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.
Continue reading " Empowering the Finance Function with Oracle Fusion Financials - Part 2 " »
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.
Continue reading " Thinking beyond Hyperion Essbase for planning (Part 1) " »
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:
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.
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.
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:
Continue reading " Cloudanomics for Business Intelligence - Part 2 " »
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.
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.
Continue reading " iSetup - An Effective and Powerful Tool to Manage Setup Migrations " »
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.
Continue reading " Can a smartphone or tablet help realize the shackle-free ERP and CRM dream? " »
Guest post by
Mili Bhaskar, Consultant, Infosys
Continuous pressure on businesses to perform has forced enterprises to evaluate, evolve and empower their finance functions, as a result of which there is a strategic shift seen in the finance department from being a score keeper to a valued business partner. The finance function on its path to evolve has come to be integrally dependent on effective information systems and technologies.
In this part of blog, I provide an overview of the current industry trends and in the next part, I will elaborate how Oracle Fusion Financials Application aides organizations in keeping up with these changing trends.
Continue reading " Empowering the Finance Function with Oracle Fusion Financials - Part 1 " »
Guest post by
Gaurav Kumar, Principal Consultant, Infosys
Definition of success parameters at the outset of any enterprise is the first step to determine the steps that need to follow. The ability to follow through with the detailed planning basis the success parameters is at the heart of project and program planning. The effective management of any enterprise depends upon the identification and administration of these parameters. Hence the relevance and effectiveness of any KPI is how closely it is linked to the business outcome and its understandability.
Guest post by
Arun Tomar, Consultant, Infosys
In the previous part of the blog, we discussed about some of the important Human Capital Management trends in the industry. This part throws light on how Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management Application can cater to the needs of these fast changing Human Resource trends in the industry.
Guest post by
Anand Balakrishnan, Principal Consultant, Infosys
Dear Nikki,
Sorry, I missed our flight. I knew you would be wondering if I made it to my section of the plane and wanted to let you know as soon as I could.
After we parted at the check-in counter and I was belting my way across the concourse I went through a full body scan that created some excitement for the good folks in the TSA, consequently I missed the shuttle transfer to the flight.
I've had myself rescheduled on the night flight to SFO, I take a connection to Seattle an hour later and a shuttle is scheduled to pick me up at SeaTac and drop me home by 8.00am.
Sit back, enjoy a complimentary beverage of your choice from the airline (the flight attendant has been informed) and head home as soon as you land without having to wait for your checked baggage.
Regards
Baggage ID - NA210802
(Green Samsonite 360O Swivel)
Continue reading " Dear Nikki, Sorry I missed our flight... " »
Guest post by
Vandana Baliga, Senior Associate Consultant, Infosys
From the housing bubble burst in US to Euro debt crisis and the potential threat of student loan bubble in US, Are the banks alive to the risk? There is a growing need to be sensitive to economic conditions, capture the debt dynamics and interpret the figures on the balance sheet of banks meaningfully. To address this need Financial Institutions have to foresee in to future and be pro-active.
The question looming large on the banks today is how to achieve this?
Continue reading " Is number crunching a solution to Bank's woes? " »
Guest post by
Gaurav Kumar, Principal Consultant, Infosys
A key step that needs occur prior to the start of any business transformation is the definition of objectives for the same. Many a transformation enterprise has bitten the dust with conflicting objectives being pushed by key stakeholders. As a fundamental premise, we can agree that any business transformation activity must have a set of objectives that it seeks to achieve. These objectives are quantified in myriad ways to arrive at a value that is expected to be achieved through the transformation. This activity however does not provide the clarity on the individual stakeholder objectives that the transformation seeks to achieve. Neither does it provide the collective sequential set of priorities which can be used as guidance by the transformation team. For example, the transformation may be effecting improvement of a particular metric however the levers to impact may widely differ amongst the stakeholders.
Guest post by
Shweta Dhal, Consultant, Infosys
The Human Resources (HR) function has morphed into a more strategic function over the past decade. This transition has caused HR to take on a more inclusive role as business partners supporting the people aspects of what makes up a business. To continue this evolution, Human Capital Management (HCM) departments need effective information technology solutions supportive of optimized global HCM processes, and the decision making tools which can provide better insight to solve HCM -related business problems.
Oracle Fusion HCM gives a new dimension to the Human Resource practice globally by leveraging features of the next generation ERP like Web 2.0, open standards based solution, rich user experience etc. It incorporates the best of breed solutions, thus reinventing the Human Resource function as a whole. The current release of Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management, 11g Release1 comes with offerings which are well integrated to give customers better insight and a holistic view of the Human Resource function, effectively aiding both strategic and day-to-day Human Resource activities.
Guest post by
Anand Balakrishnan, Principal Consultant, Infosys
ERP system have been adopted by over 90% of the global fortune 100 companies and 75% of fortune 500 corporates to handle the various facets of their operations. In the financial accounting space, while these companies have focused on the back office processing of records and generation of preliminary financials (P&L and Balance Sheets) a very small number of companies have any sort of automation in the last mile, namely generating the quarterly and annual financial statements that need to be submitted to varied set of external agencies including regulators, lenders and the street.
Continue reading " The last mile in financial reporting - The next big thing " »
Guest post by
Abhishek Bhargava, Senior Consultant, Infosys
In the earlier blog Asset Management in Electricity Distribution Utility: The Challenges of Getting Softer we discussed about the first wave of transformation i.e. use of IT by Power industry to become softer and leaner. Here we will talk about the journey of this industry into the second wave of transformation - a transition from IT enabled organizations to smarter organizations using smart grid.
Guest post by
Vinod Kumar, Consultant, Infosys
Telecom sector has been chronically plagued by revenue leakage problems and often seen to be spending the maximum energy and budget on areas around how to not let it happen or in other words having in place an effective Revenue Assurance mechanism. Making it one of the most published area in the industry are the solutions around it yet the clients, be it the newcomers or the old-timers, are often marred by this problem. Not that there are no solution around it but it's the understanding of the solution/product offering and the judicious implementation which makes a solution stand out.
Continue reading " Bridging Two Islands: A curious case of Oracle AIA " »
Guest post by
Amit Kumar Dey, Senior Consultant, Infosys
The importance of social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube no longer need any emphasis. Perhaps the power of these tools were not known even to the perpetrators of the great Middle East revolutions until they were able to garner support of millions and mobilize the masses which resulted in the end of decades of despotic rule. Social media which acted as the stimuli and later as a catalyst for the movement was very effectively used by the revolutionaries to unify and spread their message between themselves and also to animate support from the international community.
Continue reading " Integrating social media with ERP applications " »
Guest post by
Suchitha Prabakaran, Consultant, Infosys
In the current global business environment, efficient Procurement techniques, methodologies and processes play a vital role in providing a competitive edge- both operationally and financially for any organization irrespective of the size, nature of business, products dealt with, area of operations etc. Corporates now have realized the importance of streamlining and strategizing procurement processes as it makes a huge difference to the revenue and profitability of the organization.
Continue reading " Why Oracle Fusion Procurement? How does it add value? " »
Guest post by
Kamaljeet Singh Bhatia, Lead Consultant, Infosys
On 26-May-2011 the Securities and Exchange Commission, U.S. (SEC) issued staff paper associated with 'Work plan for consideration of incorporating IFRS' in which it outlines incorporating IFRS into U.S. GAAP after a certain period of 5 to 7 years. In Japan the ministry in charge of financial affairs announced that decision regarding IFRS adoption may not be made until 2012, thereafter at least 5 years would be needed to make preparations. There seems to be no decision on mandatory IFRS adaptation timelines and so far it seems to remain indecisive until FY2012-2013. However over the period there has been a growing acceptance from a number of other countries.
Continue reading " International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS): Looking beyond compliance " »
Guest post by
Rakesh Kumar, Industry Principal, Service Innovation Strategy, Infosys
Continue reading " Video: Social CRM - Delivering the Next Generation Customer Experience " »
Guest post by
Nikhil Kumar, Industry Principal, Infosys
Yet another exciting day here at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 started off with drizzling rain and San Francisco downtown bustling traffic. The exhibition halls got opened immediately after the morning keynotes around 10 am, and attracted a lot of attention and larger footsteps from customers and partners than yesterday. We could see people rushing and hopping across sessions, venues and exhibition booths and long queues for raffles and gifts offered by partners. Some folks are also relaxing with their iPads and smartphones at lounges browsing, catching up mails and chatting. Mobility can be noticed and felt all around at OpenWorld.
Continue reading " Experiencing 'Mobility' at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 " »
Guest post by
Neeraj Jha, Lead Consultant, Infosys
Some of the challenges that I can think of based on my experience and interaction with colleagues working in BI Support are due to -
Guest post by
Kamaljeet Singh Bhatia, Lead Consultant, Infosys
The last few decades has witnessed numerous examples of significant competitive advantages through supply chain integration. Information sharing through superior technology is making enterprises capable to innovate and integrate in the complex networked environment. However information integration in supply chains is limited to large enterprises and small to medium scale enterprises (SME's) significantly lag to leverage technology for supply chain integration.
Continue reading " Impediments to supply chain integration: An SME perspective " »
Guest post by
Nipun Lakhotia, Consultant, Infosys
Automobile sector is currently experiencing a turbulent transition. Apart from product innovation, manufacturers need to align their supply chain processes to meet rapidly changing customer expectations.
Logistics plays a crucial role in automotive industry, representing about 40% of the retail price of a passenger car. Historically the automotive industry has always been focused on just-in-time manufacturing (JIT) which demands for sequenced deliveries. Inbound operational planning is expected to support advanced features like milk runs, direct delivery and cross-dock optimization with drop-trailer capabilities.
Continue reading " Automobile Logistics: Demand to Deliver (D2D) " »
Guest post by
Srinath Pydimarri, Senior Consultant, Infosys
I've been a loyal customer of a particular Indian bank, whom I'd call Bank XYZ for convenience sake. My perception of loyalty stems from the fact that I've been banking with them for the whole of my professional life, have taken multiple loans, setup FDs and have their credit card. I've always been prompt at paying my EMIs as well as credit card bill. In fact, some of their Customer Support executives address me as a 'privileged customer'. However, what pains me is that they haven't increased the credit limit on my credit card. It surely has left me surprised and disappointed. In fact, I keep advising my friends to take the credit card from a competing bank. Something which I tend to do using social media as well - Facebook and Twitter. Interestingly the bank still perceives me to be a 'loyal' and a ' privileged' customer. I believe this is a scenario which commonly occurs across all industries and with all types of customers (retail / business etc). 'Social' customers today are increasingly using social media to constantly share their opinions/displeasure, amongst other things, about the brands / products they use. Such a behavior is nothing unlike the Word of Mouth (WoM) that organizations have known for a long time now. The only difference is that this has become easier, more prevalent and has greater impact, thanks to the availability and extensive usage of social channels.
Continue reading " Revisiting Customer Loyalty from a 'social' angle " »
Guest post by
Sandeep Suresh Deshpande, Principal Consultant, Infosys
In today's world, business is exposed to a constantly changing environment where organizations face the most challenging situations -
Oracle has done an extensive internal and external research, took the best practices from Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle PeopleSoft, Oracle JD Edwards, Oracle Siebel and all other acquisitions to come up with a number of industry business process areas with multiple levels of decomposition. These world class business processes can be leveraged to deliver in the complex and challenging environment.
Guest post by
Abhishek Sabharwal, Head- Infosys Oracle Innovation Center
Finally, we are here again on the helm of one of the biggest IT events of our times, Oracle OpenWorld (OOW) 2011. As the feeling of nostalgia triggers in with everyone beating each other about the number of years they had been participating in the OOW, the registration lines grew bigger and bigger. The weather, the excitement, iphone tunes and bustling traffic remained the same at SFO but the event seems to gets bigger and better, with representations from 120 countries and close to 45000 registrants. OOW started on a Green note of using minimum paper throughout the event, so no more bulky schedule. All replaced by mobile phone apps, and real time online updates...welcome Social Media and Mobility to the OOW...
Continue reading " Day 1 at OOW 2011 : The 'Green' and the 'Machines' " »
Guest post by
Peter Stacholy, Industry Principal, Infosys
My session at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 - "Innovation in the Staffing Industry with Oracle Real-Time Decisions", will show how to use a new Oracle Tool RTD (Real Time Decisions) to leverage the data already stored in your ERP system to transform your company into a predictive enterprise. We will be using a Staffing Company to illustrate all the points where we want to integrate existing ERP applications with RTD. We will show all of the points where RTD can 'learn' current enterprise behavior and subsequently predict future outcomes or suggest better ways to do things. We will conclude by demonstrating a current integration that we have already built out between PeopleSoft Staffing Front Office and RTD that ranks candidates for open positions using six dimensions that an ordinary search engine cannot evaluate!
Guest post by
Puneet Gupta, AVP and Head - Infosys Mobile Platforms, Infosys
Continue reading " Video: Mobile CRM - Delivering the Next Generation Customer Experience " »
Guest post by
Shanmugam Gnanasambandam, Principal Consultant, Infosys
Today, enterprises have CRM systems/applications implemented to support their Marketing, Sales and Service functions, which have matured, over the last two decades as an On-Premise Application and also being offered now as an On Demand Application, for access through Desktops/Laptops.
The significant progress of mobile internet, which includes availability of a wide range of affordable smart phones/tablets, high speed internet connectivity on mobile devices and users becoming more and more tech savvy, has created a keen interest in the Mobile CRM space.
Continue reading " Mobile CRM is not a choice, but a necessity for Enterprises " »
Guest post by
Sushal Subashchandra Shetty, Consultant, Infosys
Are you not able to define effective territories for your sales organization?
Is your sales team swimming in the sea without targets?
Is your sales team cherry picking on prospects and you are not aware how to tackle it?
Are you losing track of your sales team's performance?
If answer to all/one of the above questions is yes, then my cent that you ought to read this further. The top problems which one of the large manufacturing company was facing were loss of productivity due to redundant and manual process, lack of consistent and efficient reporting, inaccurate commissioning.
If you are also facing the same problems as above then sales planning solution based on Oracle Fusion Applications is the one-stop solution for you.
Continue reading " Effective Sales Planning with Oracle Fusion Sales Planning Solution " »
Guest post by
Srinath Pydimarri, Senior Consultant, Infosys
I have been observing the Social CRM market space for the last 1 year and the first impression I get is that organizations are far more closer to the reality of Social CRM - both in terms of their interest in Social CRM and the availability of suitable Social CRM solution options. Our frequent conversations with client organizations have gradually moved from being centered around 'What is Social CRM' to discussions on how Social CRM can be applied in the organization's context. In fact, a handful of our customers are coming up with specific scenarios where they'd like to see Social CRM in play. In many of the cases, however, we observe a sense of uncertainty and a few misgivings accompanying the tangible intent in taking up Social CRM, something that is common whenever organizations are faced with the prospect of new concepts and technologies. Organizations do seem to have a difficult time deciding what their first steps in Social CRM should be. I believe they can deal with this tricky situation by taking hints from the success stories that are slowly stemming around in the Social CRM space.
Continue reading " Giving Wings to your Social CRM Dreams " »
Guest post by
Rohit Kaul, Senior Technology Architect, Infosys
I happened to read about a Greek philosopher in my kids school books and it reminded me of my school days where we read about methods of learning via questioning. It must have taken a great deal of courage from that man to question and challenge the existing set ups and systems. As it turns out his methodology is what comes naturally to all of us in IT (constantly questioning and brainstorming on the best solutions).
Continue reading " What to ask about the Exadata machine before the purchase decision? " »
Guest post by
Abhishek Prasad Verma, Lead Consultant, Infosys
Power sector historically has been late in adopting IT to enable and streamline its business processes. The same is evident in its archaic operations and built in inefficiencies. However recently there has been a considerable effort by the utilities to look for all available options to improve operational efficiency in various field of operation like customer services, metering, billing etc. for improved customer services & tariff rationalization. So is the case with Asset Management System. In the first wave of transformation, the industry is looking forward to go softer and leaner i.e. it is exploring IT to replace its "Hard Book" based archaic manual systems.
Guest post by
Steven Stein, Principal Consultant, Infosys
I am proud to discuss this year at Oracle OpenWorld something we do as consultants for large organizations. This presentation was originally given during a state government implementation. State government reporting is like doing an implementation for 50 different major companies simultaneously. They all had complex statutory obligations, different legacy tools, and different user communities. The leadership of the implementation team wanted to better understand how OBIEE would be able to schedule reports, handle security for such a massive audience, integrate with their portal and ERP system, and what were the benefits of moving off the old tools such as SQR and Crystal. As our team prepared the presentation and were doing rehearsals, we kept switching from one persona to another, saying that the administrator would do this, and then the end user would see this, and these features would be like what an operational user would see, but a manager would want to see something else. My manager said, "why don't we split up this presentation into segments by four different personas." When we did this, it changed everything and made the whole thing so much clearer.
Continue reading " Four Types of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Users " »
Guest post by
Nipun Lakhotia, Consultant, Infosys
All organisations are bugged with 'Go Green' mantra. Carbon reduction is no longer an environmental decision that is forced upon as an obligation. Emergence of carbon trading and related economic benefits has evolved carbon emission reduction as one of the strategic decision. Even customers are willing to pay premium for offerings with greener credentials.
Backbone of any green supply chain is the green transportation processes - from planning to execution. As per report by leading supply chain journal, as much as 75 per cent of a company's carbon footprint comes from transportation and logistics alone. This provides a strong business case for incorporating mechanisms that reduce carbon footprint in transportation supply chain.
Continue reading " Transporting into a Greener Supply Chain " »
Guest post by
Vinayak Gangadhar Kurdekar, Technology Lead, Infosys
Businesses today need to increasingly leverage a unified platform to host all their database and applications at one place. To meet this challenge, Oracle has designed the Exadata server technology that bundles database and applications together to provide high performance, high availability, scalability and throughput. Mere implementation of the exadata server and its components is not enough. Disasters can strike at anytime. To ensure survivability and safeguard against any major disasters, effective backup and recovery solution is a must. The backup and recovery strategy needs to be not only precise but proven in all aspects. To achieve this Oracle has come out with multiple backup and recovery solutions designed in-house and third party.
Guest post by
Swati Maskara, Senior Associate Consultant, Infosys
The Economics of Cloud Computing is by now well established with its claim to reduce cost, improve efficiency and decrease time consumption when a cloud environment is used by a business.
With respect to Business Intelligence there is a need to understand dynamics of cloud computing for performing business analytics. The article intends to do so by addressing few questions around Cloud computing:
The article discusses these aspects in detail to bring forth the view point that Cloud model for performing BI is undoubtedly going to restructure and modernize IT within organizations.
Continue reading " Cloudanomics for Business Intelligence " »
Guest post by
Karan Chadha, Associate Consultant, Infosys
In Part 1 of this blog, I had talked about the immense potential that Social Media data holds for getting transformed into business insights. In Part 2 I moved on to discuss Social Media Intelligence (SMI) tools and the key value adds that they provide to Organizations. I will now move on to the piece that is the most relevant for us; the piece about integrating SMI tools with conventional reporting tools like OBIEE and establishing an integrated reporting environment; an environment which leverages insights from structured enterprise data as well as fluid social data.
Let me touch upon two facets of what is now broadly known as Social BI:
Continue reading " Can Social Media be the next big lever for Business Intelligence? - Part 3 " »
Guest post by
Sowjanya Achar, Associate Consultant, Infosys
Increasing financial crimes and money laundering activities across all sectors of the economy has necessitated government of every country to step up the vigil and make appropriate amendments to the law to curb such hideous acts and the grave consequences that occur on account of such crimes. Money laundering is a process through which illegal money is injected into the financial system in a systematic manner by disguising its true illegal origin and the usage of such funds for organized crimes such as terrorist financing, drug trafficking etc. It is in the purview of the regulators and financial institutions like banks to curb money laundering and so Anti-Money Laundering measures are at centre stage to curb financial crimes across the world.
Continue reading " Oracle Mantas Next Generation UI is now under OFSAA " »
Guest post by
Kunal Girishrao Hedau, Senior Associate Consultant, Infosys
It has been for a while now that the Insurance Companies have identified the "Online channel" as one of the dominant lead generation channel as a measure of impacting overall sales. The dominance factor however has not been realized to the level that it should be.
Guest post by
Umesh Tanna, Senior Technology Architect, Infosys
Oracle E-business suite R12 upgrade is a major project that organization undertakes. Functional, technical and infrastructure administration teams are the primary groups that are involved in upgrade project from IT department. Oracle Application Database Administration activities are very critical activities in upgrade project that is performed by Oracle Apps DBA. Following are most essential aspects of R12 upgrade project from the standpoint of Oracle Apps DBA.
Guest post by
Bhuvaneswari Venkataraman, Lead Consultant, Oracle Practice, Infosys
In one of our recent workshops conducted (during February 2011) for a financial Institution, we were showcasing a complete banking solution including OFSAA for risk Management. While explaining the capabilities of OFSAA in Risk Management perspective, one key stake holder from client Group posed a question 'Can we check Hedge effectiveness with OFSAA?' To that, my intuitive reply was "NO. Not at this point of time. But I believe this would be available in future version". Little did I know then, that my reply will be proved right very soon?
Continue reading " OFSAA to measure Hedge Effectiveness ! " »
Guest post by
Amit Zutshi, Lead Consultant, Oracle Practice, Infosys
How fast things can change and how quickly innovations can alter the competitive and business landscape is playing itself out best in the mobility arena today. Taking a real life example, I was witness to my friend's smartphone search and subsequent order from a manufacturer whom he was shunning as recently as four months back. At almost USD 700, it was not the cheapest phone on the block and hence "value-for-money" was definitely not a driving factor to embrace a hitherto novice in the smartphone domain. Visibly much happier now, my friend can't stop gushing about how his phone beats the wits out of the pioneer in its space. So, what happened in just four months?
Continue reading " Enterprise Mobility Trends to Watch For " »
Guest post by
Rohit Kaul, Senior Technology Architect, Oracle Practice, Infosys
We all know about Exadata as a fast and scalable database solution for most of the enterprise applications. So the next natural question would be - what is the best migration path from current version, platform to the Exadata platform. The basic thought to keep in mind is simply that the target platform is always fixed and would always be an Oracle database version 11gR2 with ASM on a Linux platform (Oracle Enterprise Linux x86_64 (OEL5)) or on Solaris Express - So it is to be treated like just another migration from an Oracle DB/non-Oracle database to another Oracle 11gR2 database on OEL5/Solaris Express platform. So before one embarks on the migration journey one needs to make sure that the application is certified on Oracle database 11gR2. In this blog, I will cover a few preferred migration options and not the exhaustive list, since there would be multiple permutations/ combinations of other possible options considering several factors.
Continue reading " Myriad of options for migration to Exadata " »
Guest post by
Ankush Agrawal, Associate Consultant, Oracle Practice, Infosys
Risk management has always been of prime importance for any industry and more for financial services markets. The financial crisis exposed inherent weaknesses in the risk management system, like outdated systems and processes, poor decision-making, inadequate forecasting, and reporting structures. The negative impact of these flaws on many institutions shocked the industry, and as a result, there has been a shift in attitude toward risk and it has started getting more attention.
Guest post by
Abhishek Prasad Verma, Lead Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys
Assets are the lifeline for a Power Utility Company. Considerable amount of money is spent in ensuring their availability, longevity and efficiency for power generation/transmission or distribution as this has a direct impact on the top-line and bottom-line of any company. Assets not maintained well can result in accidents causing huge indirect losses in form of penalties and/or compensation.
Continue reading " Thinking beyond Rigid Scheduled Maintenance " »
Guest post by
Umesh Tanna, Senior Technology Architect, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys
In Part-1 of this blog we found that Exadata has many features that facilitates database consolidation. This blogs describes those features and explains how it helps in database consolidation.
Database Resource Manager (DBRM)
If we are consolidating multiple databases say for ex. A and B into a single database AB, DBRM would help us control how much resources to allocate to process/programs/sessions of A and B while they run in shared database AB. Basically this enables us to control how CPU are shared amongst A and B and also establish the priorities. This is implemented with what is known as resource allocation scheme amongst the consumer groups defined within database. Also the allocation scheme changes are dynamic i.e. we can have one resource allocation scheme effective during business hours and can have different during after business hours.
Continue reading " Oracle Exadata - A platform for consolidation (Part-2) " »
Guest post by
Rajesh Dhanapal, Lead Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd
In the current era the customers are not interested to wait for months and years for BI project implementation. The customers are keen on quick wins rather than implementing the BI solution from scratch by following traditional BI approach. The Oracle BI Apps solution provides head start for the organisation to reach the to-be state quicker with reduced time and effort, and reduced risk.
Continue reading " Oracle BI Apps - What are customers interested in? " »
Guest post by
Mukesh Nakra, Senior Program Manager and GTM Director-Oracle Fusion Applications, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Tough market competition is putting pressure on organizations in terms of process standardization and access to integrated information. With the availability of the internet and all online content adapting to the Web 2.0 standards, employees and organizations are expecting systems that support businesses to adapt to these standards and new technologies. Oracle supports multiple ERP packages like Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JDEdwards and Seibel to name a few. Taking advantage of the evolution and availability of new technology platforms and with a vision to standardize the applications, both from a usability and technological basis, Oracle Fusion Applications were created.
Continue reading " Oracle Fusion Applications - Are you still looking for answers? " »
Continue reading " It's a Pain! - A day in the life of a Cost Accountant in Retail industry! " »
Guest post by
Dilesh Deepak Dattani, Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
A lot of Indian companies in Utility Space have either already started or in the process of starting implementation of IT Systems to which would help in increasing their operational efficiency and reducing costs. In this post I would like to highlight some of the typical challenges which we come across in such implementation projects in India.
Guest post by
Sourish Chatterjee, Lead Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
In my last blog, Business Intelligence in Oracle's Fusion Applications- Always Available, I had discussed that Fusion application Business Intelligence comprises of the following:
Let's now see how all the BI Content can be accessed within fusion applications.
Continue reading " How to access Business Intelligence in Oracle's Fusion Applications " »
Guest post by
Harish Ajjarapu, Technology Architect, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) is a comprehensive solution platform for enterprise business intelligence, including a scalable and efficient query and analysis server, an ad-hoc query and analysis tool, interactive dashboards, proactive intelligence and alerts, real-time predictive intelligence, and an enterprise reporting engine. Recent release of OBIEE 11g has moved one step ahead in terms of completeness, scalability and integrated the security with Middleware products like Web logic being added to the mix. Earlier versions of OBIEE (up till 10.1.3.x) while having Object and Data level security, it was often prone to tweaks and workarounds to achieve the Role Based Security using various authorization mechanisms.
In this blog, I hope to discuss the level of scalability Oracle has provided with respect to Object and Data Level Security in OBIEE and highlight the out-of-box Role Based security features of the product.
Continue reading " OBIEE 11g Security Architecture Overview - Gateway to Enterprise BI " »
Guest post by
Umesh Tanna, Senior Technology Architect, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Consolidation is one of the many key reasons for deploying and using Exadata. Oracle Exadata is an appliance - hardware and software bundled and engineered to provide maximum performance. It is a database machine that is purpose built and integrated. True, that there are high end systems that are best suited to be replaced by Exadata platform considering the growth and performance need of those system. However, by design, Exadata offers high end configuration and specification which not all types of Oracle database application that today runs in IT department need. Hence, solid business case can be built for those systems if, some type of consolidation solution is considered which can simplify, increase availability and performance and ultimately reduce total cost of ownership.
Continue reading " Oracle Exadata - A platform for consolidation (Part-1) " »
Guest post by
Amit Tuteja, Senior Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
I was lucky to be part of one of the complex Oracle implementations done by Infosys Oracle Practice in Retail industry. During my work with this large retailer I got the opportunity to work on design phase and later got involved in testing phase. Most of us understand and realize the importance of Testing in any implementation but in this blog I would like to emphasize how a well planned Testing phase increased Management/ Stakeholders confidence and paved the way for a successful Implementation.
Continue reading " Role of Testing in successful project implementation " »
Guest post by
Sandeep Suresh Deshpande, Lead Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
A large part of a Staffing branch's daily activities include communications with customers, applicants, and other contacts. Typically the volume of applicants that a recruiter will work with at any given time can be quite large. At the same time, they are also working with large volumes of orders. The ability to match an employee or applicant to an order in a timely manner is the key to the success of a recruiter.
Continue reading " Extrapolative Analytics for Staffing Industry " »
Guest post by
Vamsi Neti, Systems Engineer, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Change is inevitable. I was wondering how big a step required to process and manage the change. Business is not an exception, to be in the market accept the truth and "change the business constantly". Here is a real-time example of business change happening today, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology. A big shopping mall wants to open its new store, to sustain the competition it has planned to use RFID tags on stock (which enables stores to identify and track item in the supply chain automatically and make the customer to use virtual cart). This action has sent employees scrambling to learn about the wireless technology, ordering signage, requisitioning products and launching a PR campaign to coincide with the opening. All of these tasks need to be completed on a schedule. The implementation is very complex due to very high cost, time taking process and risk involved in designing the strategy to respond to market changes instantly.
Continue reading " Automation of Business Process Management " »
Guest post by
Nipun Lakhotia, Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Transportation Management Systems (TMS) have come a long way from home grown systems primarily aimed to reduce freight spend to highly advanced optimization systems. Let's have a look at some of the most sought after features offered by next generation TMS.
Continue reading " Transportation Management 2.0: The road ahead " »
Guest post by
Anand N P N, Consultant - Business Intelligence, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Oracle BI Applications has been in the market for a long time now and has matured as a packaged solution offering over the years. However, as more and more clients choose to implement BI Applications, the question still is - are they making an informed choice? The second major concern is - Is the implementation leveraging the best features of the OBI Apps?
Continue reading " Getting the maximum value from BI Applications " »
Continue reading " On-the-go Computing for Enterprise Mobility " »
Guest post by
Chander Mohan Bhargava, Lead Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
In Insurance Company, Billing system retrieves policy and billing details from policy administration system and handles the following transactions from a systems perspective:
Continue reading " Insurance Billing trends and the way forward " »
Guest post by
Samrat Vangari, Systems Engineer, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Amidst soaring competition, meeting needs of a customer no more solely define Business. There is an addition "Accelerated Approach" to complete the definition of business. Adaptively, Business Intelligence restraining its familiarity and to curve it upwards, is all set with its comprehensive and Accelerated Approach.
Guest post by
Navpreet Singh, Lead Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Late 2009 and 2010 witnessed quite a few mergers as economies took a U-turn from the trough of sluggishness. Now, with gloominess having ostensibly bottomed out, corporate restructuring is likely to regain momentum. Amidst M&A, the "soft" element of integrating human culture remains paramount during any change management process. These challenges get magnified by the existence of non-uniform standards and discrete IT support systems amongst merging entities.
Continue reading " Top 5 things that can make or break your EPM application integration program " »
Guest post by
Rinku Das, Project Manager, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
What is the future of Oracle Forms applications? Is Oracle going to support Oracle Forms in near future? There are many such questions worrying the developers working on forms and the customers using forms in their applications. All these are scary questions for application developers who are working on Oracle Forms for a long time and are not familiar with Java. These developers may not be in a position to immediately migrate/move to new technologies/tools like ADF, Fusion Middleware and SOA. These are the common debates now-a-days amongst Oracle developers.
Guest post by
Kartik Kamalakar Deshmukh, Senior Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Having been part of the 'brick and mortar' industry in the initial years of my career, I have always appreciated the pace of innovations and customer centric solutions that the Information technology sector has been offering its customers. Equally importantly, the customers too have been extremely receptive to these innovations and ready to experiment with newer technologies and solutions.
Continue reading " Questions a CIO must ask before going for an 'On Demand' Solution " »
Guest post by
Ranjan Kumar Singh, Senior Associate Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Solvency is a measure of the risk an insurer faces of claims that it cannot absorb. Solvency has been a primary measure to gauge the health of an insurance company. Regulators in various geographies protect the policy holder's interests through Solvency norms and guidelines. It is a basic measure of how financially sound an insurer is, but this simple calculation that does not take into account the types of business the company does and the Risk that it is exposed to.
Guest post by
Rinku Das, Project Manager, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
With the introduction of Oracle Fusion Middleware technology, technical consultants who are mainly working on E-Business Suite started questioning how to expose Oracle business interfaces (like Business Events, PL/SQL, XML Gateway, etc) built using multiple technologies as Web Services and also how to invoke & consume external Web Services. The answer to such questions is YES. This is feasible using Integrated SOA Gateway available in Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1.
Continue reading " Importance of Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway " »
Guest post by
Debapratim Dutta, Lead Consultant- Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
A few weeks back I woke up with the morning newspaper, and was surprised to discover that my sun sign has got changed! The news article explained that according to latest astronomical discovery there is now a 13th zodiac sign, instead of the long held astrological belief that there were only 12. The newly identified constellation which is between Scorpio and Sagittarius is called Ophiuchus. Before I could finish reading the entire news article, a friend of mine called up and sounding highly disappointed, informed me that from now onwards she will be happy to throw the morning newspapers' horoscopes in the bin. Co-incidentally, the day before that, the CRO of a reputed bank in an informal call told me, that from now onwards he will have to throw away many of the risk reports to the bin as most of the sophisticated risk models developed in the past are no longer accepted as valid by the regulators. Sounding equally disappointed as my horoscope savvy friend, the CRO wanted to know whether we can advise some solution to him, as they got to now re-do the entire risk data warehouse to cope up with new regulatory standards announced under Basel III.
Continue reading " Managing uncertainty in deploying a Data Warehouse " »
Guest post by
Jaideep Ranjan Vijayakar, Principal Consultant - Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
In the previous installment we discussed how to arrive at the effort estimate for the implementation team based on the complexity of the technical components underlying. These effort estimates can also be used to arrive at time requirements for the business IT counterparts (Business System Analysts and Business Technical Leads). We can pair them with their implementation team members and use a percentage of that effort. However we are missing a key portion of the implementation effort. BUSINESS TIME REQUIREMENTS.
Continue reading " Total Project Estimation - Business Time Requirement Estimation " »
Guest post by
Prasad Jayakumar, Technical Lead, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Early morning I was hitting I-94W to meet my client in Milwaukee. I wish I had my I-PASS; toll varied from 25 cents to little more than a dollar. I was wondering "Why not the government builds the infrastructure out of tax collected and let us free?" Immediately I realized my ignorance. My discussion topic with client was "How to measure ROI for SOA Projects?" It was a meeting to see if we can present benefit of SOA in a tangible way to business. I was wondering if the toll way could answer the question.
Continue reading " How to measure ROI for SOA projects? A Tollway Approach " »
Guest post by
Nobendu Roy, Senior Project Manager, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
We know that LSH is a clinical data integration platform, but it can also be used as a computing environment that gives tremendous power and flexibility to a PLSQL programmer to extend the functionalities.
Continue reading " The Power Of Oracle Life Sciences Data Hub (LSH) " »
Guest post by
Jaideep Ranjan Vijayakar, Principal Consultant - Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
As they say "A journey of a thousand miles begins but with just one step" so too any Implementation project begins but with its estimation. Many a project flounder due to inaccurate estimates made to start with. Without an accurate estimation of effort and timeline it's difficult, if not impossible, to allocate the correct resources to the project or determine milestone dates and phase durations.
Continue reading " Total Project Estimation- Non Developmental Time estimation " »
Guest post by
Ravisankar Nagavarapu, Technology Lead, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
In today's world most of the organizations are going for complex integrations of heterogeneous contents on their websites. This is resulting in scattered web content and scattered information is very difficult to manage and maintain.
Oracle Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Oracle Portal Life cycle management make it easy for the developers/organizations to bring heterogeneous content from different web assets on to a single platform. The open nature of the architecture and the standards provided by the tools help organizations to plan their future for rationalized web assets.
In recent years, OEMs have faced pressures from all directions to evolve innovative business models. Let us talk about some such challenges that relate to subcontracting:
Continue reading " The Business Context behind Outsourced Production " »
Guest post by
Prasad Jayakumar, Technical Lead, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd
One Less, One More™ - "one less negative thought or action, and one more positive thought or action, and soon our lives will be less stressful, and if practiced as a community [...] would move in the direction of our collective goals, dreams and desires" by Robbie Vorhaus, Communications, crisis and reputation advisor.
Oracle acquired many best-of-breed products on SOA landscape may be for architecture excellence or for concept/idea or for market share or to fill the void or based on some other strategy which only acquisition experts know. But, what's interesting is how Oracle managed to unify all the acquired products and paved a path to Success as a corporate and for Oracle SOA practitioners.
Guest post by
Prasad Jayakumar, Technical Lead, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
In my recent client discussion the ever pondering question popped up, "Do we need SOA Governance?" Definite YES, I told without second thought. If they would have asked me "Do we need SOA?" the answer would have been based on whether business is ok to WALK or wants to DRIVE. Since the question was about governance, it is as simple as saying "If you want to drive safely, better hold a valid driving license."
Guest post by
Nipun Lakhotia, Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Supply chains are generally designed to optimize resources and provide better customer service. But in India, supply chain design decisions are mostly driven by financial considerations - especially tax implications. Let me explain this in detail.
In India, interstate sale of goods attracts central sale tax (CST), in addition to local sales tax (VAT). Due to this dual taxation, manufacturers tend to open several small warehouses in each state and perform simple stock transfer between their manufacturing plant & these warehouses. In this process, they save on CST and only pay local tax while making sale to the end customer. Hence tax implications over shadows classic principles of warehouse design like location, capacity, storage, transportation cost etc.
Continue reading " GST: The supply chain and Logistics angle " »
Guest post by
Ankush Agrawal, Associate Consultant - Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
This is in continuation to my previous blog where I talked about matched fund transfer pricing and how OFSAA in its newer version 5.XX (OFSAA) has further enhanced its matched fund transfer pricing. In this blog we will discuss more on the methods of FTP used in the industry and supported by OFSAA.
Continue reading " Methods of Matched Fund Transfer Pricing prevalent in Financial Services " »
Guest post by
Himanshu Bhardwaj, Consultant - Business Intelligence, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd
'Should I do it on my own' or 'should I have someone else do it for me' is a question that mankind has asked itself since time immemorial. This question, commonly put as 'Build vs. Buy' in the IT parlance, has been commonly debated in the Business Intelligence (BI) space as well. From BI's perspective, the Build vs. Buy debate can be discussed in two contexts. One point of view could be to consider home grown made-from-scratch reporting applications as 'Build' and standardized platforms and packages like OBIEE as 'Buy'. The second point of view could be to consider applications developed on tools like OBIEE as 'Build' and prebuilt packages like BI apps as 'Buy'. Since standardized tools/packages have clearly demonstrated their superiority over home grown reporting applications in terms of performance as well as scalability, the first debate is pretty much settled. So, for the purpose of this blog, we will focus on the second point of view that this debate can take.
Continue reading " To B(uild) or to B(uy) - That is the Question " »
Many analysis has been done and many artifacts written about the success of the ERP projects but the question which primarily remains unanswered and less explored is who holds the key to success of the program.
Continue reading " Who holds the key to success in ERP led business transformation programs " »
Guest post by
Krishna Ammapalayam Srinivasaragavan, Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
We are in the era of Enterprise Resource Planning implementations. It's estimated that by adopting ERP systems and best practices cost reduction, quality improvement, staff skills increases too many folds. Also the IT companies dealing with ERP systems receive the maximum revenue and profit in their operations.
Continue reading " Enterprise Asset Management - Emerging trends " »
Guest post by
Malay Kumar, Principal Technology Architect, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Lot has been said and written on SOA, but are we successful in educating Business. Why is SOA good for smarter business? Unless Business understands and adopts SOA, we will still struggle to create value for our clients. SOA enables the business to focus on business and allows IT to evolve in this ever changing world.
Continue reading " Does Business understand that 21st Century Business means SOA! " »
Guest post by
Mitul Kumar, Senior Consultant - Business Intelligence/ EPM, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
I was surprised to see a recent client managing its billion dollar Marketing Expense Budgets in Excel spreadsheets. It left me wondering that in an era where Strategic Planning is the key to an organization's long term success, how can the organization let such a business critical function be run using spreadsheets which inject inherent data quality and validation problems into the system. Even from a user perspective, working on these big Excel files is cumbersome, scrolling across thousands of cells, tracking versions, making changes to the calculations manually, toggling between multiple sheets for each cycle which can be as frequent as monthly with a closure window of three days.
The big question is that despite of all the known efficiency related issues with Excel based models, why does it becomes a major change management issue to convince the users to migrate to a better, automated EPM tool which provides better process management, data quality and relevant functionalities based on best practices. The reason is not very hard to find.
Guest post by
Bhuvaneswari Venkataraman, Lead Consultant - Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Whether you are a top investment planner or adviser or even a common man unfamiliar with finance or Markets, you would invariably be seeking the term deposits rate of Banks which serves as a benchmark rate for many when they try to evaluate the different investment options. When you find the advertisement with odd terms such as 390 days, 678 days, 999 days you must be wondering what is the reason behind this specific tenure. Well answer lies in managing liquidity management to reduce overall risk. Let us see how liquidity management propels the interest rate and the tenure of a banking product.
In 1999, P&G launched Reflect.com, an online retailer of health and beauty products, that raised the bar for personalized products and service. It enabled women to create their own make-up, skincare and haircare products by choosing from a wide range of colors, fragrances and ingredients. It may have been an idea ahead of its time (Reflect.com shut down in 2005), but consumers are now taking a leaf out of P&G's book.
Continue reading " CRM Shifts in the Age of Digital Consumers and Social Media " »
Guest post by
Krishna Ammapalayam Srinivasaragavan, Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Now a days, industries focus not only on the profit, but also on the safety, morale of the employees and social responsibility in keeping the environment a better place for next generations to come. Above said things can be achieved by adopting quality systems and environment friendly methods.
Continue reading " Enterprise Asset Management - Road to success ... " »
Guest post by
Ashwani Arora, Senior Project Manager - Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
The leadership team at the level of CIO needs to take control of the situation immediately after a merger is announced and since emphasis is on speed, most critical decisions related to IT integration are finalized during this short period of time and with many unknowns to start with. One of the key areas which attracts lot of attraction and effort during M&A is to determine how much to integrate the technology, which systems and hardware to keep, what data to keep, and in what systems.
I will discuss below some key factors which are considered while laying out the long term plan for technology integration. There can be many more scenarios as we go to next level of planning details, but the below are the ones that will most likely come up in CIO level discussions immediately after a merger is announced! Also many times tradeoffs need to be made among these factors to achieve the larger business goal of the acquisition.
Continue reading " System integration during M&A: How much to integrate? " »
Guest post by
Ankush Agrawal, Associate Consultant - Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
In current world, where there is high volatility in terms of funding requirement and Interest rate, only Matched Fund Transfer Pricing approach can assess the actual risk and help to measure profitability and performance accurately for a financial institution in comparison to traditional approaches.
Continue reading " Matched Fund Transfer Pricing and its relevance in current volatile market " »
Guest post by
Murali Krishna Somisetty, Principal Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
It's easy, It's wholesome and its efficient and mind you, we are not talking about a new module of Oracle applications here. We are talking about how effectively different Oracle modules can penetrate into a company's business process effectively, for not only maintaining regular transaction data but also to help in various other aspects which any normal end user wouldn't dream of.
Our rendering of Oracle E+ series will be an inimitable blogging experience by itself. It will encourage innovation by making people think, 'oh how did I miss this and what if I used it this way?' This series will emphasize about how Oracle modules can be an excellent facilitator to manage the Oracle Applications ERP Program itself and the business needs which are not exactly application related. These guidelines and techniques can be used either during or after implementation. The initial blog posts will concentrate on what can be used 'post implementation' and later blog posts will cover what can be used 'during the implementation' phases. They also cover important aspects for such considerations and the preparation required by organizations before practicing them.
Guest post by
Bhuvaneswari Venkataraman, Lead Consultant - Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
In older version of Oracle Financials Service Application 4.5.xx (OFSA), considerable time was spent on designing the Chart of Accounts (COA) to bring out the optimum number of members under COAs. Now with new Oracle Financial Service Analytical Application 5.xx (OFSAA) leveraging its enhanced features like conditional assumptions system can assign any combination at run time instead of pre-defined only leading to thin COAs instead of thick in earlier versions.
Continue reading " Thin Chart of Accounts within OFSAA ! " »
Based on our experience in providing consulting services for companies that have numerous Intercompany or interbranch transactions between entities spread across, following have been observed to be some of the issues commonly faced by the companies due to the inability of underlying applications to meet the business needs:
-- Process inconsistencies with different units following different mechanisms to account for intercompany transactions
-- Increased manual effort due to the use of suspense or clearing account for knocking off intercompany receivables and payables
-- Increased maintenance effort due to the use of multiple accounts to record intercompany receivables and payables for each division, branch, entity
-- Lack of ability to automatically balance intercompany transactions
Continue reading " Demystifying Intercompany Accounting in Oracle Apps - Part 1 " »
In this era of globalization, an Organization needs to be agile to survive and grow. The need for agility is one of the key forces behind the introduction of 'Rule Based Applications' in the market. Oracle's Financial Accounting Hub (FAH) is one such application where accounting is managed by the business team based on configurable business rules.
Prior to introduction of FAH, most of the organizations had custom built accounting engines to address their accounting requirements. Such custom built components were a hindrance in introducing any new accounting rules or modification of existing rules to satisfy regulatory compliance requirements or due to business compulsions.
Continue reading " Build an Agile Financial Organization with Oracle FAH " »
Guest post by
Suthersan Jayaprakash, Technology Analyst- Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
The dimensions and hierarchies form the base for operations in OFSA suite of products. Any business assumptions or processing parameters are built based on the dimensions. The dimensions in OFSA are nothing but various attributes of the business. Something like organizational structure, or the business offered by the organization, or the products and services that it offers.
Continue reading " Improvised dimensions and hierarchy in OFSAA 5.1 " »
Guest post by
Debapratim Dutta, Lead Consultant- Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
The recent financial crisis has laid bare many myths in risk management. For instance; exposures which were perceived to carry low risk, performed poorly during the crisis, when compared with the ones which were considered to be more risky. Such anomalies could happen because many financial institutions failed to capture the association among multiple sources of risk. To make things worse some board members were even heard saying that they did not understand the risk reports presented to them! Clearly board members failed to make risk adjusted decisions during days leading up to the crisis, as probably they viewed risk management as something needed only for compliance in order to earn more and more return.
Continue reading " Gain insight into critical risk areas using OFSAA " »
Warren Buffett needs no introduction. He has few peers when it comes to selecting stocks that deliver exceptional returns. He is equally well known for shying away from stocks of technology companies. At the 2000 annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, he stated, "It is not that we don't understand a technology business or its product. The reason we don't invest is because we can't understand the predictability of the economics ten years hence."
Trust Warren Buffett to deconstruct technology from a buyer's standpoint.
Continue reading " If Warren Buffett was a CIO, he would invest in the cloud " »
Guest post by
Karan Chadha, Associate Consultant - Business Intelligence, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
In Part 1 of this blog, I had discussed about social media data's immense potential for getting transformed into Business critical insights. I had also argued that the answer to the question about social media being the next big lever for business intelligence is a resounding Yes! However, having said that, it is imperative to understand various challenges encountered en route. In this part, I will focus on:
Continue reading " Can Social Media be the next big lever for Business Intelligence? - Part 2 " »
Guest post by
Ankita Nagpal, Senior Associate Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Maintenance, in all its essence, is an absolutely indispensable activity for all organizations today. Downtimes or any damage due to malfunctioning of an equipment are most expensive and thus an immense squeeze in the profits. Almost each and every organization across industries have woken up to this fact and employ some or the other maintenance system.
Furthermore to just having a system in place to take care of the maintenance activities, organizations today are moving towards most intelligent and sophisticated methods of maintenance viz. Predictive Maintenance and Reliability Centered Maintenance.
Guest post by
Vyshnavi Allamsetty, System Engineer - AIA Center of Excellence, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
In today's competitive market place, the organizations have to concentrate on building robust, maintainable and high performing applications in order to withstand the competition. In addition, they need to build composite applications which adhere to standard principles and reduce human effort. This need of various organizations forced the S/W developers to build extremely agile applications and in order to implement the best practices in applications, the developers have to write loads of code.
Guest post by
Jaideep Ranjan Vijayakar, Lead Consultant - Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
We have till now discussed about the imperatives of mobilizing the enterprise, the basic configurations that are broadly adopted by organizations, the stages and types of enterprise mobility and the implementation considerations before an organization begins its enterprise mobilization journey. We will now round off the discussion with a look at the future and challenges.
Guest post by
Joydeep Dey, Associate Consultant - Oracle Insurance COE, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Underwriting is the process of examining and then accepting or rejecting Insurable risk at an appropriate premium. The premium amount depends on type of risk being covered, historical data, actuarial calculations and local regulations. If the insurance company is too conservative in choosing the risk or demands high price for risk coverage then they lose to competition whereas if they are too aggressive to acquire market share or become liberal in risk pricing they may end up paying higher claims. Hence underwriting is a specialized task which is done by a chosen few in each insurance company.
Continue reading " Pain points in underwriting practices and way forward " »
Guest post by
Jaideep Ranjan Vijayakar, Lead Consultant - Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
In the previous installment we discussed about the stages and types of enterprise mobility. In this installment we will discuss about implementation considerations before an organization begins its enterprise mobilization journey.
Guest post by
Ranjan Kumar Singh, Senior Associate Consultant - Oracle Insurance COE, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
In the earlier blog on "Pain Points" of Insurance Industry, we discussed the key challenges faced by Insurers in the present business environment. In order to mitigate these challenges, Insurance industry is now trying to leverage information technology and web enablement to create sustainable value and maintain the rate of growth. There is also a need to integrate emerging technologies with existing products and processes in order to stay competitive.
Continue reading " Use of IT to mitigate insurance pain points " »
Guest post by
Jaideep Ranjan Vijayakar, Lead Consultant - Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
In the previous installment we discussed about the imperatives of mobilizing the enterprise and the basic configurations that are broadly adopted by organizations. In this installment we will discuss the stages and types of enterprise mobility.
Guest post by
Nitin Lehri, Lead Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
So many times we casually make use of the term "Closed-loop-Marketing" without fully realizing its actual meaning. Most of us may have not, but I am sure people who are associated with Marketing related services, would have used this jargon. Several clients limit themselves to the response which they receive against the myriad offers they roll out to customers. Further they content themselves with response rate figures derived as part of post roll-out reviews of campaigns. Clients, banking on IT applications, will actually realize the benefits of closed-loop only when they can see the conversions coming in.
Continue reading " How 'closed' is closed-loop-marketing? " »
Guest post by
Olivier Penel, Principal Consultant - MDM, Oracle practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
MDM (Master Data Management) initiatives should be seen as a way to provide master data 'as a service' across the organization, lines of businesses, channels, countries, etc. The idea is to decouple the management of core data entities (products, customers, locations, etc.) from the business applications (ERPs, CRM, range planning, merchandising, supply chain, e-commerce systems) and to provide those systems with the data they need, at the right time, and in the right context.
The SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) layer aggregates master data from MDM systems, but also transactional data, historical data, or reference data, from internal and external data sources.
Continue reading " Master Data Management - Even more critical in light of Cloud Computing " »
Guest post by
Swati Maskara, Associate Consultant, Oracle Business Intelligence practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Setting goals is important only to the extent if their success is monitored and information is critical only to the extent if it facilitates action. Integration between defining, communicating, monitoring and correcting strategic objectives has always been a thirst area for organizations. Every organization has employees asking the same question - "How are my objectives and goals linked to my organization's corporate vision, mission and objectives?".
I recently got a chance to explore OBIEE 11g's new functionality - Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management - and I was impressed by the features provided. Measuring, communicating and monitoring are the three key words that define the Scorecard functionality in OBIEE 11g. Let us explore how each is performed better using Oracle Scorecard.
Continue reading " Corporate Vision to Employee Goals - Is it integrated in your organization? " »
Guest Post by
Sanil Kumar Bhaskaran, Consultant, Oracle Business Intelligence practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
I do not intend to start this blog enumerating the enormous benefits an enterprise can reap out of an EPM investment. The fact that meager 23 percent of the companies have been able to get higher returns on their equity owing to their EPM initiatives, itself makes us ponder about the underlying challenges in having an effective EPM platform. Let's look at these challenges from the other side of the table - from a Business perspective and not as a System Integrator.
Continue reading " Business Challenges in creating an effective EPM platform " »
In today's scenario, organizations are facing many problems in managing content with nearly 80% of the unstructured information, lots of content duplication and spending around 15-20% of the operating revenue in fixing problems that arouse from inappropriate data.
To maximize content management efficiency, improve security and reduce costs, organizations need a comprehensive enterprise content management solution that fits easily with their business processes. Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g meets these demands delivering the high performance and scalability required to face the challenging enterprise content management environments.
Continue reading " Demand to Deliver Solution: The Panacea for Supply Chain Disruptions " »
Continue reading " Is IT an 'enabler' or 'creator' of Business Value? " »
In a traditional manufacturing enterprise, the supply chain works in a piecemeal way through multiple departments executing their own functions and tracking their own performance. Most package-based IT solutions also accordingly adopt a siloed view of the business and provide disparate modules/ applications for different business functions. Thus measurement of overall process performance becomes tedious as end-to-end Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are not defined, benchmarked and measured, leading to dilution of process-level accountability and view, leading to dissatisfied customers and suppliers.
Have you ever wondered how you would manage your engineering changes in a single instance multi divisional environment? You are using Inventory, Bill of Material and Engineering and it has become a nightmare to maintain your master data. You have issues with data security due to the multi divisional environment.
Apart from forecasting a tremendous growth of Social Media for Business and customer facing communities, Gartner's CRM predictions for 2010 have some key points to note
High Tech manufacturing enterprises operate in a very competitive environment with a complex and long value chain. Value Chain Planning is the key differentiator and thrust area for these enterprises, as this lends them to better demand capture and fulfillment, better operational and financial efficiency. IT systems play a crucial role in enabling them to remain competitive. These IT systems acquired/built over a period of time, inevitably result in a complex integration landscape involving plethora of heterogeneous B2B (Business to Business), B2C (Business to Customer) and A2A (Application to Application) transactions. Even the reporting for running operations and management decision making is premised on multiple sources of truth.
