Infosys-Oracle Blog

In the last blog, we had discussed about how a Brand can help a Program transition from an  unexciting unanimated entity to a complete personality with whom all the stakeholders relate to. This blog would provide pointers to project/program managers, sponsors towards building a Project Brand

1.Provide a Form/Shape to your Program: I believe this is the first step towards building a Brand. It gives visual cues towards the Brand values and helps in building Brand Recall. Typically we leverage a Program Name, Tag Line, Logo or a Mascot for this purpose. (Not necessarily All but in some useful combination depending on client context). Majority of the times the first perception is formed through these Brand Cues, therefore these have to be crafted carefully with good brainstorming among key stakeholders.

2.Ensure the expected outcome of the program correlates to the Brand Values: For building a brand for a program, it's important that the program outcome correlates with the Brand Values which we are trying to project. Unless this happens, there will be a disconnect in the minds of stakeholders, which could pave the way for distrust towards the project. E.g. If we are talking about decentralization, then centralization should not come out as a cue from any form of brand communication.

3.Build a focused and integrated Communication plan around brand: Only a focused effort towards building a brand would create long-term brand value leading to benefits for the programs stated in my blog earlier. Use Town halls, road shows to exhibit the brand, and reach out to all stakeholders. 

4.Use Brand Ambassadors: We need to spread the brand with the help of Brand Ambassadors such as CXOs and Unit Leads who would represent Brand values and at the same time would help demonstrate senior management commitment towards the Brand.

5.Build on your Brand by incorporating it in all your work: Build templates to carry the Brand Logo and messaging theme for all frequently used documents in your program. Sometimes, depending on the budget and size of the program, the usage of the Brand Logo on t-shirts, pens etc also spread awareness about the brand. All these would serve to reinforce the Brand.

6.Keep Relevant Information freely available:  Any information which is not classified about the program should be freely available based on a stakeholder category and other client contexts. This enhances the trust towards the brand and helps in restricting any grapevine discussions against the program.

7.Even before implementation, Keep each interaction of the program to the external world (outside of program team)in accordance with the Brand: For e.g. Be extra prepared for User Acceptance Testing phase with your internal users or an Integration testing phase with your trading partners. Ensure that you are not giving them a feel of unpreparedness, this could be extremely damaging towards the brand.

Overall please remember, Branding takes a lot of patience and time but the results are far reaching!  A steady flow of positive communication supported by a focused plan will help the project overcome any negative perceptions about it and thereby become successful.

Posted by Abhishek Sabharwal at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Kanban has come to be established as an effective means of material movement in manufacturing plants. Kanbans not only relpenish materials, they also trigger production activities at upstream processes. As such, kanbans have become an industry- wide accepted means of signalling material movement and production. Along with kanbans, kanban cards have gained widespread acceptance. These cards generally store useful information such as item number, the replenishment location and quantity, the replenishing process etc.. These cards are generally attached to the bins that store the materials.


Let us consider a simple kanban scenario:

A process A is consuming part X which is produced by Process B. Process A will have bins containing the kanban number of part X and there will be a kanban card attached to the bin. This kanban card will have various details such as part name and description, the making process, the consuming process, the kanban quantity etc.. So once the quantities have been consumed from that bin at process A (depending on replenishment lead time, they might wait for all quantities to be consumed or a certain number from the bin), the kanban card (say card#1) attached to that bin will be taken and placed at the upstream process, and another bin of part X will be brought along with the kanban card attached to that bin (card#2). At the upstream process, the operator will see that card#1 is lying and this will signal production for the number of quantities as mentioned in the card.

Now instead of the physical kanban cards, it could be quite possible that the empty bins or trays that carry the material can themselves serve the signal for replenishment or production. For example, whenever process A has consumed all of part X from its bin, it can take the empty tray and place it at process B and can get a tray full of part X back for consumption. Now when the operator at process B sees an empty tray, this can signal for production to happen for part X at process B.

In the above case, the two processes can just use empty trays to signal further production and material movement. Of course, for this to work, process A and process B need to plan it out and adhere to the plan. For example, they need to agree on what is the kanban quantity and that process B will produce only to the kamnban quantity, they also need to agree that process B will produce only if there is an empty cart lying in its area, they also need to agree that process A will pull material from process B only when it has emptied its current kanban tray of X parts and that will will leave the empty tray at process B whenever it is pulling a new tray.

So while the above mechanism might not work at a large plant level, in localized processes, such empty trays or bins can serve as kanbans themselves and not need a physical kanban card to be attached the bins. Let me know what you think.

Posted by Rupam Das at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Business Intelligence is not just gathering information, but providing the right information at the right time to make the right decisions is an old definition. The latest technology trends are an output of fusion, integration and collaboration of multiple technologies working hand in hand. Business Intelligence would provide decisions to the right people and enables right information to be leveraged by an insight driven action or event.

The current situation in many organizations is Business Intelligence and Management Processes are in silos in their respective areas. Business Intelligence should no longer be restricted to creating standalone reports but should drive business processes, whether that is driving the actions of front-line users, or seamlessly linked into operational workflow through dashboards and portals. Market leaders identify the need of analytics to improve their management processes. Managers track their actions and performance to improve further with alignment to the organizational goals. Performance management is becoming a part of the business intelligence equation at a rapid pace. 

No matter how good a strategy can be, unless it is executed seamlessly and reaches the team on the ground it is not possible for organizations to achieve business excellence. Alignment of BI-EPM ensures that key KPI's, focus points, etc are aligned and management is well connected with the team and understand the direction towards organizations common goals. Today, one of the biggest challenge organizations face is the amount of time spent in synchronizing system data and working it back for management decision making. With integrated applications more time can be spent in analyzing data and more importantly well defined ownership & responsibility to achieve business goals.

An integrated BI and Management environment aligns strategy (EPM) and operations (BI) and drives insight and performance. The integrated Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management is considered as a lever to drive growth that extends the operational excellence to management excellence. The combination will rationalize the organization's management systems to share insights across the enterprise and improve the strategic, financial and operational management processes. The integration links strategic goals to operational decisions by integrating all management processes to deliver consistent, reliable insights to drive action with single version of the truth - with reduced system complexity and lower cost.

Gone are the days when the wait time for information was days and now users expect a response as simple and similar as a 'Google' search for a query. Expectations are huge! Any new IT investment is expected to quickly deliver the results in a short timeline with effective return on investment (ROI) and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO).

How is this possible?

Oracle has made a significant investment over the past few years (Siebel, Hyperion acquisitions being the backbone) in the BI space. From a product leadership and vision perspective, Oracle is probably the only vendor that is a leader in BI, Corporate Performance Management, and Data Warehousing.  So not only does Oracle offer the most comprehensive BI solution, it is based on category leading products across every important area of the BI solution stack.

Oracle's Siebel based business intelligence, rechristened as Oracle BI has a comprehensive suite of BI products and infrastructure designed to bring greater business visibility and insight to the broadest audience, providing access to any user in an organization to have Web-based self-service access to up-to-the moment, relevant, and actionable intelligence.

The Oracle BI Applications are built on the OBIEE platform. The recent version of Oracle BI Applications 7.9.6.1 has a new spend classification application with the integration of the Oracle Financial Analytics module with JD Edwards' World Financial Management System. There are new prepackaged ETL routines introduced into Oracle's Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management software and expanded third-party platform support for data integration, operating systems and non-Oracle databases.

Oracle's Hyperion-based performance management applications help organizations to set up predictable and transparent financial processes which are aligned to the goals of the business. This can be achieved using the comprehensive suite of applications which encompass:
• Strategic Planning through Hyperion Performance Scorecard and Hyperion Strategic Finance
• Enterprise Planning and Budgeting through Hyperion Planning, Workforce and Capital Asset Planning
• Financial Close Process through Hyperion Financial Management and Financial Data Quality Management
• Cost and Profitability Management through Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management application

Hyperion also provides the advantage to manage all the different performance management applications centrally through a common workspace, MS Office interface, reporting and analysis tools and shared administrative services. However, based on client's requirement any of the Hyperion's EPM application can even be deployed as a Best-of-Breed solution.

Oracle's EPM System leverages Oracle's Fusion Middleware and is also hot pluggable with non-Oracle applications and technologies.

Here are some usage scenarios.

OBIEE can provide users a report/dashboard on Actual Vs Budgeted expenditure for various products/units/departments with an organization. In a silos environment, this information would end up with the identification of products/units/departments where actual expenditure has been more than the budgeted expenditure. However, in an integrated environment, users can access the planning application (Hyperion Planning) directly from the BI application to study the plan and make modifications if required and submit the updated plan for approval.

The total dollar amount of Orders is a useful metrics but not good enough to manage and improve business unless insight of the existing stock, orders in queue exists. By applying business knowledge to the process, the Order amount can be aligned to the regional manager's targets, existing stocks, forecasting of future requirements and identify the areas of focus.

Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management leverage the power of Essbase and provides the ability to allocate both revenues and costs for a complete view of profitability.

Hyperion Strategic Finance provides efficiency on cash and liquidity management with a strategic financial modeling in one environment, by combining both short term and long term considerations and leveraging the integration of Oracle Crystal Ball and Hyperion Essbase through 'What if' Analysis.

The journey so far, where business users were dependant on IT earlier for the reports, information was entered and consolidated manually was a gone era. Information that is readily available at every desktop, proactive alert for the actions to be performed as required sets the pace right for futuristic BI. As rightly said by Gartner, the alliance of operational excellence and management excellence is in the right direction driving business transformation from strategic level to process level.

Posted by Sparjan Kote at 6:30 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Traditionally the manufacturing industry is always focused on improving the forward logistics- the focus is to cut cycle time for product innovation, time to market, order to fulfill. This led to optimization techniques of forward logistics through usage of technology. Forward supply chain visibility is a key parameter which the customer evaluates before choosing a supplier in manufacturing.

But the paradigm is shifting gradually. Today's best of class manufacturing organizations have created their own service organizations and are realizing the importance of managing the return and repairs efficiently. There is a considerable monetary value attached to this cycle- and more important it is the loss of loyalty due to an unsatisfied customer because of delay in the replacement/repair of faulty product. This loss can be easily associated with loss of revenue, market share and other financial numbers. As a result leading manufacturing companies are leveraging technology and collaborating with partners to optimize their return, repair, replacement, recycle and remarketing processes.

In order to understand the role of reverse logistics, let us look at the key functions in the value chain which impacts the overall cycle time for execution.

• Customer service management- This involves receiving customer complaints and ensuring service contract compliance, proactive updates on service calls, status monitoring and first hand issue resolution
• Transportation and Logistics- this involves authorizing returns, collecting, sorting, testing, stocking, shipping (transportation) and disposition
• Depot repair- Managing repair, reverse engineering, remanufacturing, reassembly and reuse of salvaged components
• Channel Management- This involves measuring, monitoring, tracking and evaluating the performance of channel partners
• Financial management- This involves managing warranty and financial liability, proper inventory valuation and costing and finally recovery of appropriate costs
•  Sales- Refurbished product sale through promotions and other channels

We need to now carefully examine the factors that impact these functions. Once we understand those we can understand the role of efficient reverse logistics in enhancing customer satisfaction. We will discuss those in my next blog- in the meantime let me know your views and thoughts. 

Posted by Nilanjan Chatterjee at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

There are many ways to achieve Leaner ERP implementation, and I have discussed some of the strategic levers for it in my previous blogs Go Lean (Part 2) and Go Lean (Part 1) like senior management and executive sponsorship, robust decision making framework, effective change management approach, upfront planning for middleware and reporting platforms, solution design workshops, selection of appropriate edge products and leveraging localizations. However, there are many tactical and operational levers also available for enterprises to adopt, which are primarily part of implementation execution cycle. I am discussing here some of these levers and best practices to minimize customizations:

• Boot Camp Trainings - Before initiating the solution design phase, organizations must seriously consider to conduct the boot camp trainings on chosen ERP to their key super users, business analysts and implementation core team, facilitated by System Integrator (SI). The intent for boot camps must be training to the team for vanilla features and functionalities of ERP relevant to their industry processes. This will enable them to bridge many gaps and requirements through seeded ERP functionality, and increase the overall fitment of the package application, leading towards reduced customizations.

• Harmonization of Requirements - If organizations are implementing the solution for multiple business units and/or geographies, all the global as well as local requirements must be captured and harmonized in early stage of the project from all in-scope business units and geographies. It enables the design to be standardized and common. If this is not done effectively, it causes major scope creeps during later phases of the project, and organization ends up with plethora of change requets and new customizations to meet local requirements. Organization must also avoid any silo approach for each business unit, location or department, and capture business unit specific or mandatory statuary and legal requirements in the initial phase of the project itself
• Design of Foundation Elements - The design and key attributes for foundation elements of an Oracle ERP must be finalized during initial global solution design phase based on harmonized requirements and future needs of the organization. Some examples of foundation elements are Ledger Architecture, Legal Entities, Chart of Accounts, Calendars, Multi-Orgs Structure, Item Segments, Costing Method, BOM Structure, Inventory Orgs, Matching options and Document Sequences etc. It helps to avoid any unnecessary customization or rework due to changes in foundation elements during and after the implementation. Many organizations spend huge effort and cost to tweak these foundation elements after the implementation like COA restructuring exercise 
• Personalization instead of customization - Project team can choose to build Personalization instead of customizing ERP directly depending upon the magnitude and complexity of the requirement. For simple requirements like hiding a field on a screen, turning on a validation, defaulting values in a form etc., the business super users can extend the application. ERP providers offer Personalization capabilities, which eliminate the need of technical development. This approach can be many times more cost effective, less vulnerable to future upgrades and easier to maintain and support
• Tighter controls through KPIs and ROI framework - Organizations must define a detailed business case for implementation program including quantitative business benefits and KPIs. The project KPI measures must be at the execution level, and not at the business performance level. Organization must also link these KPIs to the approval process guidelines for PMO with a conservative budget approach for any proposed customization. The detailed ROI framework, approval process and hierarchy must be defined in advance to perform detailed due-diligence for the need of customization. The ROI framework should include gap justification through ROI calculation based on pre-defined KPIs and cost for development and maintenance effort. This ROI framework and budget constraints approach help organization to keep customization in control 
• Selection of Third Party Tools - There are many areas in ERP where organizations have to take call between build versus buy to select specific solution on top of ERP platform. E.g., Sales tax data repository, Invoice Printing solution, planning tools, collaboration suite, Business Rule Management tool, Archive and Purging solution, Data Masking solutions, monitoring tools and so on. The organizations must evaluate all the requirements including priority, costing of tool, fitment to ERP, future upgrade support from vendors, maintenance cost etc. against the capabilities provided by vendors, ERP available options versus customization cost. This provides ample opportunities for organization to reduce overall TCO

Beyond what I stated above, there are other operational levers available for organization to reduce implementation cost, which also leads to reduced TCO. Some examples are like leveraging pre-built solutions and accelerators from SI partner, Usage of reusable custom components e.g. data migration scripts during roll-outs, templates driven approach during various phases of implementation etc.

Overall with the usage of right set of Strategic, Tactical and Operational levers, organizations can go lean on customizations. Applicability of these levers is heavily dependent on a client situations and business/IT context of the implementation program. In my professional experience as program manager of various large implementation programs, I have encountered many situations where despite using all these levers, eventually PMO had to approve major customizations, however I feel confident to state that the project team did everything to avoid the same using the levers stated above.  Overall the right decision is a decision towards reducing the overall TCO for the organization, whether it is through customizations or without it. (Though good majority of the times, it is by going through without customizations)  This is specifically important for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) who cannot afford the high front end as well as maintenance cost associated with customizations.

I hope my blogs on this subject will help you to adopt Leaner ERP. If you'd like to share your viewpoints/experiences on this topic, please write back through the comments section.

Posted by Nikhil Kumar at 7:01 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Oracle R12 has now completed a good number of years in the Market. It arrived with much fanfare, so has it delivered so far? What have been the key learnings from the upgrades that we have seen?

The former is a more difficult question, as any enterprise technology upgrade always comes with fading support for the previous version, thereby creating a risk for the organization. So product upgrades are akin to insurance policies one just has to get them. But R12 was the path to fusion so expectations were a little different. Let us discuss the latter question first, what have we learnt from our engagements of R12 Upgrades. I will next attempt to list down some of the top things I have heard from supporting multiple engagements in R12.

 

1. Measure twice - Cut Once

Well this common rule in carpentary holds true for R12 Upgrades too! People often underestimate the amount of technical impact that this version has. Oracle users have been used to almost a 10 year period when the version releases were between 11.0.3 to 11.5.10, all essentially sub releases. But R12 brings together substantial differences in the core financials modules, namely GL and AP. The one thing that we learnt from a lot of engagements is to make sure we estimate multiple times through a rigorous check with version comparisons. While the Infosys Upgrade tool does estimate the impact, it does have some limitations. For example Folders, Forms Personalizations these are aspects which not many technical tools capture. The more of these and you have a big problem of missed estimates.

In summary, accurate estimation of technical components from a technical upgrade is a must and is often underestimated.

 

2. It looks different - It IS different - User Interface changes

The R12 screens borrow heavily form PeopleSoft applications in the user interface technology, so when you look at for the first time, they look bluer and more different! We have seen lot of engagements miss the boat on estimating the effort needed for retraining some of the users, even the expert Oracle 11i ones. The html based navigation is different, and does need some getting used to. Although 11i had introduced OA framework based html screens, R12 has introduced these to a wider number of modules, even financial module of AP has a lot of these screens for eg Supplier Entry.

 

3. New Functionalities

Just like the above bullet, a substantial business user involvement is needed even if an organization is looking at technical upgrade, since R12 contains many standard functionalities that would retire customizations. Evaluate of these functionalities are best done as part of the upgrade and not as a separate project after the upgrade. The additional testing and project management effort might make the justification of the subsequent phases difficult to fund.

 

4. Reporting Changes

When underlying data structures change, it has a big impact on the reporting out of the application. And R12 contains a lot of data structure changes, this makes it opportune time to review and revise the organizational reporting strategy during an upgrade. Also with R12 the tools supported for reporting are changing, Desktop ADIs and FSGs can be replaced with a combination of Web ADI and Reports Manager. Also the BI publisher enables a lot of reuse of reporting entities

These were some of the main themes emerging from the 30+ R12 engagements that infosys is engaged in. What are your experiences? I would love to hear back from your personal experiences with R12.

 

 

 

Posted by Venu Kotamraju at 1:47 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Major challenge which any Utility faces is Power Outage. Power Outage is such a crisis that is always just around the corner for any Utility. These Outages can be caused by variety of reasons like tree limbs, animals, wind, and vehicle collisions. Storms/disasters happen in any climate, in any season. Earthquake, heat, snow, winds, tornados, and, ice all cause outages which can bring everything to halt. At that moment, all eyes turn to the Utility to make sure that customers affected are restored quickly and they are provided accurate estimated restoration times. Utility’s Management interest is to deliver excellent customer service, safety of the repair crews, and minimize the revenue loss due to power outage. It is a very difficult situation for any utility from a perception and media perspective as well.

Thus there is a strong need for any Utility to have an Integrated Outage Management System.

My question is how a Utility should assess that whether their existing Outage Management System is effective enough to deliver the excellent customer service?

Few thoughts which come to my mind which are important for any Utility:

1) Whether existing Outage Management System can provide Estimated Restoration Time?

2) Whether existing Outage Management System can provide Call Center Representatives sufficient information when customers call to inquire the status of their power outage?

3) Whether existing Outage Management System helps Utility’s Communication/Media Department to provide the right set of information to external media community?

I would love to hear more thoughts around this from Utility Industry Experts or Technology experts who are either developing OMS Product or implementing OMS Products!!!

Posted by Roopak Manchanda at 7:50 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Irrespective of the geography and services offered by Utilities today worldwide, a few challenges remain common. Utilities are constrained to meet those challenges and deliver without compromising operational efficiency and/or offering the best value for money to the end customer.  The industry in itself is facing challenges in terms of uncertainty on fuel prices, uncertainty in markets, government involvement in pricing and regulation, pressures from climate change imperatives etc. To mitigate these challenges, executives resort to their dashboards that offer a quick snapshot of their traditional financial and business performance measures.  In many cases, one of the key metric that doesn't come under the priority radar is the importance of employees who work for them has in the organisation's success.  The pace of change in utilities world-wide has accelerated market factors that influence the industry.  While technology is one of the means to prepare for these changes, organisations are beginning to understand that the role of 'employees' in their organisations is going to gain more importance in preparing for these challenges. There is a fundamental agreement across the board that these are the people who would have vital knowledge and experience that could fuel the success of the organisation. This blog focuses on few approaches that organisations can take to leverage the people advantage to stay ahead in competition.

Technology comes handy to organisations in managing their processes around recruiting the right talent, putting in a performance evaluation framework, accountability and ownership employee data, succession planning and leadership. Technology in general can assist organisations in actionising their strategy to achieve their vision.  The following are some areas where technology levers can be used to deliver

Collaboration & Empowerment: Accuracy and effective employee data management is a key success factor in ensuring a robust HR process model.  There is a noticeable shift in moving this responsibility and ownership of this data from the HR teams to the employees themselves. Web based applications facilitate connectivity from virtually anywhere anytime and also promotes collaboration.  Approval hierarchies and self service applications promote employees and their managers to take ownership and responsibility of transaction. Role base access privileges ensure that the roles and responsibilities of the employees are controlled.  Equally, this empowerment can also focus on the HR team itself by providing clear role definitions for people who manage transactions, specialists and business partners who provide inputs to HR strategies and measure effectiveness of the strategy deployed and administrators who manage and administer employee data.

Automation: Technology drivers can also be leveraged by HR teams delivering operational excellence to the employees.  This excellence plays a critical role in keeping the employee satisfied and encourages them to be with the organisation for a longer period of time.  Operational excellence can be achieved by inheriting best practices and automating them to improve productivity in delivering services to the employees. By making the HR processes consistent across the organisation and automating them, HR teams can actually focus more on delivering value added services and provide inputs to corporate HR strategy with the time that is at their disposal.

Competency Management: Clear definition of roles can facilitate managing the required competencies and training needs for the specific roles. This competency management can aid various other HR processes like career and succession planning, performance appraisal and compensation reviews, fulfilling regulatory obligations to assure employee health, safety and training needs.  A thought through competency management model provides a lot of objectivity, predictability and insight to the above mentioned processes, which ultimately can be tied up to the corporate and departmental goals.

Intelligence: Operational intelligence and alignment to HR strategy can be monitored through defined HR metrics which are best when integrated with the financial and other performance figures in the executive dashboard. In today's dynamic conditions, it is important to understand the quantitative impact of people issues on the corporate vision. This can be achieved by integrating quantitative HR metrics into executive's dashboard, along with financial and other performance metrics. Some of the new measures could be around employee attrition, revenue productivity per person, recruitment effectiveness, employee engagement and satisfaction survey scores and trends etc., In addition to the above, utilities benefit a log in integrating the FTE count, budgeted spend vs. actual spend at a cost centre level as a part of the executive dashboard.  This metric provides a continuous view on the regulatory spend.

Knowledge management: In an ageing workforce conditions, it is important to focus on not only retaining talent, but also retaining corporate knowledge from employees who are about to retire.  Structured succession planning processes, competency planning processes and training processes can address this challenge to an extent, but organisations have started focusing on developing a knowledge repository based on employee experience.  Portals, blogs to share experience, knowledge shops, User champions, Web 2.0 are some of the approaches which actually can assist organisations in providing an opportunity to tap experience and make it available for the next generation employees working for the organisation.

At the end of the day HR department or employees or technology alone cannot execute a people strategy and provide competitive advantage to organisations.  However, technology can play the role of the binding glue in bringing all these disparate teams to collaborate and execute this strategy. Technology can provide a platform hiring and retaining talent, promote a learning organisation, create leadership capabilities and opportunities, managing employee work-life balance and most importantly provide a platform where multi-cultural and multi-demographic workforce can be effectively managed to deliver a common cause.

 

Posted by Ismail Syed Mohammad at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

In my professional experience, I encountered quite a few jazzy brand names of large business transformation programs - Ascent, NextGen, Compass, Catalyst Frontier, Leap, Unity, Accelerator, and so on. Earlier, I used to wonder about the need for such branding and whether it is a fad, a marketing gimmick or is really a necessity for large transformation programs? As I encountered these mores, i learnt interesting facts about the association of a Brand to a project, which I am sharing with you in my series of blogs.

How does the business user community relate to the project even before it is implemented? What do the external partners like customers, distributors, and suppliers perceive about the project and its impact on their operations? What do the analysts and share holders think about this multi-year multimillion dollar investment? How does the internal IT team get motivated to be on the driving seat of the large initiative? All these unanswered questions points to common phenomenon 'WIIFM' (What's in it For Me).

How effectively enterprise answers these questions may decide the fate of the program even before it hits the road. Managing this perception is therefore no longer just a 'Nice to have' angle but one that is crucial to the success of the project. Many organizations undertaking large ERP Transformation programs, strive for focused and integrated communication strategy to manage this perception. This strategy can certainly become more effective in addressing perceptions when the messaging is crisp and catchy -and that leads enterprises to incline towards Branding projects.

A brand gives an unenthused inanimated thing as a project a personality, be it through symbols, or logos, or even something as simple as taglines  such as 'Empowering Partners', 'One Company', 'Intelligent Supply Chain' etc. These together provide cues on the goals and the guiding principles of the project and helps to create an image that makes the project acceptance easier.

How does a brand help a project?
1. Unites the implementation project team by giving them an identity. The team would till then be representing various departments or business units of the company but after a brand association, they are all part of the brand itself. It brings them into an umbrella matrix organization to which they can relate to and can work hard for. This in itself is quite a win, with the team members willing to go the extra mile for the project success and taking pride in their association with the project.
2. It helps in reminding the team of the Goals and Objectives of the program during various phases. E.g., a program named 'Making Boundaries vanish' or 'One Company' immediately strikes a chord about removing the departmental or silo approaches to a solution. If, at any time, tough decisions need to be made as part of the project implementation, these objectives help clear the clutter of options towards the goal of the project, thus enabling a successful implementation.
3. It unifies Communication Efforts across channels. In absence of a brand, one stakeholder group may call the project as Oracle Implementation Program, while another group may call it ERP etc. But with the name/brand given to the project, all your communication efforts are unified across all channels. The same name, image is created amongst the target audience that spreads a uniform message and sometimes may even reduce your communication costs.
4. With the imagery created around the project, brand provides a clear and definitive reason for the end users to embrace the project. Even before the implementation, users are able to relate to the project, understand its goals and how the project can help them do their task efficiently. Overall this helps in increasing user adoption rate at a reduced cost.
5. Project has a short lifecycle but with the association of a brand the team has created a timeless entity which would stand as milestone in company's history. With this association, there are increased stakes in the organization to make this project a success. It ensures commitment, visibility from senior management in resolving any roadblocks that may come during the implementation.
While there are some obvious and not so obvious advantages of creating a brand, a brand may at times prove not so effective to the project especially, if the Brand Experience does not measure up to the Brand Image created. A Brand experience is the experiential aspect of the project, which the stakeholders will have once the project is implemented. The psychological aspect, the brand image, is the visual imagery created within the minds of stakeholders and consists of all the information and expectations associated with the project prior to its implementation. It is, therefore, extremely important for PMO to present a brand which is realistic and, at the same time, inspires the stakeholders with the appropriate messaging. E.g., if the project is aimed to standardized business processes through global instance strategy, the branding cannot be about autonomy/localizations about regional business units, however brand must focus about benefits of standardization.

There would also be times where the organization may want to underplay the impact or the size of the project. In these cases, it's typically advised not to go with an elaborated Project Branding Strategy.

As I will be working on another blog about how to build and maintain a Project Brand, I would certainly like to hear more from all of you on your experiences while branding a project, wherever project branding helped or where it created bottlenecks. Don't forget to send in your comments...

Posted by Abhishek Sabharwal at 5:25 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

In large organizations like Infosys, sharing of information is very important to reduce the duplication in effort. Information sharing includes getting advice from experts, receiving support from different teams and answering the questions posted by the members of a community. Posting queries and answering them through mails may not be user friendly and tracking them at a later point of time is difficult. To address this issue, we can set up Internal Community Forums provided by WebCenter for the members in a team to share the information across the teams, thereby increasing the productivity.

Below are some of the features of WebCenter discussion forum:

User Interface:
Good User Interface and Simple to use

Security:
The authentication feature of the application ensures security of the site. Administrator of the application can keep a check on the attachments. Attachments can be automatically scanned for viruses

Language :
Currently supports English and Spanish  translations

Performance:
Features like server clustering and performance tuning makes this application  ideal for high traffic

Email Notifications:
Forum users can be notified about the discussions that happens in the forums based on the notification settings

Search and Tagging:
Search helps users to search forum content at any time and tagging feature aids in the search and navigation of the content

Reporting:
Reporting feature gives a quick statistics of the forum activities which helps to keep a track on usage

This post would be incomplete without mentioning the benefits of having  community forums in an organization.

• Information sharing through forums helps to reduce duplicate effort, thereby increasing productivity

• With the advent of discussion forums, tracking the information has become very easy, since it acts as a central repository for the messages that gets posted on forums

• Search option enables users to search any content present in the forums at any time
  

• Virtual connectivity with the experts to get the support

• Users gets watch updates through emails

With this we come to the end of the Overview and Benefits of WebCenter discussion forum.

Do feel free to send in your comments..

Posted by Anusha Moravaneni at 5:02 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

To realize the early benefits of an ERP implementation and to comply with all the legal requirements, it is important that the applications and data are properly secured by exploring all the available security option within Oracle Applications

Oracle ebiz suite has various security features like:
a) Application Security using Access Control, Identity Management , Password Management etc
b) Physical Data Security using oracle database security , back ups etc
c) Security for imodules using firewalls, proxies etc

As part of Application security, User Management or RBAC (Role Based Access Control) was introduced by Oracle few years back, the major features of User management are:

- In the User Management model, a role would point to a set of functions and separately point to a navigation menu that should be used to access those functions.
- This navigation menu may contain a superset of functions but only those functions which have been granted to the user (via the roles) would be enabled (other functions would be filtered out)
- The navigation menu can be organized in the most intuitive way for finding functions in the navigator, while the roles can be defined purely based on the security / organization requirements

What is the difference with the traditional Responsibility approach?

Under User Management / RBAC, rather than presenting the user with a list of responsibilities which may have the same menu or slightly altered versions of the same menu presented multiple times, one would present the user with a list of product areas, and all the functions which they can access in that product area regardless of the role through which the function was given.

RBAC / User Management still has long way to go with challenges like an organization should have a clear RACI(Responsibility-Accountability-Consultation-Information) matrix defined with proper roles but eventually it would replace the Responsibility based security model of oracle. 
 

Posted by Sachin Chitlange at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

There are many ways to perform an operation and there is a SMART way of performing the same operation. Inbound logistics is an integral part of any warehouse management system.

If the supplier is electronically connected to your host system then pre-receiving and receiving operations can be streamlined via ASN.

If the ASN is available:
1.There is opportunity to plan for cross-docking of orders. This in turn will reduce processing time and increase warehouse throughput.
2.Effective Labor scheduling can be planned and achieved based on the receipts.
3.Transportation Fleet can be managed.

With technology moving at rapid stride and every organization striving for lean and mean ways of achieving optimization, there are many a yard management systems available in the market. YMS offers accurate management of the trailers and containers in the receiving and shipping yard. YMS handles every yard-related function, including appointment scheduling, trailer check-in, trailer audit, and age-analysis and check-out functionality. YMS also gives complete visibility of in-transit trailers (inbound and outbound) for better planning.

Effective YMS are supplemented by implementing robust Transportation Management Systems. These applications provide the ability to improve mode optimization, load consolidation, and other traditional TMS benefits. They also enhance the load linking capabilities and continuous moves both within its own network and with its suppliers and customers. Rife is the concept of Collaborative Transportation Engineering.

The system used can provide advanced shipment execution capabilities, load consolidation, mode selection. TMS application can be easily integrated into an overall P2P and O2C process with the Host ERP application. This can be used to send the ASN related information to the corresponding WMS systems. The result of this integration is Freight savings that is augmented by the visibility of the goods in transit. Organizations are taking these SMART proactive measures to achieve growth and success propensities. I call these as "Simple Methods to Achieve Rapid Throughput". The SMART way, The TMS way.

Posted by Amit Sinha at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

In this information age, with increasing awareness, consumers are becoming health conscious & want surety that the food product they consume is Safe.  They are not happy with just to know the location of manufacturing plant, but are interested to know from where the raw material is originally sourced. Dairy industry, which typically produces a range of products for a variety of markets, faces even greater challenge in tracing individual product. This calls for tighter Integration between all the channel partners across the supply chain.  

 

The dairy industry is a vertically integrated industry with both upstream and downstream trade partners of the supply chain dependent on each other to ensure quality food. I will discuss some of the challenges dairy industry is facing and Oracle's Solution for the same.

 

Regulatory Requirements & Material Traceability:

 

To give Consumer confidence about the safety of their product, Dairy industry has to comply with stiff regulatory requirements like HACCP. Material Traceability is another challenge which gains paramount importance in case of Product Recall or Customer Complaints.

 

Oracle's comprehensive Quality management helps companies with HACCP compliance. Similarly, Oracle's lot traceability feature provides traceability across the entire supply chain which provides much needed assurance of effectively managed Product recall in case of emergency. 

 

Maintaining Product consistency:

 

In dairy industry, major raw material i.e. Milk is usually supplied by thousands of farmers with inconsistent quality. Thus providing consistent output product quality with varying input raw material becomes one of the major issues for the Dairy products manufacturers.

 

With advance oracle features like Accelerated recipe development, Simulators, Formula analysis and Lease cost formulation, the consistent product quality can be obtained with minimum operating cost. Moreover, with features such as Grade Control, Shelf-Life management variability can be precisely tracked with a quality based view of raw materials and products.

 

Proper production planning & scheduling:

 

The dairy industries produce range of products, for ex: toned milk, ice cream, butter, flavored milk etc. The same manufacturing facilities can be utilized for producing multiple products in order to have better production efficiency. Production planning and deciding on right product mix is a very critical activity. By-products produced in each of these manufacturing process makes the decision even harder.

 

Oracle's production scheduler functionality brings best practices to production planning. It allows priority based production scheduling of batches. Oracle's process-specific MES allows for better production management through best-in-class Operator Workbench & built-in device integration capabilities. With release of R12, planning has been taken to another level for process industries, where Oracle's Advanced Supply chain planning (ASCP), well-known for its advanced planning capabilities, come pre-integrated with OPM.

 

In conclusion Oracle's process manufacturing solution, i.e. Oracle Process Manufacturing (OPM) suite of applications along with ASCP, is designed to provide competitive advantage through accelerated recipe development, advanced production planning & scheduling and, ultimate Production execution capabilities.  Over and Above, an excellent integrated Quality Management system, which provides for automated sampling & approval workflow along with Solid Cost management, provides the necessary icing on the cake. Dairy Industries can do well by considering this option as worthy investment while deciding on appropriate process specific ERP. 

 

Posted by Ashish Namdeo at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Today, most of the IT industries have tens and hundreds of software systems. The interactions between these systems are becoming increasingly complex. With Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) it is recognized that every application/enterprise speaks its own language. SOA uses Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) to route and exchange messages between different applications at a high level of abstraction but, when we need to provide functionality for the capabilities expected from today's enterprises we may need a modern version of ESB, Oracle Service Bus (OSB).

Posted by Anjani Devi Badri at 7:16 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) has become yet another buzz word of recent times where every System Integrator advises clients that before going ahead with any large transformation program they need to conduct BPR of their existing processes.  But is there a correct prescription for this critical step? After all, a wrong move can jeopardize the entire ERP investment.

Based on my experience on numerous recently concluded Green Field Implementations, I realized that there are three Golden Rules for achieving efficient business processes. These must be followed after the AS-IS business process has been studied and laid out to provide a baseline on how a particular business process is running in the organization with Lead Times/Process Times captured.

1. Remove Non Value Add Activities: Non Value Add activities are redundant activities that have no value to the process. These activities have been a result of age old business practices that should have been discarded ages ago. These can be identified based on some of the pointer questions listed below
a. Does the process step add any quantitative or qualitative value to the process?
b. Is the process just a handshake without incremental value?
c. Is the step just duplicating effort where the same data can be accessed somewhere else?
d. Is the step aimed towards compartmentalizing data/process where there is no harm to the organization to have an open architecture?
e. Is the step a result of an underlying assumption? Have we validated the truth behind the assumption?

2. Automate Operational Value Add Activities: These activities are focused in providing data additions or doing some value adds for downstream activities.  They may not directly provide value to the customer but the existence of these help in serving the customer better. E.g. stacking the goods in warehouse correctly so it's easy to locate during a pick cycle. As part of BPR, we need to ask questions on whether there is a better way of doing the task?  Can we automate the task or does it necessarily require human judgment? By automating these tasks, we assure that the time spent on these activities is less and the chance of human error is minimized. Sometimes even decomposing the task further down or consolidating the tasks upwards can help bring in efficiency in the system. These can be identified based on some of the pointer questions listed below:
a. Does the step add to the customer value add related activities downstream?
b. Is the step necessary for the business to run efficiently?

3. Increase/Strengthen Customer Value Add Activities: These activities are the groundwork for creating real customer value adds - the reason for an organization's existence. What is it that the organization's customers are seeking? There are very few customer value adding activities in the entire business process and the entire operational value add activities should position themselves towards supporting these activities. Theoretically, Customers basically want their goods in best shape to be delivered on time where they receive a correct invoice with previously agreed terms. Obviously there are other factors which can lead towards higher customer satisfaction but we should consider the hygiene factors only as Customer Value Adds while doing a BPR while noting the other satellite value adds as 'Nice to Have' factors. Simple ways of identifying Customer Value Add activities are:

a. Will the customer pay for this activity?
b. Does it put the customer in a frame of recommending our services to other folks?

Once the above process is done, we have a baselined process which would have minimum operation as well as wait time. This can then be mapped to the package of choice.

While browsing some of the other blogs@infosys, I saw a blog about how to reduce customizations. I am in agreement with the colleague of mine on the same and I feel once the BPR is done, the guidelines mentioned in the blog must be followed to arrive at a Lean ERP Solution with a reduced TCO. There would be times where we realize that automating an Operational task is not worth since the volumes are low or it requires human judgment. These are calls that we can take during the implementation while adopting a decision framework.
Although, I completely understand BPR is easier said than done with the resistance towards change and that's where the experience of industry experts coupled with organizational change management, tools such as Decision Frameworks, help in making the transition.

If you have been part of a green Field implementation and would like to share your BPR experiences, please do write your comments as part of the blog.

Posted by Abhishek Sabharwal at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

The previous blog entry on this topic provided an introduction to the realm of compliance and some of the key metrics with respect to BI. Click here to access the previous blog entry.

In this part, let us dwell on the importance of the data to be measured, extraction of such data and the standard KPIs for compliance.

Measurement of Data:

In view of the need to be vigilant of dubious transactions, any brokerage firm attaches immense importance to the analysis of data by its compliance officers. Without the aid of BI, the analysis of data is an onerous exercise for these officers. There could be millions of transactions daily, out of which a few transactions do not comply with the standards. In such a scenario, the firm should tap the BI infrastructure to analyze data precisely and make informed decisions.

Let us quickly understand the characteristics of a questionable transaction, through a few illustrative examples in the equity (stock) market.  Very frequently, we encounter the term 'cross' trading. Before we delve into an example, let me also introduce the basic concepts of a trade.

A client, who wants to trade in the market, operates an account with an intermediary. The intermediary typically has a portfolio manager who manages the accounts of clients and places their orders to obtain the best prices for their transactions.

Now, in the 'cross trade' example, suppose there are two clients C1 and C2 who want to trade in the same security X. The client C1 wants to buy the security at a price P1 and the client C2 wants to sell the same security at price P1. The broker B1 manages accounts for both clients C1 and C2. The broker can execute these opposite orders on the same security between these client accounts without recording the trade on the exchange. This type of a transaction is illegal in major stock exchanges and is considered 'cross trading'. In such a transaction there is a high likelihood that the clients did not get the best price.

Another example pertains to wash trading in which the purchase and sale has occurred without a change in ownership. Such a transaction can be executed by an investor simultaneously across two different brokerage firms where he/she has an account to create an appearance of substantial trading in the security to attract market interest. This in the parlance of the stock market is called a bubble.
 
ETL Logic and Key Metrics:

The overriding purpose of the ETL Jobs is to identify dubious transactions for further analysis of the compliance team. We will not explore the algorithms to detect such records in detail here, since this write-up is more related to the function than the BI technology used commonly. Using such an algorithm which scans millions of records and isolates these suspect transactions using a variety of conditions, we load the reporting layer of the warehouse. The dimensions in this warehouse can be trader, broker, customer, time and security or stocks.

A standard key metric is the number of such trades (cross, wash etc) done on any exchange for a trader/broker on a day or week. Another metric is the absolute value of such transactions which is symptomatic of the health of the equities market. The number of such dubious trades negatively correlates with poor compliance.

The function of reporting in this exercise entails allowing the compliance officers to access the data, besides providing different perspectives to the data based on different dimensions (attributes). Compliance officers can analyze data for an individual trader or broker and chart the trends for that trader. Using a comprehensive ad-hoc reporting platform like Oracle BI, the compliance team would be mainly involved with reporting on important metrics and using the metrics for capturing trends and analyzing them. Conditional formatting, trend analysis, forecasting and improving the existing data entry checks are the attractive features provided by the BI infrastructure. One more interesting and effective method is the creation of scheduled alerts. This feature can be configured to detect dubious transactions with high dollar amount and immediately send notifications to senior compliance officers on daily basis. This gives an extra edge to the compliance officers in taking effective and timely action.

Thus far we have only scratched the surface on possibilities with BI. The pervasive usage of BI helps strengthen the effectiveness of compliance and enforcement in line with regulations such as SOX, GLBA, and HIPPA.  In light of the growing demands on organizations for statutory compliance, a BI environment can significantly reduce the burden on staff concerned with this function and fortify their defense against costly repercussions on account of fraudulent or inappropriate behavior. It is the author's earnest belief that this discussion promotes the utility of BI in the area of compliance.

This article has been written by N P N Anand. Anand is a consultant with the Oracle Business Intelligence Practice at Infosys. His areas of interest include Packaged BI Applications.

Posted by Indivar Nayyar at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

One question that continues to baffle the program management community around Training delivery in large ERP implementation programs is when to deliver end user Training? The answer is probably not as straight as you may expect. Let's first discuss the constraints around this decision:

• Go Live Date: If there is a huge gap between Go Live Date and User Training, the user tends to forget what they learnt as during this period they have to continue using the legacy system and will not be able to unlearn some of the old practices and habits post go-live. On the other hand, if the training continues till the last date, you will not be able to make an apt decision towards user readiness and its implications on implementation Go No Go Decision.
  

• Availability of Users: Typically the entire User community would be engaged with Business as Usual activities before implementation. With Training, users will be engaged in sessions, thus how would the day to day activities be supported? Further, typically a month end (worst still would be Quarter/Year End) is where any loss of man days is intolerable. Lastly any planning around Training should avoid long weekends and hugely followed sports events that ensures that user's personal priorities are considered as well as travel costs are not high due to travel season...so a win-win for both....
• Varied Needs of Users: Even while planning sessions, organization needs to consider the variability amongst the different user groups and their unique training needs. A field Service agents or agents working from home office may be difficult to reach out to while we have to ensure that regular calls are not affected while training a Call Centre Employee. A more frequent user of the system would have to be given a much more elaborate training as compared to the ones who only use it infrequently or in  read only mode. Also need to consider remote users and external users' needs like supplier or customer training for portals. Accordingly the training schedule has to be worked out.
• Solution Readiness: With the end users, the biggest factor is Branding of the new solution. Organization can't go to end users and tell them the solution is not ready or you are still testing it. The solution for which they are being trained should be as close to production as possible. Unless this happens, there will be series of correction mails and a negative propaganda about the implementation which may put roadblocks towards the implementation. So, you may like to conduct training sessions post successful UAT. However, if set of users are involved in UAT, you have to plan training for them in advance.
• Availability of Prepared Trainers/Infrastructure (Instance, Conference Rooms etc): Continuing with the Branding theme, everything about the implementation has to be perfect in front of internal customers 'End Users'. The Trainers have to be top notch and comfortable with the solution being implemented as well as should be able to relate to the end user's day to day tasks using practical scenarios and data. Further, the playground instance should be up and functioning as equivalent to the Production instance as possible (particularly on the performance parameter). Even the conference rooms, projectors, laptops, refreshments etc should be well organized for the sessions. Any rush towards training without apt preparation may create more problems than resolve them.

Overall at a high level, we typically advise our clients to wrap up End User Training about a 2 or more weeks before cutover activities, allowing that gap for people to practice and get back in case of any doubts or in case of any refresher trainings. The start of training would depend on program to program, but we would advise that to begin once the complete solution is tested 99%. We typically begin conducting training somewhere near mid of UAT phase (UAT, super users and sample end users would have undergone training earlier).

If you'd like to share your experiences related to timing of the training and have any successful secrets to share, please let us know though this blog!

Posted by Nikhil Kumar at 5:55 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

In the light of changing market dynamics and with the technology moving at such a rapid stride, we wish to bring to the table some interesting facts about one of our favorite beverages, Coffee.

Roasted Coffee: Roasted coffee is basically the transformed green coffee beans when they have expanded and changed
in color, taste, smell and density. Roasting of coffee tends to reduce the stability of the green coffee and
hence it is always preferred to roast coffee where it would be consumed, to maximize the shelf life.

The coffee roasting process consists essentially of sorting, roasting, cooling, and packaging operations.
Following roasting, the beans are cooled and stabilized. This stabilization process is called degassing.
After degassing, the roasted beans are packaged, usually in light-resistant foil bags fitted with small
one way valves to allow gasses to escape while protecting the beans from moisture and oxygen.  Hence roasting of green beans and its storage in not only a science but an art that comes with its own set of challenges.

Deterrents to Storage of Roasted Coffee : Three variables determine how well roasted coffee can be stored safely before shipping. These three variables are
1. Humidity
2. Temperature
3. Warehousing conditions

The biggest enemies of roasted coffee are air and moisture. In order to cut the contact of coffee with these two, coffee is ideally stored in nitrogen flushed bags with one way valve. Nitrogen being an inert gas, does not affect coffee in any way and also cuts the contact of coffee with oxygen. Also, the one way valve will ensure that all the coffee gasses are out of the bags without letting oxygen in. The warehouse condition is maintained as cool and away from heat and light as temperature also kills the quality of coffee. Coffee begins to lose its freshness between 24 to 72 hours after roasting and hence the storage of roasted coffee is meant to be only for such periods. Roasted coffee is not stored for long and is quickly shipped out of the warehouse. It is grounded just before consumption to give the best flavor of freshly grounded coffee.

Indicators of Freshness for roasted coffee are:
1. Shiny Appearance - freshly roasted beans will have a glossy shine due to the oils still sitting on the surface of the bean.
2. Wonderful Aroma - the aroma of freshly roasted beans is wonderfully thick and intense.
3. Frothy Brew - known as the bloom, the coffee gasses released from freshly roasted beans will cause brew to froth as one pours on the water.
4. Full Flavor - freshly roasted coffee will have a full, complete flavor

Since it is very important to track the freshness of coffee once it is out off the roasting plant, the number of days the coffee can be stored becomes an important factor. This brings into picture the term "Shelf Life" of coffee. Shelf life is a very crucial factor in determining how long the roasted and packaged coffee can be stored in the warehouse once it is out of the production system. Shelf life basically is the number of days coffee can last before it reaches its expiry date. This can also be maintained in weeks.

Facets of Shelf Life of Coffee : Coffee beans that have been roasted have a shelf life of a few weeks if the coffee has been properly stored. Once the coffee is roasted and packed, it should be consumed within this time frame. That is the reason why it cannot be stored in the warehouse beyond that time. If it does not get shipped out before the shelf life is over, the coffee is unfit for consumption and has to be thrown away or blended back as an ingredient for fresh roasting. The coffee is roasted continuously in the roasting plant and is continuously packed and rolled out via the production belt. One batch of green coffee beans which has been put in the roaster will have the same production date and expiration date across all packets in which it is packed. But the packets would not be packed on the same day and hence would not be arriving in the warehouse for storage on the same day. This makes it very difficult as well as crucial to track the production and expiration dates of each coffee pallet which is arriving in the warehouse. There are many popular modes of inventory management that are prevalent for age management. Some of the common ones are FIFO, LIFO etc. Moreover, the FIFO (First in first out) picking and shipping convention has to be followed to pick the right coffee pallet for shipping to ensure the appropriate inventory rotation. In order to achieve optimum tracking of the coffee pallets in the warehouse, we need to evaluate the various ways and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Ways to Track shelf life of Coffee in Warehouse : There are mainly two ways which are followed across the globe to track the shelf life of roasted coffee in the warehouse before it is shipped out to the destination. These methods are:

1. Manual Inventory tracking
2. Lot tracking via sophisticated mobile devices

The Manual inventory tracking is mainly followed in smaller warehouses where it is easy to maintain the details of which pallet has arrived on what date. If the warehouse is small where the number of pallets arriving in the warehouse is not huge, it is possible to track them manually. Warehouse operators may choose to look at the "recall weeks of each pallet". Recall weeks is basically a parameter which tells about the number of weeks after the production date when the item should be pulled out from the shelves for discarding. When it comes to bigger warehouses, most of the times the shelf life tracking is performed via the "Lot" tracking. Lot number is an identifier which indicates a certain quantity of some product manufactured under conditions of production that are considered uniform. This helps in segregating lots based on damage conditions/ quality problems with finished product etc. An effective way to track a perishable item (in this case, roasted coffee) is looking at its production and expiration date, both of which may be tied to each other via an item's shelf life.

Attributes of Lot number : The first two attributes of lot number, i.e. the production date and expiration date of an item already got a mention above. These are important from the point of view of shelf life. Apart from that, the other important attributes are Manufacturer Identification and Country of Origin of the product. Players in the food and beverage industry have to operate under strict rules and regulations that are mandated by the law and government. For example, in the USA, agencies like FDA, FCC and USDA mandate that product cannot be shipped to certain countries without establishing the country of origin of the product. Similarly there are other Tax, Free Trade Agreement and Custom related requirements that necessitate the retailer to establish the country of origin. Similarly the corporate and supplier social responsibility guide the retailer to establish the product's manufacturer identity. The underlying intention is to ensure that the manufacture of the product has not indulged in any malpractices. This translates into capturing these two additional pieces of information.

Comparison of various ways of tracking shelf life : Lot tracking is increasingly getting more popularity due to its effectiveness in tracking the shelf life. More and more coffee makers are now trying to maintain the lot numbers in their warehouses to track the storage of their coffee SKUs (stock keeping unit). In more sophisticated warehouses where sophisticated WMS is being deployed, the lot tracking is automated and intelligent, thus providing better efficiency and speed to the warehouse folks.

Conclusion : So it can be seen that roasted coffee is a highly sensitive product and is highly prone to getting damaged if exposed even slightly to external factors like humidity, moisture etc. Storing the coffee in the perfect conditions and facilitating the shipping of coffee from the warehouse within the permissible limits of shelf life demands a very efficient tracking system in place. Lot tracking fulfills that demand and helps manufacturers of roasted coffee reduce the levels of wastage and stocking expired products in the warehouse. This trickles down to shipping fresh and good quality coffee to the stores and finally satisfied customers.

Authors:
Amit Sinha, Lead Consultant, ES Oracle
Sneh Tarang Randev, Sr. Associate Consultant, RETL

Posted by Amit Sinha at 2:48 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Typical implementations would tread the wrong path by training their end users on all the modules/ functionalities being implemented using the traditional system based classroom session training approach, assuming that this will make them ready for the implementation. Some of these organizations, who are more mature, may leverage similar approach, however by grouping their user community by departments and having some amount of hands on training. But the fact is, the both ways lack the vision and approach towards a successful Training Program. Even before any training activity is initiated, it's important to understand the target end user population, their current skill sets, the impact of the system changes on their day to day tasks and job responsibilities, and then only a strategy must be developed around Training.

Training Need Analysis (TNA), the first step towards a comprehensive Training strategy, aims at identification and analysis of the various training needs for the end user community. It will highlight the gaps between knowledge and skills currently available with workforce and the capabilities required to perform their jobs at an acceptable level after the introduction of packaged application. The outcomes of the TNA influences key decisions about the training program and will aid in realizing the benefits and long term goals associated with the implementation.

The complete analysis is based on three dimensions:

• Organizational Dimension provides an understanding the overall program objectives, charter, in-scope activities, departments/regions being impacted, timelines, project organization and overall organization change management processes of the implementation program.  The analysis point towards learning's from other transformational programs undertaken, workforce change adoption and motivation levels and overall training needs. The dimension seeks inputs from senior management and key stakeholders of the implementation program
• Business Process Dimension provides details on As Is business processes, how the To-Be world would be, what are the process deviations and how those deviations are being handled (process changes or system changes). The assessment is related to the current tasks performed by the end users, the process of performing those tasks and identification of gaps between the current and future skills required in the To Be environment. The dimension is focused towards process SMEs, functional analysts and Super Users to get the required information
• Role Dimension brings in clarity about how far the current roles are different from the future roles in the organization. How much are the KPIs and incentives different from the current world? This assessment will help in understanding the various roles of the organization which will help in creating of Role Based high level curriculum. Through understanding of KPIs and Incentives, it also is clear which areas to focus for a particular group. The dimension seeks inputs from Organization Change Management team and the HR Lead involved in the project

Typical Training Need analysis would include the individual dimension instead of Role Dimension since the numbers of users impacted are far fewer as compared to a transformation program. And that's one of the primary reasons, a higher level, "Roles in the future world', form a dimension for Transformation program TNA. Typical Oracle medium size implementations would have 50+ roles. Given the time, it may not be feasible to have interviews and data collection with the each individual in the department, however the organization needs to go ahead using a sample work stream wise Roles for analysis towards Training Needs.

As a result of TNA, various matrices are prepared and will be used to create training and resource plans as well as identify training requirements for individual user groups and roles for the implementation.

Please write back with comments to share your experiences on training need analysis for large implementation or business transformation programs.

Posted by Abhishek Sabharwal at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

In my last blog Still waters run deep - Poor User Adoption may cost you your ERP Implementation.. I discussed at length about the importance of ERP training and the need for organizations to focus more on user adoption.  As ERP Implementations mature and grow, the focus on user training also intensifies. While many organizations have started realizing the benefits of user adoption, they often struggle to determine the right budget and the right approach to achieve it.

There are numerous challenges or key decisions in front of an ERP Program Manager at the start of implementation.

1. Which training methodology and approach should be adopted to support the business needs and long term objectives of the implementation?
2. How much budget should be planned for overall training program?
3. What technologies, tools or vendors should be selected to impart the Training?
4. What will be the touch points between the Implementation and Training Program?
5. How to develop a user documentation that is easy to create and maintain?
6. What kind of standardized content needs to be prepared to handle varied skilled end users for similar processes like from sophisticated planners or engineers to shop floor labor force?
7. How do I address the audit compliance requirements while developing training content?
8. When training delivery should be conducted to end users in the implementation cycle?
9. How many days of training delivery should be planned?
10. How to handle diversity challenges like multi-language and localized content for global roll-outs?
11. How to deliver training content to all concerned employees so that they can access it when and where they need it, based on their job functions and roles?
12. How do I deliver training - Instructor led Classroom training, or Computer Based Online training, or Job Aids, or All?
13. How to plan for delivery of training content to local and remote users as well as external entities like customers and suppliers?
14. How to plan 'Post-go-live' support, and training for new-hires and transfers?
15. How to measure that delivered training effectiveness in meeting the business objectives?

These and many more.... some of these are challenges while others are key decisions that an organization needs to take as part of its Training Strategy, resulting from a comprehensive Training Need Analysis of the organization and individuals.

So, the next questions that arises is - What is Training Strategy and what should it consist of?

Training Strategy describes the need, scope definition, methodology and approach of the training program within the ERP system, with reference to the transaction flows and business processes that impact the end user community. This must streamline the overall training process and in turn help achieve desired quality and reduce rework during content development, as well as ensure effective training delivery, finally leading towards an improved adoption rate. The objectives of overall training program must be Process focused and role based training for end users.

A structured approach to training along with clearly defined entry and exit criteria, well articulated roles and responsibilities, various deliverables and sign off procedures, selection of appropriate tools for content development, and methodical evaluation of training delivery methods for each group of users are some of the critical success factors in the sustained end user adoption of the delivered system. The strategy also reflects the guiding principles, assumptions and dependencies that ultimately shape and drive the overall approach.

In my next blog, I will talk about best practices around training program in Oracle implementations and how we can address the specific challenges.

If you have any ERP training and overall strategy related challenges to share with us, please drop by with your comments and feedback!
  

Posted by Nikhil Kumar at 5:02 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

To get an answer to the question raised in my previous blog Go Lean (Part 1), first we need to understand the primary reasons why organizations tend to develop custom code in typical Oracle ERP implementation program, and then what are the best practices or guiding principals they can adopt to go leaner.

Why Organization Customize?	Best Practices/Guiding Principles to Go LEAN!!
Lack of industry specific processes and features in the vanilla ERP solution	For the industry specific missing functionality, explore the edge products, and also partner with Oracle to work out a joint case to incorporate the required features as part of their next release or major patch set
ERP vanilla functionality cannot satisfy many unique business process requirements of the organization that business users are practicing in legacy system since many years, so numerous gaps get identified for customization during solution design phase	In case of major gap, the implementation team should instead of saying direct 'No' to business, explain them about how ERP will meet their requirements through alternate solution approaches. Understand their requirements and vanilla functionality gap, perform detailed analysis, and come up with multiple possible solution options with pros and cons, and take collective decision to choose an option which is not as pervasive as a direct customization (seems more effort, but worth it!!!)
Implementation team members avoid change in As-Is business process of legacy system, and introduce changes in ERP standard business processes to maintain status quo with business user	To avoid such scenarios, conduct the solution design workshops to bring functional consultants, business analysts and power users (business key stakeholders who has authority to make decisions for their departments) together to review the overall solution and to make conscious effort towards vanilla ERP
Integration of  the ERP system with all the available legacy applications and external systems, leads to development of multiple inbound and outbound Point to Point (P2P) interfaces	Evaluate and implement the appropriate Middleware solution to address integration requirements with plethora of legacy applications and external systems to avoid development of Point to Point  (P2P) interfaces
Development and enhancement of custom management and operational reports within ERP system	Evaluate and strategize towards an integrated Reporting platform or data warehouse at the beginning of the ERP program for all the management and operational reporting requirements, and avoid any new custom report within ERP. Only reports that need  dynamic data from transactional system might be considered in ERP, else always push it to the chosen reporting platform
Addressing the specific needs of individual department/business unit over and above a common ERP business process cutting across business lines	Always perform detailed To-Be process mapping with elaborated fit-gap analysis and business process reengineering with the objective of breaking the silo approach of departments and drive the business community towards a common platform and standardized processes
Inability to deal with specific statutory or regulatory requirements for the geographical regions  being rolled-out	Explore availability of region specific localizations of Oracle ERP to address statutory or regulatory requirements. If not available, raise Enhancement Request with Oracle Support

 Beyond what is stated above, there are certain ground rules which the organization must follow to go leaner on customizations:

• Ensure senior management commitment and executive sponsorship to keep the ERP vanilla. And, this message needs to trickle down from them to all levels. There has to be strong questioning by the management in case of any major process change which results in heavy customizations
• Ensure to implement robust Decision Making framework like preparation of Key Decision Document for foundation element and critical major design solution, maintaining key decision logs etc.
• Ensure effective change management processes, awareness and focused approach of organization towards vanilla implementation by keeping the right mix in PMO (Program Management Office) comprising key business stakeholders as well as IT leads

For more on this topic, remain tuned for my next blog. If you'd like to share your viewpoints/experiences on this topic, please write back through the comments section on this blog for sharing your learning for a Leaner ERP.

Posted by Nikhil Kumar at 1:04 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Oracle WMS tries to optimize the material storage and handles material movement within warehouses and storage units based on the business constraints for a facility. By implementing Oracle WMS, a Warehouse Manager can walk within the four walls of the warehouse to execute material transactions. These include:

1. Inbound Transactions,
2. Outbound Shipments and
3. Inventory movement

and avail of the other value added services in Oracle eBusiness Suite (EBS), through hand held RF (Radio Frequency) devices which are well integrated with EBS.

Oracle WMS is tightly integrated with other Oracle distribution & manufacturing modules and enables significant transactions of these modules through third party hand held devices / tools. The Transactions in the shop floor / warehouses via those devices is updated in Real time. There are many organizations world wide that follow the Lean Manufacturing way of doing business and handling operations.Lean Manufacturing is an operational strategy aimed at achieving the shortest possible turn around time by eliminating waste and storage needs. The basic idea behind the lean manufacturing concept is to reduce the turn around time between a customer order and shipment as compared to the actual production, while minimizing the storage needs. Some of the established characteristics of lean manufacturing processes are:  

1. Single-piece production and Repetitive order characteristics
2. Just-In-Time materials management
3. Short cycle times and Continuous flow work cells

There are business scenarios where, due to space constraints within the warehouse there are requirements to perform immediate receiving upon getting the goods from the shipping location.Oracle supports two modes of receiving process

1. Standard: These is when receiving is done by entering the shipment number and then for each item/lot combination, the item, lot and quantity is provided.
2. Express:  In this case the receiving is done by entering only the Shipment Number.  All item/lot/quantity combinations associated with that shipment are then automatically received.

According to standard Oracle functionality, Express Receipt may only be used if the material being received has been packed into an LPN prior to receipt (at the time of shipment). But it could so happen that the material is not packed into an LPN at the time of shipment because the source organization is not a WMS organization and therefore has no LPN capability.As an outbound counterpart, Directship is a unique functionality provided by Oracle WMS. This feature is suitable for organizations that have high volume repeated order fulfillment or in a Just in Time production concept. This can be alternatively referred to as Lean Manufacturing. This automates the shipping components of the order fulfillment. Following are the typical stages of a sales order line under the WMS Directship scenario:

1. Entering
2. Booking/Scheduling
3. Reservation

There is no separate need for Pick Releasing the sales order line. The order after getting booked and scheduled can be ship confirmed from Oracle WMS Mobile Applications. Therefore after the sales order line is reserved following are the other life stages for the sales order line:

1. Delivery Creation for the sales order line (Load Truck functionality of WMS)
2. Close Truck Functionality (Trip Creation for the Delivery)
3. Move to Yard (Trip planning or firming)
4. Ship Confirmation (Trip Closure)
5. Close (Sales order line is closed, inventory interfaced, AR interfaced)

The direct shipping needs a dock door appointment and a corresponding staging lane assignment. Therefore for a particular sales order/ delivery a dock door must be assigned otherwise direct ship is not possible. In a Lean Manufacturing scenario the material is completed off to an assembly line, ready to be loaded onto trucks for shipment. The assumption that forms the premise of pick release is that material is on hand in a warehouse storage location when the warehouse is ready to begin processing for shipment. This does not hold true for these scenarios. The additional step to pick material and deliver it to the staging lane is not needed in such cases. That's mostly due to the fact because the material is brought to an outbound preparation area (where packing and shipment preparation is done) directly from manufacturing zone, and hence direct ship is most preferable for such scenarios. This feature of shipping without picking is not applicable to all business scenarios but only to a few of the specific scenarios as stated above. All orders can be directly shipped only when associated to an LPN.

Posted by Amit Sinha at 4:40 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )