In This Issue

ISSUE 2 * June 2012

net WORK

Yard Tracking Application

Can You Track Movement In and Out of The Yard—And Manage Inventory Easily?

FDC Solutions’ Yard Tracking prod-

uct helps dealerships manage and

track equipment and attachments via

two modules: The In/Out Tracking

Module and the Inventory Module.

The software is integrated with the

DBS Equipment Management Sys-

tem Shipping and Receiving func-

tions and allows equipment and at-

tachments to be received and

shipped directly from the Yard Track-

ing software via the handheld.

The Inventory module requires all

equipment and attachments in DBS

to be tagged and the yard inventory

is taken by store. The Yard Tracking

Inventory module is able to operate

independent of DBS for those cases

where the yard is not 100% wireless-

ly connected.

Features

Allows equipment and attach-ments to be received and shipped directly from the Yard Tracking software via the handheld from the yard

Lets the handheld user convert Pre-Shipper to Shipper, Ad-vanced Receiver to Receiver and Shipper to Receiver

Supports multiple attachments on one Shipping/Receiving DBS record

Checks if the machine is on a contract and auto-fills the Ship-per from the contract

Provides real-time data and immediate updates in DBS

Benefits

Minimizes yard losses

Identifies and resolves discrep-ancies

Flexibility to use Location and Store Location to determine which physical store the equip-ment resides in

Pg. 1

Pg. 2

Pg. 3

Yard Tracking Application

FDC Replacing STW’s

DBS Upload Utility

Did You Know?

Sun Setting of V5R4—

What Does It Mean to

You?

Thompson Machinery in

the News

Observing Etiquette in a Conference Call Reminder for Loading Accenture’s ASP’s FDC Solutions Purchases Toll Inventory Capital Solution

Pg. 4 Dealer Happenings

2012 NADITA Conference

From the FDC Employees

Observing Etiquette in a Conference Call

FDC Solutions Purchases

Toll ICS System

FDC Solutions is proud to announce their purchase of the Toll ICS Sys-tem. The system offers a fully opti-mized inventory and distribution planning methodology and its inte-grated supporting software for de-mand forecasting, reorder point man-agement, vendor performance man-agement, master production sched-uling and supply chain risk manage-ment.

Competitive Advantage A competitive edge is delivered by our fully integrated and optimized risk-based technology that has rou-tinely delivered stock savings of over 20% while simultaneously lifting cus-tomer service levels by several per-centage points, even when competi-tors’ inventory management products are in use!

ICS Delivers: Improved inventory availability Customer service Simultaneously reduced inventory

ICS Drives: Demand forecasting Inventory level / re-order point

settings Inventory distribution

ICS Offers: A full-function, state-of-the-art

4th generation system plus im-plementation

A comprehensive and integrat-

ed methodology Process re-engineering and

change management when needed

New for CAT Dealers

Vendor Managed Inventory

(VMI)

Feature allows dealers to man-age the inventory for custom-ers, allowing dealers to deliver better service for their custom-ers who stock parts, and pro-vides dealers visibility of their customer’s forecasts

Forecasting and Planning

Forecast growth or decline by groups of parts or by SKU

NPI

Ability to forecast new parts based on like or related parts for new product introduction

Simulation

Simulate different forecast or risk options by SKU, by sub-sets or for all parts

Events

Separated from the forecast. Results are stored for future event planning

Supplier Risk Tracking

Determine reliability of your vendors. Identify long lead times on items, and stock ac-cordingly

Seasonality

Identified automatically and will ramp up / down inventory for the season

Integration

Integrates seamlessly with DBS, SAP, Microsoft, and many major ERP’s. An invest-ment you can take with you

Contact FDC Solutions at for more information about implementing ICS at your dealership!

In the office world, many of our daily frustrations, pet peeves, and discordant moments revolve around communica-tion. In order for your office to become more like a family, you must all observe proper etiquette in your communications, whether your mode be instant messag-ing, email, phone call or conference call. For now, let's focus on the confer-ence call. Click on the link below to ob-serve the humor in conference calling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbJAJEtNUX0

Guidelines for a Conference Call

Punctuality—Be on time

When it comes to speaker phones, the mute button is your friend

Participate in your conference call from a quiet location

Introduce the participants at the be-ginning

As the facilitator, offer a brief intro-duction of yourself before speaking in a conference call

Reminder for Loading

Accenture’s ASP’s

If your dealership has any FDC Solu-

tions’ software and plan to load Accen-

ture ASPs in the near future, please

contact FDC Solutions, allowing at

least two weeks prior to migrating the

ASP to production. We will review

those programs, files, and copybooks

changed in the ASP and update any

affected FDC-modified code.

Inventory Capital Solution

FDC Replacing STW’s

DBS Upload Utility

Did You Know?

Sun Setting of V5R4—

What Does It Mean to You?

Attention DBSi 5.0 Dealers on V5R4

Published: February 28, 2012 by Alex Woodie, ITjungle.com

“Thompson Machinery, the author-ized dealer for Caterpillar equipment in central and western Tennessee and central and northern Mississippi, has decided to stick with CODA Fi-nancials running on the IBM i OS, and in fact will expand its usage of the Java-based software, UNIT4 CO-DA announced last week.” “Today, the CODA group within glob-al IT powerhouse UNIT4 has a long history of providing financial packag-es to the nation's Caterpillar dealers, who have long relied on the IBM i platform for running back-office ap-plications.

Thompson Machinery in the News

But back in 1994, CODA Finan-cials was not proven as one of the go-to solutions for CAT deal-ers. So it's worth noting that Thompson Machinery was one of the first CAT dealers to take the risk of installing CODA Financials software on its AS/400 equip-ment. Implementing a financial package is a big deal for any or-ganization. But at least it could always fire the software compa-ny. That hasn't happened.” Click here to read the article in its en-tirety.

CAT Dealer Still Likes CODA for IBM i Financials

At first blush, IBM's recent extending of the end-of-support date for V5R4 seems generous. After all, with sup-port now granted to September 2013, this release will have been viable for seven years--longer than any other IBM iOS release. Plus IBM is letting users purchase a software maintenance extension at a premium cost (to be announced) above their current monthly maintenance. Yet customers want more time, and they don't necessarily want to pay for it. Why? Because upgrading from V5R4 requires an application migra-tion step that for some shops is a problem, and economic conditions make any price increase force com-pensating cost cuts elsewhere in the organization: usually jobs.

The Support Schedule announced and updated by IBM can be found by clicking here.

FDC’s Approach to Migrating

from V5R4 to V6R1

Before migrating to V6R1, all ref-erences to JACADA objects in the Innovator library must be removed from your DBSi code. DBS 2.3.4 does not use JACADA, but part of the upgrade process requires analysis of third party code to determine if it can run on V6R1. FDC Solutions is committed to removing JACADA code from DBSi 5.0 for our ERP-supported dealers.

We have written a tool to remove this code, and are currently doing detailed testing of this pro-cess. We will be reaching out to all of our affected ERP dealers to review the project plan with you and schedule removing this code from your system in preparation for you upgrading to V6R1.

When Caterpillar discontinued support of the “DBS Upload Utility”, FDC Solutions began developing its replacement called FDC DBS-STW Transfer Utility. This util-ity was created to support dealer’s ef-forts to upload and download Service Technician Workbench (STW) to and from DBS/DBSi, including the Durability Indicator.

The XML Upload and Run utility package includes the ability to upload:

Labor and Travel Times

Parts Causing Failure (SIMS)

SMU Value

Miscellaneous Costs

Mileage

Repair Background Notes

This utility is being deployed at a pilot dealer and will be available for all FDC-Supported ERP Dealers in July 2012.

Formsprint recently announced the re-

lease of the 2012 version of Formsp-

print. From their March newsletter,

among other features in the 2012 up-

date, "FormSprint version 2012 sup-

ports Dynamic Duplex Control. Prior to

this release, duplexing was either on or

off for a given form/print job. Dynamic

duplex control permits printer duplexing

to be turned on or off based on the

spool file content. Spool files can con-

tain a mixture of pages requiring du-

plexing and those to be printed on a

single side. The result is faster printing

time and fewer printer cycle counts."

For more information, contact

Formsprint at 860-657-3339.

Dealer Happenings

CODA Integration Projects for 2.3.4 The latest version of Coda is on the iSeries. We have six dealers signed up for the project, with Kramer, Ohio CAT, Puck-ett, and Hawthorne leading off.

From the FDC Employees

Change Default System Passwords

Contact us:

FDC Solutions Inc. 456 Fulton Street, Suite 298A Peoria, IL 61602 (309) 676-7795 info@fdcsolutions.net

http://fdcsolutions.net

Default passwords are user pass-words that are equal to the user profile name. A necessary part of security checking is sniffing out and changing user profiles that contain default passwords. Default pass-words occur often when creating new user IDs because default passwords are the default setting for new IDs in both OS/400 V4R5 and V5R1. As a result, many sys-tems may have a number of user profiles that are ripe targets for hacking. Procedure to Analyze Default Passwords 1. Detect and review default pass-

words using the ANZADFTPWD command

2. Create a list of users who have

default password ANZDFTPWD ACTION(*NONE)

a. Profile name b. Is the profile enabled or

disabled c. Is the default password

active or expired NOTE: if the password is . Expired and the password is des-ignated in the PWDEXP parameter of the user pro-file, the user will need to to change the password up-on next sign on

d. Profile Text description

3. QUSRSYS/QASECPWD is the source of this information and may have SQL or SEQUEL re-ports run against it.

Possible Immediate Actions to Take 1. Leave as is 2. Use ANZDFTPWD to disable the

userid’s with default passwords

3. ANZDFTPWD ACTION (*DISABLE)

4. Use ANZDFTPWD to set all the default password pro-files to a status of expired (*EXPIRED), forcing users to change their passwords upon next sign on. ANZDFTPWD ACTION (*PWDEXP)

Note: Mass changes at times may cause many problems and caution is advised prior to disa-bling or expiring a number of IDs. Long Term Solutions 1. Use Operations Navigator

instead of CRTUSRPRF. Op-eration Navigator automati-cally configures default pass-word to be changed during the first sign on.

2. Change default value for

CRTUSRPRF to password expired: CHGCMDDFT CMD(CRTUSRRPRF) NEWDFT(‘PWDEXP(*YES)’

3. When using CRTUSRPRF, it

will default to CRTUSRPRF USRPRF(user+profile_name) PASSWORD (*USRPRF) PWDEXP(*YES)

Note: All current default pass-words will still be on the Iseries and the PWDEXP can be set to *NO if you choose to create a userid with a default password. 4. Just say no to default pass-

words CHGCMDDFT CMD(CRTUSRPRF) NEWDFT(‘PASSWORD(*NONE)’)

NADITA Conference

The 2012 North America Dealer Information

Technology Association (NADITA) confer-

ence was held in Orlando, Florida on April

16—April 19, 2012 at the Rosen Plaza Hotel.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to

attend our presentation and visit our booth at

the vendor fair. We look forward to continu-

ing to provide you with high-quality services

and products you are accustomed to receiv-

ing from FDC Solutions, and to growing our

community of FDC-supported ERP dealers.

FDC Solutions is proud to announce the addition of three Caterpillar dealers using our DBS Support Service. We take pride in providing the functional and technical needs of a dealer. Thompson Machinery Nashville (LaVergne), TN, December 1, 2011 Western States Meridian, Idaho March 1, 2012 Giles & Ransome Bensalem, PA June 1, 2012 Use of our support services has grown tremendously over the past year, and this change reflects our commitment to en-suring that our outstanding customer support continues to scale with our growth.