Infosys’ blog on industry solutions, trends, business process transformation and global implementation in Oracle.

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February 28, 2010

A diet for your General Ledger system: From “Fat GL” to “Thin GL”

Determining the number and composition of the extended accounts (Flexfield structure in Oracle) has been a topic of debate and angst amongst GL architects.

A “Fat GL” design as the name implies contains a very large number of journals, often containing information that would typically be required for operational management reporting and typically containing minimal summarization.

Continue reading "A diet for your General Ledger system: From “Fat GL” to “Thin GL”" »

November 17, 2009

Use Oracle EAM effectively, turn Assets to Cash!

Managing assets is crucial for any business, especially for Oil Field service companies which are asset intensive where operational cost in asset management contributes to a substantial part of expenses. Even a 6-8 % saving on operational cost can make lot of difference.

Continue reading "Use Oracle EAM effectively, turn Assets to Cash!" »

October 07, 2009

When the going gets tough, the smooth gets going!

During tough economic times, even the mightiest of them fall and especially in oil and gas industry we have seen that happening when crude plummeted to $32 after hitting a record of $147 a barrel at a point of time

Continue reading "When the going gets tough, the smooth gets going!" »

October 01, 2009

Flexible,Scalable Billing Platforms for Telecom

Technology innovations, deregulations, merger and acquisitions, low capex and maximizing operational efficiencies have made Communication Service Providers (CSP) think and evaluate about outsourcing. A key trend in outsourcing is managed services model.

Continue reading "Flexible,Scalable Billing Platforms for Telecom" »

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.

Continue reading "EBS R12 Roadmap: A Global Retailer’s challenge in picking the optimum upgrade solution approach to R12 with an existing Oracle product portfolio" »

September 15, 2009

Small & Medium Oil Field Services Companies – Market Dynamics and Challenges

Oil Exploration and Production is a complex process, and each step of the oil supply chain involves specialized technology. Oilfield services companies provide the infrastructure, equipment, intellectual property and services needed by the international oil and gas industry to explore for, extract, and transport crude oil and natural gas from the earth to the refinery, and eventually to the consumer.

Continue reading "Small & Medium Oil Field Services Companies – Market Dynamics and Challenges" »

September 05, 2009

Capture actionable information from your shopfloor

So you have just implemented an ERP system that automates your organization-wide business transactions, reduces a lot of paperwork and also helps with reports at different levels of aggregation. However, when it comes to the shop floor, is your ERP capturing what goes on behind the transactions? To find out the answer, you can start by asking your business the following question-Have there been improvements in the three key elements of your OEE- namely, Quality, Performance and Availability?

Continue reading "Capture actionable information from your shopfloor" »

August 27, 2009

Green Design – A Means to reduce Product Development Costs?

It is seen that for High Technology companies’ compliance to green related regulations required for market entry is the top pressure driving green product development. Most of the High Technology manufacturers have a green product development initiative in place, even more than other industries. They also seem to brand energy efficient technology as one of their top marketing strategies
It is clear, that while today High Technology manufacturers are focused on compliance to regulations like RoHS, REACH, WEE, TSCA, etc. they must look ahead and add cost reduction strategies around green design in their efforts in order to capture and sustain competitive advantage.

But doesn’t too much focus on compliance lead to increasing product development costs and affect their sustainability in the marketplace?? Let us see how successful High Technology manufacturers address this.

Continue reading "Green Design – A Means to reduce Product Development Costs?" »

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 07, 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 19, 2009

Oracle's MTO Solution for Process Industries

This is followup blog to:

http://www.infosysblogs.com/oracle/2009/05/finally_maketoorder_solution_f_1.html

In Last Blog, I discussed about Oracle’s MTO solution for process manufacturer. Let’s go a little deeper to understand how it will benefit Process as well as hybrid manufacturer.  We will also see how this solution has evolved through various releases of OPM.

Continue reading "Oracle's MTO Solution for Process Industries" »

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" »

February 24, 2009

Is Lean Manufacturing the answer to your operational woes -II

Previous post - Is LEAN Manufacturing the answer to your operational woes?

A straight forward answer to whether 'Lean manufacturing is the answer to operational efficiency woes' is not feasible, but researchers have acknowledged that along with agility, leanness in operations and manufacturing is important. Most of the ERP and Supply Chain products provide ways and means to inculcate these processes into the e-business architecture.

Continue reading "Is Lean Manufacturing the answer to your operational woes -II" »

February 23, 2009

Is LEAN Manufacturing the answer to your operational woes?

In today's economic turmoil, the manufacturing units are under constant pressure to look for innovative methods to provide value for money to their customers. In such a scenario, it becomes imperative for the enterprise to manufacture and sell products which would actually add profits to the business, not just revenues.

Continue reading "Is LEAN Manufacturing the answer to your operational woes?" »

February 17, 2009

Speed to Market - Using historical data

The other aspect of successful design is effective usage of historical data. Recall the fact that only 30% of new products launched succeed. Effort that would have gone into the other 70% of the failed product will prove useful in the new initiative.

Continue reading "Speed to Market - Using historical data" »

February 16, 2009

Detail Design phase - Speed to Market Strategy

Continuing  the series of  previous posts on Speed to market started at:
 
 

Continue reading "Detail Design phase - Speed to Market Strategy" »

February 06, 2009

Is my CAD vendor the natural choice for PLM?

 As a head of Product Engineering team, you finally convinced the management for a PLM tool for your organization. The next big question will be which tool should you implement? All CAD vendors have PLM tools & few ERP vendors also offer PLM as a module. 

Continue reading "Is my CAD vendor the natural choice for PLM?" »

November 23, 2008

Business Intelligence and the Economic Gloom: A Perspective

With the economic meltdown of the financial world and a severe downturn and meltdown in the Automobile and Retail sectors we are possibly headed for tough times ahead.

With the global economy being so intertwined there is no sector or industry vertical that is immune to this crisis.

Continue reading "Business Intelligence and the Economic Gloom: A Perspective" »

November 18, 2008

Providing visibility to your large projects through a Project centric solution

In continuation with the entry here

Standardised project management process
Utilities have a trend of growing through acquiring other companies and hence the project management processes are likely to vary within their business.  For e.g., an organisation that took over a contracting company that specialises in executing rechargeable jobs is likely to have its processes and systems for managing rechargeable jobs different form the rest of the business - unless there is a conscious effort to homogenize the processes.  The project centric solution design addresses this by mapping the processes to the job classification available out of the box in Oracle ie., direct and indirect jobs  Also project management templates can be defined to ensure that the projects are defined in a specific way that is aligned with other projects in the organisation. This substantially reduces the time required by the engineers and/or planners to create projects in Oracle.  In some cases (Large capital projects), the project are likely to be created in best of breed project management software like Primavera or MS Projects etc.,.  The out of the box interface available in Oracle eBusiness suite can be used to reduce the need to duplicate effort in entering project data into Oracle.  With this, the process, the resource assignment and budgeting are the only processes that need to be done in Oracle eBusiness suite, whilst the other core project management processes are managed in the actual Project management suite.

Continue reading "Providing visibility to your large projects through a Project centric solution" »

November 17, 2008

Manufacturing Execution System – Make it work for you!

Are you having to deal with low percentage of on-time completions, high throughput times, frequent line down situations or high WIP? Obviously something is very wrong, particularly if you said "Yes" to more than one of the above. Having consulted for several discrete manufacturing clients has made one thing very apparent to me - a lean and agile manufacturing environment is not an option but an imperative for manufacturing industries to achieve operational excellence. All of the above were contra-indicators of operational excellence. A manufacturing execution system (MES) can support a manufacturing firm in achieving this very objective. An MES system works in tandem with a mainstream ERP system to execute, monitor and manage the production processes on a shop floor. Together with an ERP system, an MES system can nudge (or push, if required!) an enterprise into adopting standardized processes and at the same time creating key data elements for performance measurements.

Consider the ways in which an MES system can assist you:

  • Detailed scheduling: An MES system can take input from capacities defined for work centers and hourly usage of machines and labor (in routings) to perform detail scheduling. Sophisticated MES systems can take setup times into cognizance to minimize setups and maximize utilization
  • Dispatching: A MES system can use a dispatch list format to feed work to work centers. It can be used to perform real time prioritization of work orders to reflect reality on the floor - component shortages, current work center availability, downstream work center availability, premium customers and even executive diktats (a late evening call from the plant manager overrides everything else!!)
  • Operational Reporting: An MES system, complemented by the use of the mobile devices using radio frequency, can be used to perform move transactions from one operation to another. This is important in a job shop environment which may have long lead times, to track work orders, correctly reflect work in process costs and perform dispatching of jobs
  • Nonconformance tracking: An MES system will provide ways of tracking and managing non-conformances. While eliminating waste such as non-conformances remains a top priority for organizations, managing them on occurrence remains a grim reality. Ways to quickly identify, segregate and disposition non-conformances will aid in minimizing impact upon customer orders

    An MES system is now frequently offered by ERP vendors as an add-on or they provide integration with best-of-breed MES vendors. So its time for companies who have not yet invested in MES systems to see how they can make it work for them!

November 10, 2008

Managing large projects - Do you need a piece of paper or an integrated system?

‘What is the project budget?’, ‘Who approved this capital investment?’, ‘who is monitoring the budget overruns?’, ‘who is tracking the project performance in terms of cost, quality, time and effort?’ and finally ‘Where are we in terms of planned Vs Actuals?’ – These are common questions one will come across, if they have spent some time in utility industries.  Utility industry is one of the very few industries that manage their operations as projects.  Everything they do is managed in their systems as an outcome of a project or a group of projects. Given this challenge, what does one need to manage these projects? Will there be the organization’s ace project manager available to manage all your projects efficiently? – Probably not. !

Continue reading "Managing large projects - Do you need a piece of paper or an integrated system?" »

Innovation through Collaboration: Addressing Flat World Challenges in the Hi-Tech Industry

It was Oracle Open World time in September and CXOs from leading hi-tech companies came together again for this year’s High Tech Leader Circle (HTLC) at the Moscone Center. I had the privilege of delivering the keynote session and could not think of a more pertinent topic than “Innovation through Collaboration” for a thought-provoking discussion with business leaders in the room.

The global business scenario has changed dramatically in the last year. Rising costs continue to put pressure on margins; globalization and the power of emerging economies are increasing the complexity of the business environment, and customer expectations from vendors and service providers has multiplied exponentially. The economic slowdown, collapse of the housing market and unexpected exchange rate fluctuations have made the business environment even more difficult. C-Level executives can no longer rely on conventional approaches to create a competitive advantage and have to look at innovation through collaboration to steer their organizations through turbulent times.

Continue reading "Innovation through Collaboration: Addressing Flat World Challenges in the Hi-Tech Industry" »

November 05, 2008

High Tech Reverse Logistics: A Potential Cost Cutting Avenue

To put in simple terms, Reverse Logistics is the flow of Returned goods by the customer to a state where the product is disposed of, repaired, recycled or internally consumed. And because of the strict norms pertaining to disposition of goods in the high tech sector, this is a very strategic area.

Continue reading "High Tech Reverse Logistics: A Potential Cost Cutting Avenue" »

October 22, 2008

High Tech Industry’s Sourcing Value Proposition: Reverse Auction

With the current slowdown being accelerated by the financial turmoil, companies are increasingly looking at avenues to cut costs yet maintain profitability against all odds. This is a tricky situation given the fact that any decision leads to a bullwhip effect owing to the integrated nature of today’s supply chain. One of the time tested techniques to achieve this is through Reverse Auctions which is quite prevalent in the High Tech industry.

Continue reading "High Tech Industry’s Sourcing Value Proposition: Reverse Auction" »

September 24, 2008

OOW- the "Middle Chapter"

Greetings from OOW - SF, USA

 With so much going on - its hard to find time to stop and type:

  • Newly announced Oracle business units
  • Aggressive solution development plans to address industry whitespace
  • Larry's keynote later today...

Last night our own Kakal (ES Head) presented his Hi-Tech Leaders Circle keynote:  "Innovation Through Collaboration" - showcasing Infy thought leadership in what is arguably the most intensely competitive crucible today: the fickle, product-centric hi-tech marketplace.  In the end, hi-tech companies that combine traditional and emergent technologies will be better positioned to create competitive advantage in the flattening world.  Over 100 senior executives (a who's who of hi-tech) were present to hear these key messages - and did you note the big announcement by one of our key Oracle clients, Cisco?  Collaboration tools (Jabber, Webex, etc) are expanding their markets ---immediate proof points that we are riding and defining the front edge of the next wave.

Our leadership hosted over 150 Infy clients, partners, and team members from around the globe to celebrate and thank all for the exceptional dedication and effort that has resulted in a thriving Oracle professional services powerhouse here at Infy and most importantly driven our clients success.  Both Srinath Batni and Kakal warmly welcomed and thanked the group, and we enjoyed a brief respite from the hectic schedule of the conference to reflect on past, present, and future.

Back to Day 3 - the always engaging Larry Ellison will deliver the keynote today - watch for one final show update tomorrow before we pack up and head back to the field.

Chris

September 20, 2008

Going Green

Last week when I was in Kansas City presenting a paper at the 2008 APICS International Conference, I had an interesting observation. There was a tremendous emphasis on Sustainability. We talk about Lean Supply Chain but companies were one step ahead discussing Green Supply Chain. Initially I had dismissed it as another fad but I was amazed at the commitment more so in the High Tech Domain.

Continue reading "Going Green" »

September 04, 2008

Do you wanna expedite your Order cycles?

Where is my Order????? When will it get shipped???? Another delay, yet again!!!! These are some of the very common and frequently asked questions by the Customers.
The challenging business needs, difficult to hold enough inventory, increase in cost of manufacturing and more so frequent re-org’s have made manufacturers to re-think about their business strategy. The business drivers are changing and increasing at a fast pace and Enterprises using ERP’s expect the product vendors to be more than up to speed to offer capabilities in the standard product and also provide an Integration strategy to offer seamless out-of-box integrations.These capabilities are targeted towards Increase in Agent Productivity, Significant reduction in cycle time, Automating Business flows, Orchestrating Business flows spread across disparate applications and Enabling Shared service operations etc.
Oracle has a taken a step forward to meet the above objectives and much more than that. The latest release of Oracle EBS (eBusiness Suite), which is popularly known as R12, is a significant step to meet the complex and demanding business objectives. The features like Multi Org Access Control (MOAC) allow agents to access data spread across Operating units from a single responsibility. The enhancements done as part of EBS R12 in Order Management, Advanced Pricing, iStore help in increase of Agent productivity and shorten the Order cycles.
Come and join the journey if you wanna know on how to expedite and streamline your prolonged Order cycles…….
This session will elucidate how Oracle R12 features can be leveraged to enable shared service operations with features like MOAC. It will elaborate the New R12 features in the areas of Order Management, Advance Pricing and iStore with suitable examples. The session will explain on how the new features like Price book will join the core stream and make it more transparent to the customers. This session will also talk about how the new R12 features and Fusion middleware product BPEL came together and delivered a composite Application model for a big Hi-Tech giant.

Oracle's latest version of its E-Business Suite (EBS) is a significant release. Current users need to determine if and when this upgrade will be appropriate, if they have not already done so. New users of Oracle applications need to ensure that Release 12 is the appropriate release to implement.  – Gartner

The journey begins in the biggest Oracle Technology symposium – Oracle Open World, 21st-25th Sep 2008……

Session ID: S300276
Session Title: Shorten Your Order Cycles with New Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 Features: Wanna Know How?
Track: Oracle E-Business Suite

August 31, 2008

High Tech Industry: A State of Flux

Moore's law describes an important trend in the history of computer hardware: that the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit is increasing exponentially, doubling approximately every two years. The trend has continued for more than half a century and is not expected to stop for another decade at least and perhaps much longer. This alone is a testimony to the fact how the high tech industry is changing at a rapid pace. And companies seem to be in a state of shock trying to cope with this change. Rising costs, shrinking markets seem to add further to their woes.

 

Continue reading "High Tech Industry: A State of Flux" »

August 10, 2008

Thinking of R12? Go for an Enhanced Upgrade

Call it the bane or boon of an ERP system, companies do not have a choice but to upgrade to a higher version. There are various factors which drive the decision to upgrade namely de-support of the current system by the ERP vendor, availability of new features in higher version which have the potential to give a strategic edge. Typically companies choose the upgrade path to avoid the de-support problem and hence what it finally does is a pure as-is technical upgrade. This has multiple benefits in the sense that it is least risky and also can be done in a shorter timeframe. But once in a while it makes sense to have a look at the new features which can bring efficiencies in the process.

 

Continue reading "Thinking of R12? Go for an Enhanced Upgrade" »

August 08, 2008

Hi-Tech Trash: Have our e-dumps become safer?

Scientific American featured a thought provoking article in November 2007 titled--Trashed Tech: Where Do Old Cell Phones, TVs and PCs Go to Die? The enormity of the problem of electronic waste and the urgent need for producing toxin free electronic components could not have been discussed better. I had a serious conscience attack about replacing my old cell phone after reading the article!!

Continue reading "Hi-Tech Trash: Have our e-dumps become safer?" »

August 04, 2008

High Tech Sector’s Label Printing Needs: Are we there?

 

If there is one thing which we can call as the livewire of the High Tech Sector is Labels. The entire high tech industry moves on labels. In Standard ERP Packages there are certain limitations in terms of volume of labels, performance and quality of bar code labels. As a result, typically companies have looked at other middleware options as a plug and play with the ERP Packages. Latest offerings from the ERP vendors seem to address this problem removing the need for middleware.

 

Continue reading "High Tech Sector’s Label Printing Needs: Are we there?" »

July 31, 2008

What is the Right Product Structure for the High Tech Sector?

To give a text bookish definition, Product structure is a hierarchical decomposition of a product, typically know as the BOM (Bills of Material). The High Tech Sector typically has a Model BOM with Option Classes and Options. With so many variants offered by competitors, the industry has no other way but to offer a better customer experience to garner market share. And one way of offering a better customer experience is to give as many choices as possible to the customer to choose from. For example, giving various ranges of RAM to the customer to choose from gives a feeling of contentment to the customer.

 

Continue reading "What is the Right Product Structure for the High Tech Sector?" »

July 21, 2008

High Tech Industry’s Logistics Woes: Oracle Transportation Management may be the answer

Gone is the era when customers would queue to your factory gate to buy the goods produced by you. Remember Bajaj scooter in the 80s when we had a waiting time of up to 10 years. Not any more. With breakthrough advancement in science and technology, we are in a situation where the market place is cluttered with supply surpassing demand. More so in the high tech sector where changes happen in split seconds. Given the current situation, the winner is surely the one who will be able to provide a better buying experience to the customer and yet charge reasonably for providing the service. This includes both choice of products and/or services and delivering it to the customer at a reasonable price.

 

Continue reading "High Tech Industry’s Logistics Woes: Oracle Transportation Management may be the answer" »

July 19, 2008

Collaboration: The way forward for High Tech Industry

In his classic best-seller ‘The Goal’, Eliyahu M. Goldratt discusses about the three fundamental ways of making money for a going concern namely,

  1. Increase throughput (the rate at which the system generates money through sales)  
  2. Reduce Inventory (all the money that system has invested in purchasing things which it intends to sells)
  3. Reduce Operational expenses (all the money the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput)

     

Continue reading "Collaboration: The way forward for High Tech Industry" »

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 05, 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?

Is there really a difference between the two? You bet! A lack of understanding this difference can push one down a perilous path of over budget ERP implementations. Retailers do their business differently and this difference has a big impact on accounting. Implementers, project managers, consultants and developers must all understand this difference.

Continue reading "Retail Financials or Financials for Retailers?" »

Measuring manufacturing system parameters – first step to drive towards manufacturing execution excellence

Corporations today are spending significant amount of time and money in deploying state of the art ERP software like Oracle, SAP etc. IT management in these big corporations is more concerned to get the software deployed and then they consider their job is done. To say the truth the job is not even half done in most cases. The fail to recognize an important parameter - the ability of the system to perform as per "expectations" after the system has been deployed.

Continue reading "Measuring manufacturing system parameters – first step to drive towards manufacturing execution excellence" »