Inclusions

WHO SHOULD

Attend

Reflections from a Business Owner

Pricing

NETWORKING

Who Should Attend?

Maximizing roi

A Business Owner on the Value of Attending the Executive Summit at

TUG CONNECTS 2025

As business owners, we’ve invested a lot of capital into our ERP and the edge products that feed data into and consume data from our ERP. One on one time with Infor and other product executives is invaluable to know their direction and intention with the products we’re paying for.

The executive summit at TUG Connects reminds me every year to spend time on my strategic vision for Kyana Packaging Solutions; many other competent people are focused on the day-to-day tactical decisions.

When my company was moving from a legacy ERP to a new ERP, I attended the user conference from two other contenders to SXe. TUG and TUG Connects was by far the best user community and the best user conference versus the competitor’s user communities. We picked SXe because of the TUG Community experience. TUG focused on getting more value from the software we already owned, a user community mission that still rings true today.

Over the course of the years, I’ve bought two manufacturing companies. With the first, I was certain that I’d have to buy manufacturing software. Conversations at TUG Connects regarding how other people use SXe/CSD helped us to realize that the functionality we needed was already built into SXe, Savings us $90-100,000 annually in a new licensed manufacturing ERP. Infor has continued to refine CSD to make it even more compatible with the light manufacturing that we do.

I first learned about the Advanced Inventory Management (AIM) functions in SXe/CSD while attending a Grant Howards session at TUG Connects. I came back and tested some of the functionality that already exists in CSD, but that we weren’t using. After my purchasing team attended Grant Howards full training seminars, we implemented AIM across our warehouses and improved our inventory turns by 1.5 – 2 times based on the warehouse and improved our service levels by 3-4%. The inventory investment savings alone is more than $100,000 and the service level improvement is priceless.

Training for our teams is critical, not just to the continued success of our company but to the retention of the best employees. If people aren’t encouraged by new growth and education opportunities here (my company) they will seek them elsewhere.

A lot of our staff is heads down all day doing their work. It’s my responsibility as the business leader to look across the company and see what’s coming in one department that will affect another department and coordinate the change. TUG Connects gives me access and insight into technology that can change our business operations or sales processes, a change that my IT team may not see.

Distributors bring together the best our vendors have to offer and work to make our customers’ businesses better. Adding technology to our existing processes and operations will enhance our customers’ experience and improve our efficiency. TUG Connects is the premier showcase for distribution technology and a can’t miss event.

Entrepreneurs are curious about everything. TUG Connects is a smorgasbord of networking opportunities that allow the business owner to ask open questions in a non-competitive environment to see how business may deal with the day-to-day problems that we struggle to solve alone.

The keynote speakers at TUG Connects are always thought provoking and on point. I wish I could bottle their presentations and present them to my whole team. They are worth the price of admission.