizations in the past and wondered how the company/individual could advertise that they knew anything about Lawson other than the name.

The interviewing before deciding will be even more important if you're contemplating customizing the product - be sure your consultant is familiar with the app functionality, too, and save yourself a world of grief later.

Good luck

thanks, Stephanie. I'm new to LawsonTalk so not sure of the proper etiquette but would you be willing to name some names of consulting companies that claim to be certified Lawson consultants that you have add good luck with?

Just in case - contact me off line xxx-xxx-xxxx. If I'm not able to pick up the phone, leave a voice message and I'll get back to you. :thumb:


Edit: Phone number removed at member request

The implementation of EMSS can be very straight forward or very complicated depending on how you have set-up your core system and how much you want to modify the system.

My first suggestion would be to do the following in your test system with a fresh data copy:

1) Set-up your ESS screens (there are only a few on the application side) BS01, BS02, BS03.1, BS03.2, BS03.3 and some HS screens.

2) Set-up the personnel actions you want your managers to be able to perform.

3) Set-up at test supervisor table.

3) Grant access to the bookmarks in test to your test users.

Have your HR and benefits department go in as an employee or manager and take a look and perform some transactions. You should be able to determine the types of issues you will have based on the questions you receive. See what the system will let you enter (mixed case, all caps, etc. and what it won't do. Pay close attention to benefits as this is always an I got ya.

You may find that you need some consulting help just to help you clean up your core application so that it works well with EMSS.

Be mindful of the requirements and what is compatible. In our case, we will soon be running 8.0.3 applications under the LSF9 environment and are finding some inconsistencies in the documentation for installing ESS. They have an installation document for installing ESS for application version 8.0.3 running in the LSF9 environment, but can't find the same for the Common Browser Library. We're still looking at it but at a first glance, it doesn't appear that ESS will not run in a 8.0.3apps/LSF9 application environment.

We are 8.0.3.10 apps and LSF9.0.0.3 env and are running ESS/MSS so I know it will work.

Wouldn't be Lawson if you didn't find some! :bye: