Ah, welcome to America. Welcome to bags of crisps the size of the average human head, though maybe not the average American’s. Welcome to id checks for anyone buying alcohol who’s below pensionable age; to wrongly spelt words and staff that smile so hard they must all be on prescription drugs.

It is, of course, the home of Silicon Valley, the epicenter of the global technology industry, or one of them, if that’s possible. And home to to San Diego, which is where I’ll be most of this week sucking up Lawson Software’s annual Cue customer conference, and spitting out some nice little bitesized morsals of ERP news for you to consider. Hand on heart, it’s not the kind of subject that really gets the pulse racing is it? But Enterprise Resource Planning, and all the technology that goes along with it is vitally important in helping firms improve their efficiency, boost revenue and productivity. It’s no wonder that the two largest ERP specialists out there, SAP and Oracle, are also two of the largest software companies in the world too.

As a generalist in this game, I’ll be keen (I really will, honest) to find out what Lawson have got to offer enterprises that the big boys can’t, what they’ll be doing in terms of new products this year, and finding out what their customers think. That’s the idea anyway – wish me luck.