Infosys-Oracle Blog

Posted by Guest at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Often,during client meetings, I am asked if ERP systems are secure enough to be used. Granting of rights,privileges,administrative rights across various 'responsbibilities' in oracle applications is a common practice in any implementation.This prevents unathorised access and potential misuse.

But what about hackers who deliberately break into your system to take control over your sensitive data?Are the current erp applicatiosn safe enough?

Looking forward to your views as we continue the discussion in a series of posts soon.

Locutus.

Posted by Guest at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the environment where the budgets for CIO’s offices are continuously declining (after all who wants to own ‘yet another fancy and heavy on features application software’ that requires a significant investment and without no surety of  ROI) the businesses are left with two options:

1)      Cancel the IT project that are in pipeline: Risk -  Business Revenue may further slip southward due to the lack of support from IT for all the new & innovative ideas.

2)      Delay the IT projects that are in pipeline:  Risk – The delayed  investment may  not provide the benefits as expected due to missed business opportunity.  

Is there any third option…yes of course… in my opinion all the options that help us to share the cost among the users of it would be worth exploring  during these times of tough economical environment. The very simple  example…”do we hire a chartered plane each time we need to fly from one location to another or instead  we take the regular flights and share the cost of flying a plane with our co-passengers”  . I am sure that for 99.99 %  surveyors will choose the first option as this is the easy way to afford  a flight and opt for various service options based on their preferences around urgency, comfort, privacy and brand value.

While we  derive the analogy from the above example and envision an IT Service that can be shared across the customers, the key aspect is the management of the shared services organization.  I believe that the idea of  managing  shared services organizations as independent profit centers brings lots of benefits. The few worth mentioning here are:

Ø  Enhanced consciousness for making the shared services profitable  

Ø  Higher quality of decisions being made by the managers who are closest to the point of decision

Ø  Faster speed when it comes to making operational decisions

Ø  Mangers subjected to less of corporate constraints and can focus more on innovative solutions

An ‘IT shared services’  running profitably  is a clear sign then the customers requirements have been understood correctly and  they are being served at the right price.

In my next post let’s learn some of the components that contribute to the cost of running an ‘IT Shared Service’…….

 

Posted by Shobhna Agarwal at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Aruna Srikanth at 04:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Further to my earlier post on managing expectation from MDM implementation – we will discuss on some of the best practices for Master Data Management (MDM).

A company decide on going for a MDM program - what are the first steps to be taken to ensure a successful implementation of the program.

First, Define a vision for the program – clearly define the vision for implementing MDM program in your organization. This holds good for any enterprise wide program especially when implementing a new technology. This vision should articulate the desired end-state and help the stake-holders to understand what needs to be done.

As we touched the stake-holders, another important step is to get Stakeholders buy-in across the information chain – this is a critical step for success of the program. Failure to get buy-in from everyone may result in non-cooperation by some stake holders causing failure of the entire program.

The buy-in is achieved by creating awareness about the advantages of MDM & the processes involved in MDM. This helps stake holders to understand the need and vision of the MDM program & work towards achieving that vision.

The next and the most important step is Planning. Spend sufficient time in planning for the MDM program.  Focus on the implementation strategy to choose and how to evaluate different vendors. While implementing MDM program, do not go for big-bang approach. Plan for a phased approach to deliver early benefits to the organization. Ensure that the different phases are aligned with MDM vision.

As part of the first steps we also need to consider the following potential problems/ gaps that would come in the way of successful MDM implementation:

The first one is to consider and make the stakeholders aware of potential performance problems when the new system is rolled out. Typically any new systems will have some initial problems before it starts delivering benefits. It is important that all stakeholders should accept this inconvenience for sometime instead of reverting to old ways of managing data.

Along with the above, the company should assess their existing process and identify conflicts with MDM standards. This is a critical step if you are planning to join global data pools and share information with your suppliers and customers using GDSN (Global Data Synchronization Network). Even if your company is not planning to be part of GDSN, it is advisable to stick to global MDM standards as the standards are evolved after lot of efforts and will definitely help your company manage the master data in a better way.

Successful MDM program rely heavily on strong Data Governance policies. Define data governance policies and processes if not in place already.

Once we are ready with the initial steps we start with selection of MDM tool and implementation of the tool.  Watch this space for more on the ‘Best Practices’ to be followed during selection and implementation of MDM tool.

Posted by Krithivasan S at 08:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In continuation of my earlier post : http://www.infosysblogs.com/oracle/2009/06/business_intelligence_serving_1.html .I would like to emphasize on BI needs by mid and small sized companies too.

We have in the market various BI tools that can collate data from different corners within and outside the organization and deliver needed information to aid us in taking the right decision at the right time. It again depends on the organization to identify the pain areas and make use of the best BI tool that can deliver the maximum benefit in that area.  It is very difficult to identify a BI tool that will fit as-is within an organization due to change in processes adopted by each industry.

You will find almost all BI tools being deployed as a web based system. This enables individuals to extract meaningful information from the BI solution. The time has come not to see IT department as an Information Gatekeeper but as a tools provider that enable the management to take quick and optimum decision.

Posted by Neeraj Jha at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is followup blog to:

http://www.infosysblogs.com/oracle/2009/05/finally_maketoorder_solution_f_1.html

In Last Blog, I discussed about Oracle’s MTO solution for process manufacturer. Let’s go a little deeper to understand how it will benefit Process as well as hybrid manufacturer.  We will also see how this solution has evolved through various releases of OPM.

Start Manufacturing only after receiving customer's orders means to start a pull-type supply chain operation i.e. supply being pulled by demand. From the viewpoint of supply chain management, it has been proven that those who can meet due dates promised with customers, along with keeping inventory to bare minimum, maintain competitive advantage, irrespective of Economic Scenario. MTO forms the basis of JIT manufacturing.

Now let’s talk about the way it worked in OPM. In 11i, Reservation Rules for the item were defined. As and when Customer Orders were received, production department was asked to create a Production Batch depending on the Order and later Batch was linked with the Sales Order in the system, a crude way of getting MTO functionality with lots of manual intervention.

In R12.0 there was one more problem associated with it, no reservation rules could be defined due to which as soon as the Item gets created it could be reserved against another Sales Order defeating the very purpose.

With R12.1.1, Oracle provides separate screen to define rules specifically for MTO. It also has the functionality for checking the inventory on-hand balance, so that if there is any item available in the inventory that could be used against the Sales Order. Further, it defines against which Warehouse/ Item Type/ Item Number/ Customer the MTO rules are to be used. A new event “GME Batch Supply Reservation Notification Business Event” also needs to be enabled to notify Customer Sales Representative.

Upon creation of Sales Order for MTO enabled item, “Process Manufacturing Make to Order” concurrent request is run, which create the Batch directly from Sales Order. Item reservation window also contains the details of the Sales Order on the Demand Tab and of the Batch on the Supply Tab.

While Oracle has indeed provided MTO solution for Process Manufacturer, it is still yet to be worked in integrated fashion along with Discrete. In Hybrid environment, where both, process as well as discrete manufacturing is used, user will have to follow two different processes. But, for Process Only Manufacturer, it is a great relief; there long pending demand is finally addressed.

Release of R12 clearly shows Oracle’s increasing focus towards process industries. We are seeing more and more process specific solutions from oracle. “Outside Processing” enhancement which is pending from long time also seems to see light of day in coming future releases. For Oracle Latest Updates & Infosys solution in this space, keep visiting this blog.

Posted by Ashish Namdeo at 06:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Everybody is talking about it.. Decision makers are contemplating either to invest for growth now or to cut costs to maintain margins.. or do both. well.. am sure people know that these are easier said than done. there are too many theories, hypothesis, advices, opinions and the latest in the list.. 'management books'... trying to use all possible ways of the current situation to make themselves heard.. but what is heartening is that there is good amount of truth and reality in all of these.. as they are directly from their heart.. they have felt it, experienced it and living with it.

Just wanted to share my thoughts on the avenues that are available for executives to survive and sail through the current recession in the IT Outsourcing space... While there are many ways being pondered, let us look at few of the prominent ones in the market.. these are applicable for both type of organizations.. those who are either looking for ways to start outsourcing or those who are already matured in this but are looking for newer ways to cut costs..

Let us look at new Service Delivery Models, as the first among the 3 part series of this survival kit..
 

Innovative Service Delivery Models

Talking of delivering IT services, there has been significant amount of maturity among the companies that outsource IT services to SIs across the world.. Initially, that is around 1.5 to 2 decades ago, companies were more comfortable with 'touch & feel' kind of business. Wanting to know who are working for them, what is that they are working on and with a desire to have full control on the overall engagement. Slowly the situation improved, not bcos of diluted expectations but bcos of the maturity and the rampant acceptance of the IT outsourcing model.

Companies started to believing their IT service partners more and more leading to a more refined delivery model offering 'Managed Services' - Where the provider retains the execution control on the operational aspects of the engagement, having an equal participation on the tactical aspects too, while the customer retains the strategic control of the relationship. The providers became more accountable for the results, to deliver projects within schedule, under or same budget with acceptable quality of work. This model has had great success as it offers a win-win proposition for both customers and providers paving the way for more trust on the partnership.

IT Shared Services Delivery (or can we say 'IT Service delivery 2.0')

One of the most compelling value proposition to customers who are looking at options for supporting and maintaining their applications at low cost but still want to retain their SLAs and maintain high customer satisfaction, is to look at IT Shared Services Delivery model.

A simple definition would be that this model involves a single team, in other words one common pool of IT consultants, supporting multiple customers, round-the-clock, on multiple technologies.

You can look at this option if?
 - You are a mid-to-small sized company
 - Your application landscape is more stable and doesn't involve too many transactional interactions with end users
 - Your landscape includes a large Enterprise Package consisting of too many modules or there are too many small peripheral applications where you may want to have individual module specialists as the ticket volumes are not substantial
 - You are looking at extended support coverage beyond the normal business hours but could not afford the extra costs associated with it
 - You are looking for 'need-based' support - instead of locking in FTEs you want people only when there is work
 - You want to meet unforeseen demands - ability to address any unprecendented spurt in demand with minimal increase in costs
 - You have a highly labor intensive environment where the processes have high repetition rates
 - You are interested to bundle all applicationand infra related support and maintenance into one package and want the best deal possible
 - and more...

This is one model that can give almost all that you need.. the flexibility in services, dynamic pricing, predictability in costs, scalability of operations - all with same service levels and maintaining the customer satisfaction. Try it out..

Posted by Ramgopal Natarajan at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Based on the interest generated  by my earlier blog  on BI needs for a Telecom Operator http://www.infosysblogs.com/oracle/2009/04/an_insight_into_the_business_intelligence_needs_for_a_telecoms_operator.html#more 

that I had written a few weeks back, I would want to take my view point a step forward. In my earlier blog I had mainly discussed about the possible stacks or spaces within a telecom operators landscape that needs a strong and well defined BI strategy.
In this blog I would want to discuss on some important architectural and functional tenets within which a Telecom players’ Business Intelligence roadmap should be architected and constructed, in order to derive maximum mileage.

Posted by Somnath Mukherjee at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the current recession hit market, Manufacturing is one of the industries that is facing global competition that it has never experienced. Reductions in profit margins, Increase in raw material cost along with government regulations demand more innovative ways to look on to Optimize resources, gain productivity, minimize investment.

To overcome this we need to maintain optimum level of inventory so as to avoid overstock / short-supply and bring innovative and profitable schemes at marketing level. Business Intelligence is the right tool that will help us in achieving this.

BI helps in keeping managers updated / equipped with state-of-the art and exact information that helps in taking critical business decisions rather than going on assumptions.

Manufacturers use Business Intelligence software to improve visibility and communication across their increasingly complex supply chains, while satisfying customer demands for new products and product enhancements.  Following business area are prime areas of concern:

Some of the areas where BI Solutions can be applied in Manufacturing are:

Supply Chain and Order Management:  Oracle Supply Chain and Order Management Analytics delivers deep customer insight into order and inventory data so you can make better decisions in each stage of the order lifecycle. Oracle Supply Chain and Order Management Analytics enables you to assess inventory levels, determine likely product fulfillment needs before the order has been booked, quickly identify potential order backlog issues, and stay on top of critical accounts receivable (A/R) and daily sales outstanding (DSO) issues. By leveraging actionable and fact-based insights, one can transform your current Supply Chain and Order Management processes to improve financial performance and customer satisfaction.

Financial Management: Oracle Financial Analytics helps front-line managers improve financial performance with complete, up-to-the-minute information on their department's expenses and revenue contributions. KPI’s and reports enable financial managers to improve cash flow, lower costs, and increase profitability while maintaining more accurate, timely, and transparent financial reporting that helps ensure Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

Procurement and Spend: Oracle Procurement & Spend Analytics,  enables us to optimize supply side performance by integrating data from across the enterprise value chain—enabling executives, managers, and frontline employees to make more informed decisions. It increases visibility into the complete procure-to-pay process, including comprehensive spend and procurement analysis, supplier performance analysis, supplier payables analysis, and employee expense analysis. Through complete end-to-end insight into the factors that impact company performance, you can significantly reduce costs, enhance profitability, increase customer satisfaction, and gain competitive advantage

Using above one can assess cash-management and monitor operational effectiveness of the payables department to ensure lowest transaction costs. Identify most profitable customers, products, and channels, and understand profitability drivers across regions, divisions, and profit centers. Improve inventory management for those products that consistently fall into backlog due to a lack of appropriate stock levels. Gain visibility into inventory activities to minimize unnecessary expenditures and optimize inventory to conserve working capital. Gain detailed visibility into direct and indirect spending, and identify opportunities for consolidation and reduction of costs. Monitor price, delivery, and product quality to determine best - and worst - performing suppliers.

Business Intelligence tools mainly are being accessed by top Management who need to obtain strategic information that can help them decide the future course of action, help in taking strategic decisions. Business Intelligence is still being more equipped for decision making, predicting trends, analysis, delivering information.

Being part of Manufacturing Industry we need to look out for a solution that can help us in lowering lead time, can help in reducing production costs, improve product quality, better tracking and improve customer satisfaction. Manufacturing Industry need to respond quickly to changing market environments. In the current environment delivering the key information to the key people has gained extra importance that can help plan for production, reduce hidden costs, keep optimum level of inventory, and maximize profits.

Changing Customer and Distributor requirements, Internal Operations demand an optimal way of decision making by the manufacturer. Each manufacturer has his own processes, own tacking system, order processing and its own challenges. All this add up to the need of having effective BI system in place and providing results out of it. Again there has been long debate on the quality of data that is available with manufacturing industry as for most of them they have to depend on external parties like retailers, distributors, contractors, suppliers , its own customers, others. If a proper feed is given to Supply Chain and Order management that will definitely ensure deep customer insight and inventory data for better and effective decision making.

One of the challenges that manufacturing industry face is due to changes in demand. If we have a proper understanding of costs and demand, managers can make better decisions. Some of the manufacturer’s also have a customer specific costing, delivery Bi will be helpful in finding the most appropriate way.

Improved Visibility in Procure to Pay is helpful to optimize the supply side performance.

Manufacturing Companies product portfolios are larger to manage, large number of supplier’s to negotiate on cost and quality, maintain huge inventories which need to be tracked and moved to meet customer demands. Along with this there is always a need to analyze/identify customer need, maintain and improve customer delight, add customers so as to remain in business and profitable. BI will definitely be of help in making right decisions to overcome these pressures and will help to manage and sustain in business in this complex environments.

Posted by Neeraj Jha at 08:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Are you looking for a tool that ensures maximum convergence of the best-of-breed Oracle applications deployed at your enterprise?

Let’s discuss how Oracle Process Integration Packs (PIPs) not only offer out-of-the-box process integration solutions to composite industry processes, but also cut deployment times significantly.

Posted by Malay Kumar at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In one of my earlier blogs , I had introduced Oracle Strategic Network Optimization as a tool to optimize your supply chain. Well, the primary objective is to deliver a consistent, flexible, efficient, sustainable, Supply Chain  which results in an optimized output that considers all trade-offs such as customer delivery, cost, risk, lead time, tax, carbon footprint, etc. Please refer to the link below:(http://www.infosysblogs.com/oracle/2009/05/linear_programming_models_orac.html#more)

To start with, the elements in the Cost bucket which are considered for Optimization are Landed Cost, Expedite Cost, Inventory Carrying Cost and Move Cost Estimator.  Looking at the Optimization criteria, there are elements like Quality, Delivery Performance, Strategic Alignment, Carbon Footprint and Business Rules and Constraints which are taken into consideration while solving the Model (in most cases it is a Linear Programming Model).

Oracle Strategic Network Optimization can address almost all the elements except the Carbon Footprint piece (which is slated to be incorporated in future releases).

This is an interesting product to look out for!!!

Posted by Sandeep Chatterjee at 08:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is June 05 and it is World Environment Day. All the organizations are increasing awareness and are going green. Thinking on the same lines, i thought of some areas in a ERP, which can contribute to a Greener world.

The top 3 items which directly impact the environment are Fuel, Electricity and Paper. Designing an effective ERP system would directly or indirectly help in reducing the use of these 3 items and thereby helping in eliminating the use of natural resources.

Here are some of the ways, i could think of

Minimize Paper Work

Fuel
Use effective SCM models to reduce transportation of goods. Design the system and work with direct supply from Warehouse/Stores to Customers.
E.g.

Electricity

These are some points which i could think of. Let me know how you think we can have a Greener ERP.

Finally to end - Do not print this blog

Posted by Venkatesh Swatantra (Venky) at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Managing expectations is what we do most of the time in our life.

Managing customer expectations – this is a big topic. We restrict ourselves to discussing a couple of expectations from customers when they plan to implement an MDM solution. MDM is a growing field – people have limited knowledge and there is no clear leader in MDM product offering. So obviously customers will have certain expectations and inhibitions about the MDM implementation.
First the inhibition – “We will implement MDM but we will not allow it to act as a single source of truth. Our current masters will be in place until we are satisfied with the new system.”  Sounds logical right? But we have this typical problem for MDM implementations.

In recent times, we are coming across few instances where companies introducing MDM in their landscape, want to hold their current masters. The new MDM master is expected to get information from the current master and feed it to downstream systems. This will create problems in implementing the MDM program successfully. Typically, the legacy masters are meant for some transactions and hold the master data (Product/Supplier/Customer) as an additional responsibility. In addition, there could be multiple masters for the same data. Those systems are not capable of incorporating best practices of MDM and that is the main reason for any company to implement an MDM program. When there is inbound data from multiple masters – ensuring the data quality inside MDM system is a pain. Also, as the legacy system continues to own the data there could be changes in the data after the last update into the MDM system – this leads to obsolete data flowing into downstream applications. The premise on which MDM is conceptualized is that it should own master data and act as a single source of truth for master data. But the concern of the customer is genuine…what to do?

The solution is to identify a set of data (that belongs to one product category), completely migrate it to the new MDM system and retire the legacy master after the cut-over date – that is, after cut-over date, for the migrated category, the new MDM system will be the only master.  Initially, this could be done for a smaller non-critical category or a new line of products for which there is no legacy master data.  This helps to tide over the initial problems involved with migrating it to a new system and once the new system is stable, more categories may be migrated and finally, all other master systems will be retired.

The next one is an expectation…

We also see a trend of expecting Product MDM systems to handle transactions – this will dilute the purpose of Product MDM systems. Product MDM systems are meant for managing master data and giving the right data to subscribing applications. Also, most of the major vendors are not supporting transactions in the Product MDM system. This means a custom component is required to handle the transactions. Having a custom component is not advisable when other out-of-the box applications are available for transactions. Maintaining the custom component will involve higher costs.

Implementing partners tend to address all the client’s requirements even if it means developing custom components. This will only meet their expectations but not add value to them. It is the duty of implementation partners to set the right expectations on MDM system. Also, they have to articulate the need for incorporating MDM best practices during implementation.

MDM implementation best practices? Will come back soon with that!

Posted by Krithivasan S at 09:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Can a ERP system exist without customizations? Can a Company run its business using a Vanilla ERP product? This is a question which can be debated on and on..

When the ERP products were conceptualized and developed, the best practices across industries were incorporated in the product. As the ERP's evolved, more and more common practices and features were added in them and thus a robust ERP product was built.

When companies implemented ERP, they customized the product to streamline the business process and suit their needs. As business increased, the customizations grew and boltons were created and new functionlities were added in the ERP.

The impact of customizations is realized only when a ERP is upgraded.

Questions like
Why is the retrofit exercise effort so high?
Why is the cost so high?,
Why are the timelines more? are asked.

So the real questions is how much should a product be customized? What are the best practices for customizations?

In general customizations cannot be avoided, but the amount of customizations can be limited and structured. Customization additions can be governed by the following the set of principles

1. Have a set of standards which the IT development team has to follow when implemeting any changes to the system.
2. Before each change, perform a impact analysis and check if the customization is really needed?
3. Have thorough code reviews done internally which will catch and block unwanted code from moving to production systems.
4. Try to use emerging technologies like web services to keep customizations outside the product and call web services to perform validations and reuse the same across different ERP systems.
5. Perform systematic audits of the system to see if any functionality/code can be dropped.
6. Check periodically to see if patches can be applied and customizations can be avoided.
7. During upgrades, try to see if the some of the customization can be deleted/dropped and ERP delivered functionality can be used, thereby keeping the system more vanilla.

The above are just some indicative set of principles which can be followed to avoid/reduce customizations. I would like to hear from you on how you think that customizations can be reduced and a cleaner ERP system can be maintained..

Posted by Venkatesh Swatantra (Venky) at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)