A few weeks ago, I set myself a task of laying a new engineered wooden floor in our new lounge. This isn’t a particularly difficult task, but can be quite challenging when you’re dealing with in a non-square room with an uneven sub floor. Although I’ve done this type of work several times, for me, there had been a few years between the jobs. And although the job got done and the finish was of a decent standard, I know for certain that I wasted 50% of the time allocated; re-educating myself on the best practice way of laying floors, evaluating adhesive options, browsing for helpful tips on You Tube and rechecking the flooring that I had already put down.
What frustrates me is that I am sure, that on those other occasions, I went through the exact same time wasting steps, and I didn’t make any effort to document how and why I had come to the conclusions I had. This is where a simple ‘self-created’ How-To would have been extremely handy, as 10 minutes at the end of the last job and a 5 minute review at the start of this one, would have probably had saved me 4 hours in total. And in being more efficient, I could have used the wasted time to do something far more productive, like watching the football.
Joking apart, the importance of How-To’s cannot be understated, the benefits come in the time they save, the assistance they give and the peace of mind they generate. A how-to is an informal, often short, description of how to accomplish a specific task. A how-to is usually meant to help non-experts and may leave out details that are only important to experts. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How-to)
At NexSys we appreciate that users of SYSPRO and its Complimentary products have to carry out specific or repetitive tasks such as license application or month end routines, we actively encourage each to document our collective knowledge by creating ‘How-To’s’, which sometimes get prepared under the guise of ‘Handy-Hints’, ‘Tutorials’, ‘User Guides’, ‘Walkthroughs’ and ‘Viewlets’.
Most of these are available for download on the K3 Customer Portal
SYSPRO have also acknowledged the importance of this, and often produces higher level FAQ’s, these can be accessed via the SYSPRO Support Zone.
So, before you think about doing something in SYSPRO that you have never done before, ask us if we have a How-To or Handy Hint! And if you have your own How-To’s that you think should be shared with the world, don’t be shy – let us know!
