2018 Ross SIG Conference: Full Schedule

This annual customer conference offers sessions across Ross Special Interest Groups, including the Chemicals, Metals & Natural Products, Food & Beverage, Life Sciences and Services industries. Special Focus Groups revolve around Finance, Technology and Operations. Attendees have the opportunity to meet with Ross product experts, as well as their peers from other customer companies.

10:00am EDT

The New Data Warehouse Option for Ross Analytics

The new Aptean Data Warehouse option brings power and flexibility to your reporting and analytics systems:

Viewer Agnostic, use what you have or what works best for each business unit
Consistent data for each department, regardless of user interface
Tables and Relationships defined and maintained by Aptean
Finally deliver self-service BI!
Future integration of other Aptean products (*forward looking statement, your mileage may vary)

Speakers

Ravi Reddy

Technical Product Manager, Aptean

Ryan Swain

Director of Information Technology, Paradise Tomato Kitchens

Ryan Swain has been with Paradise Tomato Kitchens since 2001. When it was determined that the company’s ERP system needed to be replaced he led the selection and implementation of Ross ERP in 2008. Since that time, Ryan and his team have undertaken 4 major ERP upgrades, implemented... Read More →

Tuesday October 16, 2018 10:00am - 10:50am EDT
Ellington Salon C

General Track

11:00am EDT

GDPR: It Applies to All of Us

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union regulation but it applies to all of us, and it has widespread implications for any company with contacts, customers, and possibly your customers’ customers in the EU. Violations can carry enormous fines.

Join us to learn how GDPR relates to the information you have stored in Ross ERP and related archives. We will cover:

Who Does GDPR Affect?
Facts & Figures
Principles & How Aptean Can Help

Speakers

Jason Barr

Chief Information Security Officer, Aptean

As Chief Information Security Officer, Jason Barr leads Aptean's compliance, governance and security programs. Jason has over 20 years of experience in the information technology sector building and securing hosted platforms for customers.

Tuesday October 16, 2018 11:00am - 11:50am EDT
Inman

General Track

1:00pm EDT

Connecting with Audiences through Storytelling

Do you need a better way to align people with your vision? Trying to communicate a new concept, idea, or initiative? Connecting with your audience through storytelling is a valuable skill that will enable you to capture attention and influence decisions. We will discuss:

Why stories resonate with audiences
The importance of sharing context in your presentation
A structure for a story-driven presentation
Tips for creating and delivering a presentation that keeps audiences engaged

Speakers

Andy Sirmon

Sr. Principal, Sales Enablement, Aptean

Andy is responsible for helping guide product sales enablement efforts with a particular focus on elevating and packaging Aptean’s value messaging to support its go-to-market strategies. Andy brings with him almost 20 years of marketing experience with a focus on understanding customers... Read More →

Tuesday October 16, 2018 1:00pm - 1:50pm EDT
Piedmont

General Track

2:00pm EDT

Meet the Aptean Customer Success Team

Join us as we discuss all aspects of the Aptean service and support team: We'll cover all of the topics and more:

The metrics we use to measure effectiveness
An overview of the tools available on the new Aptean Connect support site
Tips and tricks to get the most out of support

Speakers

Liliana Uribe

Aptean

Tuesday October 16, 2018 2:00pm - 2:50pm EDT
Ravinia

General Track

3:15pm EDT

Creating a Bill of Lading for Bin Transfers between Physical Warehouses when using One Logical Warehouse in Ross

Kathy LaBudde, Business Analyst at Berner Food & Beverage LLC, a private label consumer packaged goods food and beverage manufacturing company, will share the company's process of creating a Bill of Lading for “shuttles” between physical warehouses under one Logical Warehouse in Ross.

Come hear what we have done and share what you have done to solve same or similar business process tasks. With Berner’s current expansion, our onsite warehouse space was overtaken by production lines, which created a need for automated bill of lading creation for shuttles between our facilities. This transaction is a Data Collection Bin Transfer but did not satisfy trucking documentation needs.
We’ll discuss the following:

Use of “logical” warehouse for ease of user visibility to inventory and MRP/MPS
Data Collection Bin Transfer to create Bill of Lading for transportation documentation
Tracking of shuttles between facilities including number of transfers and time between locations
The result is a document stored in custom Ross table tracking the LPNs moved, Carrier information, and user/time stamps.

Speakers

Kathy Labudde

Senior Business Analyst, Berner Food & Beverage

Kathy LaBudde, Business Analyst at Berner Food & Beverage LLC, a private label consumer packaged goods food and beverage manufacturing company, has been with Berner since 2000. This is also the year Berner implemented Ross.

Tuesday October 16, 2018 3:15pm - 4:05pm EDT
Piedmont

General Track

10:00am EDT

Analytics: Deep Dive into Aptean's Plans

In this session we will be looking into Aptean’s roadmap for process analytics. This includes an overview of current analytics dashboards; an overview of the new Data Warehouse and a brief explanation on the available KPI’s.

Speakers

Jack Payne

Ross Enterprise Product Manager, Aptean

For over 20 years Jack has been working with the Ross ERP solution for process manufacturers and helping customers get the most value out of Ross ERP. He continues to work closely with the product management and development organization in providing input into future functionality... Read More →

Ravi Reddy

Technical Product Manager, Aptean

Wednesday October 17, 2018 10:00am - 10:50am EDT
Ellington Salon C

General Track

1:45pm EDT

Lean Flow Operations and Ross

The Horticulture Industry has turned to "Lean" Techniques in order to maximize profits and prepare for labor shortages. Midwest Groundcovers, one of the largest container nurseries in the Midwest States, undertook a significant “Lean Flow” project that was implemented in 2017. Most of the effort and focus related to order fulfillment.

In this session, we will discuss how we built Ross customizations in order to:

Optimize shipping racks with products that change sizes throughout the year
Batch pull in all of our production nurseries
Stream-line order assembly in our distribution warehouse

Speakers

Chris Plane

Inventory, Midwest Groundcovers, LLC

Rick Santiago

Network/PC Tech, Midwest Groundcovers LLC

Wednesday October 17, 2018 1:45pm - 2:35pm EDT
Ravinia

General Track

2:45pm EDT

QlikSense at Gehl Foods & Illes Seasonings & Flavors

QlikSense has been widely talked about within the Ross SIG community. The tool is sold as a solution to all of your reporting needs. Gehl and Illes will present how they have used the tool to address their reporting needs.

What questions have been answered at Gehl
Data mart, Data warehouse, and business intelligence fundamentals
How Qlik fits into these strategies and concepts
How to implement a true data warehouse and BI solution with Ross and Qlik
See how Illes converted QlikView documents to QlikSense using mashups to enhance their users' experience

Speakers

Les Howell

Executive Director of IT, Illes Seasonings & Flavors

Before joining Illes in 2006, Les spent 10 years as a Director of IT at State Fair Foods (a division of Sara Lee). Now, with almost three decades of experience, Les keeps Illes at the forefront of new systems and innovations in manufacturing processes. He’s on the EUC board for... Read More →

Tim Ringle

Business Systems Analyst, Gehl Foods

Tim Ringle has 18 years of IT experience in both public and private sector industries. As part of an ERP implementation team at a midsize US food manufacturing company, Tim became familiar with multiple ERP systems and a wide range business concepts. He enjoys working with the most... Read More →

Wednesday October 17, 2018 2:45pm - 3:35pm EDT
Ellington Salon B

General Track

4:00pm EDT

EDI Partnerships with Integration to Ross ERP – Automating the Function

Pam Gesin, Senior System Analyst at Berner Food & Beverage LLC, a private label consumer packaged goods food and beverage manufacturing company, will share the company's trials and tribulations of automating their EDI process via SPS Commerce with Ross ERP.

Our goal was to automate the order process in and the invoice process out between our EDI partners and Ross ERP. This would improve the overall efficiencies (speed and accuracy) of the whole EDI process at Berner Food & Beverage. This session will highlight our lessons learned and issues found when implementing the Extended EDI automation solution.

We’ll discuss the following:

Guidance and expertise that our Aptean and Berner partnership (using Aptean Services) has provided when implementing our EDI Automation process
Prep work needed within the Ross ERP system
Define and optimize our process flow to/from Ross and SPS Commerce via EMF events
The end result is better accuracy, consistent data and time savings

Come hear what “gotchas” we found, the need to use EDI Extended and using EMF to automate the FTP download and upload process. Share what you have done and any issues you found when implementing your own EDI automation process.

Speakers

Pam Gesin

Berner Foods

Brandon Maciag

Information Technology, PEZ Candy, Inc.

Brandon has worked in the IT department at PEZ Candy, Inc. since 2010. His specific duties include EDI implementation, web development, ERP support, and syndicated sales data reporting. He has been involved in RossERP uplifts to 6.4 and 7.1.

Wednesday October 17, 2018 4:00pm - 4:50pm EDT
Ravinia

General Track

8:00am EDT

SIG: Chemicals

Speakers

Dan Loosemore

Plant Manager, Hammond Expanders

Eric Lucke

Director, SI Group

Eric Lucke is a Sr. Manager of Global Enterprise Solutions at SI Group. He has been working with ERP systems for 16 years and with Ross for 12 years. He has partnered with Ross to enhance the standard product and is a co-leader of the Chemical SIG. He has led multiple project... Read More →

Teresa Williams

Applications Manager, GEO Specialty Chemicals, Inc

Teresa has been with GEO Specialty Chemicals, Inc for 30 years. GEO began working with Ross ERP in 1997. She has implementation experience in all functional areas of the Ross ERP product. Teresa is responsible for support, implementations, training, upgrades and modifications.

Thursday October 18, 2018 8:00am - 9:30am EDT
Piedmont

General Track

8:00am EDT

SIG: Food & Beverage

The Food & Beverage SIG group is extremely important to both Aptean and the SIG community. Aptean uses the content generated in this session to roadmap out the enhancements to the product to make sure that they focus on the improvements most valuable to the community. We will.

Quickly review all enhancements on list for consideration
Add items for review that are suggested
Quantify the value of suggestions to the entire Ross community

Please be sure to attend to make sure your needs are reflected in the Ross development roadmap.

Speakers

Chris Balay

Director of I.T., PEZ Candy Inc.

Chris has been the I.T. Director at PEZ Candy Inc. since 2000. He was part of the team that chose and implemented Ross ERP 5.7 in 2005. Since then PEZ has uplifted to 5.9, 6.4 and 7.1.

Tim Ringle

Business Systems Analyst, Gehl Foods

Thursday October 18, 2018 8:00am - 9:30am EDT
Ellington DEF

General Track

8:00am EDT

SIG: General Business

Speakers

Thea Hickey

Director of Accounting, ISMIE Mutual Insurance Company

Thea has been with ISMIE since 1997 and has been a Ross user for 19 years. ISMIE uses the financial suite, G/L, A/P, A/R, F/A, POP and Advanced Reporting. Some of her roles at ISMIE have included month-end G/L processing with allocations, fixed asset processing, accounts receivable... Read More →

Shari Ray

Principal Customer Solutions Consultant, Aptean

Thursday October 18, 2018 8:00am - 9:30am EDT
Inman

General Track

8:00am EDT

SIG: Life Sciences

Join your fellow Life Science and Pharmaceutical peers during this interactive forum where we will discuss current issues such as new tracking and reporting requirements impacting our industry, new or enhanced functionality within Ross ERP which can be used to resolve issues specific to our companies, and prioritization of new functionality requests. Your input and feedback is valuable and will be provided to Aptean as they continue to develop and enhance the Ross family of products to meet our current and future needs.

Speakers

Darla Prevish

CFO, Hardy Diagnostics

Darla Prevish started at Hardy Diagnostics in 2014 and is currently the CFO. Hardy Diagnostics, a 100% employee owned company, develops, manufactures, and distributes automated microscope slide stainers for laboratory use as well as culture media and rapid identification kits used... Read More →

Thursday October 18, 2018 8:00am - 9:30am EDT
Ravinia

General Track

9:45am EDT

Ross Version 8: Deep Dive with Q&A

Speakers

Jack Payne

Ross Enterprise Product Manager, Aptean

Thursday October 18, 2018 9:45am - 10:35am EDT
Ellington DEF

General Track