Vita Sanguis Supple Vinculum - Labor Management
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Infosys’ blog on industry solutions, trends, business process transformation and global implementation in Oracle.
February 5, 2012
November 22, 2011
Asset Management in Electricity Distribution Utility: "The Challenges of Getting Smarter"
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.
September 16, 2011
Asset Management in Electricity Distribution Utility: "The Challenges of Getting Softer"
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.
August 7, 2011
Solutions for Linear Asset Management - Data Model for defining the non liner assets and associating them to the linear assets
In my earlier blogs I have explained the data model to define the linear assets as part of the linear asset management solution. Any network will have both linear assets and non linear assets. It is important to build the relationship between the linear asset network and non linear assets.
July 26, 2011
Oracle EBS Solution to E Publication Industry
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June 29, 2011
Solutions for Linear Asset Management - A Data Model for Definiing the Linear Assets
June 27, 2011
Emerging Trends in Publication Industry
Publishing industry of yesteryears consisted of developing content and selling them as books, journals etc. The customer had two choices either to buy it or not buy it. They did not have the opportunity to check the contents of the book / chapters of the book for a limited time before buying it or for that matter buying only a portion of the book. The publishers at maximum had variants like paper back, hard cover, soft cover with minor price difference to cater to different segments of customers. The business processes of a publisher were mainly related to Sourcing content, Printing the content and selling books / journals from warehouse.
Continue reading " Emerging Trends in Publication Industry " »
June 23, 2011
Planning your next Oracle NMS upgrade
As Oracle plans its release of the next version of the NMS, thoughts of planning that next upgrade come to mind. This upgrade will be different than the usual upgrade though. Why is that? The reason is the evolutions in the Oracle NMS product have created some very significant changes. The big things to keep in mind are 1) the Deprecation of X-Motif, 2) Switchover from JBoss to Web Logic, 3) Required LDAP or Active Directory usage, and 4) Deprecation of PDM (Performance Data Mart). There are always the usual challenges in an upgrade, but this blog entry is focused on the unique needs of this next upgrade. Preparing for this upgrade will require more than the usual preparations and planning.
Continue reading " Planning your next Oracle NMS upgrade " »
June 21, 2011
Thinking beyond Rigid Scheduled Maintenance
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 " »
May 29, 2011
The 10 most challenges in Linear Asset Management and solution options
Continue reading " The 10 most challenges in Linear Asset Management and solution options " »
May 19, 2011
Typical Challenges faced in Implementing Meter Data Management Systems in Utility Distribution Space - Indian Context
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.
March 25, 2011
Oracle Business Intelligence for Utilities: Making Great Use of Outage, Restoration, and Energy Distribution Information
The Oracle Utilities roadmap for
Business Intelligence (BI) has become clearer and headed in a direction of
strength. Going forward Oracle Business
Intelligence for Utilities (OBIU) replaces the unpopular Oracle Utilities
Business Intelligence (OUBI). Don't let
the similar names confuse you. They are
two separate products. Unlike its
predecessor, the OBIU is built on OBIEE framework (Oracle Business Intelligence
Enterprise Edition). With OBIU,
Utilities will have fewer challenges with the installation and implementation
of the Business Intelligence Framework, Portals, and Dashboards. With the
ongoing implementation of smart meters and smart grid projects, more and more
data will become available to a utility. Smart Grid data stored in the BI can be used
to plan power distribution and influence consumption and decrease having to
purchase power from other utilities at more expensive rates. An effective Business Intelligence solution
is needed to mine the data and display it in useful reports and dashboards,
which enable Utility executives to improve their decision making abilities by
having near real time and historical information related to demand, usage,
trends, and outage risks, and asset usage.
February 10, 2011
Who holds the key to success in ERP led business transformation programs
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 " »
November 8, 2010
Looking for the most cost-effective and complete content management platform? Use Oracle Content Management
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.
September 19, 2010
Competition Powering Utilities: Is it the competition that is driving the utilities towards newer and bigger initiatives ?
Competition that has conventionally been a stranger to the utilities has now great influence over the utilities business across the world. Although different geographies are into different phases of evolution, competition is only gaining more relevance across. Another significant positive change is the increasing adoption of information technology, more specifically the connect of typical operational systems such as SCADA, PMS, NMS etc with the enterprise wide IT systems such as asset management, billing and customer care. A whole new set of systems such as Automatic Metering Interface (AMI), Meter Data Management (MDM), Distribution Management System (DMS), Outage Management System (OMS) although still evolving, has played its role in achieving this connect. Continuing the change is clearly visible trend, a long journey ahead which takes the initiated utilities toward Smart meter, Smart grid and smart customers.
I was wondering how much credit goes to the competition for all this action that mark the state of the utilities today? Is it the competition that is driving the utilities towards newer and bigger initiatives ?
September 15, 2010
Is IT an 'enabler' or 'creator' of Business Value?
Continue reading " Is IT an 'enabler' or 'creator' of Business Value? " »
September 2, 2010
Critical points to be consider while "Asset Group" Design process for Successful eAM implementation
August 27, 2010
Advanced Metering Infrastructure and Outage Management
- Reducing OK on arrivals
- Know faster when there is an outage
- Identify nested outages easier
- Reduce unrequested callbacks
Continue reading " Advanced Metering Infrastructure and Outage Management " »
May 22, 2010
Go Lean: Minimize customizations and reduce overall TCO in Oracle ERP implementation (Part 3)
There are many ways to achieve Leaner ERP implementation, and I have discussed some of the strategic levers for it in my previous blogs Go Lean (Part 2) and Go Lean (Part 1) like senior management and executive sponsorship, robust decision making framework, effective change management approach, upfront planning for middleware and reporting platforms, solution design workshops, selection of appropriate edge products and leveraging localizations. However, there are many tactical and operational levers also available for enterprises to adopt, which are primarily part of implementation execution cycle. I am discussing here some of these levers and best practices to minimize customizations:
- Boot Camp Trainings - Before initiating the solution design phase, organizations must seriously consider to conduct the boot camp trainings on chosen ERP to their key super users, business analysts and implementation core team, facilitated by System Integrator (SI). The intent for boot camps must be training to the team for vanilla features and functionalities of ERP relevant to their industry processes. This will enable them to bridge many gaps and requirements through seeded ERP functionality, and increase the overall fitment of the package application, leading towards reduced customizations.
May 21, 2010
What's the need for Outage Management System for any Utility?
Major challenge which any Utility faces is Power Outage. Power Outage is such a crisis that is always just around the corner for any Utility. These Outages can be caused by variety of reasons like tree limbs, animals, wind, and vehicle collisions. Storms/disasters happen in any climate, in any season. Earthquake, heat, snow, winds, tornados, and, ice all cause outages which can bring everything to halt. At that moment, all eyes turn to the Utility to make sure that customers affected are restored quickly and they are provided accurate estimated restoration times. Utility’s Management interest is to deliver excellent customer service, safety of the repair crews, and minimize the revenue loss due to power outage. It is a very difficult situation for any utility from a perception and media perspective as well.
Thus there is a strong need for any Utility to have an Integrated Outage Management System.
My question is how a Utility should assess that whether their existing Outage Management System is effective enough to deliver the excellent customer service?
Few thoughts which come to my mind which are important for any Utility:
1) Whether existing Outage Management System can provide Estimated Restoration Time?
2) Whether existing Outage Management System can provide Call Center Representatives sufficient information when customers call to inquire the status of their power outage?
3) Whether existing Outage Management System helps Utility’s Communication/Media Department to provide the right set of information to external media community?
I would love to hear more thoughts around this from Utility Industry Experts or Technology experts who are either developing OMS Product or implementing OMS Products!!!
May 20, 2010
Leveraging Technology - Retaining corporate knowledge in an Ageing workforce situation
March 23, 2010
Smart Metering - Smart Grid
March 15, 2010
Managed Solution for Staffing Industry
As staffing industries remain challenged to grow their revenues, their focus areas have also shifted to reduce their back office costs continually, streamline the business process through automation, front to back office integrations and integration with VMS systems. Given their proven experience in implementing and supporting global implementations be it compliance with global accounting requirements or managing global payroll, ERP System integrators are very strongly placed to help staffing companies reduce their back office costs both on the pay side and the bill side, thereby improving their bottom-line revenue.
Continue reading " Managed Solution for Staffing Industry " »
Is it possible to achieve "Zero" breakdown in Maintenance World?
In maintenance world when we talk of "Zero Break down" most of the time maintenance crew says that it is not possible to achieve zero break down. So is it really possible to achieve "Zero Break down" for a Machine /Equipment? The answer is "Yes".
What is breakdown? :- When a Machine (M/c)is working and suddenly something fails for e.g. in case of CNC M/c hydraulic hose pipe rupture and it leads to heavy oil leakage, thus Beak down due to hydraulic leakage occurs on the M/C.
Above Failure could have been anticipated by doing regular check of hydraulic hose piping by carrying out proper preventive, predictive maintenance.
What is "Zero Breakdowns"? :- When the Maintenance Department hand over a M/C to Production Department for the Production activities, that time maintenance department can confidently say the M/C would not fail due to "Hydraulic leakage" for another 24 Hrs as they have done a proper inspection/rectification through Preventive and Predictive Maintenance on the M/C on Hydraulic side. This 24 hrs of running time without any Hydraulic failure is said to be "Zero Break Down" in Hydraulic piping area.
After 24 Hrs again maintenance team would take the machine in their custody to do preventive and predictive maintenance to ensure that there would not be any failure due to "Hydraulic leakage" for another 24 hrs, thus maintenance team take over the control of M/C after certain running period of the M/Cs and do preventive/Predictive maintenance to achieve "Zero Breakdown" in specific area e.g. 'Hydraulic Pipe failure'. Over a period of time by doing proper, regular preventive maintenance on almost all the areas of M/C instead of specific area leads to achieve Total "Zero Breakdown" on an asset for certain mentioned period time frame by the Maintenance department.
Continue reading " Is it possible to achieve "Zero" breakdown in Maintenance World? " »
September 15, 2009
Needs & Opportunities - Staffing Industry
There have been astounding changes and developments during the evolution of the staffing agency in its 50-plus years of existence. The staffing industry has evolved from its early years where temporaries were provided in emergency situations to replace absent workers to become strategic partners for its clients by providing wide range of employment services and solutions.
Continue reading " Needs & Opportunities - Staffing Industry " »
May 17, 2009
Regulated Energy and Utility Market Challenges – Pricing
In today’s competitive environment the unit prices for electricity and gas is driven heavily by the competition between energy companies.However, to ensure that the customer receives a fair price and to avoid monopoly, it is quite common to have this price overseen by regulation. Though there are many pricing models available in different countries, by and large the pricing models in regulated scenarios are either revenue based pricing or rate based pricing. This blog briefly touches upon the pricing models and the components of prices. Pl. note that the examples in this blog focuses on UK energy market.
Continue reading " Regulated Energy and Utility Market Challenges – Pricing " »
May 14, 2009
Regulated Energy and Utility Market Challenges - IFRS compliance challenges in Fixed Asset Management processes
Vertically integrated utilities have large assets in form of their generation stations and their components. This part of the business is regulated in some countries. Through the regulatory environment, the government gets involved in various aspects of utilities viz., pricing, Secured energy supply, Pressure to reduce carbon footprint etc.,. Equally there are some accounting challenges that are posed through regulations and reporting norms. This blog talks about one such challenge faced by generators on the way in which they manage and report their generation Assets and their significant components.
December 18, 2008
Reuse and Recycle of WEEE (Wastage of Electrical and Electronics Equipment) – Optional or Mandatory?
The Directive on WEEE (Wastage of Electrical and Electronics Equipment) in EU notes that the content of hazardous components in electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) is a major concern during the waste management phase and recycling of WEEE is not undertaken to a sufficient extent. The WEEE directive places the responsibility of end of life (EOL) disposal responsibility of the products on the manufacturers either individually or by joining a collective scheme. This implies that the cost of disposal of the product and the harmful substances that it contains squarely lies on the manufacturer. The EU Commission has set new targets for recovery and reuse/recycling by 31-Dec-2008 for all EU countries.
September 19, 2008
Managing Indirect Spend? Slash costs and Save upto 20% of indirect cost
Across Industries, specifically utilities and process industries, because of their capital intensive environments, typically spend a substantial amount on indirect procurement, especially services. Typically services account for more than 60% of the indirect spend for companies in these industries yet this area has remained unexplored for either automation or transformation efforts.
The Services Supply Chain comprises of unique and complex activities. This is then the reason why streamlining the process coupled with adequate systems support can lead to a large savings in this area. But how do we really go about it? Our experience tells us that this is definitely possible and is a huge opportunity for savings. Oracle Advanced Procurement Suite with its Services Procurement processes help organizations in streamlining processes in achieving these savings.
Continue reading " Managing Indirect Spend? Slash costs and Save upto 20% of indirect cost " »
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- Vita Sanguis Supple Vinculum - Labor Management
- Asset Management in Electricity Distribution Utility: "The Challenges of Getting Smarter"
- Asset Management in Electricity Distribution Utility: "The Challenges of Getting Softer"
- Solutions for Linear Asset Management - Data Model for defining the non liner assets and associating them to the linear assets
- Oracle EBS Solution to E Publication Industry
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