P-052824: How Harper Collins Automated Inventory Reservations

This session was presented at INFOCUS 2026.

How do you guarantee inventory for strategic customers without creating manual processes or sacrificing overall inventory efficiency? Harper Collins faced this challenge by offering customers reserved inventory that could be drawn down over a defined period, while ensuring those reserved quantities remained unavailable to other customers until the reservation expired. This session explores how Harper Collins leveraged JD Edwards Fulfillment, combined with Orchestrator, to automate the entire reservation lifecycle. Attendees will learn how customer and item-specific reservation profiles with effective dates were implemented, how inventory was isolated from general availability, and how order fulfillment was seamlessly automated from reserved inventory. We'll also demonstrate the automated process that identifies expired reservations, returns unused inventory to the general pool, and maximizes inventory utilization without manual intervention. Whether you're looking to improve customer service, better manage constrained inventory, or automate complex fulfillment processes, this session provides a practical, real-world example of extending JD Edwards to solve a common business challenge.

This session is eligible for the following CPE certification: NASBA

Speakers: Michael Tigue, HARPER COLLINS PUBLISHERS
Mahesh Sathenjeri, Syntax

P-052774: Enterprise Automation (GenAI Knowledge Assistant): Building a Generative AI Knowledge Assistant for JD Edwards Functional and Technical Teams

This session was presented at INFOCUS 2026.

JD Edwards knowledge is often fragmented across documents, tickets, mappings, and tribal expertise, causing delays when key resources are unavailable. This session presents a practical way to build a retrieval-based Generative AI knowledge assistant for JD Edwards teams. The assistant delivers accurate answers on process flows, integrations, table references, and support activities while maintaining source traceability and preventing hallucinations. Attendees will learn document structuring, access controls, and use cases for onboarding, knowledge transfer, and daily operations. Demo Recommendation: Live interaction with the GenAI assistant answering JDE-specific questions, showing grounded responses with source references. It uses JDE tables to create a knowledgebase "semantic layer" and tops it with "Ontology Layer" for real time business context at low token cost.

This session is eligible for the following CPE credit: NASBA.

Speakers: Kaushik Ray, PCB Apps (a PentaFour Group)

We'll take a look at under-the-radar features in 9.2 and show how developers can use them to boost productivity and deliver quick, high-impact improvements without a major overhaul. Examples include advanced Orchestrator tricks, incorporating Form Extensions and Personal Forms to spruce up user interfaces, and we'll share some handy code snippets. We will also look at some common mistakes and how to dodge them.

Unlock the full potential of JD Edwards with ChatJDE, a generative AI platform designed to streamline ERP interactions and automate decisions at scale. This session begins with a practical overview of ChatJDE Assistant, a secure conversational interface that integrates directly into JD Edwards workflows. See how it eliminates repetitive clicks, surfaces real-time answers, and drives measurable productivity gains in finance, procurement, and operations. You’ll also learn about the underlying architecture, enterprise-grade security model, and how it can be deployed in under a week.

From there, you’ll witness an end-to-end scenario: using natural language, an order is created via ChatJDE Assistant. As soon as it's submitted, ChatJDE Agent automatically takes over — reading JD Edwards data, checking inventory and pricing thresholds, applying company-specific rules, and notifying stakeholders of the approval outcome. The process is fully autonomous and real-time, with a clear audit trail and no human intervention.

What You’ll Learn:
• How ChatJDE Assistant enhances day-to-day JDE interactions through conversational AI
• Deployment and security practices for adopting generative AI in JD Edwards
• A step-by-step showcase of automated PO processing triggered by a natural language command
• Practical insights into how ChatJDE delivers real ROI and scalability across ERP operations

Your JD Edwards system holds the keys to your company’s financial truth. If you're only using your JD Edwards system for static financial statements, you're missing the bigger picture.
In this finance-focused session, we’ll show you how to move beyond traditional statements and start using JDE data to tell the full story of your business. Whether you're building income statements with relative period logic, distributing financials by business unit, or tracking trends across dashboards, you’ll walk away with practical tools to elevate your reporting game.
Highlights include:
• Building smarter income statements
• Leveraging automated distribution to deliver the right numbers to the right people—instantly
• Using templates to cut time and increase consistency
• Techniques to sharpen your outputs and streamline your workflows
• Visualize the financial performance in real time
• Tips to align reporting with strategic goals, board expectations, and operational execution
This session is your shortcut to turning JDE data into financial leadership fuel.

This session highlights PCL’s ambitious HCM transformation, focused on consolidating payroll operations from 26 distinct JD Edwards ERP instances into a single, unified platform. With over 15,000 employees and more than $1 billion in annual payroll across multiple countries and currencies, this initiative represents one of the most complex payroll consolidations in the construction industry.

The presentation will cover the strategy behind remapping and harmonizing HCM master data—such as Union Codes, Job Types, Job Steps, PDBAs, Benefit Plans, and Wage Attachments—to support accurate, compliant, and uninterrupted payroll processing across diverse districts. A rigorous cross-referencing approach ensured data integrity, avoided duplication, and allowed for localized business needs to continue seamlessly within a standardized global framework.

Attendees will gain insight into the technical, operational, and reconciliation challenges overcome during the project, including how end-to-end payroll accuracy was achieved and validated at scale. We’ll also share lessons learned and key success factors for managing HCM transformations in complex, decentralized environments.