Infosys-Oracle Blog

Most of the organizations are typically used to tracking project progress based on % cost spent. Moving to a detailed, sophisticated and integrated Project management solution certainly poses a major “change management” challenge. In this blog lets look at few points which implementation team can keep in mind to address this effectively.

For the organizations, whose business is centered around project management, typically the most frequently used method to check on project progress is % cost spent. %cost spent as compared to cost budget that’s defined.

There are lot of pitfalls in measuring projects progress just based on % cost spent. In most of the cases of complex, engineering projects, typical capital expenditure projects, % cost spent will never give a real health check or a status about the project.

Organizations are realizing this and there are some options like  Oracle projects solution.

Now when such organizations move to sophisticated PPM solution like “Oracle Projects”, it certainly creates lot of change management challenges. Ultimately the success of such initiative depends on how effectively these challenges are addressed.

Oracle Projects offers a tightly integrated solution with almost all the transactions systems which we have in EBiz suite of products. It has integration with General ledger, Accounts receivables, payables, Human resources, Inventory management, WIP, Asset management systems. This integration is a real strength in this integrated solution of Oracle projects and due to this integration you can have proper cost collection and checks on spend of projects funds as well. And this feature also poses a major challenge as far as change management in an organization is considered.

I think following three major points should be kept while designing the projects solution using Oracle PPM, for any organization. This will ensure that change management issues are handled effectively right from the design phase itself and not during the typical “training” phase.

As mentioned above projects solution really impacts the current operational procedures for most of the departments of an organization.

It will have impact on procurement, payables, inventory, fixed assets, engineering and finance function of an organization.

Pause before you decide go for everything at one go

.

There is always a pressure on Internal IT to go big bang on projects solution and implement all the features which are available across Oracle PPM solution. Many a times, we may have a situation where requirements are driven by looking at the features rather than taking organizations change management strength and immediate priorities.

For Oracle’s PPM solution one can always look at two distinct features or solution. These two distinct features let you configure solutions where you can completely focus on “Projects financials” in phase one and then go for “Project and resource management” or vice e versa. There are lot of factors which will decide which way you want to go (ex. What is the existing foot print of Ebiz Suite of products? ,  what are the major pain points – are they related to managing only cost and budget? Or we are looking at some solution where team members can resolve issues collaboratively etc).

Stabilizing on one of these areas and then rolling out other features can be a option that should be considered.

However, its important to note that one has to be very careful about this judgment. For ex. If company is starting a new operation in say India or China and they are looking at implementing projects solutions, one can opt to go big bang for all projects features, look at best practices from out-of-box solution as this a new organization that’s starting and you can take a benefit of all features to establish your project management features.

After Go – live typically there is a period of two months, one month etc for supporting the issues that may come up. In this time frame organizations may  invest on a consultant  who has domain experience and has earlier worked on adopting these ERP driven processes as a end user him/herself.

He/She typically wont be a part of client Project management office, but a consultant who can work with al users and maybe contributes to some work that happens in the system.

This kind of assistance in the initial days, will certainly minimize the risk that may arise due to change management. In most of the cases client organizations have fully dedicated Business process champions during implementation phase, but a different version of this role (and probably different users) in initial few days of go live will help in change management process.

Posted by Prasanna Kelkar at 08:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Earned value management is a tool by which senior management can track exceptions in projects execution very easily. However there are certain pitfalls in basing your decisions completely on this single measurement for project progress reporting, unless you take care of certain points for measuring projects progress.

In the world of “Project management” Earned value calculation and management is one of the most discussed topics. Once you are able to derive the earned value for a project execution phase, you can calculate various other “ratios” for checking on the state or health of a project. You can get Cost performance index and schedule performance index etc. And just looking at these values your senior management should be in a position to know what’s right (or wrong) with the current status of the project.

If we look at the various factors or measures which are essential to calculates Earned value for a project as follows

• Cost budget
• Actual cost spent till date
• And importantly the % of the work that is complete.

Lets look at these three measures and how these are derived by system to get a measure of earned value.

Cost budget planning is the most important and basic step that is followed in project management and all the project management systems will have the features to enter proper cost budget at proper level (Again, proper budget definition is also a subject in itself, project managers may opt for time phased, non time phased budgets, deciding on the levels at which they want to define the budgets, how granular you want to go for budget control etc) for a project in the system. So there is no subjectivity in calculating the cost budget for a project at all.

On similar lines, there is no subjectivity at all, when it comes to proper cost collection so that you get actual cost that is spent on a project. Most of the Project management systems, will have a proper integrations with other transactions systems like procurement, payables, inventory and manufacturing modules to collect appropriate cost for the projects.

But the real challenge lies in how you are collecting the % complete for a project. And this is where lot of subjectivity comes in. And the fact that calculating % complete can become one of the subjective measure for a project, creates some challenges in a way the “earned value” for a project can be used by senior management. So due to this subjectivity you may have a situation that inspite of having system derived “Earned value” , cost and schedule performance indices, management feels the need to get in details of project execution , transaction etc to know the real health of a project.

Typically % complete for a project should be derived based on % complete for each measureable and important task in your system. Also the way in which each tasks % complete is calculated should really depend on the “Type” of work that is completed / achieved during execution of a task or an activity. There are various methods to calculate % complete for a activity (like duration based, cost based, work quantity based  etc), but there is no way one should / can standardize on one of the methods to be applied consistently for all types of the tasks for a project.

So this is one of the important decisions that need to be taken during implementation and for each type of task appropriate method to derive % complete should be finalized.

Apart from this setup for each task, what is more important is the weightage that one has to associate to each task. When it comes to progress roll up at project level, every task or activity of a project will not have same kind of importance. The importance for rollup can not be decided based on cost or duration of a project (Ex, for typical EPC organization, the cost consumed or planned for tasks like Engineering, is very negligible as compared to total project cost.). However when it comes to tracking the progress at Project level, the task’s importance is very high. So during implementation it’s very important that a proper weightage should be assigned to each task.

Now, having considered various factors which will enable effective % complete calculations at project level the further challenge lies in institutionalizing these practices across organization. This can be achieved by using various features of PPM products (Ex, templates for Oracle Projects, Methods in Primavera methodology management etc).  So once these things are taken care, there will be consistent interpretation of earned value measurements at project level across organizations. This certainly makes it easier and effective for senior management to drill down into project status check by “tracking by exceptions”.

Posted by Prasanna Kelkar at 09:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Improving logistics performance still remains a challenge for many firms, even those that have achieved better planning and optimization from implementing well structured TMS applications available in the market.

In present economic situation, most organizations focus on transportation as a key area to reduce operational costs as it directly affects their bottom line. Realizing the importance of this rationale, better planning of transportation routes using advanced network design and optimization logic can result in significant savings for the planners. A round trip Multistop opportunity is one of the key areas in that direction which typically results in 5 to 15% reduction in transportation cost.

Planning Roundtrip Multi-Stop Delivery Routes 
In instances where different shipments are scheduled to be delivered to different locations that are at close proximity to each other, it may make sense to build multi-stop shipments so that orders can be consolidated on one piece of equipment. Even better synergies can be achieved through optimization of Reverse logistics operations i.e. planning for customer returns on existing linehaul movements

Infosys Oracle Transportation Management Center of Excellence (CoE) has unlocked OTM configurations that enable automated Round-trip Multistop shipment planning, which would provide end to end visibility for reverse logistics operations using truckload services.

One of the most important requirement for any transportation planner in a manufacturing/retail organization is to consolidate the delivery orders from the warehouse with the customer returns to the warehouse in a single truckload shipment i.e. the same truck starts from the warehouse, delivering goods to customer and picking up the returns, if any and finally returning back to the warehouse. Thus instead of many direct shipments, a single consolidated roundtrip shipment should be created.

In OTM terminology, planning engine should create the route sequence of a shipment where the same location is the first pickup stop and the final destination stop thereby forming a roundtrip. Additionally OTM must handle both the delivery & pickup activity at the same stop. To elaborate further

                                       
Application of advanced planning features like depot profile, modifications in planning parameters and changes to the OTM properties result to the desired outcome.

 
Such stop sequence can be achieved manually also, but consolidating such order releases via OTM provides transportation planner with better route & cost optimization opportunities.

Acknowledgements: Nipun Lakhotia

Posted by Nilabja Dey at 05:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

All of us who are interested in Business intelligence must have heard of, or had been part of success stories of Business Intelligence Implementations while some of us has also been part of / heard of / tasted business intelligence failures. In this blog I would like to discuss on some of the common pitfalls which if best avoided will translate all business intelligence project to success stories.

In every assignment you can go for continuous requirements phase till you actually don't halt them or cut to be taken rest for next release as all projects are subject to constantly changing requirements. One way to manage this is scope document. Once the scope is defined than we start customizing the Business Intelligence product we are going to use. It has been observed that too much of customization is something which should be avoided as it has huge impact on cost during customization itself and then on its maintenance. If customization can be avoided by standardizing the process across industry, this option should be explored. If already available Business Intelligence product needs lots of customization, option of going for a new in-house product should be explored than going for a packaged product.

Lack of training to the end users is again a big risk that should be avoided while implementing a Business Intelligence Applications as in the absence of the implemented application everybody was having some or the other way to discover their information might not through the right source, following right processes, in right time but the work has been going on. The whole idea of having the new system in place is to be used by the end users who without proper training could not use it to the best benefit of self and the organization. A significant time should be spent on user training (Train the Trainer within organization) for the Business Intelligence Applications’ so as to explain the functionality, develop interest in end users.

Stakeholder's involvement is a must. Stakeholders’ involvement and getting the status of the project helps understand and track the progress of the project on a regular basis. All Stakeholders need to be aware of the current state and help in taking to next level. An implementation having disinterested, non - involved Stake holder is always at risk.

In the absence of proper Business Intelligence roadmap it has been observed that owners are not completely aware how the Business intelligence implementation is going to fit into their overall business strategy. It proves to be another reporting system that an analytical system.

Quality of Data has been one of the big challenges of the Business intelligence program as most of the decisions are based on data and in the absence of good quality data one is not able to take right decision. This hinders the business users to take decision based on data in the system. Business users should be rest assured that data in the Business Intelligence application is of better quality than the transactional system and decisions can be based on this.

Hopefully, all of you who are working on Business Intelligence programs are not encountering any of the above pitfalls. If you are encountering any of these, this is a signal of potential problem in future. Please think, discuss and plan to avoid and make your implementation a success story.

Posted by Neeraj Jha at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the last decade, the emergence of e-commerce coupled with the rise in smaller and more frequent orders has made parcel shipping operations one of the key functions of transportation management.

Parcel shipment operations pose unique challenges, such as:
·    Large volume of transactions – a major operational constraint
·    Diverse rate structures and negotiated discounts for each customer, which periodically change based on weekly parcel freight
·    Multiple service levels and packaging codes
·    Carriers generally send a single weekly consolidated invoice. In some cases this invoice can contain details of tens of thousands of shipments

Due to these unique characteristics of the Express Industry, execution of parcel shipments was typically not considered as one of the core functions of a Transportation Management System (TMS).

Since Parcel Freight Bill Rating and Auditing was not handled within the TMS, these functions were either manually managed by shipper’s in-house personnel or outsourced to 3rd party service providers like National Traffic Service, Franklin Traffic Service etc., thereby incurring extra cost for the shippers.

Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) which delivers robust transportation planning and execution capabilities to shippers and third party logistics providers can be integrated with 3rd party solutions like Kewill FlagshipTM to support parcel rating and freight settlement for major express parcel carriers such as United Parcel Service (UPS), FedEx etc. Such integrations call for an extra license overhead for the OTM customer.

Infosys Technologies has developed a ‘ready to deploy’ solution to integrate OTM with UPS OnLine® Tools for parcel rating and freight settlement. This solution can be used by shippers who use OTM for transportation management and have outsourced their express parcel shipment execution to UPS. It facilitates:
.    Small parcel rating as per negotiated rates, service levels and packaging code
.    Matching UPS weekly consolidated invoices to source shipments in TMS for better freight spends visibility
.    Integrating UPS invoices to E-Business Suite(EBS) Payables for freight reconciliation

It helps in streamlining all aspects of transportation management for parcel shipments on a single TMS application at no additional license overhead. This solution can be built using existing OTM tools as well as UPS provided web tools which are provided to their customers free of charge
 
Shippers can now economize their supply chain cost by eliminating 3rd party service providers or freeing up internal personnel time for more value adding activities. They can leverage this solution to dispense with cumbersome maintenance of customer negotiated rates, enhance visibility of UPS invoices to related shipments and automation of freight settlement and audit processes.

Posted by Nilabja Dey at 08:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Giriraj Somani at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In order to have more control yet operating in a collaborative mode, the preferred Component Partner, price and quantity is often dictated by the parent company. In order to increase visibility and have better control over the inventory across the supply chain, many high tech companies are setting up Global Supplier Hub for the Component Manufacturers at a place in proximity to the Manufacturing Partner site.  The warehouse is maintained by a third party and the parent company usually pays the provider for the services. The goods are owned by the Component Partner till the time they are supplied to the Manufacturing Partner.

Typically, the Manufacturing partner build schedule and inventory balance triggers the supply requisition based on the replenishment model. The component partner ships the material into the hub based on the trigger and provides Advanced Shipment Notice for all shipments into the Hub. The Manufacturing partner in turn pulls material from the Hub based on the daily manufacturing requirements. The shipment from the Hub to the Manufacturing partner is usually provided by the service provider. The ‘On Order’ and ‘On Hand in Hub’ information is made available to all stakeholders.

Some of the advantages in this model are increased component visibility for all In-Transit and On-Hand material positioned to support all manufacturing locations, a standard way to value inventory by all channel partners and increased speed, accuracy and accountability. 

Posted by Sandeep Chatterjee at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Most Retailers operate in two,fundamentally different set of modes. These modes have a direct impact on the package applications they choose. In this video blog i touch upon this difference and the subsequent impact.

'Hi everyone, welcome to infosysblogs my name is Venu kotamraju and I am a principal consultant with Infosys, Today I wanted to talk about a typical retail organizations and what the variety of operations are and the impact it has on its applications.

Retailers engage in two basic form of transactions one that involves all the items sold through their stores, also known as direct or merchandise operations, which requires sourcing the items from the suppliers, stocking them in regional warehouses and distributions centers and finally stocking the individual stores with these products, and all the operations surrounding this 'selling through the store' operation.

Typically most retailers have used applications such as Retek or what is also known as Oracle Retail for managing store operations which includes setting up the stores, stocking them, tracking inventory, making sure items are marked up or down and the final sale through the point of sale system and tracking the financial data back to financial system.

Other set of systems are corporate systems which deal with human resources or financials, corporate procurement is often called expense or indirect. These two set of systems usually stand alone, there is no single package vendor who has integrated them yet, even Oracle eBusiness suite is often preferred for expense and merchandise operations is kept out of it. Reasons for this are numerous if not historical, point of sale system has large number of transactions which are not needed in that detail in an ERP, hence usually point of sale system is outside an ERP system.

This understanding of what is merchandise and expense is important for procurement or financial systems and retailers employ different packages or applications for them.

You can read more on this topic on my blog at infosysblogs.com where I cover this and other retail topics. Thank you.'

Previous Post in this thread  -http://www.infosysblogs.com/oracle/2009/03/video_understanding_retailers.html

Posted by Venu Kotamraju at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)