Infosys-Oracle Blog

With the need of the hour for Senior Executives being the ability to make well informed decisions on a 24x7 basis, it has become imperative that they have constant access to the Business Applications specially Enterprise Applications.

While, the jury is still out on the ability of the Next Gen phones to provide Office like capabilities via phone, iPhone has made significant strides towards this.  Oracle has launched a free business application called the Oracle Business Indicators® on the Apple Apps Store which leverages the capabilities of Oracle’s Business Intelligence Applications to provide access to vital decision making metrics and analytical data on the iPhone.   SAP has similarly developed a BI front end interface for the iPhone. While there are applications on Blackberry as well such as the Blackberry Sales Client for SAP CRM, its current user interface seems to pose a technological challenge to adding more capabilities.

It is expected that in coming time, there will in an increase in the level of investment and attention from both the Suppliers (ERP Developers and Mobile Manufacturers) as well the Customers (Global Organizations) to focus on creating one single integrated technology platform.

Posted by Swaroop Sundararajan at 03:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In IFRS convergence Journey, companies will have to deal with changes in lot of fundamental definition which will be different from current one.

To name a few like definition of subsidiary company, valuation of inventory on LIFO or revenue accounting based on net present value (in mention example either the concept or definition will change from existing one) . To elaborate further on subsidiary company, “Control” (to define subsidiary company for consolidated financial statements) under Indian GAAP is obtained by an entity on acquisition of more than one-half of the voting rights or by control of composition of Board of Directors. However under IFRS, control is the power to govern the financial and operating policies of an entity so as to obtain benefits from its activities. Hence organization need to look into this new definition and includes subsidiary companies as applicable when presenting financials statement after April 2011. Similarly difference will be there in other areas. In short companies should start looking at different aspects and plan for proper implementation of IFRS

Posted by Giriraj Somani at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cisco International initiative  was started with a long term strategic view to add new Cisco selling companies in select emerging countries thereby addressing service provider, public sector, and enterprise customers’ expectations for higher levels of accountability, engagement and global consistency and an extended Cisco sales model and in-country presence to improve customer intimacy and support.

This has its own challenges in terms of country specific localizations and the associated IT systems as the enablers. To give an example, the typical customs clearance timeframe in Brazil is 30 days on an average. This means the goods need to be stored either in a government warehouse or a bonded warehouse. This has its implications during the quarter end. And accordingly the IT systems need to be designed to take care of the regular process and the quarter end process. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Want to know more?  Meet us at Oracle Open World 2009 for the Session ‘Cisco International - Constructing a Commerce Back-end to Support the Next Decade of Growth’

To name a few like definition of subsidiary company, valuation of inventory on LIFO or revenue accounting based on net present value (in mention example either the concept or definition will change from existing one) .

To elaborate further on subsidiary company, “Control” (to define subsidiary company for consolidated financial statements) under Indian GAAP is obtained by an entity on acquisition of more than one-half of the voting rights or by control of composition of Board of Directors. However under IFRS, control is the power to govern the financial and operating policies of an entity so as to obtain benefits from its activities. Hence organization need to look into this new definition and includes subsidiary companies as applicable when presenting financials statement after April 2011. Similarly difference will be there in other areas. In short companies should start looking at different aspects and plan for proper implementation of IFRS

Posted by Pravin Sekhani at 01:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Knowledge process outsourcing(KPO) may be defined as outsourcing of  high added value process  where the achievement of objectives is dependent on the skills, domain knowledge and experience of the people carrying out the activity. It is being claimed that KPO is one step extension of BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) which is outsourcing of low value added services to a partner company.

Is it possible for a Hi-Tech company to outsource high value added and critical processes like Design, manufacture of critical components, etc. to global outsourced partners to achieve business benefits? Let's look at what are pre requisites for this and the pros and cons of this and evaluate.

Prerequisties for the Outsourcing Partner for High Value added Processes:

1. First and foremost requirement is the trust and faith in the outsourcing partner that the Hi-Tech company is able to establish. The Hi-Tech company should be able to share with confidence future plans like new products, innovations, etc. with confidence that this will not leaked to competition. Document and agree on the security requirements.

2. Availability of sophisticated machinery, good technical skills, skilled manpower with the outsourced partner to manage all requirements. It also entails the ability of the outsourced partner to respond quickly to equip themselves with such machinery and skills understanding the urgency of the Hi-Tech company.

3. Proven capabilities to deliver as and when required to meet market and production deadlines. Also ensure that they are compliant with all statutory laws.

4. Tactical willingness and culture in the Hi-Tech company to engage the Outsourcing partner in high value added processes.

Once the above factors are analyzed and the Hi-Tech company feels that it makes sense to enagage the Outsourcing Partner in High Value added processes it should start with a small representative set of processes that are outsourced. They should watch the results for some time and then decide on the effectiveness and comfort with the outsourcing before deciding on the next steps.

The benefits envisaged from this are:

1. Leverage from global economy the best in class manufacturing processes and materials

2. Reduced product costs

3. Improved Return on invested capital / assets

4. Reduction in time to market

5. Increased market responsiveness and flexibility to changes

The points to watch out for are:

1. Increased risk to High-Tech companies since High Value added processes are not fully under their control.

2. Tight control on quality and delivery reliability.

3. New required capabilities/ skills may not be available with the Outsourced partner.

Hence the Hi-Tech company needs to set up robust monitoring mechansim to ensure that any anomalies / delays are flagged off at the earliest so that necessary corrective actions could be taken. The Hi-Tech Company should also provide the Outsoucing partner with visibility to its plans so that both parties are fully synchronized in their plans and help them be more responsive to demand, effectively compress order cycle time, reduce inventory and excess or expedited resource costs.
 

Posted by K N Harilal at 09:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the current ‘blink-and-change’ market environment, availability of accurate and actionable information at the right time to the right audience is increasingly becoming mission critical for enterprises.

Users would like to access information, on demand, for real-time decision making, through traditional and sophisticated modes of delivery.

Now imagine a realistic scenario where an enterprise has multiple disparate business units linked to a global subsidiary structure each tracking their customers, vendors, products, sales and distribution channels. Access to a singular view of information to measure the operational performance and understanding the behavioral insights into strategic KPIs is a myriad of disconnected analysis across multiple toolsets in a complex technology environment. Does this scenario resonate with you?

Our  Accelerated BI approach helps adress the following:

• Do you get actionable insights at the right time to respond to faster-to-market conditions and increase efficiency?
• Is your mobile workforce empowered to make decisions ‘on the go’ to pursue opportunities and accelerate closure of business deals?
• Can you enable self-service for business users or do they need to depend on IT/data teams for their information needs?
• Are longer deployment cycles for analytical capabilities impacting your decision-making capabilities?
• Can you seamlessly access enterprise-wide data to increase market share and operational efficiency while optimizing operational costs?

Explore more on this at OOW'09 - http://www.infosys.com/oracle/oracle-openworld-california09/default.asp

Meet us at Booth# 411, Moscone South at OOW'09

-Indivar Nayyar

Posted by Guest at 07:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Information grows exponentially in most enterprises. The need to analyze and interpret this information is essential to be able to meet business objectives.

While there are a variety of ways to address both these challenges, there is general consensus that individual point solutions do not scale to meet enterprise needs.  While analysis and interpretation of data requires an enterprise business intelligence platform, the management of this data has to be done in a manner that minimizes redundancy and optimizes accuracy of the information available to the BI systems.

Master Data Management is a generally accepted approach to managing critical business information today. The realization that it is a journey and not an end state is critical for realizing benefits from an MDM program. From the recognition of the need for MDM, to maintaining high quality data on a long term basis involves the evolution of the organization through stages that might be termed a journey from enablement to profitability. These stages transcend IT, touching different functions in a company e.g. operations, business, etc.

Infosys has worked with a wide array of clients, implementing Oracle MDM solutions across the comprehensive suite of Oracle MDM applications like Oracle Customer Data Hub/UCM, PIM Data Hub, Hyperion DRM, and the Oracle Data Quality Servers. We have developed a comprehensive set of MDM-specific methodologies, tools, process templates, reference architecture to help deliver MDM programs

We will be sharing best practices from these case studies as well as addressing key questions you may have related to handling and implementing master data management programs in your enterprise at Oracle Open World in San Francisco from October 11-15th, 2009. Meet us at Booth# 411, Moscone South. for answers to these questions, and more:
1. How effective are you at meeting your customers’ needs? Do you feel that you lack a comprehensive view of your customers, leading to loss of cross-sell/up-sell & reduced customer satisfaction?
2. Are you facing challenges in defining an organization wide data governance strategy for all master data?
3. Are you leveraging your product information across your supply chain to optimize cost and increase sales?
4. How do you achieve true Business Intelligence through integrated data use and management?
5. Is accurate master data an integral part of your enterprise IT roadmap?

-Aaman Lamba

Explore more on this at OOW'09 - http://www.infosys.com/oracle/oracle-openworld-california09/default.asp

Posted by Guest at 07:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On the EBS R12 Roadmap, retailers with an existing Oracle product portfolio and operating globally across multiple business units and having multiple oracle instances face the everlasting dilemma whether to Upgrade for achieving the new package benefits at a relatively lesser cost versus - to Re-Implement a fully re-engineered R12 based solution bringing in maximum benefits but probably at a relatively higher cost.

At a high level the key features of going for an Upgrade based solution for any retailer would be:
 •Lower cost, shorter timeframe option
 •Suited when the ‘latest version’ is the driver
 •Scope to review business processes
 •Key areas like Org Structure, COA generally untouched
 •Organization wide processes, procedures and data unaffected
 •Minimal Change Management
 •Minimal involvement of Users
 •Higher application downtime at cutover
 •Any existing business pain points may continue

Re-Implementation based solution would have the following features:
 •Suited for business transformation and instance consolidation
 •Scope to review major decisions and limitations of the past
 •Longer timeframe, relatively more expensive than an upgrade
 •Lower cutover risks – no downtime, easier rollback
 •Higher adoption risks – Impact on Organization structure, Change Management, Data Migration, History of Data
 •Higher amount of ownership (solution) with Client

Overall for an R12 based transformation initiative, a retailer needs to consider other important factors as well if it operates globally across multiple business units and has multiple oracle instances. Two of the important ones being Single Instance versus Multiple Instance approach and Big-bang versus a Roll-out approach.Some of the key features of the same are listed below:
Multiple Instance:
 •Suited for local needs , But not directly scalable for growth
 •Simplified Application Change Management , But Duplication of development components
 •Instance Stability and Lower Application downtime due to independent nature, But Changes   affecting multiple  instance take longer to apply
 •Better performance with similar infrastructure, However needs higher overall infrastructure
 •Consolidation and reporting takes more time

Single Global Instance:
 •Suited for Global standardization
 •Global Enterprise Management through best in class processes
 •Enables shared services business processes and support, Productivity Enhancement
 •Global Enterprise Visibility
 •Consolidated reporting across the Enterprise
 •Responsive to business changes and Growth
 •Economies of Scale, Reduced Cost of Maintenance & Infrastructure
 •Application Downtime, batch processing

Big Bang:
 •All 11.5.x or previous versions instances upgraded or re-implemented to R12 at the same time
 •Quicker achievement of end state but higher risk of failure
 •Higher concurrent requirement of personnel and resources make it prohibitive
 •Intensive change management effort due to simultaneous change across the organization
 •Lesser interdependency with other initiatives

Rollout:
 •Staggered implementation/upgrade of all instances
 •Focused execution
 •Impact of change lesser due to staggered change
 •Longer timelines at incremental costs
 •Potential for other organization wide initiatives to impact execution – Freezing change

Concluding, it’s always a challenging decision based on a combination of objective considerations (parameters where decision can be relatively easily made) and subjective considerations (parameters which vary in importance depending upon client’s particular business issues and the significance of the factor for any given situation). Actual decision making should be based on the business case prepared by an exhaustive analysis of all factors and their weights as applicable per the Retailer's scenario.

Posted by Vivek Singh at 07:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Its confirmed that we need those niche packages to bring innovation and competitive advantages for the enterprises. Companies across the industries are embarking on engineering/Re-engineer their Business Process to prepare for their Next Generation Business Models.

This brings in the challenge of Heterogeneous packages/systems that the business processes need to map to.

Does Business platforms like AIA makes sense for building the next generation Enterprise platforms? Do they provide the framework to transform business to remove the constraints by conventional Best-of-Breed tradeoff decisions?

I want to hear your views on this and also invite you our session http://www28.cplan.com/cc221_new/session_details.jsp?isid=312582&ilocation_id=221-1&ilanguage=english

Posted by Rizwan M.K. at 06:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In recent times Hi-Tech companies have increasingly looking to outsource substantial portion of their manufacturing to vendors in developing nations like India, China, ec. to uncover substantial reduction in costs. This outsourcing  helps the companies to improve competitiveness and profitability and to some extent even helps in making the Hi-Tech companies operations viable in the marketplace.

Hi-Tech companies have sought, among other things, to divest themselves of production capacity (and the inherent risks associated with owning capital equipment), lower their labor costs and maintain greater flexibility in the face of ever-shrinking product lifecycles.  The impact of market forces and need for innovation is driving this need.
But does this outsourcing promote innovation? How does Hi-Tech companies ensure that they have selected the right partner, established the proper relationship and adapt adequately to the change so that it can encourage innovation?

The benefits the Hi-Tech company expects from this is :

  - Economies of scale
       Aggregation of multiple orders reduces costs, both in purchasing and in manufacturing
  - Risk Sharing
       Demand uncertainty transferred to the suppliers
       Suppliers  uncertainty through the risk-sharing effect
   - Reduction of capital investment
       Capital investment transferred to suppliers.
       Suppliers’ higher investment shared between customers.
   - Focus on core competency
       Buyer can focus on its core strength
       Allows buyer to differentiate from its competitors
   - Increased flexibility
       The ability to better react to changes in customer demand
       The ability to use the supplier’s technical knowledge to accelerate product dev cycle time
       The ability to gain access to new technologies and innovation.

This it is seen that there are significant benefits to Hi-Tech companies by outsourcing "non-value added"  activities to suppliers.  But does this attitude really contribute to better innovation? Lets examine some aspects  and see how it could be done.

Traditionally outsourcing decisions revolves around the notion of core and non-core activities of the firm. However in the new age with significant advancement of information and communications technology and blurring of the concept of core competency for a firm itself, this yardstick is flawed. Hi-Tech companies must look beyond just cost reductions as the primary driver and look towards the real strategic and organizational business drivers before taking the decision to outsource.

It is also seen that most of the outsourcing decisions are driven by ‘make’ and ‘buy’ considerations. Hi-Tech companies have to look beyond just the cost or make or buy considerations and be driven more by product-level strategies. The need is to outsource in those the areas where supplier will be able to contribute to innovation and thus help is achieving the maximum benefits of outsourcing.

The Hi-Tech companies also need to look at their firms not as isolated entities but rather as agents in a complex value chain within which they maintain and develop existing and new competencies. Thus they need to look at this as a network if innovating organizations than look at just their company. This will help bring in new kinds of relationships and partnerships. This will lead to development of innovations that will  be shared across this whole network which will ultimately help the Hi-Tech company derive maximum benefits of outsourcing.
 

Posted by K N Harilal at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Worldwide countries are moving for either adopting or converging to IFRS as common accounting standards across globe. However during transition phase which is spread over next decade, organization adopting IFRS will have to do dual reporting to meet the requirement of IFRS 1.

Dual reporting is not a simple requirement of taking financial statements as per local GAAP and redrawing them as per IFRS. It will have deeper implications on business processes and IT systems specially ERP Applications. This is because IFRS and Local GAAP may have significant differences about not only how a transaction is to be accounted but also on how a transactions should be processed.

Though most ERPs support two versions of accounting for one business transaction, they can only process one version in sub-ledgers modules either as per IFRS or as per Local GAAP. This limitation poses significant challenge for an organization to report under IFRS. Such organizations should carefully analyze such differences and follow solution strategy which not only addresses the dual reporting challenges but also ensures smooth processing post IFRS switch-over. Differences exists over various topics like spares valuation, inventory valuation, discounting, financing, ESOPs, etc. To elaborate further on spares valuation As per IAS16  on Property, Plant and Equipment,  “Spare parts and servicing equipment are usually carried as inventory and recognized in profit or loss as consumed”. As per Indian GAAP AS10 on Fixed Assets, “Stand-by equipment and servicing equipment are normally capitalized”. Most ERPs can process a purchase transaction as either inventory purchase or as asset purchase – separate flags ensure whether transaction is interfaced to Inventory module or Fixed Asset Module. In such scenario organization will have to either define custom solution or workaround to meet IFRS needs.

Posted by Pravin Sekhani at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Oracle Cloud Computing is the technology which can be helpful in reducing the cost and avoiding the maintainance hassle.Cloud computing is an approach to “increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. Cloud computing encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the Internet, extends IT's existing capabilities.
Instead, cloud computing views computing resources as being provided as fully online services. In addition, the data generated or acquired by the user also resides online, and the user has sole access to that data unless he or she decides to share it. This approach represents part of the evolution of the client-server model.

The Next Generation of the Business Application Will be cloud-enabled.

Few things to ponder:

• Are you looking for economical computing styles that maximize entrepreneurial scalability?

•Do you want to reduce IT Infrastructure cost to maintain the Oracle application?

•Would you like to do complex computation, simulation and data analytics in an easier way?

•Are you looking for faster backup and recovery of application and database?

•Do you have trouble in maintaining many applications and software for computing and processing data?

•Do you want to quickly fulfill your ever changing demand for hardware and software?

Explore more on this at OOW'09 - http://www.infosys.com/oracle/oracle-openworld-california09/default.asp

-Syed Naqvi

Syed Amber Naqvi  working as a Technical Architect in Infosys since March 2007.
He has total more than 9 years of IT Experience  with  expertise in the Oracle Apps - DBA.

Posted by Guest at 06:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There have been astounding changes and developments during the evolution of the staffing agency in its 50-plus years of existence. The staffing industry has evolved from its early years where temporaries were provided in emergency situations to replace absent workers to become strategic partners for its clients by providing wide range of employment services and solutions.  

There has been a huge shift towards recruiting professionals in Finance, Sales, Engineering, Information Technology, and Management. Hence the growth opportunities has also brought up few challenges for the industry as a whole that mainly includes Customer retention & serving new industries, Applicant loyalty, high operation cost due to disintegrated systems in usage, high percentage of manual effort involved in the process of matching the right people with the right job there by prohibiting a quick response to the customer for an order & integration of the business processes across geographies.
These  challenges needs to be addressed by a  Go-To-Market solution that  provides a real- time visibility into opportunities and resources, finding, bringing and retaining the best talent across the globe,  managing clients, applicants & orders from a single source, fully integrated to manage both the front office and back offices seamlessly and inculcates the best industry practices so as to deliver the high quality service thereby adding more value to the customers while reducing the costs and maximizing  profitability

Explore more on this at OOW'09 - http://www.infosys.com/oracle/oracle-openworld-california09/default.asp

-Sachin Kumar Jain

Sachin has over 10 Years of IT Consulting experience and leads Energy vertical within Oracle EBS Technology space at Infosys

Posted by Guest at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Oil Exploration and Production is a complex process, and each step of the oil supply chain involves specialized technology. Oilfield services companies provide the infrastructure, equipment, intellectual property and services needed by the international oil and gas industry to explore for, extract, and transport crude oil and natural gas from the earth to the refinery, and eventually to the consumer.

Key issues in this industry segment are turbulence in Oil prices, rising exploration costs, credit crunch, increased cost of capital, weak demand and other market challenges and movements (mergers and acquisitions). Oilfield services companies are also facing challenges in different processes like Health Safety & Environment, Asset management, financial consolidation, Governance Risk and Compliance, Technology Innovation, Knowledge Management etc. As a result, OFS companies are focusing more on operational efficiency, maintaining liquidity and leveraging integrated IT systems to deliver services and solutions in a compliant, secure and efficient manner.

In fact most of the Oilfield Services companies are now looking at rapid implementations of suitable end-to-end solutions that enable them to streamline their operations and reduce their time and effort on less value added activities. Also this helps in reduction in cycle times and improves processes in their core value adding opportunities.

Explore more on this at OOW'09 - http://www.infosys.com/oracle/oracle-openworld-california09/default.asp

-Sachin Kumar Jain

Sachin has over 10 Years of IT Consulting experience and leads Energy vertical within Oracle EBS Technology space at Infosys 

Posted by Guest at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

IFRS convergence (most likely approach instead of adoption) in India has come to its final stage. Initial reaction was of indifference when journey started in 2006, later on it changed to concern (late 2008) and now disbelieve as final deadline of 2011 is just few days away. IFRS Journey in India has started now and train has left the station. Companies need to embark now otherwise they will be left behind.

Posted by Giriraj Somani at 06:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Value Stream Mapping is one of the lean techniques businesses employ to understand the value adding activities in their current process and design a future process after weeding out the unnecessary activities that do not add value from a customers’ point of view. This technique found its origin in the automobiles industry and has found widespread acceptance in other discrete industries and also in service industries.

Value Stream mapping is a technique that aims to identify all the value adding activities of the process under study, remove the unnecessary activities, and then connect the value adding activities together- as if all these activities were generating value for the customer as smoothly as the flow of a “stream”. For the purpose of this blog, I am assuming value to be any activity in your process for which the customer is willing to pay. For example, if you are taking steel and molding it to make rims, we can assume that your customer is willing to pay for the transformation. However, if the rim has to travel 50 meters within your plant to get to the packaging area, the customer is willing to pay for the packaging material and effort, but not for the cost of transporting the material 50 meters within your plant.

So how is a Value Stream map different from a process drawing or a process map? Usually, in process maps, you identify the material flows and activities within a process. In a value stream, you also show flow of information as well as delays and can additionally put in pertinent data (such as production rate, replenishment frequencies etc.). These details allow you to analyze your business process more holistically than your process charts.

To do a value stream mapping, the best approach is to identify folks who know the best about the process you are going to study- this can include managers, operators, support personnel etc. who are related to the process. You then have these people chart the various activities in the process out on a large sheet of paper. You can either do it in your meeting rooms, or can have people observe the process as it happens and then draw the various activities on the paper. Make sure folks observe not just the flow of material, but also flow of information, delays such as queue times etc.. Having them record the processes as they happen will ensure that they are accurately noting down the delays and deviations involved. Some experts suggest following a convention of keeping only the value adding activities at the center of the chart, and then the non- value adding activities towards the bottom and top of the chart. This allows for a clear demarcation of non- value adding activities from the actual value adding process. Once the process has been diagrammed, folks can put in additional details related to each activity such as the frequency, output rate and other relevant details.

With the above done, you have a visual idea of what is adding value to your process and what is not. Next you brainstorm further to understand the process better and identify the unnecessary activities and ways to remove them. One thing to remember is that, one of the reasons why this has worked so well for automobile companies is that they have a limited product variety being manufactured within a plant (say as compared to say an electronics manufacturer). If you have a large variety of products, then this technique might not give the necessary results, unless these products can be grouped into a relatively smaller number of product families. You will have to determine whether this technique will be of help to your business or whether you should look at other lean techniques available to identify the non- value adding activities.

One of my clients, a large manufacturer of industrial equipments in USA did a value stream mapping exercise of one of its manufacturing plants. They seperated their products into one of a few product families and then identified the value stream for each such family. After analysis, they decided to divide their shop floor into cells with each cell manufacturing one specific product family. So they grouped all the machines necessary to manufacture that product family into a cell. This resulted in having all the necessary machines lined up in a sequence within the cell thereby eliminating unnecessary material handling. Infosys also helped by designing a custom solution that helped determine the value stream of configured assemblies right at order booking thereby designating it to be manufactured at a specific cell.

You can get help from Infosys consultants in both determining your value stream as well as ways to remove your non- value adding activities and implementing it in your ERP.

Posted by Rupam Das at 02:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As the diamond sponsor of the Oracle OpenWorld2009, we will be at the event showcasing the best of breed solutions, demos, client success stories and sessions.  Our CEO, S. Gopalakrishnan would be keynoting on “Seven Game Changing Trends” on Wednesday 14^th Oct 2009.

Infosys clients and company executives will be leading fourteen sessions throughout Oracle OpenWorld 2009 on topics such as increasing operational efficiency, SOA and business strategies for the recession 

Posted by Amandeep Singh Syali at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Due to the recent credit crisis and uncertainty in the global market, the supply chain business model is changing drastically. More often the planners are finding it extremely difficult to arrive at an optimized plan for supply chain operations. This reduces the flexibility of operations at downstream level resulting in either loss of business due to stock outs or huge inventory pile up. Traditionally supply chain planning is done either at a weekly level or daily level taking into account the current inventory picture and the latest demand on hand.  But more often there are quite number of changes happening either in terms of demand, supply situations, capacity due to machine break down, engineering changes, quality issues etc.  All these changes have to be made in the transaction (ERP systems) systems and there is a high latency factor before we can replan.  How do we react to these changes and quickly replan to ensure that latency factor due to ERP is minimized? 

The solution is to have a tool with rapid planning capabilities. This should also provide visibility into the changing conditions directly into planning tools. Event driven planning capabilities with excellent simulation features can help planners react to the volatility in market conditions faster. Another key feature which will help planners is the analytical capability of the planning tools. Currently most of the planning tools do not provide strong features to analyse the KPIs, compare KPIs in various scenarios and then take actions. Planners would like to check their production trends or analyze specific product categories to track their corporate metrics. Features to monitor the performance of their plans, analyze exceptions and review key performance indicators will help supply chain planners take quick decisions.

In order to quickly react to the changing market conditions, the planners will have to collaborate with other stakeholders in the extended organization while finalizing a comprehensive supply chain plan. A planning tool with features to gain visibility across multiple enterprises and collaborate among various planners will drastically reduce the time for planning and make faster decisions. It will be a winning feature if all planners can work on a holistic master plan and take quick decisions.

Explore more on this at OOW'09 -
http://www.infosys.com/oracle/oracle-openworld-california09/default.asp

Meet us at Booth# 411, Moscone South at OOW'09

Follow us at Twitter -  http://twitter.com/infyatoow

Posted by Sreekumar Sreedharan at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Based on the interest developed from my earlier blog on :

 Pitfalls to be Avoided in Business Intelligence Implementations at http://www.infosysblogs.com/oracle/2009/07/pitfalls_to_be_avoided_in_busi.html#more , and call for more to share around this, I would like to extend it based on my own experience of working on BI projects and discussion with colleagues on problem faced.

Maintaining a steady process that provides decision takers access to crucial business information is directly associated with corporate objectives and is one of the major goals of upper management. More emphasis is given in the current scenario is on availability of information by decision – makers on -demand and to achieve this need to have an ongoing, consistent and standard process is there. Business Intelligence is capable of providing thorough understanding of commercial; provide historical, current and predictive view of business. Sometimes BI implementations fail to convey or inform a decision-maker because the information presented was unclear. In the last blog also we have highlighted on some items that are best avoided and will expand the list a little to have more success stories.

It is always advisable to design the measurements the way that give users what they need other than let them calculate for items which system can compute.

BI Layouts exceeding the single page also has an impact on how it is read and interpreted. While designing layouts utmost care should be kept to fit it on a single screen. Breaking the data and organizing by means of drill down / link over multiple screens should be explored.

Design of BI Screen Layout is a very critical factor. The amount of real estate consumed by the information and its arrangement has a significant impact on how it is perceived by users. Using the correct mixture of visual displays to gain users’ attention to critical data reduces the time needed to review and consume the information.

Providing users with too much information and detail in a single view should be avoided. BI designers want to provide as much information as possible; however, too much data presented at a single time might turn up as confusing for users and inefficient.

Hopefully, all of you who are working on Business Intelligence programs are already taking care of this. If you are not giving attention to either of these, this might be a signal of potential problem in future. Please think, discuss and plan to avoid and make your implementation a success story and share your experiences

Posted by Neeraj Jha at 07:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Typically we talk about two kinds of supply chain- A responsive supply chain and an efficient supply chain.  An efficient supply chain is mostly targeted at reducing costs while a responsive supply chain is designed to cater to the changing needs of the demand (both new and variant) by building some kind of redundancy in the system. But in both cases have you incorporated the risk element?

Most companies work in environments where they have multiple partners who manage different elements of the supply chain. Since there are multiple partners involved, it is more imperative that the company which dominates the supply chain do a proper risk assessment and management to avoid last minute surprises. In fact if you have failed to do that you have lost the battle as your partners will be doing a similar risk assessment exercise.

As a typical example, the dominating company handles the product design but moves the actual production process to the contract manufacturers. There is definitely collaboration here in terms of co-development and communication of forecast and demand. But what if the contract manufacturer fails to build the product on time? There is loss of revenue and customer goodwill. What if the contract manufacturer tries to go for a vertical integration thereby undercutting the dominant company?

Apart from the above risks, there are other risks like percentage of hazardous elements in the final product, trade restrictions. In light of the above circumstances, companies need to have a risk assessment matrix to quantify the risk and factor it to arrive at a supply chain decision. If you are not doing it, you may miss the bus.

Posted by Sandeep Chatterjee at 07:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So you have just implemented an ERP system that automates your organization-wide business transactions, reduces a lot of paperwork and also helps with reports at different levels of aggregation. However, when it comes to the shop floor, is your ERP capturing what goes on behind the transactions? To find out the answer, you can start by asking your business the following question-Have there been improvements in the three key elements of your OEE- namely, Quality, Performance and Availability?

Most of the current ERP systems do not meet the requirements of real time data gathering and analysis that a complex manufacturing environment requires. The ERP vendors have started providing some sort of MES tools for the shop floor in the recent years, however, these one size fits all solution are suitable for use mostly in less complex manufacturing environments. Manufacturing across industries are different in terms of process complexity, product volume, product mix etc.. As such, you need to first identify specific shop floor data gathering, analysis and executing tools available in the market for your industry and then figure out a way of getting those to talk to your ERP system. Some of these tools might have in-built interfaces for your specific ERP package, otherwise you need to invest to create those touchpoints between your ERP and the tools to get the data flowing between them.

How will such investment help in improving the operational parameters?

Quality: Real time data analysis can provide instant feedback to supervisors on areas where faults might be happening so control actions can be taken immediately. It can also provide real time feedback and analysis to the operators on the floor regarding causes of errors empowering them to take corrective actions.

Availability: Availability of equipment is often a measure of net operative time or what percentage of time the machine is available when it is needed. Real time data gathering and analysis can quickly identify if any machines are down and suggest if the work needs to be routed to an alternate machine or work area. In case of demand- driven plants, supervisors can look at the demand realtime and the load situation in the shop floor and commit additional orders on the fly.

Performance: It is a measure of standard quantity produced within the available operative time. One way of keeping the performance up is to eliminate bottlenecks that might arise due to a constrained machine, an equipment breakdown or unmanageable load. Real time data gathering and analysis can suggest alternate options to a supervisor for eliminating bottlenecks, rerouting work dynamically from a broken down machine to a different one, or distributing loads across machines to get the work done. These factors allow circumventing unwarranted halts in the production process thereby improving the performance.

So what kind of tools should you look for? You will broadly need tools that satisfy some or all of the following requirements

Gather real time data from the shop floor including moves, issues, reworks, scraps, loads etc.
Convert those data into actionable items
Dispatch those actions to different users- supervisors and operators at their proper summary levels.
An ERP helps in capturing basic transactions, while a real time shop tool will help in capturing more granular information and analyzing them to provide instantaneous actionizable suggestions thus making the shop floor more adaptable to constantly changing load situations and changing customer demand. Investing in such tools for running the shop floor and integrating them with your ERP will get you where the finest manufacturing organizations have already travelled.

Posted by Rupam Das at 01:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Retailers are facing stiff challenges due to globalization, increasing input costs and higher customer service expectations. In addition to this, growing service options from carriers, combined with demand for more frequent and time-definite deliveries are forcing retailers to revisit their transportation planning systems to optimize movement of goods across the distribution channel.

In recent times, Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) has emerged as a holistic solution to challenging transportation requirements in retail industry. It provides significant value to retailers as it
• Helps in greater control over supply chain from supplier to distribution centers to retail stores
• Reduce total transportation costs
• Reduce stock-outs with end-to-end visibility across the supply chain
• Improve asset utilization by managing all transportation processes – inbound and outbound – with a single, integrated system
• Provide new levels of collaboration  with vendors and carriers

OTM acts as a powerful competitive differentiator – helping retailers to deliver goods at low cost, thereby allowing retailers to reduce prices on key products.

Visualizing great demand for OTM among retailers, Infosys has developed ready-to-deploy ‘OTM-In-a-Box: Retail’ solution within the Oracle® Accelerate framework. Oracle® Business Accelerators are best-in-class business solutions that reduce time & cost of OTM implementation.
‘OTM In-a-Box: Retail’ is based on industry best practices and addresses key issues faced by retailers while managing their transportation supply chain. The solution covers inbound & outbound transportation planning, freight rating, and financial settlement for point-to-point, multi-stop and multi-leg shipments across different transport modes namely Truckload (TL), Less than TL, Ocean and Air. This solution also extends to design & development of specific number of reports of medium complexity and implementation of all major workflow features.
The ‘OTM In-a-Box Plus’ is an advanced offering comprising of Cross-Docking, Consolidation & Deconsolidation Pools and Continuous Move optimizations. In addition to above features, ‘OTM In-a-Box Advanced’ deploys Fusion Transportation Intelligence, an analytical tool for business analytics and management decision making.
Retailers can definitely leverage Infosys’ ‘OTM In-a-Box: Retail’ to implement scalable enterprise transportation system in an accelerated time frame.
These offerings are even available for manufacturing which uses industry best practices to help manufacturers manage their transportation.

We would be discussing this at length at OOW'Oct'09,US.

Acknowledgement for inputs from - Nipun Lakhotia,Oracle Practice,Infosys

Posted by Nilabja Dey at 07:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)