The comments from users at Lawson's Customer and User Exchange 2006 conference here last week came as the company unveiled the first piece of its Landmark ERP system.

The Landmark Strategic Sourcing application, introduced less than a month after Lawson brought out Version 9 of its application suite, aims to improve and automate the procurement process.

Lawson officials declined to disclose further delivery plans for the Landmark line, which will succeed Lawson 9.

The city government of Greensboro, N.C., plans to begin using the new Strategic Sourcing software this fall, several months after it installed the Lawson 9 financial and human resources software. The city was an early adopter of the Lawson 9 applications, which were officially introduced last month.

Chryste Hover, the municipality's director of ERP, said the decision to use Lawson 9 required that the city first install the IBM WebSphere-based Lawson System Foundation 9, which is also needed to run Landmark applications.