Hosted by Chandra Wobschall and Paul Houtkooper

Hey JDE Connection listeners, Chandra and Paul here! This week we welcomed two guests to the podcast, Lane Lassetter, Director of Accounting and Shared Services from Interface, and Rajan Kaistha, founder of RST Solutions. And yes, with two guests and two hosts, we briefly considered calling it a panel. Apparently, there are rules about these things.

Lane oversees accounting and shared services at Interface, including AP, AR, credit and collections, payroll, and general accounting. Rajan and the RST team have worked with Interface and their JD Edwards environments for years. That history gave us a chance to talk about something we always enjoy: what happens when a business problem gets solved well enough that people start asking, “Okay, what else can we do?”

As it turns out, quite a lot.

Starting with the Pain Everyone Understands

Our conversation started in accounts payable, an area near and dear to at least one recovering accountant among us. Lane described a familiar AP process involving invoices, coding, manual entry, approvals, and plenty of human touches along the way. Interface wanted to reduce that effort while also replacing an aging archive system. Once automation entered the picture, invoices could begin moving through the process with far less intervention. Approvers could handle their part without bouncing between systems, and AP could spend less time pushing paperwork from one stop to the next.

That alone makes for a good project. But Lane didn’t stop there.

The Dangerous Question: “What Else Can We Automate?”

We had to laugh when Lane admitted he started getting a little nerdy about the possibilities. Fortunately, this is the JDE Connection, so he was among friends. Once Lane saw what was possible, his list started growing. Vendor updates. Vendor onboarding. Payment requests. Customer refunds. And then came PO approvals. This one caught our attention because the pain was so wonderfully ordinary. Some approvers rarely need to log into JD Edwards. When a PO finally arrives, they may have forgotten their password, which means a call to IT, a reset, a login, an approval, and then three months later…repeat the whole adventure.

Giving those users a simpler way to review and act on a request may sound like a small change, but Lane shared that people have described it as life changing. We understand why. Sometimes the best improvements aren’t flashy. They simply remove that one irritating task everyone has quietly accepted for years.

Modernization Can Start Small

One theme kept resurfacing as we talked with Lane and Rajan: successful modernization doesn’t always begin with a giant initiative. Interface started with a tangible business problem. Once people experienced the improvement, they began bringing forward their own ideas. Leadership started seeing possibilities. One use case naturally opened the door to another.

We also talked about Interface’s upcoming JD Edwards upgrade and the additional opportunities a newer toolset can provide. That brought us back to something we discuss often: staying current gives organizations options, but those options become valuable when people connect them to actual business needs.

Lane’s story is a great example of what that can look like in practice. Solve something painful. Let people experience the difference. Then listen carefully when they start asking what comes next. And perhaps keep Rajan’s phone number handy, because Lane seems determined to keep adding to the list.

Midwesternism of the Day

This week we’re headed to a Minnesota church basement, or maybe a good old-fashioned potluck, where a simple word can mean something very different than you might expect. There are plenty of varieties and everyone seems to have a favorite. You’ll have to listen to find out what we’re serving up this week.

Until next time, let’s keep learning, sharing, and most importantly, laughing together.

Toodles!

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