Infosys-Oracle Blog

A few reasons why customers prefer to stick to the "Build" direction of BI are listed below:

• Source data spread across multiple legacy applications
• No immediate roadmap for migrating the legacy platforms to the standard ERP or CRM packages from the market leaders
• Unavailability of common definitions of various metrics across the organization
• Lack of Business user preparedness for moving out of traditional reporting platform to an EDW
• BI solutions already existing in silos and no strategy of revamping the entire platform
• Challenges in history data migration into packaged BI models

Packaged BI solutions provide seamless integration with the standard ERP or CRM packages from market leaders. Having said that, there could still be certain factors that need to be considered before going for a packaged BI solution on top of the standard ERP or CRM applications. Standard ERP implementations are ideally considered for process improvements in an organization. But there could be situations where the business may not want to deviate from their existing business processes and plug heavy customizations into the ERP applications, there by having to apply the same level of customization into the packaged BI also. It should be noted that these customizations are highly likely to be requirements for analysis as well, as they are built in the source for a specific purpose. These customizations can be costly and along with the cost involved to buy the product, this could turn out to be more than building just what is needed.

In case of legacy applications, there wouldn't be any way to populate the prebuilt analytics. There are universal adapters provided which can reduce the cost or effort compared to doing a complete build but the perception is that the reduction is lesser than desired. In scenarios where a combination of both packaged ERP and legacy applications are used, the above points would still be applicable. In addition to this, there could also be Data Quality or standardization issues, which would impact both Build and Buy options.

The above mentioned points are few of the criteria, based on my experience, which could drive the decision towards a custom BI solution and there can be several others. Several large organizations, including the ones I am working on, are frequently kicking off custom BI projects. Despite all the benefits brought in by packaged BI solutions, I feel the above listed scenarios are quite common in various organizations and could tilt the decision towards building Custom BI solutions.

Hence, it is my view that 'Custom BI solutions are going to exist for several more years'. I would be interested to hear your opinions/ experiences on this topic. I would also share few more thoughts in my next blog entry on key success factors in custom BI implementations.

- Ravi S Kandarpa

Ravi S Kandarpa has over 12 years of IT experience. He has worked on several Business Intelligence implementations for leading telecom and manufacturing clients and has experience on various Business Intelligence tools. Currently Ravi is a Senior Technology Architect with Oracle BI practice in Infosys.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 5 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Responsive supply chains are no more just a jargon. More and more organizations are adopting this route in order to stay competitive in this era of globalization. Last few years have seen economic downturn and thereby a trend of consolidations. There have been many a mergers and acquisitions.

Let us consider a high technology and discrete manufacturing organization for our discussion purpose. Demand volatility is most certainly the major impediment that the high technology players are confronted with. Supply chain volatility and particularly demand volatility, is on the rise, driven by increased global competition and changes in buying behavior. Consumer is the king as they all have said since time immemorial and consumer engagement pattern is redefined each day. Consumers expectations continue break their bars each day and their brand loyalty continuously decreases. Demand is growing for products specific to individual local markets, adding new layers of supply chain complexity. There is also a threat that the organizations of today are facing. And that is the threat of cannibalization. How can we forget the Motorola's of the world whose own products have cut throat of their siblings.

Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity - not a threat. Just as energy is the basis of life itself and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress. The blood line of high-technology companies is bringing new products to market. But the shrinking design cycle times and explosive global competition combined with a shrinking market window have been the major factors contributing to the shrinking margins. The pie is shrinking and the stakes are getting higher each day. So in effect the shortening product life spans and rapid go-to-market are on the rise.

These organizations are trying to position themselves better against their peer by differentiation. Newer and better products are introduced each day. But how long do they stay. High Tech Manufacturing organizations operate in strict regulatory and compliance environment. For example business entities selling goods or services in Taiwan need to issue a Government Uniform Invoice (GUI) to the buyer at the time of purchase, as stipulated in the Time Limit for Issuing Sales Documentary Evidence section of Taiwan's Value-added and Non-value-added Business Tax Act.

Let us draw our focus on the Asian markets just for a moment. All points mentioned above are apt and relevant. Consumer's brand loyalty is diminishing with so many players in the market that can offer the same product for cheaper rates. Customer switching cost is really low and customer order cancellations are very common.

A High Tech organization that operates in this part of the world deals more in delivery orders than a traditional sales order. A delivery order is a logical grouping of a number or customer order lines that meet a pre-specified or dynamically chosen grouping criteria. The deliveries are released for picking and shipping at the very past moment after customer has granted its acceptance. These are simulatable functionality in Oracle EBS over and above the standard delivery groping criterions.

IT has to follow the business and business redefines the IT. In order to meet the business imperatives, technology imperatives need to be aligned.

Posted by Amit Sinha at 1:47 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

When an organization engages in systematic, purposeful acts, using and stretching its abilities to the maximum, it cannot help but feel positive and confident abut itself. I firmly believe that by stretching yourself beyond your perceived level of confidence you accelerate your development of competence. It holds good equally good for an organization that is a living individual.

Responsive supply chains are the key tenets of success for any organization in this competitive world. Even profitable organizations need to continuously initiate a new process of transformation to position them for success in this shifting landscape. In the consumer packaged goods-to-retail supply chain, the highest level of shelf-level stocks outs in grocery stores is during the peak shopping period. One of the biggest challenges to transforming into a Responsive Supply Chain is developing an understanding of how to process information coming from multiple levels on both the buy and sell side about what is happening right now. This is radically different from the hierarchical, linear flow of information.

On Demand WMS can help achieve the responsiveness in supply chain that is so important for a world class organization.

Let us consider the example of the food service and QsR industry. The success in the food service business is measured by the timeliness and quality of the end products. Legal and custom compliance also mandate the ability for expiration and lot tracking is for players in this industry. Running an efficient food service operation requires tracking fresh ingredients and perishable food inventory. Organizations need to remain flexible and adaptable to ensure that all recipes and preparations are executed and delivered with finesse. QsR players need to ensure food safety and should be prepared in the event of recalls. This requirement not only increases visibility and long-term profitability, but protects your company's reputation.

On Demand WMS delivers complete control for food service operations by eliminating manual data entry, countless paperwork and any guesswork in determining what food is in stock. Designed to enhance stock and material visibility and control, On-Demand WMS system updates your food inventory levels as recipes are processed. This allows you to remain in control and on time. And since many an On-Demand WMS are web-based solutions, business can see and control their entire food service inventory from anywhere at anytime of the day.

Change is the only constant as we all know. Organizations have to evolve and step up to the pressing demands of the global ecosystem.

Posted by Amit Sinha at 4:33 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Social media has proliferated at an electric speed and social media platforms have touched millions across the world. More than 8% of the world population is now on Facebook and more than 40 million tweets are made every day on Twitter. Consequentially, social media has made internet a much more collaborative place and the amount of data available on the web space has increased exponentially.

Amidst all these happenings, some folks are sensing a giant value creation opportunity. This opportunity is created on two accounts. One, due to the sheer volume of content getting generated on social media platforms. And, second, potential that this data holds for getting transformed into business critical insights. So, do social media look like being the next big lever for business intelligence? Well, many would say a resounding YES!

Now, based on this background, I will try to touch upon three basic questions:

• How can transformation of social media data create value for organizations?
• What differentiates social media data from other sources of data?
• How can Social Media data be transformed into actionable insights?

How can transformation of social media data create value for organizations?

Understanding a customer's mind is one thing that has been at the top of the agenda for marketers around the world. Social media data coming in form of twitter tweets, Facebook comments, discussion forum reviews etc is a rich source of data pointing to people's perceptions, reactions, sentiments, and feedback about organizations and their products. This can provide organizations a peep into their customers' minds thus giving them a chance to understand and serve them better. Eventually better customer understanding and service will lead to better customer acquisition and retention. Superior revenues and ROIs will be a logical consequence.

What differentiates social media data from other sources of data?

Social Media data is probably superior to other data sources in more ways than one. This data is enormous yet inexpensive. This data comes in real time from real people. And finally, I believe this data is perhaps the most authentic reflection of a customer's mind since it comes out voluntarily. Nobody is forced to write a product review, it's always voluntary. Neither are comments on a product's page on Facebook or Twitter out of compulsion. These factors overcome the limitations of traditional data collection methods like questionnaires and interviews which suffered from drawbacks of reach, cost and receptivity.

How can Social Media data be transformed into actionable insights?

Understandably, sophisticated tools are required to carry out this transformation. To start with, any social media intelligence tool gathers all the relevant information from various social media platforms. Owing to the noisy nature of this space, hunting for relevant information is a challenge for all such tools. The next step would be to organize the data into different buckets based on geography, demography, time etc. Techniques like textual analytics are then used to comprehend each segment and thus gain valuable and timely insights about people's reactions, brand reputations, latest market buzz, key influencers, opinion leaders and so on.

In part 2 of this blog, I will touch upon some of the challenges that exist in transformation of social media data, some prominent social media intelligence tools in the market and finally a few case studies where analysis of social media data have benefitted the organizations.

- Karan Chadha

Karan Chadha is an Associate Consultant at Infosys. He is a part of Business Intelligence practice and specializes in OBIEE. His interests lie in consulting and pre-sales activities across the practice.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 4:42 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 4 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Oracle Coherence is nothing but concept of clustered data management through Caching. Coherence provides database caching, HTTP session management, grid agent invocation and distributed queries. Coherence supports many topologies for clustered data management. Each of these topologies helps in improving performance, fault-tolerance etc.,

With clustering mechanism, Oracle Coherence ensures there is no single point of failure or single point of bottleneck for the applications. It provides automatic scale out of servers, at any point of time, we can add new servers to the cluster and the data will be evenly re-distributed with the new members. Every data object in the memory has a back-up on another server of the cluster which helps in automatic high availability of the data.

Coherence provides several cache implementations like Local Cache which is Local on-heap caching for non-clustered caching. Replicated Cache for small, read-heavy caches, Distributed Cache for linear scalability for both read and write access. Data is automatically, dynamically and transparently partitioned across nodes. The distribution algorithm minimizes network traffic and avoids service pauses by incrementally shifting data. Near Cache to Provide the performance of local caching with the scalability of distributed caching.

Coherence has several options for data storage like On-heap for fastest option, though it can affect JVM garbage collection times, NIO RAM--No impact on garbage collection, though it does require serialization/ De-Serialization, File-based--Uses a special disk-optimized storage system to optimize speed.

Coherence supports various types of caching like Read-Through, Write-Through, Refresh-Ahead and Write-Behind caching.

With this we come to an end of a short glimpse of Oracle Coherence Introduction.

Posted by Anu Samantha at 4:09 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

'Build first integrate later' approach leads to heterogeneity and application silos. You need to forbid this quickly before it becomes out of control. An independently designed application, what we call monolithic is a self contained world and a "private data silo" rather than part of a larger system of applications that work together. Applications like this results in unwarranted integration complexities and issues later if not sooner.

Architects with a good vision have started automating end-to-end business processes across lines of business. They reengineer, redefine and construct a unified business platform through composite applications. So how do they build a seamless interoperable platform to allow application to application integration? The solution is - adopt SOA, Service-Oriented Architecture.

SOA enables end-to-end automation of key business processes on an integrated platform. SOA offers high reusability of services across loosely coupled applications allowing you to build a composite platform. Enhanced flexibility, as a result of application independent services, also enables smooth upgrades of applications in response to constantly changing customer demands.

The large product vendors like Oracle are in the front line of this vision, with the Oracle SOA Suite providing the most comprehensive, proven and integrated tool kit to build composite applications. Organizations that are using Oracle based applications can utilize this product to build unified processes quickly.

Next time when you build a new application which is moderately large for a new or existing process keep in mind few vital things as below:

1. Have you analyzed the business process end to end including the interfaces?
2. Have you insured that interfaces will be built in such a way that they are easy to change in future with less efforts?
3. Have you analyzed that interfaces that you are building are going to be reused in near immediate future by other applications ?
4. Have you ensured that if there is application to application data exchange there is no tight coupling between them?

In the nutshell do not procrastinate your integration worries, address them from day one with scalable and flexible options like using service oriented architecture. I would like hear your views on this subject.

Posted by Gaurav Sharma at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Consider the following business scenario: A receiving clerk in a warehouse is inspecting and receiving material from a supplier. Quality tests find one attribute just outside the defined acceptance limits. This is a case for acceptance under deviation and a quick decision has to be made if the lot should be accepted under deviation.

The user looks up the open receipt in the application, the details of the receipt including supplier name, Item name, quantity etc show up. Apart from this, in the same transactional screen, the user is also able to see the Supplier Score till last month for the supplier in question. He is also able to see the acceptance status of the last 5 deliveries from the supplier for the item in question. Apart from this he also able to see the on-hand quantity projections for the item for the next week in the same screen. With all the above contextual and instantly available information, within the process flow, the users are able to take a quick decision on this case of acceptance under deviation. The scenario described above would be a reality in Oracle's Fusion applications where Business Intelligence and Analytics would be always available.

Fusion Applications are the soon to be launched, next generation applications from Oracle which will include the best features and functionality from EBS and other applications from Oracle like Siebel, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards. Analytics are an integral part of Fusion Applications; it's pervasive and embedded within process flows of Fusion Applications.

Fusion application Business Intelligence comprises of the following.

• Oracle Transactional BI (OTBI) is real time self service reporting directly off Fusion Apps data. It has pre-packaged content covering major Fusion applications.
• Oracle BI Applications (OBIA) is a prepackaged data warehouse enabling historical analysis and cross domain insight.
• Specialized Domain specific Analytics include financial statements, sales territory planning and Project Performance built on Essbase technology. White space analysis built on Real Time decisions and Oracle Data Mining Technologies.
• Oracle BI Publisher reports are also available; these are out of box content within Fusion applications to cater to pixel perfect and highly formatted report requirements.

Fusion applications brings together the best of functionality from all the applications that Oracle now owns on a next generation service oriented technical architecture. In similar fashion Oracle has leveraged multiple BI technologies assimilated from acquisitions to provide a seamless BI experience for users of Fusion Applications. Some of the key features include a consistent user experience across Fusion applications and BI screens and identical visualization components used throughout. A common semantic model which unifies definition of key entities and calculations like Customer, Invoice, Date, Account etc. There is tight integration with Fusion Applications functional architecture like flex fields, trees and security. This BI solution has a low cost of ownership due to easier installation, functional setups and systems management. BI in Fusion Applications will be installed and setup together with the Application. It will not be an afterthought or a separate project after the Application Go-Live.

Coming back to the business scenario described in the beginning, the supplier score is historical in nature and would be sourced from Oracle BI Applications (OBIA), acceptance status of last few deliveries will come from Oracle Transactional BI (OTBI) as this is intra Day real time data, On-hand quantity projections would come from specialized domain specific Planning Applications. All this information would converge to a point in the process flow where a decision needs to be made. It will also be presented in intuitive Web 2.0 style user interfaces. This will raise the bar for information expectations for business users to a new level.

In my next blog entry, I will discuss the different access paths for Analytics in Fusion Applications including the central BI content catalog...please stay tuned.

- Sourish Chatterjee

Sourish has 12+ years of collective industry experience. His IT experience spans consulting, product management and quality functions in the area of  pre-packaged BI Applications. At present, Sourish is working as a Lead Consultant with the Oracle BI Practice of Infosys.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 7:18 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

One side - primarily IT folks - argued that the email id for an individual should be single and mastered at the enterprise level; and the same id should be used for all communication purposes like Campaign emails, Invoice / Billing communication, Service issues, etc. This is similar to the way one would master the other attributes of a customer like name, address, etc. The rationale was that email is a communication channel like mailing addresses and phone numbers and typically we have a 'primary' address or phone numbers to 'best' reach the customer.

The other side - consisting of Sales & Marketing teams - argued that each department should maintain its own version of the email id for the same individual. Sales did not want Marketing to overwrite the data gathered by Sales reps; Marketing did not believe that Sales gathered any meaningful data in the first place. In short, both Sales & Marketing believed what they each had was the best and was wary of losing it to the other team.

It is an interesting debate, isn't it?

My opinion is this:

• Email ids serve very different purposes to different teams and hence can be different for different teams. Marketing sees email ids as a vehicle primarily for distributing commercial content like advertising, promotions, etc. through campaigns, whereas other departments see them as a vehicle primarily for transactional or relationship content.
• Because of this key difference, different teams treat emails differently. For instance, Marketing would not think twice to switch to a different email id if it sees a better chance of reaching the contact through that email. Sales and other teams, however, would probably want to stick to what the contact provided as the 'official' communication id for sending content related to billing, invoicing, etc.
• And there are legal implications (CAN SPAM laws, for instance) that one has to keep in mind for distributing commercial vs transactional content.
  

Hence, I believe that there is no such thing as 'Enteprise Email Id', in this context. Trying to force fit a one-email-fits-all solution will likely not work. Of course, one can come up with other ways of handling the problem like, for instance, leaving the ownership of the single email id with the Marketing team when the contact is still a prospect and transfering that to the Sales team once Sales starts talking to the contact.

What do you think? Will be glad to hear if you have a different view point.

Posted by Alex Rishi Sankar at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

- Gaurav Gupta and Indivar Nayyar

OBIEE 11g was launched in July and the software became GA a couple of months back (in August 2010). This release marks one more step in Oracle EPM consolidated product roadmap. For this release, Oracle has focused on 2 basic tenets: Innovation and Integration.

New innovative features have been incorporated and are backed by strong integration with disparate applications, source systems and Fusion middleware architecture resulting in integrated user interface offering streamlined experience to end users. At Infosys, we have explored 11g's new features and installation and upgrade process and would be detailing them out in a series of blogs on OBIEE 11g. This entry will focus on providing a high level overview of the new functionalities incorporated in OBIEE 11g.

Innovation: OBIEE 11g has incorporated new applications and features that empower end user to have exhaustive view of their businesses delivered as required.

• Scorecard and Strategy Management
  This is a performance management tool by which an organization can create objectives and initiatives that will form its strategy. Organization can then assign KPI's to its objectives and initiatives for measuring progress and performance. It empowers business user to articulate, monitor and communicate integrated strategy roadmap of organization to all the stakeholders.
• Actionable Intelligence and Alerts
  It empowers business user to invoke business processes and trigger workflows based on events identified through reports, dashboards and scorecards. It delivers on functionality of 'Guided Analytics' and provides for actionable insights to the user.
• Interface improvements
  Drill in place (instead of drill down to new view), presentation hierarchical columns, sliders for graphs and gauges, support for ragged, skip and unbalanced hierarchies, map view integration with NAVTEQ, Home Page (instead of My Dashboard as default page) with Recent and Most Popular Dashboards/ reports and full text search capability are some of the key improvements in the user interface of OBIEE 11g.
• BI Publisher
  It stands in stark contrast with previous versions in terms of architecture as well as functionality. It has segregated data model from report definition as separate object, thus making it reusable across different reports. It also allows for online creation and editing of reports and templates that removes dependency from traditional editors and allows for inclusion of rich UI features and standardization in reports across organizations. With its new data model editor that allows for federated queries across multiple data sources, it needs to be seen if it can act in itself, as an alternative to OBIEE 11g.

 Integration: OBIEE 11g integrates with disparate systems, applications and devices, thus delivering efficient strategic to operational reporting.

• Fusion Middleware (FMW) Integration
  Integration with Fusion Middleware brings with it major changes in architecture and host of new features provided by FMW. OBIEE 11g now boasts of new robust security architecture supported by identity management module, centrally controlled configuration module and inclusion of Weblogic server as default web server.
• Hyperion and Essbase Integration
  OBIEE 11g delivers on union of BI analysis with Performance Management applications and is now integrated with Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Financial Management. Similarly, Essbase can now be used as a data source with 11g and the 10g limitations with Essbase have been sorted out (like support for ragged and unbalanced hierarchies, UDAs, Essbase MDX functions and flattening of hierarchies).
• Mobile BI
  Oracle promises to integrate OBIEE 11g with Blackberry (apart from current support for iPhone), thus expanding its reach to wide set of business community that relies on it as standard communication device. However current release of OBIEE 11g release is unclear on how to do so and hence users might need to wait for next release to be able to leverage this exciting feature.
• GIS Integration
  OBIEE 11g enhances its geo spatial intelligence reporting by integrating with maps provided by NAVTEQ (that powers Bing Maps). Location based intelligence can be very effective reporting technique for industries like retail, travel, hospitality, utilities etc.
• Search functionality
  OBIEE 11g is integrated with Enterprise search through Fusion Middleware, thus providing for secure search. It indexes all the Reports/Dashboards/KPI, thus enabling enhanced search capabilities across all functionalities.

OBIEE 11g promises to be next generation solution in BI space, with advanced technology and enriching features for end user. However, number of innovations and integration added to OBIEE 11g brings with it another set of challenges and questions. It still remains to be seen how developer community will react to the new architecture and functionalities of OBIEE 11g. Also, will the value additions that it brings in the new release result in fresh investments and product sponsorship from IT and Business managers.

Gaurav Gupta is an Associate Consultant in Infosys with over 3 years of IT experience. He is part of the Business Intelligence practice in Infosys and specializes in OBIEE with focus on the recent OBIEE 11g platform. His interest lies in consulting and sales support activities across BI domain.

Posted by Indivar Nayyar at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Many social services organizations provide varying services ranging from healthcare and billing to tax filing and helping people find jobs.  Greater transparency and operational efficiency is expected to achieve this. Oracle Policy Automation Solution provides enhanced customer centric service delivery through a consistent multi-channel approach.

This allows customers to determine the benefits or services for which they are eligible through a channel that suits them. In case of billing and tax filing it allows the subject matter experts to create rules and author business logic that is used in complex benefit calculations. When rules, rates, or user circumstances change, Oracle's policy automation solution allows organizations to quickly and accurately calculate benefits and obligations.  In case of employment agencies, OPA enables policy owners to author the screens and flow of the questionnaires that are deployed, so that end users can be assured they are given the most up to date information at all times.

OPA allows the business managers to model and deploy business rules in any language. It provides support for writing rules in 24 languages and more is on the way! The natural language rules engine allows business managers to work independently of IT staff as most of the case activities can be automated and configurable to changing demands. It separates technical hand from business process modeling thereby providing flexibility to manage and implement rules dynamically based on customer needs.

Some of the major benefits of using Oracle Policy Automation Solution are:

·It absorbs the complexity of constantly changing policy rules.

·Improves communication across policy stakeholders

·Help end users to navigate complex rules, in terms that make sense to them

·Transform service delivery and reduce burden on call centers, drastically reducing costs

·Improve accuracy of advice provided by contact centers

·Support rule creation in natural languages.

Posted by Harsha Agarwal at 3:46 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Posted by Sean Leo Ryan at 6:48 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Per many researches conducted pan globe, companies worldwide, are realizing the benefits of rolling out standardized WMS processes across their national and global warehouses. Popularly referred to as WMS unification, this initiative is typically triggered from a need to streamline processes by extending best practices from the industry or within the organization to all the storage locations. This delves into the outline, benefits and implementation perspectives to design the "Right" WMS instance strategy for organizations having geographically distributed warehouses on the road to a WMS unification exercise. Hence the choice of an appropriate WMS for an organization will act as a positive catalyst and enabler.

A typical day in life of warehouse includes processes like Inbound Logistics, Inventory Control/Movement processes and Outbound logistics. We have moved beyond ages where organizations used to maintain islands of information to meet business needs. Rolling out standardized warehouse processes using unified WMS can help achieve economies of scale. We can use single WMS ecosystem to standardize the business processes that use RF devices talking to the legacy database. As they say there are many ways to perform an operation and there is a SMART way of performing the same operation.  These are "Simple Methods to Achieve Rapid Throughput".

The SMART Way Jig Saw brings together the building blocks of Strategy, Process, Organizational Change and IT Infrastructure. When all these blocks are married to each other we get a cohesion called a single WMS Ecosystem. An effective WMS Strategy leads to:
• Standardization
• Better Requirement Management
• Better Instance Management and
• Reduced TCO

More often than not an effective WMS unification exercise supports standardization, deployment of best business practices and provides end-to-end integration between business functions to enable faster go to market strategy. It gives an opportunity to standardize WMS processes and systems, reduce TCO and manage skills set- optimizes warehouse resources by advanced task management functionality. It also reduces integration points between enabling systems, guarantees consistent and continuous evolution to support business evolution and also enables shared services to allow organizations to predict, plan and respond to changes in business environment.

Therefore if organizations want to Grow Big While Staying Small- they need to adopt the SMART Way.

Posted by Amit Sinha at 5:43 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Oracle Financials suite in R12 allows you to be both locally and corporate compliant while increasing efficiencies by supporting to run your Accounting Center of Excellence (ACE). The core components of the Oracle R12 architecture that support establishing ACE for your organization are:

Accounting: Sub Ledger Accounting engine and Financial Accounting Hub can help define and consolidate the accounting rules at a central place

Centralize Transactions: Multi Org Acces Control (MOAC) functionality can help process sub ledger transactions for multiple units from a single responsibility

Centralize Period Close and Consolidation: Ledger Sets and Data Access Set functionality in General ledger helps process period end processes like Revaluation and Consolidation from a single responsibility while maintaining security

Centralize Accounting Set Ups : Definition Access Set functionality in General Ledger allows to secure your key set ups like Allocations, Report definitions at a centralized place by assigning them to a set of responsibilities

Benefits of ACE using Oracle R12

Centralized accounting policies
Scalable accounting system
Improved Efficiency
Reduced Costs
Frees senior finance executive to focus on strategic financial goals
Provides timely and accurate financial information and
Improved internal controls

Posted by Sachin Chitlange at 8:23 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )