M3UA News: UK Conference 2020; Member Survey; Vendor Matchmaking and more

Another year at the M3UA

As 2019 comes to a close it’s time to reflect on a significant amount of activity and change at the M3 User Association this year. As usual we’ve run conferences in the Netherlands and the UK, and we’ve also hosted 13 Special Interest Group meetings (members can search our event history to see presentations and recordings here).

But that’s not all, we’ve completely redeveloped the M3UA website and are starting to see real benefits both in the administration of our members register, scheduling of our events, member profiling and event registration, public and member news mailings, members Q&A forum and more.

All that remains for us to do this year is to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We hope you all enjoyed a great year in 2019 and have great plans for 2020 (both personal and professional!)

Speaking of plans for next year…

M3UA Conference UK 2020

We need your help to make next year’s conference a success, building on the great response we had in 2019. If you would like to find out about sponsorship of the event, you can contact us here.

  1. What do you want to see on the Agenda? Workshops? Industry Sessions? SIG sessions? Masterclasses?
  2. If we arranged a full, free training session for members the day before the conference starts, what topic would compel you to attend?
  3. We need short M3 case stories to share our combined knowledge and experience amongst members. Would you share yours?

Leave us a message here, we’re interested in any and all feedback. Remember, this is your conference, help us to make it work for you.

2020 Members Survey

Are most of our members running M3 on-premise or in the cloud? How many of them are one, two, three or more releases behind the current version? What proportion of members are in the process of upgrading? Which of the Infor add-on solutions or Infor Partner solutions are they using? In which countries and languages?

As part of our commitment to continuously seek ways to increase the value our members gain from their participation in the M3UA, we need to understand more about their current M3 systems. That’s why in 2020 we will be asking every member to complete a short survey. Understanding more about the profiles of our members will help us deliver more appropriate content and give us an opportunity to connect members with similar profiles.

Completing the survey will earn you 500 reward points!

Every member of the M3UA accumulates reward points for their participation in association activity. Everything from registering for or attending an event, to presenting a case study or leading a SIG can earn you rewards. Check out your profile to see how many points you’ve already earned!

Take the survey NOW! Click Here 

You can access the survey online by clicking the link above. Both members and non-members are welcome to submit responses. We will follow up with every member to ensure we have at least the most basic information regarding their use of M3.

Special Interest Groups

The M3UA Special Interest Groups (SIGs) exist to explore topics of interest to our members. Recent sessions have been very well attended, addressing challenges with User Management, the use of API’s, functional changes in M3 Finance and much more. Members can search past events (change the filter dates) on our Events page to find recordings and presentations.

The next scheduled SIG meeting (10th January at 3pm GMT) covers the topic of Master Data Management with M3. We’ll be hearing from some of our members regarding their MDM strategies and trying to help others with the challenges they face with theirs. Whether you’re cleaning up in preparation for an upgrade, or continuously looking for ways to improve data quality, this session could be for you. Register here.

Future sessions are being organised on the following topics, keep an eye on our events page for the latest news:

  • Accessing M3 (outside-in) using API’s
  • M3 Licensing and License Audits
  • A roadmap for IBM Power Systems (iSeries)
  • VAT, Intrastat and Triangulation
  • Costing Challenges, Tips and Tricks

SIG sessions are a significant benefit of membership with no limit to the number attending from each member company, a great reason to join! (Ask about membership here). If you have topics you’d like to see covered in future sessions why not submit your suggestions?

Members Q&A

Do you have a challenge that other M3UA members might be able to help you with? The easiest way to connect with other members is to post a question on the M3UA website. All subscribed member contacts will receive notification that a new question as been posted, and you will receive notification if they reply.

Responding to a question is easy, just clicking the “I have an answer” button in the notification email will take you direct to the question. If you’re interested in seeing the responses other members give to someone else’s question, just click the “Track this question” button.

Take a look at the recent questions and responses on the website:

Vendor Matchmaking – Searching for the one.

Now our new website is up and running, we’re starting to consider ways we can use it to help you get more value from your membership. Our members register now gives us the opportunity to build and use more complete profiles of all our members, including our Vendor Members. The 2020 Members Survey is part of this process.

As a User Member would you use a search capability that allowed you to identify which of our Vendor Members provide a specific solution or service? Would you endorse the Vendor Members that you use and give them a rating to help others in their search?

The M3UA can’t ever hope to provide a universal and complete catalogue of all products and services provided by all Vendors serving the M3 community. But our mission is to help members share knowledge and experience, this investment will help them discover “who uses who” and how they rate them.

What would you want to search for? Would you want to rate anonymously or openly? Would you even want others to know who you use? If you’re a Vendor Member, what capabilities would you want to offer? What would you want to be rated on?

How much value would this Vendor Matchmaking service provide you? If you have any thoughts or feedback, please let us know.

Social Networking – The M3UA ‘Mixers’

No, we don’t mean Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn (although LinkedIn is a great way to keep in touch with M3UA Events).

We mean real, face-to-face networking events or ‘Mixers’. Would you attend a Mixer if one was taking place near you? We’re thinking about organising opportunities for you to meet each other over a drink (Pub Mixer), or a meal (Dinner Mixer), or a round of golf (Golf Mixer). At our conferences, the networking opportunity is always the #1 reason people attend. Mixers are an easy way for us to create more opportunities for networking and hopefully make them fun.

Mixers will be attended by small groups who meet because they’re in the same town, or in the same industry, or work in the same function. The M3UA can organise and even fund some of these events, helping you to build your network and gain from the experience and knowledge of others. And have some fun doing it.

If you’d like to ‘Host’ an event, let us know. We’ll work with any and all members to help them ‘Stir Up a Mixer‘.

Members News

M3UA member the Dawn Meats Group recently announced on LinkedIn awards they won at the Annual McDonald’s UK & Ireland Supply Chain awards dinner. It’s great to see companies using M3 being recognised for supply chain excellence.

Nunhems (BASF Vegetable Seeds) have recently rejoined the M3UA after finalizing their M3 Upgrade and adding 9 new legal divisions to their M3 13.4 version.

Mateq Solutions an M3 service provider based in Vriezenveen, Netherlands also joined after attending the M3UA Benelux Conference.

Picture of Martin Hill

Martin Hill

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *