Infosys-Oracle Blog

Firstly Exalytics is an analytical machine with in-Memory (TimeTen Database) capabilities, advanced visualizations, Columnar compression and hardware tuned for extreme performance. Depending on your appetite towards analytics, you can scale this machine to your needs and if still not satisfied Oracle gives you even better option to join it with your Exadata machine for even better peformance on the Oracle Database side of it with Exadata being tuned for RDBMS performance. Yes certainly it will be seperate license cost (separate SKU's) that you will have to shelve out.

Recently Oracle announced their entry into the Big Data World with Oracle Big Data Appliance which includes
1. An open source distribution of Apache Hadoop
2. Oracle NoSQL Database
3. Oracle Data Integrator Application Adapter for Hadoop
4. Oracle Loader for Hadoop
5. An open source distribution of R - for Big Data analysis

There's need for some bit of explaining about when and how those 3 machines will be used, as there overlaps in terms of capabilities like Cache management, in-memory database:
1. Oracle's design of those 3 appliances (4 actually if I include Exalogic too) is with idea of division of labour, distrubute analytical workload across appliance machines. The performance gains on analytics are possible only when caching is effective, & only if the data is in Exalytics DRAM the true performance gains can be realized
2. The hardware lock-in with Sun servers that Oracle's pushing for could be another decision factor for customers
3. The right use-cases of leveraging those 3 (or 4) boxes needs to be seen
4. One additional point to explore and ponder over would be how other vendor based tools would interface or fit with Exalytics - if that's a possibility

What is it competing against - SAP HANA (already in market for over a year: provides flexibility to choose their hardware), and IBM buying our Netezza in September 2010 building their integrated software-hardware appliances optimized for specific workloads (Smarter Systems initiative of IBM).

Interest space to watch how Oracle prices those appliances right, build right use-cases and agressive marketing strategy to penetrate with their in-memory TimeTen database. Keeping all doubts aside, end consumers are in for treat and sharpen their analytical capabilities with features which were never thought of possible before.

Will post more as we see the growth and progress of Exalytics and Oracle's Big Data Machine. Do share your experiences, challenges that you see in Big Data space.

Posted by Yogesh Bhatt at 6:38 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Guest post by
Mili Bhaskar, Consultant, Infosys

In the Part -1 of the blog, there was a brief discussion about some of the important Industry trends. This part throws light on how Oracle Fusion Financials Application can cater to the recent Industry needs.

Infosys Point of View

• Strategic Shift from scorekeeper to value adding Business Partner through Oracle Fusion Financials
  Oracle Fusion Financials Application leverages the cube functionality for storage, access and retrieval of high end data catapulting it to be a powerful dimensional calculation engine. The challenges faced in operational areas like collections, asset lifecycle management, receipt processing etc. are addressed through the dashboard concept. Functionalities like spreadsheet integration and Imaging Integration and analytical tools like Oracle Transaction Business Intelligence and Oracle Business Intelligence Applications have also helped in adding value to business with minimal cost.
• Proactive risk management-Business Agility through 'One Stop Source' through Oracle Fusion Financials
  Single posting engine in Oracle Fusion Financials helps to get consistent and accurate data from a single source with secure drill down. Single page view restricted through logon credentials in Oracle Fusion financials have work areas with Task panes providing links to specific tasks, watch lists, tagging, enterprise secure search and personalization functionalities which help in getting all critical information at one stop. Also, features like the Smart View, and Account Monitor provide an Integrated Business Analytical layer for better & faster decision making.
• Up-to-date with Ever-changing Regulatory Reforms and Policies through Oracle Fusion Financials
  The Sub Ledger Accounting engine in Oracle Fusion application helps in defining and maintaining accounting rules based on the organization's transactions and is capable of representing the same transaction differently in different books which fulfills statutory and regulatory reporting needs of the enterprise. New and enhanced functionalities like the secondary ledgers and the capability for alternate accounting meets the various GAAP reporting requirements.

• Scalable Global Shared Services Model through Oracle Fusion Financials
  The reference data sharing functionality supports operations for multiple ledgers, business units etc. and reduce the time required to create new business units. Information like sales methods, transaction types, and payment terms are shared across business units and triggered by the reference data model of Setid.The enterprise function design functionality defines explicitly your service providers and clients and the relationships the business units share. The Allocations engine feature coupled with master data management and role based dashboards as part of the Oracle Fusion accounting hub adds value to the shared services model and helps in streamlining business functions like trading community architecture.
• Effective Mergers and Acquisitions through Oracle Fusion Financials
  Superior architecture of Oracle Fusion Financial Accounting Hub helps in streamlining and performing consistent accounting for data coming from varied applications during mergers and acquisitions.Neverthless, companies which have complex consolidation requirements arising out of challenges like joint ventures or multicurrency analysis may use Oracle Fusion Accounting Hub in conjunction with Oracle Hyperion Financial management to attain comprehensive reporting capabilities.

Conclusion
Oracle Fusion Financials does offer a comprehensive functionality package to cater to various organizations demands, however, certain features like advanced country specific localizations, budgetary controls would be available in next releases. Overall the finance function value adds that Oracle Fusion Financials brings forth is very promising and the ERP package is all set to take on the next generation business challenges.

Note: I would like to specifically mention Giriraj Somani, Principal Consultant at Infosys for his contribution in the blog.

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Guest post by
Hari Ram, Senior Systems Engineer, Infosys

Oracle Hyperion Essbase provides the best of multidimensional database capabilities in terms of performance and features. The Essbase lovers and existing users may believe that Essbase is sufficient enough for their planning, budgeting and forecasting requirements. Hence most planning applications still exist on Hyperion Essbase instead of Hyperion Planning - the centralized MS Excel and Web-based planning, budgeting, and forecasting solution from Oracle's Hyperion Suite of Products.

Hyperion Planning & Essbase

Hyperion Planning uses Essbase as the database engine to store the numeric data and dimensions, while it needs a relational database for other repository needs. Hyperion Planning leverages Multidimensional functionalities and capabilities of Essbase to the fullest to provide varied planning options along with inherent Data Forms, MS Excel, Web based grid interface for the data entry and reporting needs. It also has Task lists to track various activities and their status during the Financial Planning process. The Process management feature provides an approval process independent of the Organizational hierarchy.

Why Hyperion Planning is not just {Essbase + Excel interface, Task, Approval.... features}?

Handling various types of planning

Typical Financial Planning systems would handle Expense, Revenue, Capex, workforce, Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Cash flow...etc. In planning systems built on Essbase, an application would have one database to handle each types of planning. Data, dimension member sharing between two databases would need additional development/maintenance effort.

While working with similar multi-planning type requirement with Hyperion Planning, I found that the idea of plan type reduces the complexity of the solution, user-appraisal when compared to a Standalone Essbase application. Hyperion planning's Plan Types treated as individual databases in underlying Essbase database comes with inherent facility to share data and dimension members across plan types in Hyperion Planning or equivalent databases in underlying Essbase. This reduces the need for additional development/maintenance effort when compared to Planning systems based on Standalone Essbase. The Hyperion Planning user would seldom realize that the dimension members belong to multiple databases. While this might be an area of concern while using Standalone Essbase to build planning system.

• Multi-Currency application
  As a developer, I find it quite taxing to work with multi-currency applications built on Standalone Essbase. This requires a Currency database, few defined dimensions and also mapping between members in the Currency database with members in the planning database.

Designing a multi-currency application using Hyperion Planning reduces the developer's effort and complexity of thought. The pre-built Currency dimension, Currency Conversion scripts, Exchange rate table that may be specific to a Scenario and Version (allowing one to have different exchange rate for the same year for different scenario). The User interface for Exchange Rate Table makes it so convenient for the Financial Planners & Analyst to work with the system.

• Varying attributes, Text/date measures
  Something that excited me about the version 11 of Essbase is "Varying attributes". The 'Varying Attributes' feature in Essbase provides a solution to situations, where the relationship between two dimensions varies with an independent dimension. Example, member of Salesman dimension changes with Period, while tracking Sales. Hyperion Planning doesn't support Varying attributes, but such cases can be handled using a flag member.

Another addition in the newer versions of Essbase is Text and Date Measures, in order to track textual values or measure (say Customer Feedback: 'Good', 'Average' and 'Bad'). Initially it sounded like an imitation of Hyperion Planning's Smart View to handle textual data, but Smart List still remains the favorite. Practically, most of the times, I came across cases where we need to capture textual information for more than one dimension (Accounts, Entity...Products, etc..,). Smart List in Hyperion Planning, which can be used with multiple dimensions of any type, scores higher than the Text/Date Measure in Essbase, which can be used with only one dimension.

• Data Forms
  Financial Analysts and Planners, I worked with, always like to have set of standard data entry/reporting spreadsheet that complements MS Excel (though it has 'rigidity' as a freebie). We spend lot of time fixing issues with the data validation at individual cells, incorporated either by formula or VBA. But the validation and guiding rules would change with the dynamics of the market. Lack of central maintenance of standard spreadsheet, the need to circulate the revised spreadsheet carrying the newer validation rules, throws up a challenge to the efficiency of Change Controller.

Data Forms in Hyperion planning provides a standard centralized grid-based interface for data entry and data-checks. Customizing or fixing a Data Form issues take lesser time and effort compared to the Excel based spreadsheets. It also provides option to have textual comments, annotations, a built in calculator (Supporting Detail), various data allocation and spreading options like Grid Spread, Adjust, Mass Allocate, etc..,) to handle the daily needs of a Financial Planner &Analyst.

In this blog, I tried to share my view on the basic differentiators between Essbase & Hyperion Planning based Financial Planning systems. In Part-2, I will be sharing my thoughts on Data and Process management aspects.

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Guest post by
Amit Tuteja, Senior Consultant, Infosys

Most of us have been part of implementations where CRP (Conference Room Pilot) is undertaken by the client. In most cases CRP is used by the client when they are not familiar with the product and want to see if the ERP package would fulfill most of their needs before they finalize which package to be implemented. In one of the recent projects I got a chance to work on CRP exercise in Oracle Apps for a client where Oracle was already running for more than a decade. Here is a glimpse of the situation which the client faced:

1. Multiple Geographies with different business model. E.g. One Geography was following distributor model. In one of Geography ATO operations formed major portion of their sales.
2. Different Geographies had different Oracle version being used: One Geography had 11.5.9 version of Oracle and others had 11.5.10 version.
3. Local IT teams at each Geographies led to various different customizations across Geographies: The customizations built were also of different nature based on business needs in each geography.

Client engaged Infosys to do a business process re-engineering (standardize Business processes across Geographies) exercise in the first phase and then undertake CRP (showcase the fitment in oracle) in the second phase.

Infosys undertook the business process reengineering exercise where processes across the Geographies was discussed in detailed sessions with key stakeholders and recommendations were made for Standardized key processes that would fit all the Geographies with minor variations. A comprehensive document listing detailed requirements was also created.  The CRP exercise took these 2 things as inputs and modeled/ mapped the key scenarios in Oracle covering major portion of the requirements with focus on critical requirements. Here is the modus operandi that was followed:

1. The CRP sessions were conducted twice a week with participation from IT/ operations from all geographies from client side.
2. Key design discussion documents were created for major areas where the Vanilla Oracle couldn't fulfill the requirement. During these discussions detailed requirements were gathered around those areas.
3. CRPV Issue log was maintained to capture points that needed more discussion, functionality which client wanted to see.

Here is a snapshot of the benefit the Customer realized:

1. Infosys consultants mapped the processes and modeled the same using standard Oracle and on the way many such features were explored which customer didn't even knew existed (this is when the client had been using Oracle for over a decade) ex a customization was done for Consigned inventory process whereas a standard process existed which fulfilled 90% of their requirements.
2. Infosys questioned their methods and processes that had become part of their everyday life which in the initial stages did cause a lot of resistance but in later stages the Client was more receptive to new ideas/ change.
3. Minor alterations in processes to ensure that all Geographies follow the same process instead of customizing the same for each Geography, this would prove to be a boon as they progress to next phase.
4. The Key design discussion documents enabled us to capture major requirements associated with most customization which was a stepping stone for the implementation.
5. The CRP exercise helped client build confidence in Infosys abilities and Infosys got a level playing field with the incumbent for the implementation phase.

Every coin has two sides, the journey was not a smooth sail, here were some challenges we faced:

1. Conflicting priorities within Geographies which required lot of detailed sessions with all stakeholders to get them on same page sometimes senior management had to be called in to resolve a deadlock.
2. Along with standard processes, alternate business scenarios had to be developed to take care of the processes which were critical to only one Geography. E.x. Distributor model was followed only in on Geography.

Overall based on my experience I would certainly say that CRP exercise could certainly be a game changer in more than one ways as discussed above.

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Guest post by
Kiran Amara, Principal Consultant, Infosys

In the Part-1 of the blog, we provided an overview of recent CRM Industry trends and in this part we will provide our Point of View regarding how Oracle Fusion CRM and its capabilities cater to the recent CRM trends.

Infosys Point of View

• Social CRM Internal and External to the organization
  First release of Oracle Fusion Applications will address Social CRM for the internal organization, by embedding Web 2.0 technologies into transaction process flows rather than add-ons unlike present day Enterprise Applications. This approach should provide enhanced user productivity and easier user adaption.

Important Web 2.0 technologies embedded as part of transaction flows of Oracle Fusion Applications include: tags, discussion forums ,Wikis, RSS feeds, links to social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, Activity Streams.

However Social CRM for the external organization functionality is expected in future releases of Oracle Fusion CRM.

• Mobile Workforce Enablement
  Oracle Fusion Sales Mobile on iPhone and BlackBerry is available in Oracle Fusion Applications. The Oracle Fusion Sales Mobile applications provides read/ write access to contacts, calendars, tasks, customers, leads, opportunity, notes etc. It is designed to increase the productivity by easy access to required information and ease of use.

We could also expect Oracle to release applications for Android and Tablet devices as part of its future releases.

• Analytics in CRM & Analytics Enabled Vertical CRM Solutions
  Embedded BI is a key differentiating factor for Oracle Fusion CRM. The availability of real time data embedded in the transaction screen and choice to slice and dice the information, drill into the information will bring in more informed decision making process in the sales cycles. The landing pages of most of the Oracle Fusion CRM applications have relevant data in the tabular or graph forms to give a quick and real time picture to the user.
• Cloud/ SaaS enabled CRM
  Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management is built by leveraging the Service Oriented Architecture and its Open Standards technology stack which provides organizations with the flexibility to subscribe the required components/ modules instead of purchasing the software.

The plan is to have all modules SaaS enabled, however driven by market demand. This would provide the required depth in functionality, which otherwise have been missing in today's SaaS enabled Products. E.g. Complete Campaign to Cash process on SaaS.

Conclusion

Oracle has taken a bold step  with Oracle  Fusion Applications , by trying to address most of present day and next generation trends and problems, enhancing the user experience,  applying open standards, enabling best of breed functionality and providing alternative deployment options.

With sound Order capture and Service & call center applications expected to be available in future releases, we expect Oracle Fusion CRM will be a significant contender in the ever-evolving CRM market.

Note: I would like to specifically mention Mahesh Potluri and Sushal Shetty, Consultants at Infosys for their contribution in the blog.

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Due to the economic downturn we have seen an era of consolidation in terms of mergers and acquisitions. These mergers and acquisitions have resulted in enterprises having siloed and complex IT systems. There is more need than ever before for undertaking an IT lead innovation to simplify and create a single nervous system. Tighter budgets and the hunger to realize the return on investment faster, often leads to myopic approaches adopted by the implementation teams involved with these business transformation programs. Even though that might sound like an obvious principle, in reality schedule delays and other factors often lead to a time crunch as a pre-determined "go live" target date approaches, and what often gets shorted are two of the most important factors for success: training and testing.

User acceptance testing is the life blood of a successful WMS implementation but one that too often loses out in the fight for time as the go-live date approaches. This is primarily due to schedule slippages in the other phases of the project, the brunt of which is borne by UAT more often than not. From a strategic viewpoint there are two constants in this entire equation, this ever moving target. These are:

1. Go-Live Date
2. Time elapsed in conducting UAT

Based on these constants other variables need to be worked out.  In effect the team needs to determine a date by which UAT needs to start to meet the target go-live date, and if the schedule needs to be compressed, it needs to be compressed before UAT starts. Let us also think in terms of the demographic mix of the warehouse. A typical warehouse or distribution center involves personnel of varied age groups, varied educational and training backgrounds. Therefore for the new system to sink in to their working habits, will involve a dedicated and carefully planned user acceptance testing. There are ways expedite phases of the project like configuration and development, but there aren't any to expedite the UAT.

At the end of the day, in order to avoid an implementation disaster, the deployment team should not take short cuts via curtailed UAT as each day could be worse than the previous one if such short cuts are adopted. As they say, Rome was not built in day, and neither is a successful implementation story.

Posted by Amit Sinha at 8:20 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Guest post by
Swati Maskara, Senior Associate Consultant, Infosys

In the first part of my blog I talked about economics of using Cloud platform for performing business analytics and its obvious benefits. Through this part I want to bring forth ideas which can help a cloud BI customer as well as service provider maximize the overall benefits out of a cloud setup and reap advantages beyond the obvious ones.

The blog attempts to addresses following questions:

• How organizations can maximize value derived from a Cloud setup?
• How the Concerns around Data Security can be addressed?

How organizations can maximize value derived from a Cloud setup?

Apart from the obvious advantages, Cloud computing holds a lot of potential for revolutionizing the BI space. Cloud infrastructure involves many advantages which can be leveraged both by software companies and clients to enhance the presence of Business Analytics.

Penetrating the mid-size segment:- Small and medium businesses usually have huge volume  of BI data that needs to be analyzed, but they often go for excel based or cheap analytic solution as they have limited IT budget and resources. BI on cloud can help such organizations to make use of the advance computational capabilities and huge data storage space available on a pay-as-you-use basis. As no investment in infrastructure and licensing is required upfront, and payment is made based on demand and usage, there is a huge untapped potential for penetrating BI in mid-size segment through cloud computing. BI on Cloud provides elasticity to the investment made and hence can be widely used for ad-hoc analytic projects.

BI penetration within the Business: - As businesses don't have to make capital investment in establishing Data marts and enabling analytics and reporting, there is more fund available to expand Data analytics to other operational areas of the business and hence help gain a competitive edge over other players in the market. Cloud computing will help in penetrating BI within an organization to areas which were earlier not included for analytics because of cost disadvantage.  Moreover, a cloud setup also helps the customer in offloading the upgrade and maintenance costs of a given software application.

Facilitating assessment of BI Technology: - Software companies can use cloud as the default medium to make various technologies available for appraisement. Client can use this default medium for evaluating various applications without the necessity to create specialized demo by the software companies. Clients can evaluate and understand various products available by temporarily uploading test data and generating test reports. This will also help in cross selling of products, for example a client implementing Hyperion Planning could also be shown the demo of HPCM hosted on the cloud.

How the Concerns around Data Security can be addressed?

However, apart from the various advantages offered by using a cloud infrastructure there are a few factors which are restraining the adoption of BI on cloud. A major concern is around data security. Business Intelligence data is mostly sensitive and is accessible only by top management. Businesses are often reluctant to share such data on the cloud.  The problem is mainly due to lack of trust between the vendor and the client. This  problem with data security needs to be dealt by developing some kind of  third party enterprise which can provide credit rating or credit certificate, to the Cloud vendors  after performing due diligence with respect to data security, something like the credit rating agencies providing ratings to the companies.

With the increase in demand for Cloud set up for performing Business Analytics, more and more vendors are entering the space ensuring with time, vendor maturity and improved quality of services. As suggested by the famous Ansoff Matrix, when a new product is introduced in an existing market the strategy of the vendors should focus around Product development and hence the vendors should continue to be innovative with respect to their offerings primarily focusing on data security and enhanced analysis.

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Guest post by
Pradeep V Krishnamurthy, Principal Consultant, Infosys

During the last three to five years, Oracle CRM and best of breed niche solutions have emerged and expanded to offer broad CRM or CRM related functionality, including Loyalty Management, Campaign Management, Self Services, a 360 Degree of Customer View and others. As many companies continue to expand their CRM functionality to include these trends, we are witnessing significant number of relatively new trends shaping the future of CRM as a key tool with the capability not only to increase sales revenue and significantly influence customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty, but with the potential to change the paradigm under which companies have traditionally interacted and done business with their customers.

In this part of blog, I provide an overview of recent CRM Industry Trends and in the second part, we will provide our Point of View regarding how Oracle Fusion CRM and its capabilities cater to the recent CRM trends.

Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management 11g Release 1 includes Sales, Marketing, and Customer Data Management modules. Service, Order Capture, Call Center Modules and Vertical Flavors are expected to be part of the next release.

Industry Trends

Below we provide a graphic depicting how the current industry CRM trends are impacting "traditional" CRM functions. A brief description of these functions is also provided.

• Social CRM
  Social Networks have emerged as the "next big thing" after Google in terms of the impact of technology on business and individuals. Organizations can embrace Social CRM by embracing it internally, externally or by doing both.
• Social CRM for the Internal Organization- Web 2.0
  It's about improving User adoption by incorporating Web 2.0 technologies within Enterprise Applications like  Tags, Discussion Forums etc.,which help in bring about a collaborative workforce.
• Social CRM for the External Organization
  This includes the process for executing campaigns on Social Network sites, Generation of leads through social networks and monitoring Social networks for gauging customer sentiment and brand awareness by the use of Social Analytical tools.
• Mobile Workforce Enablement
  The need for the Mobile Sales and Service Workforce of an organization to have instantaneous real time access to the organizational data is of paramount importance to do business in a highly interconnected world. Hence the traditional CRM Applications have been extended to enable it to reach out to its mobile organization.
• Analytics in CRM & Analytics Enabled Vertical CRM Solutions
  Availability of data and information in abundance has made it imperative for business to try to make the most of it. What a business can do with its data is in most cases the most crucial determinant of whether a business is a first mover or a laggard when it comes to  its launch or new products, services, channels and innovation. Business Intelligence or Analytics now will play a role that is more critical than it has ever been in the past because of the volume of data available now for analysis as compared to what was available a few years back.
• Cloud/SAAS enabled CRM
  SaaS provides the flexibility to organizations for reduced Time to market new application initiatives, as well as brings about cost savings in the form of subscription based model and helps the organization concentrate on the business side and leave the maintenance to the experts.

The above discussed industry trends in the CRM sphere can be very well addressed by Oracle Fusion CRM Applications and we will discuss that aspect in next blog.

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Guest post by
Vikas Jhamb, Lead Consultant, Infosys

Any Implementation in Oracle ERP world involves a constant effort in re-doing the setups from scratch whenever a new instance is required. Getting a new instance and bringing it to speed with the current setups just can't be avoided or wished away. It has to be done and redone with almost no scope of errors. But anything that is done manually is prone to error and if these errors slip in when we are doing the setups, these will cause a lot of grief and the project team may have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out where there has been slip between the cup and the lip.

The traditional way of managing this activity is by introducing strict document control in the project and maintain set up sheets either in excel or word (BR-100) and restricting the control to select few in the project. Whenever there is change required in the existing setup or a new set up is required a request is sent to the person controlling the specific setup and asking her/him to make the changes in the set up sheet after taking the requisite approvals. When the approval comes through the set up sheet is updated and a new version of the same is created and kept in the document repository and is used in making the changes to setup in the existing/new instances. This approach obviously involves a lot of manual effort which can certainly be spent on other critical activities in the project.

The other way of migrating the setups is to get a third party tool and use the same for migrating the setups .This will involve the licensing cost for acquiring the tool and will also involve a learning curve. Also the efficacy of such tools is another area of concern.

Another way of managing this activity is to use a native tool provided by Oracle free of cost as a part of Apps license is iSetup. This native tool can take out a lot pain out of migrating setups from one instance to another. Through a series of blog posts I will take you through the various features provided by iSetup and how any Oracle ERP project can use this tool to cut short the time in preparing a new instance whenever required for a specific project milestone.

Typically the steps required in setting up a new instance will involve:

• Creation of a new instance (Cloning, Fresh Install)
• Creation of all the setups required manually
• Migration of the customizations (If required) 

In the blog posts that will follow I will take the readers through the process of using iSetup for automating the activities involved setting up a new instance.

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Guest post by
Amit Zutshi, Lead Consultant, Infosys

It may sound ironic that we live in a world where on one hand the household gadgets are able to not only communicate to each other wirelessly but are also able to work with external entities (read grocery stores, hospitals, service personnel et al) to drive efficiency within the home, but at the same time the corporate systems seem to remain largely ensconced in the physical infrastructure available within the four walls of the workplace. While corporate calendar and email have been able to breach that barrier a long time back, the actual productivity improvements borne out of making the workforce truly mobile are being realized only now that serious effort is being spent to unshackle the biggest behemoth of them all - the corporate ERP.

Moving from the On-Premise paradigm to the On-Demand model was an attempt in the past to deregulate ERPs in the sense of reducing the burden of maintenance and support from the corporate IT team. The new approach led to the pruning of the corporate IT function and helped utilize it better for supporting the IT backbone rather than the quirks of the ERP in question. However, it did little to satiate the increasing need for mobile deployment of the business' data and functions. While it was enough to look at the factory, the physical infrastructure and the resident workforce in the past, it has become almost necessary to provide round the clock access to data, analytics and business functions to squeeze the last bit of process improvements and productivity from the workforce, especially the one that is frequently mobile. The 'On-Demand' vs. 'On-Premise' debate may inevitably surface every time an organization decides to tread a transformation journey, what this is getting coupled with, consequently, is the considerations of 'On-Device'.  It is the "on device" deployment consideration, of course along with the cloud, which is leading the next wave of ERP reinvention.

So, what is this On-Device model and how does it help unshackle the ERP?

One of the major objectives of enterprises that have already invested in ERP applications or are in the process of doing so is to make the ERP deliver 'on-the-go'. Worldwide, corporations are spending millions of dollars to leverage the advances in middleware as well as smartphone and tablet design technology to devise applications that would take the ERP and CRM systems out of the physical boundaries of the organization. At present, however, only a select set of functions can be deployed due to limitations of transmission speeds and inherent nature of ERP applications. However, there is no reason why any major ERP vendor would not be able to deploy the full suite of ERP/CRM applications on mobile devices in the times to come. There are three major reasons why that would be possible:

• Technology Advances: Moving beyond 4G would mean that mobile users would be promised speeds in the range of hundreds of Mbps. This would take the network constraint out of consideration. Coupled with improved device processing (quad core et al), we are going to have a robust platform to enable a mobile ERP dream.
• Light Apps: All major ERP vendors are moving from three-tier architecture to a browser-based architecture complaint with HTML 5 specifications and are making the applications lighter by the day. It isn't long when all ERP functions would be light enough to be deployed on any mobile device. While this is the biggest constraint in getting ERP mobile at present, thanks to technology advances, the feasibility doubts are being laid to rest.
• Rich Use Cases and Newer Business Models: Technological advances in the core business processes are ensuring that more and more business functions go mobile. While RFID opened the door for mobile warehouse management and logistics applications, mobile cameras made copying and barcode scanning possible. Similarly, with the corporate assets like machine monitoring equipments, buildings and even mundane things like air conditioners becoming increasingly intelligent, the use cases for mobility are only increasing.

Enterprise Mobility, the ubiquitous term used to define mobility in a corporate context, is the force behind making enterprises take their business functions and data outside of their physical premises and hence break the physical infrastructure barrier and its associated process deficiencies. If we look at the current mobile ERP application landscape through the lens of enterprise mobility, there are already a fair amount of areas getting covered, such as manager approvals, field sales automation, sales forecasts, warehouse management services, expenses and business indicators. Although we have only partially realized the shackle-free ERP and CRM dream by now, the chase to the finish is on. Smartphones and tablets are no longer seen as just the slick devices providing calendar, web browsing and document editing features for the corporate worker, but also powerful business gadgets to 'run the enterprise from the airwaves'.

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A seminal study by APICS, Cap Gemini E&Y and Oracle shows that how "Delayed differentiation" or Postponement enables companies to reduce inventory while improving customer service. It delays product differentiation till the time an actual customer order is received, in other words to a point closer to the customer. It gives an opportunity to hold inventory at sub-assembly or components level thereby optimizing cost without compromising service level. For example an Electronics Original Equipment Manufacturer can hold inventory cost effectively for mother boards, PCBs instead of fully assembled switches. Similarly industrial pneumatic/hydraulic valves manufactures will carry a healthy level of safety stocks for microprocessors and other valuable components; an Office equipment manufacturer will be interested in optimal investment in key components such as lens systems, photoreceptive drums.

Enterprises need to integrate Inventory Postponement strategy to its adaptive supply chain strategy to address demand fluctuations and supply chain disruptions. Product structure harmonization plays a critical role in such endeavors.  For example a server and PC manufacturer can converge and standardize its key components such as memory, processors and HDDs across product lines.  Commonality of key components across products help create opportunities for further postponement as the parts can be used interchangeably-  enterprises can hold inventory at the lower BOM levels(at subassemblies/key components) and assemble the finished goods as per the customer's desired configurations when actual demand is received.

Oracle Inventory Optimization (IO) is a tool that recommends a powerful postponement option - planners will be fascinated to arrive at a most profitable Service Level.  The tool calculates optimal safety stock and postponement based on service level targets, inventory carrying costs, production cost, procurement cost, demand uncertainty, supply lead time variability etc. Supply chain planners may further fine tune the Inventory Plan by applying penalty factors for violation of constraints. IO is a part of Oracle Value chain planning and is seamlessly integrated with other modules such as advanced supply chain planning, demand planning/Demantra. 

As volatility remains stubborn for the months to come, supply chain planners will find inventory postponement is the key to unlock the secrets of reduced inventory cost, increased flexibility to manage demand and supply uncertainity and profitability.

Posted by Kallol Kumar Kar at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )