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
January 14, 2012
Quisque Id Of Implementation - Curtailed UAT
Continue reading " Quisque Id Of Implementation - Curtailed UAT " »
December 5, 2011
Enigme de la Symbiose
November 19, 2011
Achieving Higher Levels Each Time - Servicing Contracts
Continue reading " Achieving Higher Levels Each Time - Servicing Contracts " »
November 8, 2011
Symbiosis in Printing Industry - Contract To Kill
Continue reading " Symbiosis in Printing Industry - Contract To Kill " »
October 5, 2011
Impediments to supply chain integration: An SME perspective
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 " »
September 20, 2011
Why Oracle ORPOS, ATG, and Siebel Need to Merge?
Granted, it is a provocative headline and I could already visualize question marks being raised on the headline itself of this blog. However, it is time we take a fresh look at good old point of sale (POS) application that has perhaps had its golden run for over 20+ years in its various incarnations by multitude of app developers.
Continue reading " Why Oracle ORPOS, ATG, and Siebel Need to Merge? " »
September 13, 2011
Value Delivered By Value Chain Planning - Subcontracting Practices
Continue reading " Value Delivered By Value Chain Planning - Subcontracting Practices " »
Transporting into a Greener Supply Chain
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 " »
September 11, 2011
Risk Management Portfolio For A CMO
August 28, 2011
Establishing The Centroid Of Magic Triangle - Hitting the Bull's Eye of CMO Engagement
August 18, 2011
Best Practices In Contract Manufacturing - Implementing An Operational Agenda
Continue reading " Best Practices In Contract Manufacturing - Implementing An Operational Agenda " »
August 15, 2011
ABC of Contract Manufacturing + Markowitz Theory = Depth of Cost Iceberg
Continue reading " ABC of Contract Manufacturing + Markowitz Theory = Depth of Cost Iceberg " »
August 12, 2011
Integrating with 3PLs - How to make IT work?
As the Global Retailers grow in size and expand across geographies with more complex logistics function, they rely more on outsourcing 3rd Party Logistics Service providers (3PLs) to manage their supply chain and warehouse operations for better inventory management, operational and cost efficiency. Also this helps the retailers to focus their energy more on their core competencies and developing their product capabilities and increasing their market penetration.
Based on the geographical spread, product types, number of stores/distribution centers and the availability of 3PLs, Retailers have to work with multiple 3PL service providers to manage their entire supply chain. Managing seamless and tight IT integrations with multiple 3PL providers is a big challenge for any retailer today and the absence of an integrated IT infrastructure tops the list of concerns that retailers voice about 3PLs.
Continue reading " Integrating with 3PLs - How to make IT work? " »
August 8, 2011
Traits of a Green Supply Chain
There are certain attributes of a supply chain based on which the supply chain practices can be designated as Green Supply Chain. This blog is a result of the analysis of green supply chain initiatives of various companies. The blog describes the various innovative steps and business processes which are helping companies to have more aware and environmental friendly operations amd processes, making it more sustainable. These practices and steps indicates the traits of a supply chain being green and environmental friendly.
August 5, 2011
Contract To Kill - Focus on Core Competencies
Continue reading " Contract To Kill - Focus on Core Competencies " »
July 27, 2011
KEP Strategy Is In Vogue
July 19, 2011
Centralized Procurement with Oracle Fusion
Introduction
With the business expanding across globes and with manufacturing organizations resorting to sub-contracting, there is a need for organizations to look at procurement beyond their current markets. This introduces the need for a centralized procurement function for better purchasing efficiency, better control over organization spend, and central and simpler management of contracts with suppliers. Oracle Fusion Procurement introduces new and better features that aid organizations to better manage their procurement functions. The following are the advantages of a centralized procurement function:
- Better control over organization spend
- Consolidated purchasing across business units
- Leverage volume discounts by consolidated demand
- Better supplier relationship management
- Single point of contact in buying organization for supplier
- Centralized contracts - easier implementation and better management
- Consolidated measurement of supplier performance
- Reduced overheads
Continue reading " Centralized Procurement with Oracle Fusion " »
July 14, 2011
Roads Apart - Yet Worlds Apart
July 2, 2011
TEAR Factors to Gauge ROI of Big Ticket Engagements
Continue reading " TEAR Factors to Gauge ROI of Big Ticket Engagements " »
May 30, 2011
Online Retailing - Product Promotions Using Facebook Open Graph API
It has been just over a year since Facebook launched its Open Graph API. It was touted as the next wave that would enable online retailers to target potential customers with personalized product promotions. The Open Graph API is yet another step from Facebook to challenge the stranglehold that Google has on online search.
Continue reading " Online Retailing - Product Promotions Using Facebook Open Graph API " »
FTS Needs Leads To KEP Strategy, Involving a WMS, ROI Follows
Continue reading " FTS Needs Leads To KEP Strategy, Involving a WMS, ROI Follows " »
May 27, 2011
It's a Pain! - A day in the life of a Cost Accountant in Retail industry!
Continue reading " It's a Pain! - A day in the life of a Cost Accountant in Retail industry! " »
May 18, 2011
Viability of Big Ticket WMS Engagements
Continue reading " Viability of Big Ticket WMS Engagements " »
May 4, 2011
Manufacturing Outsourcing - Let IT open the door for Collaboration
Continue reading " Manufacturing Outsourcing - Let IT open the door for Collaboration " »
May 1, 2011
What happens in the Warehouse stays in the Warehouse
Continue reading " What happens in the Warehouse stays in the Warehouse " »
April 25, 2011
Best May Not Be Best, Sometimes !!
April 20, 2011
CSR@Green Supply Chain
March 25, 2011
Product Master 2.0 Retail Version
Oracle Product Item Master (PIM) was released in Jan 2008. PIM was touted as an innovative master data management application that allows global retailers to create a single, enterprise view of all product information to help unlock value from within the business.
With much water having passed under the bridge, where does it stand and what is the Product Master 2.0 for Retail, read on for my perspective on it!
March 19, 2011
Responsive Supply Chain is a Responsible Supply Chain: A Green Initiative
Continue reading " Responsive Supply Chain is a Responsible Supply Chain: A Green Initiative " »
March 17, 2011
Supply Chain Visibility
Over the last decade or two supply chains have become increasingly complex. As large portion of manufacturing has moved from high-cost developed countries in the Western hemisphere to low-cost developing countries in the East, global trade has increased and so has the complexity of supply chains. Managing an increasingly complex supply chain requires availability of accurate and timely data to supply chain managers. Chain Visibility is a concept that attempts to achieve that.
March 7, 2011
Supply Chain Best Practices: Reduced TCO via Best Of Breed or ERP WMS
Continue reading " Supply Chain Best Practices: Reduced TCO via Best Of Breed or ERP WMS " »
February 28, 2011
Exploring Item life cycle management options
Every country is making its Food and drug administrative control laws more and more stringent. Each country has a different requirement to get the products in specific labels formats, label colors, holograms, compositions etc. Issue is more challenging if item life cycle is short and old SKUs are getting replaced by new SKUs
Continue reading " Exploring Item life cycle management options " »
Strategizing and Prioritizing of porting ERPs to Mobile Devices
Continue reading " Strategizing and Prioritizing of porting ERPs to Mobile Devices " »
Why ERP Apps Need to Embrace Mobility to Stay Relevant
Continue reading " Why ERP Apps Need to Embrace Mobility to Stay Relevant " »
February 26, 2011
Trends in Supply Chain Practice: XDock- From Mundane To Magic
Cross Docking is the balancing fulcrum between the Dock to Stock and Direct Store Delivery approach as we have discussed earlier. There are certain tenets of successful cross docking implementation and its best fitment.
Continue reading " Trends in Supply Chain Practice: XDock- From Mundane To Magic " »
February 23, 2011
Challenges in Outsourcing to 3PLs
"That part of the supply chain process that plans, implements and controls the efficient flow and storage of goods, services and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption, in order to meet the customers' requirements."
February 21, 2011
Supply Chain Planning and Logistics integration
There was a time, not so long ago, when various business functions within the enterprises used to function in silos and that was still ok. Simply because that was the norm of the day. Not any more though. In today's competitive environment, managers are continuously looking for avenues to cut costs without compromising service.
Unless the functions in the enterprise collaborate, those objectives are highly likely to fall flat on their face. It is like building a tunnel. If two teams start digging from either side of the mountain without working with each other, the probability of them finding each other half way down is pretty low. What the enterprises need in such situations are systems and processes which work across the functions to recommend what's in the best interests of the enterprise. Availability of better systems is a big enabler in this aspect.
Continue reading " Supply Chain Planning and Logistics integration " »
February 13, 2011
Supply Chain Best Practices For Store Based Retailers - Reverse Logistics
It may leave many of us agape, but it is widely understood that retailers and distributors end up loosing close to 15% of sales revenues handling returns each year. A return has much more to it than mere waste management. In my last blog I had discussed on the probability of return as a function of multiple variables. Unless handled properly, returns could have a severe adverse impact on the bottom line of any retail organization. Concept of reverse logistics first surfaced in the 1980's, it is not new. But it may have been only well understood by proactive organizations or those smitten by the return bug.
Continue reading " Supply Chain Best Practices For Store Based Retailers - Reverse Logistics " »
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 " »
January 29, 2011
Mirror Images of Sales and Returns
Quality relates to perception as they say, and profit links a dollar value to this perception. Sales and return are the two sides of the same coin. They depict and demonstrate the extent of both quality and profit hand in hand. While returns trickle in throughout the year, for many consumer goods retailers the annual holiday season is characterized by an flurry of returns. Successful organizations around the world provide an easy opportunity to the customers to return the products. It is a fact that many customers prefer to shop at stores that offer the best returns policy along with bargain pricing.
January 9, 2011
Cross Dock- The Seesaw Between D2S and DSD
Retail sector has clearly demonstrated the practice and implementation of cross docking. Whereas, it is difficult to find many examples of true cross docking outside of the retail sector.
Continue reading " Cross Dock- The Seesaw Between D2S and DSD " »
December 29, 2010
Creating Quality supply chain !
In Simple terms, Quality is nothing but attaining excellence in what we do, being it manufacturing or in service industries.
We all be hearing these words regarding the Product quality as
"Yesterday was customer's need, Today is Customer's Satisfaction, and Tomorrow will be Customer's Expectations."
That mean each and every product or the material going out of the industries or coming in should have excellent quality standards so that the finished good is of best quality . Because Deficient incoming raw material will affect the final product and spoil the product name in the market. So in today's scenario following quality only at Manufacturing Plant level is not sufficient , but also training the Vendors (Suppliers) regarding quality procedures , Complying with quality standards is must .
For example, we are running Casting industry and supplied with raw aluminum ingots from our vendor. You trust the Vendor and use the ingots in production. The result may be Complaints from Customers about defective castings. Why is it so? What happened suddenly?
December 27, 2010
MES for Process Industries
What is MES ?
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) acts as central repository for all the data transacted, but there is no way of controlling the operations or passing the information between plant control system & ERP in integrated manner.
MES (Manufacturing execution systems) help in detailing the process and also controlling the operations through the systems. MES uses the data and provide results on the plant activities in minimal time. MES Collects the data from plant system, store them, and the output are used to control the functions in enhancing productivity and process on the whole.
MES for Oracle Process Manufacturing (OPM):
MES for Process Manufacturing adds new batch execution functionality and increases usability for manufacturing operators.
December 26, 2010
Picking SMARTLY, Aren't You?
Picking is the deemed to be the most important activity in the Warehouse Management as it is cost-intensive. Order picking in most distribution centers represents the largest area of cost, often said to account for more than 50% of labor costs. Due to the nature of distribution and fulfillment there are more outbound transactions than inbound transactions, and the labor associated with the outbound transactions is likely a big piece of the total warehouse labor budget. Another reason for the high level of importance placed on order picking operations is its direct connection to customer satisfaction. The ability to quickly and accurately process customer orders has become an essential part of doing business. In my earlier blogs on picking I have touched upon multiple dimensions of effective picking in relation to warehouse design in order to achieve operational efficiencies. Study conducted by Norman Saenz in past can be put to use to carefully analyze tenets of effective picking. Retailers around the world can reconsider their picking approach holistically to get a step closer to being a world class organization. We extend the SMART (Simple Methods to Achieve Rapid Throughput) ways to perform the picking operation SMARTLY in a warehouse.
December 5, 2010
"I" Am A SMART Retailer
Cross docking is a common practice amongst the retailers and has been widely acknowledged to provide operational efficiencies and scales of economies. In my earlier blog I had mentioned about the warehouse shape and size and how it relates to effective cross docking practices. Let us take this discussion a little further.
November 24, 2010
Transportation Business: Measuring your Container Cube Optimization
Guest post by
Aniruddha Suresh Parwekar, Principal Consultant - Business Intelligence, Oracle practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Transportation is one of the key elements of your Supply Chain Strategy. The primary objective of the Supply chain is to deliver a right product in right packaging and right condition to right customer at right time and right Cost. Transportation part of the supply chain can help you with goods delivered in right condition to right customer at right time and right cost. In short, Transportation can make more impact on the cost rather than revenue and bottom-line rather than top line. Hence, while transporting goods; typical objective of any Transportation manager would be to minimize the cost for freight.
Continue reading " Transportation Business: Measuring your Container Cube Optimization " »
November 20, 2010
Are you a SMART Retailer ??
Cross docking has gained popularity amongst the retailers and has been widely acknowledged to provide operational efficiencies and scales of economies. A key business imperative for the retail industry is quick turnaround and cross docking proves to be a definite enabler.
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.
November 7, 2010
Task Of Avoiding Stock Outs- Task Management
Out of Stock is a common problem that has smitten retailers immemorial. It is a part and parcel of the industry dynamics. One of the core WMS concepts can come in really handy and act as a panacea.
Continue reading " Task Of Avoiding Stock Outs- Task Management " »
October 23, 2010
On Demand WMS For Responsive Supply Chain
When an organization engages in systematic, purposeful acts, using and stretching its abilities to the maximum, it cannot help but feel positive and confident abut itself. I firmly believe that by stretching yourself beyond your perceived level of confidence you accelerate your development of competence. It holds good equally good for an organization that is a living individual.
Continue reading " On Demand WMS For Responsive Supply Chain " »
September 26, 2010
Pick Effectively To Get Pricked Minimally
A day in life of a warehouse involves labor intensive and system dependant activities. I have earlier written on multiple dimensions of inbound logistics, putaway and detailed receiving. Put-away is getting material and putting it in the storage areas of the warehouse. It accounts for 15% of the total costs as many a research have spelled but picking is exactly the opposite and it costs more than 3 times of putaway.
Continue reading " Pick Effectively To Get Pricked Minimally " »
September 15, 2010
Is IT an 'enabler' or 'creator' of Business Value?
Continue reading " Is IT an 'enabler' or 'creator' of Business Value? " »
September 13, 2010
Oracle Edge Products - What are the latest Retail Needs
Most Retailers have by now embraced the Internet's effect on their businesses. Earlier versions used to see Retailers creating a different entitity such as XYZ Online or XYZ.net for their online sales. But with the recent phase of Multi Channel Commerce initiatives Retailers are quickly merging operations for procuring, selling and shipping items across the multiple channels. This meant that the IT applications had to quickly adapt and integrate with each other to serve the growing business needs of a seamless enterprise. Oracle has taken a big step in acquiring or developing solutions to meet this growing need of Retailers! This post describes what these new products are and why they are called Edge!
Continue reading " Oracle Edge Products - What are the latest Retail Needs " »
September 12, 2010
Dynamics of Shipping Industry- A Glimpse
World has indeed changed from when Ferdinand Magellan's set on the first expedition of 1519-1522 to sail from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific Ocean thereby completing the first circumnavigation of the Earth.
Continue reading " Dynamics of Shipping Industry- A Glimpse " »
September 6, 2010
Optimized Parcel Rating: A key to control transportation costs
"Do you ship more than 100 parcels each day?"
Most of the large enterprises might say 'YES' to this question. In the last decade, the emergence of e-commerce coupled with the rise in smaller and more frequent orders has made parcel shipping operations as one of the key functions of transportation management systems.
Parcel shipping is an inherently complex and expensive mode. Logistics planners are generally faced with the challenge of meeting customer expectations of delivering goods at a lesser freight cost within the stated service time. Adding to their woes, FedEx and UPS have increased their rates for parcel shipments in 2010.
Continue reading " Optimized Parcel Rating: A key to control transportation costs " »
September 2, 2010
Critical points to be consider while "Asset Group" Design process for Successful eAM implementation
August 26, 2010
Social CRM : Prospects and Pitfalls
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
August 16, 2010
Warehouse Sizing and Configuration- Art OR Science
Continue reading " Warehouse Sizing and Configuration- Art OR Science " »
August 7, 2010
From KYC to KYS- A Paradigm Shift
Organizations pan globe have engaged in programs like VoC (Voice of Customers) since time immemorial. They all want to know what their customers perceive of them. Recent times have seen the flattening of the business world. In order to keep an organization's supply chain lean and optimize on cost and operations, it is equally important to engage in programs like VoS (Voice of suppliers).
June 24, 2010
What Is Better: Radio Frequency Identification or Barcodes?
There is always an obvious choice at the end. It could to difficult to make though. But for long there have always been discussions which technology is better - RFDI or Barcode. There are many differences and benefits that each of these carry with them. Both bar codes and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) are a type of automatic identification and data collection (AIDC) technology.
Continue reading " What Is Better: Radio Frequency Identification or Barcodes? " »
June 8, 2010
Pillars of WMS
Receiving and putaway have often being defined as 2 of the 4 pillars of a typical Warehouse Management System. Put together the two pillars account for no less than 17% of warehouse operating expenses. Hence choosing the right processes and a system to support these processes is paramount.
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.
Oracle R12 : Journey So Far! Key Learnings
Oracle R12 has now completed a good number of years in the Market. It arrived with much fanfare, so has it delivered so far? What have been the key learnings from the upgrades that we have seen?
The former is a more difficult question, as any enterprise technology upgrade always comes with fading support for the previous version, thereby creating a risk for the organization. So product upgrades are akin to insurance policies one just has to get them. But R12 was the path to fusion so expectations were a little different. Let us discuss the latter question first, what have we learnt from our engagements of R12 Upgrades. I will next attempt to list down some of the top things I have heard from supporting multiple engagements in R12.
1. Measure twice - Cut Once
Well this common rule in carpentary holds true for R12 Upgrades too! People often underestimate the amount of technical impact that this version has. Oracle users have been used to almost a 10 year period when the version releases were between 11.0.3 to 11.5.10, all essentially sub releases. But R12 brings together substantial differences in the core financials modules, namely GL and AP. The one thing that we learnt from a lot of engagements is to make sure we estimate multiple times through a rigorous check with version comparisons. While the Infosys Upgrade tool does estimate the impact, it does have some limitations. For example Folders, Forms Personalizations these are aspects which not many technical tools capture. The more of these and you have a big problem of missed estimates.
In summary, accurate estimation of technical components from a technical upgrade is a must and is often underestimated.
2. It looks different - It IS different - User Interface changes
The R12 screens borrow heavily form PeopleSoft applications in the user interface technology, so when you look at for the first time, they look bluer and more different! We have seen lot of engagements miss the boat on estimating the effort needed for retraining some of the users, even the expert Oracle 11i ones. The html based navigation is different, and does need some getting used to. Although 11i had introduced OA framework based html screens, R12 has introduced these to a wider number of modules, even financial module of AP has a lot of these screens for eg Supplier Entry.
3. New Functionalities
Just like the above bullet, a substantial business user involvement is needed even if an organization is looking at technical upgrade, since R12 contains many standard functionalities that would retire customizations. Evaluate of these functionalities are best done as part of the upgrade and not as a separate project after the upgrade. The additional testing and project management effort might make the justification of the subsequent phases difficult to fund.
4. Reporting Changes
When underlying data structures change, it has a big impact on the reporting out of the application. And R12 contains a lot of data structure changes, this makes it opportune time to review and revise the organizational reporting strategy during an upgrade. Also with R12 the tools supported for reporting are changing, Desktop ADIs and FSGs can be replaced with a combination of Web ADI and Reports Manager. Also the BI publisher enables a lot of reuse of reporting entities
These were some of the main themes emerging from the 30+ R12 engagements that infosys is engaged in. What are your experiences? I would love to hear back from your personal experiences with R12.
May 16, 2010
The TMS Way- The SMART Way
There are many ways to perform an operation and there is a SMART way of performing the same operation. Inbound logistics is an integral part of any warehouse management system.
May 7, 2010
Dairy Industry Challenges & Oracle's Solution
In this information age, with increasing awareness, consumers are becoming health conscious & want surety that the food product they consume is Safe. They are not happy with just to know the location of manufacturing plant, but are interested to know from where the raw material is originally sourced. Dairy industry, which typically produces a range of products for a variety of markets, faces even greater challenge in tracing individual product. This calls for tighter Integration between all the channel partners across the supply chain.
The dairy industry is a vertically integrated industry with both upstream and downstream trade partners of the supply chain dependent on each other to ensure quality food. I will discuss some of the challenges dairy industry is facing and Oracle's Solution for the same.
Continue reading " Dairy Industry Challenges & Oracle's Solution " »
May 4, 2010
Age Management For Consumables
In the light of changing market dynamics and with the technology moving at such a rapid stride, we wish to bring to the table some interesting facts about one of our favorite beverages, Coffee.
April 28, 2010
Oracle GRC : Is this what we have been waiting for?
Financial Regulation is just around the corner, as we try to recover from a near financial collapse one thing is clear that regulation will be become tighter. This is quite similar to the efforts around accouting standards after the collapse of Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and other firms. The Sarbanes Oxley Act was passed in 2002 to address that issue. Most organizations undertook immedate measures to comply to these regulations. Each industry has had its challenges in adopting these.
Retailers in particular have a unique challenge in terms of their financial landscape. Most of their accounting data is spread across at least two sets of systems, Corporate Accounting has to reconcile expense/capital procurement through traditional Oracle/PeopleSoft based applications, and merchandise/trade procurement and liabilities through Oracle Retail/legacy applications. This dichotomy of systems meant that any product for Governance, Risk and Control needs to span across these two sets of systems.
Oracle's acquisition of Logical apps two years ago, created a strong software for GRC automation and intelligence. Compared to Oracle's internal controls manager which was the only application avaiable for implementing controls, GRC Manager gives a much wider array of automating the entier GRC needs of an organization.
Two things make this the right time for embarking on GRC automation, the need for regulation has never been higher and implementing such a product gives the entire top management a greater degree of confidence in managing governance, risk and controls. The ability to proactively identify conflits in segregation of duties and resolve them in real time is a very compelling reason for any organization on jump on the bandwagon.
Two, the product offering from Oracle has matured where it is creating the right solution for a Retail organization by automating across platforms and also integrating intelligence. With Oracle creating a holistic offering of products for retailers, the merchandising as well as the expense business operations can be supported on Oracle products. This makes the integration of the Oracle GRC product that much easier.
Oracle GRC might be the right product at the right time to hit the market and with R12 upgrades lot of organizations should evaluate this as part of their R12 strategy.
March 15, 2010
On Demand TMS: A new reality in transportation sector
Over the past few years, we have come across variety of terms like hosted solutions, ASP (application service provider), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The basic idea shared among all such concepts is that rather than installing software on a server within the boundaries of the enterprise’s IT domain, the software resides outside the company’s walls by 3rd party service providers and delivered over web technology.
SaaS or “On Demand” generally implies a multi-tenant model, where multiple companies share a single/multiple instance of the software and associated hardware / infrastructure. It makes perfect sense for transportation processes to be deployed on SaaS mode as they are
- Inherently network centric
- Involve extensive communication and collaboration between different trading partners
- Standard workflows across companies and industries
On demand TMS is the latest buzzword in the transportation industry. They are developed on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform to keep pace with recent developments in IT industry. On demand TMS definitely scores over traditional TMS in many key areas such as
- Incremental implementation (module wise) reduces initial cost overhead & ensures rapid deployment.
- Greater willingness to adapt to the application as on-demand TMS is perceived as a “service”, making buyers accept it as more standardized offering and demand less customization.
- Ready to use carrier connectivity enables providers to leverage existing carrier connections among common customers
- Collaborative transportation opportunities via benchmarking transportation processes across the industry.
- Strategic flexibility to “unplug” an on-demand TMS solution and switch to another service provider
- Additional advantages provided by on demand TMS providers like process consulting by domain experts, streamlining support escalations and guaranteed performance levels.
On demand TMS is definitely the way forward, but it does not pose an end to traditional TMS implementation as initial subscription cost in this model works out to be higher when compared to traditional TMS deployment. Only ‘vanilla’ configuration can be managed in such formats leaving little room for customer specific enhancements. Moreover, enterprise will always face the strategic risk of exposing company specific data to external world.
Corporate shippers should look at a two step approach to TMS implementation. Initial phase of TMS project should be delivered via on demand service provider, but later with better process maturity, the enterprise should move to in-house TMS deployment to appraise processes to next level and maintain more control over data.
Acknowledgments for inputs from - Nipun Lakhotia , OTM Consultant, Oracle Practice
- Ready to use carrier connectivity enables providers to leverage existing carrier connections among common customers
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 23, 2009
EBS R12 Roadmap: A Global Retailer’s challenge in picking the optimum upgrade solution approach to R12 with an existing Oracle product portfolio
On the EBS R12 Roadmap, retailers with an existing Oracle product portfolio and operating globally across multiple business units and having multiple oracle instances face the everlasting dilemma whether to Upgrade for achieving the new package benefits at a relatively lesser cost versus - to Re-Implement a fully re-engineered R12 based solution bringing in maximum benefits but probably at a relatively higher cost.
September 5, 2009
How Risky is your supply chain?
Typically we talk about two kinds of supply chain- A responsive supply chain and an efficient supply chain. An efficient supply chain is mostly targeted at reducing costs while a responsive supply chain is designed to cater to the changing needs of the demand (both new and variant) by building some kind of redundancy in the system. But in both cases have you incorporated the risk element?
August 27, 2009
Labor Day - Retail Prep and ERP impact
Continue reading " Labor Day - Retail Prep and ERP impact " »
July 20, 2009
Planning Roundtrip Multi-Stop Delivery Routes in OTM
Improving logistics performance still remains a challenge for many firms, even those that have achieved better planning and optimization from implementing well structured TMS applications available in the market.
Continue reading " Planning Roundtrip Multi-Stop Delivery Routes in OTM " »
July 7, 2009
Video: Retailer Operations and Packaged applications!
Most Retailers operate in two,fundamentally different set of modes. These modes have a direct impact on the package applications they choose. In this video blog i touch upon this difference and the subsequent impact.
Transcript:
'Hi everyone, welcome to infosysblogs my name is Venu kotamraju and I am a principal consultant with Infosys, Today I wanted to talk about a typical retail organizations and what the variety of operations are and the impact it has on its applications.
Continue reading " Video: Retailer Operations and Packaged applications! " »
June 8, 2009
What do you optimize in your Supply Chain?
In one of my earlier blogs , I had introduced Oracle Strategic Network Optimization as a tool to optimize your supply chain. Well, the primary objective is to deliver a consistent, flexible, efficient, sustainable, Supply Chain which results in an optimized output that considers all trade-offs such as customer delivery, cost, risk, lead time, tax, carbon footprint, etc. Please refer to the link below:(http://www.infosysblogs.com/oracle/2009/05/linear_programming_models_orac.html#more)
Continue reading " What do you optimize in your Supply Chain? " »
April 17, 2009
Retail Order Management - Emerging Trends
Continue reading " Retail Order Management - Emerging Trends " »
April 1, 2009
Failure of Peanut Corp. of America, what should we learn??
The peanut butter and peanut paste recall have been considered the largest product recall in history. Nine people have been died & thousands have reported sick due to consumption of PCA products. Questions are being raised about the food safety regulations & quality issue in Supply chain. Is it the system Failure or Greed of few individuals? Is it only the PCA whom to blame? What about the downstream Manufacturer who were using PCA products as their Raw Material? Also, are our Quality regulations sufficient? But the most important question that most Food companies should be asking themselves is this, what to do to avoid the repetition of same in future?
Continue reading " Failure of Peanut Corp. of America, what should we learn?? " »
March 31, 2009
Transportation and Logistics market in Emerging economies like India - Glocalization approach needed
Logistics costs in India are estimated to be around 13% of the GDP, which comes to around US$94 billion in 2005-06.Transport sector’s contribution to India’s GDP is estimated to be around 7.6% in 2006-07, and road transport has a dominant role in this contribution with a share of 4.7% in India’s GDP.Currently, the market is extremely fragmented and dominated by unorganized sector. Most of the organized players are using their home grown operational TMS system for managing their day to day work.
March 25, 2009
Video: Understanding Retailers
The retail industry is unlike any other in many ways – from accounting methods followed to the range and type of interactions with suppliers and customers. In this video blog, I have discussed the dynamics of the industry and how these impact technology solutions created and implemented for retailers.
March 10, 2009
A Retail Perspective on MDM
Retailers are increasingly paying closer attention to the customer data to analyze consumer behavior. Consumer behavior is not the only reason to start maintaining enterprise data in a better way. Master Data Management is an approach of holistically identifying enterprise-wide key entities and maintaining them in a centralized manner. This post identifies some key areas for this approach for retailers.
February 23, 2009
Is Online Sales the hope for low In-store sales?
Continued from post http://www.infosysblogs.com/oracle/2008/12/is_this_the_right_time_to_go_a.html
In this tough economic environment one definite trend is emerging, more and more consumers are buying online, finding wider availability, better pricing and ease of service. Let us evaluate some key trends in online sales.
Continue reading " Is Online Sales the hope for low In-store sales? " »
January 24, 2009
Demystifying Merchandise Accounts Payable
Merchandise Accounts Payable, a mouthful isnt it? This blog explains and simplifies the complex area of Merchandise Accounts Payable, often seen in Retailers or Wholesalers. It also presents a point of view on various Oracle Products and their fitment to this business area.
Continue reading " Demystifying Merchandise Accounts Payable " »
January 23, 2009
Are we there yet? R12 upgrade and Retailers
Continuing from my previous blog http://infosysblogs.com/oracle/2008/12/r12_upgrade_whats_in_it_for_re.html
Are we there yet? Has the time come to pick the R12 Version of Oracle eBusiness Suite, it has been on the market for more than two years now, bugs have been reported but stability seems to have been achieved, let us look at what the version offers for Retailers as the dust on the product launch settles...
Continue reading " Are we there yet? R12 upgrade and Retailers " »
December 22, 2008
Is this the right time to go aggressive with online Retail Sales ?
Economy is still in the midst of a financial credit crisis, consumer spending is slowing and every stock market move up is followed by a corresponding move downwards. Are these tough times really the time to aggressive to go online with Sales? I think so, isnt that what the ERP packages were supposed to be ready to deliver?
Continue reading " Is this the right time to go aggressive with online Retail Sales ? " »
December 18, 2008
R12 Upgrade - What's in it for Retailers?
Most Product companies flourish by rolling out newer versions every now and then. Most versions are mere bug fixes, is there a difference then in the fusion enabled Oracle R12 version, especially for Retailers who have been long waiting to get an integrated suite of applications to run their business!
Continue reading " R12 Upgrade - What's in it for Retailers? " »
November 24, 2008
Using Operational Levers To Boost Supply Chain Performance
To remain competitive in today's environment, manufacturing companies are looking at boosting their supply chain performance. One of the key levers for improving supply chain is 'cost reduction' at various stages of the entire chain.
Continue reading " Using Operational Levers To Boost Supply Chain Performance " »
August 16, 2008
Thinking of Acquisition? Keep ERP as one of the decision parameters
Continue reading " Thinking of Acquisition? Keep ERP as one of the decision parameters " »
July 10, 2008
Retailing in a Down Economy, any different from a Boom?
An economic downturn affects everyone, some more than others. The overall effect tends to lower consumer confidence and this has a direct impact on consumer spending. Or does it?
Continue reading " Retailing in a Down Economy, any different from a Boom? " »
June 5, 2008
Retail Financials or Financials for Retailers- Part Deux?
Now we have established that Retailers are a special breed of organizations (see here) and their financials definitely deserve a special look. I think this difference in their operations has tremendous impact on their choice of applications. Some of the common notions of Oracle Applications such as Procure to Pay do not work for retailers.
Continue reading " Retail Financials or Financials for Retailers- Part Deux? " »
May 15, 2008
Retail Financials or Financials for Retailers?
Continue reading " Retail Financials or Financials for Retailers? " »
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