In This Issue

ISSUE 7 * May 2013

net WORK

Enhancement to DBS Captures

Contacts For Survey

Measure, Manage, and Improve

The Daniel Group, an organization

known for providing methods for

improving customer retention and

loyalty, is being used by many Cat-

erpillar dealers in the United States

to measure, manage, and improve

their customer service. The organi-

zation unlocks the mystery of their

customers' experience through ac-

tionable feedback and tools to in-

crease customer retention. Dealers

needed a way to capture valid con-

tact information on the Parts Coun-

ter Screen and provide the infor-

mation to the Daniel Group to con-

duct a survey.

To solve this problem, we devel-

oped an enhancement for dealers

to use to capture contact infor-

mation. The enhancement is sim-

ple, concise, and captures contact

data entered directly on the screen

or by accessing Influencer data.

One way a dealer uses our en-

hancement to capture complete

contact information is by initiating

the sale from DSPSCMAC. The

function captures contact and ma-

chine population information and

transfers the information to the

Parts Counter Sale function.

Our enhancement forces the

counter person to enter a con-

tact and phone number or re-

trieve it from the Influencer data

in DBS.

A dealer that purchased our

enhancement said customers

find it irritating when they have

to give their name and phone

number to the counter person

every time they buy a part. Our

enhancement allows the coun-

ter person to quickly gather this

information and not have to ask

for it time and time again. The

information the dealer needs for

the survey is then captured.

The feedback allows dealers to

identify ways to improve cus-

tomer service and enhance val-

ue for their customers.

This enhancement provides

potential opportunities to tie this

into CRM applications and oth-

er data collection projects.

Please contact FDC Solutions if

you are interested in imple-

menting this solution at your

dealership.

Pg. 1

Pg. 2

Pg. 3

Enhancement to DBS

Captures Contacts For

Survey

Dealer Happenings

NADITA Conference

IBM i Security Tips

DICE Team Projects

Update

From the FDC

Employees

TecSys—WMS System

Implementation

Pg. 4

Beginning is Half Won

Reporting Help Desk

Calls

Using Dual Sessions

DICE Team Projects Update Latest Addition to FDC Staff

TecSys’ logistics solutions empower CAT dealers to significantly impro-

ve customer service levels, throughput volumes, order turnaround ti-

mes, as well as warehousing costs and profitability. The WMS system

allows dealers to move orders in and out of the warehouse with the

highest rate of efficiency and at the lowest cost while eliminating unpro-

ductive processes and technology. Ferreyros, in Lima, Peru, recently

purchased TecSys’ WMS system, and FDC Solutions provided the in-

terface to DBS. The DBS-WMS System Interface was designed to pro-

vide a seamless, near real-time interface between DBS and WMS. Data

is sent from DBS to the WMS system and vice versa.

STW Upload Utility

FDC Solution’s DBS-STW Tranfer Utility was created to support dealer’s efforts to upload and download Service Techni-cian Workbench (STW) to and from DBS/DBSi. The DBS-STW Transfer Util-ity increases dealer efficiency by elimi-nating the need for the technician to re-type data into the service report, already created in DBS/DBSi. This information is sent from DBS/DBSi to STW to create a STW Service Report. In addition, the DBS-STW Transfer Utility package in-cludes the ability to capture and upload to DBS/DBSi:

SIMS Data

SMU Value

Labor & Travel Times

Misc. Costs

Mileage

Repair Background Notes

This utility is available for FDC-Supported ERP Dealers. Please contact FDC for information on this product along with instructions to install and launch.

CATUsed Equipment

CatUsed.cat.com enables dealerships to list used equipment for sale through the Internet. Dealers that use the CatUsed MidTier interface are required to imple-ment a Web services interface. FDC Support will be contacting their ERP supported dealers in the next few weeks to schedule rollout if they have not yet implemented the Web service.

Warranty Claim Web Service Interface

The Warranty Claim Web Service re-places the current methods of submitting claims through LU6.2, which will be re-tired on February 1, 2014. This interface is available for FDC Supported ERP Dealers. Please contact FDC to sched-ule roll-out at your dealership.

New Business Intelligent Interfaces

CAT has announced four new Business Intelligence interfaces: Work Order, Equipment, Invoice, and Customer. The Work Order interface will be the first in-terface of the four available to dealers. FDC Solutions is analyzing the interfac-es and will keep you updated.

Ferreyros Celebrates New Warehouse Opening

We are pleased to introduce the

newest member of FDC: Vikas Patil.

Vikas joined FDC in April. He will be

working on a variety of FDC SAP

projects. Vikas has a diversified 10

years of experience including over 8

years of SAP consulting and the rest

in textile/garments production and

services marketing. SAP business

process consulting exposed Vikas to

Aero MRO, consumer electrical, IT,

heavy equipment and machinery,

tiles, and real estate businesses.

The majority of Vikas’ consulting

was in SAP CRM and SD involv-

ing business process blue-

printing, solution mapping, cus-

tomizing and close coordination

with development teams. He has

practiced Agile, ASAP, and RDS

implementation methodologies

with onsite, offshore, and near-

shore delivery models. He has a

master’s degree in Marketing and

an IBM Advance Certification in

software engineering. Vikas en-

joys watching sci-fi movies and

spending time with friends and

family.

FDC Provides Interface to DBS

Ferreyros hosted an Americas South Parts Operation dealer meeting in March 2013 and ended the meeting with a barbeque and tour of the new warehouse.

Dealer Happenings

Freight Module We offer an affordable, simple solution that not only ensures you recover all your freight costs, but also lets customers know up-front what their costs will be and make sure those costs will be fair and consistent. The FDC Solutions’ Freight module is designed to automatically charge the customer for freight parts on shop, counter, and Internet documents. The following dealers have recently gone live with FDC’s Freight module: Hawthorne Machinery San Diego, California Foley, Inc. Piscataway, New Jersey

NADITA Conference

The 2013 North America Dealer Infor-

mation Technology Association (NADITA)

conference was held in Las Vegas, Nevada

on April 22- April 25, 2013 at the Aria Hotel.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to

attend our presentations and visit our booth

at the vendor fair. We look forward to con-

tinuing to provide you with high-quality ser-

vices and products you are accustomed to

receiving from FDC Solutions, and to grow-

ing our community of FDC-supported ERP

dealers.

Contact us:

FDC Solutions Inc.

456 Fulton Street, Suite 298A

Peoria, IL 61602

(309) 676-7795

Watch Out When Restoring User Profiles

Loeber, Rich. “Watch Out When Restoring User Profiles.” E-mail 5 April 2013. www.kisco.com.

I was recently confronted with an issue on one of our test IBM i box-es. The box is implemented as a “warm” backup site for one of our customers. Every night, a simple FTP of changed objects takes place from their server to our test box. The theory is that the customer can afford to lose one day’s worth of processed transactions for the ease and rela-tively low expense of maintaining this sort of backup site.

The problem posed to me concerned their security configuration. While their program base and data files were all being properly synced night after night, their passwords were growing woefully out of date on the backup site. If they had an emergen-cy, nobody would remember their older passwords.

I thought that the solution would be simple. Just run a SAVSECDTA (Save Security Data) on their sys-tem, then restore it on our test box. Before doing this, I compared the user profile base on both sys-tems and found some areas for con-cern where the same user profile existed in both places. Fortunately, the RSTUSRPRF (Restore User Pro-files) command lets you either re-store specific profiles or restore all profiles with an exclusion list. I want-ed to exclude all Q* profiles plus a handful of common profiles that exist on both systems. My list ended up being fairly short.

I was all set to bring these profiles current, but when I tried the RSTUSRPRF, I was gently reminded that this command can only be run when the system is in restricted state. Our test box hosts several websites including one that runs in secure HTTPS mode. Thinking this would be a quick process, I shut down the system after notifying a

few people that there would be a short interruption in service. When the system came to re-stricted state, I ran the user pro-file restore which ran quickly and without any issues.

I then restarted the system, and here is where it got interest-ing. At first, it looked like every-thing was fine, but I soon found that the web server instance that was using HTTPS was not re-starting correctly. After poking around for a few minutes, I found that it was objecting to the digital certificate that was speci-fied for the site. I fired up the Digital Certificate Manager (DCM) to see what was going on and the certificate looked just fine. I decided to delete the cer-tificate and re-add it, and here is where the train wreck was re-vealed.

When I tried to re-issue the cer-tificate, I was advised that my password for the certificate store was invalid and that I would have to change the password before I could issue the new cer-tificate. I dutifully changed the password, but the same error kept coming back up.

After a long investigation period, I finally determined (with help from on-line friends) that the root of the problem was the RSTUSRPRF. It turns out that the restore user profile process restores critical data and keys for the digital certificate store while restoring your profiles. I now had this information from our client’s box, not ours. None of the certificates on our system were valid any longer and addi-tional applications on the test box were failing because of this. The solution was fairly simple.

Click here to continue reading.

Beginning is Half Won

Sayih, Jim. “Seven Tips to Overcome Pro-crastination.” E-mail 29 April 2013. Seven tips to overcome procrastination:

1. Take five minutes to identify what

you are putting off. On a blank sheet of paper, note several im-portant activities that you realize you are delaying or have put on hold.

2. Look at your list of tasks and do

one of them right now. Put the ener-gy you have been directing toward excuses into the activity you’ have been avoiding. You’ll discover that action eliminates anxiety.

3. If getting started is the hard part for

you, set a designated time slot in the day to work on the list. Set aside thirty minutes of your lunch hour for work specifically on one job, project, or personal goal that you have been avoiding or find diffi-cult to start.

4. Do not worry about perfec-

tion. What counts is quality of effort, not perfect results. Do not let your-self get bogged down with a preoc-cupation for perfectionism.

5. If what you are putting off involves

other people, consult with them. Your reasons for delaying action may be imaginary. Lack of commu-nication often turns molehills into mountains.

6. If you fear the consequences asso-

ciated with the action you have been avoiding, ask yourself, What is the worst thing that could happen if I did this today? The worst–case scenario most likely would be a mi-nor inconvenience or a temporary setback.

7. Finally, vividly picture how you will

feel once the task is done. Freedom from anxiety. Freedom from nag-ging pressures. Freedom from self–doubt. Accomplishing put–off tasks will give you a great boost of confi-dence and energy.

Contact us:

FDC Solutions Inc.

456 Fulton Street, Suite 298A

Peoria, IL 61602

(309) 676-7795

info@fdcsolutions.net

http://fdcsolutions.net

Helpful Information to Log Your Call

At one time or another, all of us have had to deal with a malfunction or is-sue with a system which means a call to the Help Desk. For many of us, it can equate to frustrating at-tempts at using jargon we feel unfa-miliar with or trying to solve the prob-lem by trial-and-error. Typically, the help desk can resolve the issue in a timely manner. However, there are steps you can take before speaking to an analyst to simplify the proce-dure, make it painless for you, and save both of us time in resolving the problem.

In order to properly log your call and create a ticket, please be prepared with the following information when calling in or e-mailing a problem:

1. Dealership Name

2. Dealer Code

3. Caller information

Who should we contact at the dealership, and what is their contact information

Who is experiencing the error

If reporting for another user, can we contact the end user directly

4. Detailed description of the issue

Details on what they are doing / trying to accomplish

DBS Function names in-volved

Any key information (ID #, agreement #, document number, part number, SOS, stock order number, work order number/segment/operation, etc.)

User profile and job number

Any error messages re-ceived, especially UPC codes, PCI9999 sheets, screen prints if available

Frequency of issue—is this the first time it occurred or is it recurring?

Issues Encountered in DBS

If you have dual sessions running in DBS, chances are you might en-counter some problems. For exam-ple, if a parts counter person has a document open in one session, he or she can cancel the document in a second session. As a result, if there are parts on the document in session #1, the cancellation of session #2 essentially does noth-ing, and the session #1 document will still charge out the parts or-dered. However, if you utilize a Warehouse Management System (WMS), that order may not be sent or pulled. Subsequently, the inven-tory ends up being out of balance and you have a customer service issue.

It has also been noted that ad-justments made to the backorders (in MNTPCBO) can essentially increase the quanti-ty of parts being charged out – if the adjustments are done in dual sessions.

While the examples provided are for Parts, the same holds true for Sales and Service too. It is recommended that you only keep one session in DBS. If you need a second session open for inquiries, change the color scheme for the session. Use caution when doing this to avoid inventory and billing issues.