I was wondering how other companies are justifying the upgrade to 8.1 applications in the next year. I am unable to get my hands on documentation that lists the differences so I am having trouble justifying the expense of hiring consultants to bring the upgrade in. I can think of two things that perhaps I could argue but need more information. 1 - staying more current will alleviate having to test for bundled patches that may cross modules and require intense testing through out the year - on average how many patches might be necessary if we remained on 8.0.3 - any guestimates? 2 - Absence management is free if installed now - does anyone have a date that this will not be the case? In addition when will Time Accrual be decommissioned?

TX in advance for any responses to my questions. Sheila

The main reason clients are so interested in jumping onto the 8.1 technology that I've seen is for the security enhancements. It is an administrative nightmare to manage Lawson security and I know of multiple organizations who have a full-time person just handling that. I believe with the 8.1 model of security, you could probably re-assign or let that person go after the initial security setup for 8.1. I also know of companies who have a full-time person handling all of the time accural issues that large companies run into that will be eliminated by the Absence management product. I'm not sure you could get rid of this employee though becuase Absence Management is one of the more complicated modules that Lawson has put out.

From a patch perspective, my guess is that you'll be applying far more patches moving to 8.1 than if you stick with 8.0.3 just because of the huge technology changes that Lawson has put into place.

There are a lot of considerations that go into the ROI (return on investment) of upgrading. How many of the Lawson modules you use, how much time your wasting on things that will be fixed with the upgrade, if any of the new features of the upgrade will help reduce man hours, paper, or errors. If there are any automation features from the upgrade you'll be able to use to reduce man hours. From what I've seen, there aren't many cost justifications for upgrading to 8.1.

Hope this helps.

IIRC, auditing capabilities are dramatically improved as well due to the new security model, but I don't remember much other than tidbits from some CUE sessions last year.