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

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October 10, 2011

Video: Social CRM - Delivering the Next Generation Customer Experience

Guest post by
Rakesh Kumar, Industry Principal, Service Innovation Strategy, Infosys

 

Continue reading " Video: Social CRM - Delivering the Next Generation Customer Experience " »

October 6, 2011

Experiencing 'Mobility' at Oracle OpenWorld 2011

Guest post by
Nikhil Kumar, Industry Principal, Infosys

 

Yet another exciting day here at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 started off with drizzling rain and San Francisco downtown bustling traffic. The exhibition halls got opened immediately after the morning keynotes around 10 am, and attracted a lot of attention and larger footsteps from customers and partners than yesterday. We could see people rushing and hopping across sessions, venues and exhibition booths and long queues for raffles and gifts offered by partners. Some folks are also relaxing with their iPads and smartphones at lounges browsing, catching up mails and chatting. Mobility can be noticed and felt all around at OpenWorld.

Continue reading " Experiencing 'Mobility' at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 " »

Achieving excellence in BI Support

Guest post by
Neeraj Jha, Lead Consultant, Infosys

 

Some of the challenges that I can think of based on my experience and interaction with colleagues working in BI Support are due to -

  • Business implements changes in enterprise applications and hence the source systems for BI gets modified
  • Change in data archiving and purging
  • End users start writing their own queries for self-use and difference in queries being written by the BI Support team
  • Increment in data size
  • Tuning & Performance needs due to user created queries absorbing capacity
  • Correcting the data in source after seeing wrong data in warehouse through BI System
  • Usage of proper Tools
  • Data security needs as user base increases
  • Upgrade in source system resulting change in source system database structure
  • Continued challenges to build new

Continue reading " Achieving excellence in BI Support " »

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 " »

Automobile Logistics: Demand to Deliver (D2D)

Guest post by
Nipun Lakhotia, Consultant, Infosys

 

Automobile sector is currently experiencing a turbulent transition. Apart from product innovation, manufacturers need to align their supply chain processes to meet rapidly changing customer expectations.

Logistics plays a crucial role in automotive industry, representing about 40% of the retail price of a passenger car. Historically the automotive industry has always been focused on just-in-time manufacturing (JIT) which demands for sequenced deliveries. Inbound operational planning is expected to support advanced features like milk runs, direct delivery and cross-dock optimization with drop-trailer capabilities.

Continue reading " Automobile Logistics: Demand to Deliver (D2D) " »

October 4, 2011

Revisiting Customer Loyalty from a 'social' angle

Guest post by
Srinath Pydimarri, Senior Consultant, Infosys

 

I've been a loyal customer of a particular Indian bank, whom I'd call Bank XYZ for convenience sake. My perception of loyalty stems from the fact that I've been banking with them for the whole of my professional life, have taken multiple loans, setup FDs and have their credit card. I've always been prompt at paying my EMIs as well as credit card bill. In fact, some of their Customer Support executives address me as a 'privileged customer'. However, what pains me is that they haven't increased the credit limit on my credit card. It surely has left me surprised and disappointed. In fact, I keep advising my friends to take the credit card from a competing bank. Something which I tend to do using social media as well - Facebook and Twitter. Interestingly the bank still perceives me to be a 'loyal' and a ' privileged' customer. I believe this is a scenario which commonly occurs across all industries and with all types of customers (retail / business  etc). 'Social' customers today are increasingly using social media to constantly share their opinions/displeasure, amongst other things, about the brands / products they use. Such a behavior is nothing unlike the Word of Mouth (WoM) that organizations have known for a long time now. The only difference is that this has become easier, more prevalent and has greater impact, thanks to the availability and extensive usage of social channels.

Continue reading " Revisiting Customer Loyalty from a 'social' angle " »

Leveraging Fusion Business Process Model Methodology in Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

Guest post by
Sandeep Suresh Deshpande, Principal Consultant, Infosys

 

In today's world, business is exposed to a constantly changing environment where organizations face the most challenging situations -

  • Information silos across the value chain
  • Parallel processing amongst distributed systems
  • Mismatched products to support complex end-to-end business processes
  • Complex and long-running projects
  • Real-time project consolidation and budgeting

Oracle has done an extensive internal and external research, took the best practices from Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle PeopleSoft, Oracle JD Edwards, Oracle Siebel and all other acquisitions to come up with a number of industry business process areas with multiple levels of decomposition. These world class business processes can be leveraged to deliver in the complex and challenging environment.

Continue reading " Leveraging Fusion Business Process Model Methodology in Project Portfolio Management (PPM) " »

October 3, 2011

Day 1 at OOW 2011 : The 'Green' and the 'Machines'

Guest post by
Abhishek Sabharwal, Head- Infosys Oracle Innovation Center

 

Finally, we are here again on the helm of one of the biggest IT events of our times, Oracle OpenWorld (OOW) 2011. As the feeling of nostalgia triggers in with everyone beating each other about the number of years they had been participating in the OOW, the registration lines grew bigger and bigger. The weather, the excitement, iphone tunes and bustling traffic remained the same at SFO but the event seems to gets bigger and better, with representations from 120 countries and close to 45000 registrants.  OOW started on a Green note of using minimum paper throughout the event, so no more bulky schedule. All replaced by mobile phone apps, and real time online updates...welcome Social Media and Mobility to the OOW...

Continue reading " Day 1 at OOW 2011 : The 'Green' and the 'Machines' " »

Building the Predictive Enterprise

Guest post by
Peter Stacholy, Industry Principal, Infosys

 

My session at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 - "Innovation in the Staffing Industry with Oracle Real-Time Decisions", will show how to use a new Oracle Tool RTD (Real Time Decisions) to leverage the data already stored in your ERP system to transform your company into a predictive enterprise. We will be using a Staffing Company to illustrate all the points where we want to integrate existing ERP applications with RTD. We will show all of the points where RTD can 'learn' current enterprise behavior and subsequently predict future outcomes or suggest better ways to do things. We will conclude by demonstrating a current integration that we have already built out between PeopleSoft Staffing Front Office and RTD that ranks candidates for open positions using six dimensions that an ordinary search engine cannot evaluate!

Continue reading " Building the Predictive Enterprise " »

September 30, 2011

Video: Mobile CRM - Delivering the Next Generation Customer Experience

Guest post by
Puneet Gupta, AVP and Head - Infosys Mobile Platforms, Infosys

 

Continue reading " Video: Mobile CRM - Delivering the Next Generation Customer Experience " »

September 29, 2011

Mobile CRM is not a choice, but a necessity for Enterprises

Guest post by
Shanmugam Gnanasambandam, Principal Consultant, Infosys

 

Today, enterprises have CRM systems/applications implemented to support their Marketing, Sales and Service functions, which have matured, over the last two decades as an On-Premise Application and also being offered now as an On Demand Application, for access through Desktops/Laptops.

The significant progress of mobile internet, which includes availability of a wide range of affordable smart phones/tablets, high speed internet connectivity on mobile devices and users becoming more and more tech savvy, has created a keen interest in the Mobile CRM space.

Continue reading " Mobile CRM is not a choice, but a necessity for Enterprises " »

September 27, 2011

Effective Sales Planning with Oracle Fusion Sales Planning Solution

Guest post by
Sushal Subashchandra Shetty, Consultant, Infosys

 

Are you not able to define effective territories for your sales organization?

Is your sales team swimming in the sea without targets?

Is your sales team cherry picking on prospects and you are not aware how to tackle it?

Are you losing track of your sales team's performance?

If answer to all/one of the above questions is yes, then my cent that you ought to read this further. The top problems which one of the large manufacturing company was facing were loss of productivity due to redundant and manual process, lack of consistent and efficient reporting, inaccurate commissioning.

If you are also facing the same problems as above then sales planning solution based on Oracle Fusion Applications is the one-stop solution for you.

Continue reading " Effective Sales Planning with Oracle Fusion Sales Planning Solution " »

September 26, 2011

Giving Wings to your Social CRM Dreams

Guest post by
Srinath Pydimarri, Senior Consultant, Infosys

 

I have been observing the Social CRM market space for the last 1 year and the first impression I get is that organizations are far more closer to the reality of Social CRM - both in terms of their interest in Social CRM and the availability of suitable Social CRM solution options. Our frequent conversations with client organizations have gradually moved from being centered around 'What is Social CRM' to discussions on how Social CRM can be applied in the organization's context. In fact, a handful of our customers are coming up with specific scenarios where they'd like to see Social CRM in play. In many of the cases, however, we observe a sense of uncertainty and a few misgivings accompanying the tangible intent in taking up Social CRM, something that is common whenever organizations are faced with the prospect of new concepts and technologies. Organizations do seem to have a difficult time deciding what their first steps in Social CRM should be. I believe they can deal with this tricky situation by taking hints from the success stories that are slowly stemming around in the Social CRM space.

Continue reading " Giving Wings to your Social CRM Dreams " »

September 20, 2011

What to ask about the Exadata machine before the purchase decision?

Guest post by
Rohit Kaul, Senior Technology Architect, Infosys

 

I happened to read about a Greek philosopher in my kids school books and it reminded me of my school days where we read about methods of learning via questioning. It must have taken a great deal of courage from that man to question and challenge the existing set ups and systems. As it turns out his methodology is what comes naturally to all of us in IT (constantly questioning and brainstorming on the best solutions).

Continue reading " What to ask about the Exadata machine before the purchase decision? " »

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.

Continue reading " Asset Management in Electricity Distribution Utility: "The Challenges of Getting Softer" " »

September 14, 2011

Four Types of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Users

Guest post by
Steven Stein, Principal Consultant, Infosys

 

I am proud to discuss this year at Oracle OpenWorld something we do as consultants for large organizations. This presentation was originally given during a state government implementation. State government reporting is like doing an implementation for 50 different major companies simultaneously. They all had complex statutory obligations, different legacy tools, and different user communities. The leadership of the implementation team wanted to better understand how OBIEE would be able to schedule reports, handle security for such a massive audience, integrate with their portal and ERP system, and what were the benefits of moving off the old tools such as SQR and Crystal. As our team prepared the presentation and were doing rehearsals, we kept switching from one persona to another, saying that the administrator would do this, and then the end user would see this, and these features would be like what an operational user would see, but a manager would want to see something else. My manager said, "why don't we split up this presentation into segments by four different personas." When we did this, it changed everything and made the whole thing so much clearer.

Continue reading " Four Types of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Users " »

September 13, 2011

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 7, 2011

BACKUP and RECOVERY in EXADATA

Guest post by
Vinayak Gangadhar Kurdekar, Technology Lead, Infosys

 

Businesses today need to increasingly leverage a unified platform to host all their database and applications at one place. To meet this challenge, Oracle has designed the Exadata server technology that bundles database and applications together to provide high performance, high availability, scalability and throughput. Mere implementation of the exadata server and its components is not enough. Disasters can strike at anytime. To ensure survivability and safeguard against any major disasters, effective backup and recovery solution is a must. The backup and recovery strategy needs to be not only precise but proven in all aspects. To achieve this Oracle has come out with multiple backup and recovery solutions designed in-house and third party.

  1. Disk based backup and recovery.
  2. Tape based backup and recovery.
  3. Backup and recovery using dataguard.

Continue reading " BACKUP and RECOVERY in EXADATA " »

September 5, 2011

Cloudanomics for Business Intelligence

Guest post by
Swati Maskara, Senior Associate Consultant, Infosys

 

The Economics of Cloud Computing is by now well established with its claim to reduce cost, improve efficiency and decrease time consumption when a cloud environment is used by a business.

With respect to Business Intelligence there is a need to understand dynamics of cloud computing for performing business analytics. The article intends to do so by addressing few questions around Cloud computing:

  • How Cloud qualifies as an efficient platform for performing Business analytics?
  • How is Cloud model different from SaaS?
  • How organizations can derive maximum value from a Cloud setup and what are the major challenges?

The article discusses these aspects in detail to bring forth the view point that Cloud model for performing BI is undoubtedly going to restructure and modernize IT within organizations.

Continue reading " Cloudanomics for Business Intelligence " »

August 24, 2011

Can Social Media be the next big lever for Business Intelligence? - Part 3

Guest post by
Karan Chadha, Associate Consultant, Infosys

 

In Part 1 of this blog, I had talked about the immense potential that Social Media data holds for getting transformed into business insights. In Part 2 I moved on to discuss Social Media Intelligence (SMI) tools and the key value adds that they provide to Organizations. I will now move on to the piece that is the most relevant for us; the piece about integrating SMI tools with conventional reporting tools like OBIEE and establishing an integrated reporting environment; an environment which leverages insights from structured enterprise data as well as fluid social data.

Let me touch upon two facets of what is now broadly known as Social BI:

  • Transforming generic insights offered by SMI tools into actionable customer specific insights
  • Richer customer insights by leveraging social data in conjunction with traditional data

Continue reading " Can Social Media be the next big lever for Business Intelligence? - Part 3 " »

July 11, 2011

Exadata Smart Flash Cache

Guest post by
Chandru Narain Amarnani, Senior Technology Architect, Oracle Practice, Infosys

 

Oracle Exadata has become a buzz word in the industry especially when looking for a solution which can handle massive information of data, managing them cost effectively, and most importantly accessing these data with high performance. The Sun Oracle Database Machine (as it is referred) is quickly getting accepted as the ultimate solution for Online Transaction Processing(OLTP), Data Warehousing and consolidation of mixed workloads delivering extreme performance, high availability and scalability. One of the key enabler of this is the Exadata Smart Flash Cache.

Continue reading " Exadata Smart Flash Cache " »

July 6, 2011

Enterprise Mobility Trends to Watch For

Guest post by
Amit Zutshi, Lead Consultant, Oracle Practice, Infosys

 

How fast things can change and how quickly innovations can alter the competitive and business landscape is playing itself out best in the mobility arena today. Taking a real life example, I was witness to my friend's smartphone search and subsequent order from a manufacturer whom he was shunning as recently as four months back. At almost USD 700, it was not the cheapest phone on the block and hence "value-for-money" was definitely not a driving factor to embrace a hitherto novice in the smartphone domain. Visibly much happier now, my friend can't stop gushing about how his phone beats the wits out of the pioneer in its space. So, what happened in just four months?

Continue reading " Enterprise Mobility Trends to Watch For " »

June 28, 2011

Myriad of options for migration to Exadata

Guest post by
Rohit Kaul, Senior Technology Architect, Oracle Practice, Infosys

 

We all know about Exadata as a fast and scalable database solution for most of the enterprise applications. So the next natural question would be - what is the best migration path from current version, platform to the Exadata platform. The basic thought to keep in mind is simply that the target platform is always fixed and would always be an Oracle database version 11gR2 with ASM on a Linux platform (Oracle Enterprise Linux x86_64 (OEL5)) or on Solaris Express - So it is to be treated like just another migration from an Oracle DB/non-Oracle database to another Oracle 11gR2 database on OEL5/Solaris Express platform. So before one embarks on the migration journey one needs to make sure that the application is certified on Oracle database 11gR2. In this blog, I will cover a few preferred migration options and not the exhaustive list, since there would be multiple permutations/ combinations of other possible options considering several factors.

Continue reading " Myriad of options for migration to Exadata " »

June 20, 2011

Oracle Exadata - A platform for consolidation (Part-2)

Guest post by
Umesh Tanna, Senior Technology Architect, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys

 

In Part-1 of this blog we found that Exadata has many features that facilitates database consolidation. This blogs describes those features and explains how it helps in database consolidation.

Database Resource Manager (DBRM)

If we are consolidating multiple databases say for ex. A and B into a single database AB, DBRM would help us control how much resources to allocate to process/programs/sessions of A and B while they run in shared database AB. Basically this enables us to control how CPU are shared amongst A and B and also establish the priorities.  This is implemented with what is known as resource allocation scheme amongst the consumer groups defined within database. Also the allocation scheme changes are dynamic i.e. we can have one resource allocation scheme effective during business hours and can have different during after business hours.

Continue reading " Oracle Exadata - A platform for consolidation (Part-2) " »

November 15, 2010

Upgrade to Fusion is like relocating your household till it gets in final shape. Oracle R12 Financials or Fusion Financials, What's the Upgrade path to choose?

Upgrading to the latest version of Oracle is always a challenge. Oracle Open world this year launched all range of version1 Fusion software including Fusion Financials. Upgrade to R12 has also been a challenge to lot of clients due to the big ticket changes in data model in Financials area.
Existing customers on 11i are in a jinx on what is the right step to do? Most of them do not want to pay the premium support cost of Oracle 11i and also want to shift to the latest technology and functionalities. However with Oracle announcing the release of Fusion early next year here are some pointers on whether one should go for R12 V/s Fusion

Continue reading " Upgrade to Fusion is like relocating your household till it gets in final shape. Oracle R12 Financials or Fusion Financials, What's the Upgrade path to choose? " »

September 24, 2010

Day 5 at OOW 2010 : Thanks and adieu !

Finally the closing day of OOW started with various sessions happening across Moscone Center. It's been another beautiful day.

Continue reading " Day 5 at OOW 2010 : Thanks and adieu ! " »

September 23, 2010

Day 4 at OOW 2010 : Keynotes from Kris and Larry...

Yet another sunny day started with Keynote session on how to outperform user expectations with rich enterprise applications by Ted Farrell, Oracle Chief Architect and Senior Vice President, Product Development, while Ryan Martens, Rally Software's founder and Chief Technology Officer, shared some critical innovations for scaling software agility.

Continue reading " Day 4 at OOW 2010 : Keynotes from Kris and Larry... " »

September 22, 2010

Day 3 at OOW 2010 : Cloud, crowd, and Fusion !

This was a typical Day 3 of a 5 Day symposium. Cloud and Crowd (C2) both went hand in hand when Thomas Kurian started the day with his Cloud Computing Keynote with a deep dive on quite a few products the Technology stack. Interestingly he was stressing cloud in every second sentence!!!

Continue reading " Day 3 at OOW 2010 : Cloud, crowd, and Fusion ! " »

Effective BI Governance - Helping organizations reap maximum benefits from its BI investments

Business demands much more from IT than simple cost reductions, process & work force automation, and faster turn-around times. They are necessary but not sufficient in the modern day competitive landscape. The modern day systems should provide the users with insights, actionable knowledge which will help them to combat the cut-throat competition. Business Intelligence (BI) is positioned to address these issues. However, it is very important to understand and create an eco-system that fuels the BI investments to deliver the maximum return and minimizes the probability of failure of the same.

Continue reading " Effective BI Governance - Helping organizations reap maximum benefits from its BI investments " »

September 21, 2010

Day 2 at OOW 2010 : Rendezvous of 119 nations...

It started off with a Keynote in the morning with Oracle's Chief Marketing Officer giving some interesting bits:

Continue reading " Day 2 at OOW 2010 : Rendezvous of 119 nations... " »

Is Fusion CRM game for it?

The success rates of CRM implementation have been reported low traditionally. Various studies attribute the reason to various factors like user adoptability, system adaptability, high TCO etc. Should I take the liberty of saying that marketing and sales users (next to warehouse users) would be ranked first in discarding a system which is not easy to use and fit the requirements. So, Is Fusion ready for sales and marketing users? Let us have a look at the features which marketing and sales users would go gala about it.

Continue reading " Is Fusion CRM game for it? " »

September 20, 2010

Day 1 at OOW 2010 : Fog in the day, 'Clouds' in the evening...

This was a typical San Francisco day with morning Fog continuing till noon and the mist in the afternoon was refreshing for the people walking between various venues. We could see the long queues at various registration booths.

Continue reading " Day 1 at OOW 2010 : Fog in the day, 'Clouds' in the evening... " »

Demand to Deliver Solution: The Panacea for Supply Chain Disruptions

"Supply chains cannot tolerate even 24 hours of disruption. So if you lose your place in the supply chain because of wild behavior you could lose a lot. It would be like pouring cement down one of your oil wells" -Thomas Freidman, American journalist, columnist and author.

Continue reading " Demand to Deliver Solution: The Panacea for Supply Chain Disruptions " »

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 ?

Continue reading " Competition Powering Utilities: Is it the competition that is driving the utilities towards newer and bigger initiatives ? " »

September 17, 2010

Oracle OpenWorld 2010: Customer Value & Profitability through TMS

For global enterprises, customer management is the core Business area which could not be ignored, and maintaining the customer value chain properly is a huge task. Customer satisfaction is one of the very important parameter for any Organization to maintain; and to attain this many Organizations have rolled out many initiatives to keep customers happy. In today's competitive world holding the customer and making him to buy a product by catering various product offerings is a very challenging task; in house Shipping is one of those product offerings which could make the customer to choose the vendor from whom he want to buy and therefore Transportation management systems (TMS) are always viewed in a holistic perspective, integrated into an overall 'order to cash' supply chain. Logistics planners are thereby looking for a TMS that can provide end to end optimization solution with capability of shipping any product from any node in the supply chain network - supplier drop ship, warehouse to customer, customer returns etc.

Continue reading " Oracle OpenWorld 2010: Customer Value & Profitability through TMS " »

September 15, 2010

Are your company's sales and operations planning, demand management and operational planning processes integrated?

Global and low cost country sourcing, extensive use of contract manufacturers, customer need for rapid response to demand and new product introductions are making the supply chains of High Tech enterprises increasingly complex. In such a scenario, the traditional siloed aka departmental approach of demand and supply planning processes are not enough to provide a comprehensive view of the tradeoffs among sales, marketing, procurement, manufacturing and operations functions. Today, CXO and business leaders see an increasing need for an integrated Sales and Operations process which aligns diverse business functions and balances supply and demand in an iterative and collaborative manner. In addition to an aggregated view, executives also want to perform "what if scenario" planning to be able to anticipate and respond effectively to sudden demand changes and supply constraints.

Continue reading " Are your company's sales and operations planning, demand management and operational planning processes integrated? " »

Strategic Sourcing - Leverage Supplier relationship for cost effective procurement

Relentless global competition, plummeting prices, demanding customer and recent economic downturn have put sizeable pressures on costs and margins across all industries with High Tech Industry being no exception. With raw-material/components costs comprising about 70+% of the overall COGS amount, the sourcing professionals (or the asset procurement team) are trying hard to manage their sourcing activities efficiently and looking at effective ways to collaborate with their suppliers. Even a small improvement in negotiations, can result in a substantial affect on margins, thereby improving the overall competitiveness of the organization.

Continue reading " Strategic Sourcing - Leverage Supplier relationship for cost effective procurement " »

September 14, 2010

Demystifying Oracle Fusion Procurement Product Family

Fusion procurement falls under the FSCM (Financial & Supply Chain Management Pillar), the procurement family comprises of the five modules highlighted below. Each of these has been enhanced as compared to their current suite of EBS products. Exploring each of the modules we get a host of new features to work on. A brief sketch on each of the modules ....

Continue reading " Demystifying Oracle Fusion Procurement Product Family " »

How can you manage user expectations while transitioning from existing BI platforms and applications to Oracle BI Fusion Edition?

Managing user expectations is increasingly becoming the key concern of organizations while implementing or upgrading BI software applications and platforms. Goading as well as guiding the users to embrace the change is extremely important for successful implementation of Oracle's BI Fusion platform and its pervasive use within the company. So how can a company manage user expectations and upgrade to Fusion keeping both users and management in sync. Is this really possible?

Continue reading " How can you manage user expectations while transitioning from existing BI platforms and applications to Oracle BI Fusion Edition? " »

September 13, 2010

Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO)- A new revolution in Supply Chain space!

Oracle Fusion the new buzz word in ERP Applications as it brings in a new era into ERP product suites. It combines the best elements of Oracle's various business software product lines(E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards) into a next-generation suite giving users a whole new experience with Fusion UI's and Embedded Analytics(Business Intelligence).

Continue reading " Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO)- A new revolution in Supply Chain space! " »

Infosys's Integrated Risk and Performance Management (IRPM) Framework: How does it help you?

Infosys has developed an Integrated Risk and Performance Management (IRPM) Framework designed by SMEs in Financial Risk Management.

Continue reading " Infosys's Integrated Risk and Performance Management (IRPM) Framework: How does it help you? " »

September 9, 2010

Fusion Projects Portfolio Management (PPM) - Charting a new course for Project Managers

The Project Manager, like a captain on a ship, is ultimately responsible for the success of a project. In a project centric environment, there have been challenges faced to achieve the quality, on-time completion and cost effective project delivery. These challenges turn out to be massive when one project manager is responsible for managing multiple projects running at the same time. The technology solutions developed to deliver the project, ultimately aims to achieve a Return on Investments (ROI) and at the same time providing the excellence in Project Management practices.

Continue reading " Fusion Projects Portfolio Management (PPM) - Charting a new course for Project Managers " »

September 8, 2010

Know the unknowns of MDM

Master Data Management (MDM) helps providing a unified view of master data and provides capabilities to share data across disparate systems. This results in improvizing the information supply chain.

Continue reading " Know the unknowns of MDM " »

September 7, 2010

Financial transformation initiative leveraging Oracle EPM

Financial management is the backbone of all organizations apart from being the most visible function since stakeholders tend to give more prominence to financial parameters while gauzing an organization's performance. Moreover, in the era of globalization where business environment is being strictly monitored by regulators and governed by strict regulations, financial discipline in terms of planning, monitoring and control is a key to survival for all the organizations irrespective of size and spread. In a scenario where majority organizations have their financial models built in silos of Excel spreadsheets which provide limited functionalities around process automation and financial control, it is time where business needs to take a fresh look at transforming the financial systems in terms of planning, consolidation and reporting, or in other words, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM).

Continue reading " Financial transformation initiative leveraging Oracle EPM " »

September 6, 2010

Strategy, Social media, CRM and me!

In the days past being a member on Twitter, 'liking' the videos on facebook, geo-co-locating myself on foursquare, 'Plurk'ing a bit and 'Ning' ing myself to have friendfeeds and myspace, I always wondered how can my/others pas-t-ime be a strategic driver to derive value out of an existing CRM implementation. I embarked on a short journey unto myself where I dabbled with some models and found that a maturity model for this new channel of social media would be one of the steps to achieve strategic enablement. The History Book of CRM is splashed in 'red' of numerous examples of 'using' CRM to scale up revenues. Did anyone see whether the defined goals in-line with the business vision matched the toll being implemented? Well, now when CRM has 'matured' then we do see numerous examples of high flying flags in the same Book of History where Goals->Strategy->CRM have worked in tandem to drive customer benefits and relationships.

Continue reading " Strategy, Social media, CRM and me! " »

September 3, 2010

Are you able to objectively and quantitatively measure the performance of your entire Demand to Deliver Value Chain in a holistic manner?

In a traditional manufacturing enterprise, the supply chain works in a piecemeal way through multiple departments executing their own  functions and tracking their own performance. Most package-based IT solutions also accordingly adopt a siloed view of the business and provide disparate modules/ applications for different business functions. Thus measurement of overall process performance becomes tedious as end-to-end Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are not defined, benchmarked and measured, leading to dilution of process-level accountability and view, leading to dissatisfied customers and suppliers.  

 

Continue reading " Are you able to objectively and quantitatively measure the performance of your entire Demand to Deliver Value Chain in a holistic manner? " »

Key differentiators in Oracle Fusion Applications when compared to Oracle Applications Unlimited

Over the past few years, from the time Oracle had announced about Fusion Applications many organizations were curious to know what Fusion Applications would bring to the table. Now with Fusion applications around the corner, it has resulted in dilemma whether they should adapt to Fusion application or continue on existing Oracle Applications Unlimited.

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September 1, 2010

Scope of Social CRM - Demystified Part-2

As promised, I have come back with the second and final part of the scope of Social CRM series. In case, you have missed out on the earlier part, it can be accessed here.

As I said in the first part, the parameters provided were only a subset on which an organization could go for an assessment exercise. But the actual test for any organization is how to go about once the analysis is out. For this, I will put forward different scenarios assuming that only these are the set of parameters, thus strategy could focus on the following options based on the how did they fare on the various parameters.

Continue reading " Scope of Social CRM - Demystified Part-2 " »

August 31, 2010

Smart Grid - The future in Utilities - II

In my last blog, I wrote about the challenges the utilities industry in facing and the smart grid investments that are available for them.  In this blog, I intend to address a few solutions for the questions posed in the blog.

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Resolve Supplier Collaboration Problems with Oracle Supplier MDM

Over the past decade, companies have invested in supply chain management (SCM) software to automate procurement processes, improve delivery times and reduce the cost of doing business. Majority of the Fortune 1,000 (and beyond) have realized dramatic savings by applying strategic sourcing principles to both their indirect and direct expenditures.

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Managing your engineering changes in a multi divisional Oracle Global single instance environment

 Have you ever wondered how you would manage your engineering changes in a single instance multi divisional environment? You are using Inventory, Bill of Material and Engineering and it has become a nightmare to maintain your master data. You have issues with data security due to the multi divisional environment.

 

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August 30, 2010

Scope of Social CRM - Demystified Part-I

For the past few months, I have tried to explore Social CRM from various aspects that I feel are important for organization to consider if they are keen on exploring the Social media platform. As I see, the question that is bound to be a part of discussion for any organization wanting to devise a Social CRM strategy would pertain to the opportunities to expand the traditional CRM pillars i.e. Sales, Marketing and Service for Social CRM. The answer to this really depends on the assessment an organization should undertake in order to identify the scope and relevance of the Social CRM related possibilities. This will also help them to prioritize on whether they should use it first for marketing, then sales and service or vice versa.

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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

Enterprise adoption of social media will occur primarily in the context of customer relationship management (CRM), according to Gartner. The analyst has predicted that 80% of all market growth in 2010 will come in this field, as organizations struggle to find a clear business case for leveraging social media as a tool for internal communication and collaboration.

 For most organizations, the single most logical way to differentiate the business is through great customer experiences, rather than having the lowest cost or most innovative products and services," said Ed Thompson, vice president and Gartner analyst.

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August 25, 2010

Smart Grid - The future in Utilities

Over the last decade, the climate, economic conditions and consumer behaviour has changed drastically forcing the utility companies to rethink their approach in managing their operations and delivering integrated services.

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Demystifying Legal Entity in Oracle R12 Architecture

Design of the Organization structure is the common issue faced by most business houses. The structure should not only be compliant from legal perspective but should also be effective from operational management and accounting perspective. Legal entity is the crux of the organization structure as this determines the statutory and country specific (local) reporting needs.

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August 13, 2010

Is your IT system geared to support the dynamics and complexities of the High Tech Value Chain?

High Tech manufacturing enterprises operate in a very competitive environment with a complex and long value chain. Value Chain Planning is the key differentiator and thrust area for these enterprises, as this lends them to better demand capture and fulfillment, better operational and financial efficiency. IT systems play a crucial role in enabling them to remain competitive. These IT systems acquired/built over a period of time, inevitably result in a complex integration landscape involving plethora of heterogeneous B2B (Business to Business), B2C (Business to Customer) and A2A (Application to Application) transactions. Even the reporting for running operations and management decision making is premised on multiple sources of truth.

Continue reading " Is your IT system geared to support the dynamics and complexities of the High Tech Value Chain? " »

October 15, 2009

Day 4 Special @ OOW'09 - Keynotes from Kris and Larry Ellison!

This afternoon at Oracle Open World, over 10000 people packed into the large hall at the Mascone North convention centre witnessed two very different kind of Keynotes

Kris, our CEO talked about the trends that will shape the future while Larry Ellison did a great sales job of selling his company's products. The contrast was very visible.

Continue reading " Day 4 Special @ OOW'09 - Keynotes from Kris and Larry Ellison! " »

October 8, 2009

Enhance cross selling and Upselling with MDM

Getting business from existing customers is always easier and cheaper than acquiring a new customer. The extent of  repeat business also acts as a metric to acquire a new customer.

Continue reading " Enhance cross selling and Upselling with MDM " »

MDM strategy :Do you have one?

There are no second thoughts in implementing a data governance program to manage your master data. Though there are various definitions for data governance – they boil down to defining processes and policies for accessing data and adhering to them using technology and orchestration of people involved.

Continue reading " MDM strategy :Do you have one? " »

October 5, 2009

Enterprise performance Management :Lever to drive growth and operational excellence

 Like many of us, I too had heard about EPM being a driver of growth and operational excellence. The catch for me then was ‘how’ can or how are organizations achieving these results.

Continue reading " Enterprise performance Management :Lever to drive growth and operational excellence " »

October 1, 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 30, 2009

Intelligence was Never Meant to be Slow: The Accelerated Approach to BI

In the current ‘blink-and-change’ market environment, availability of accurate and actionable information at the right time to the right audience is increasingly becoming mission critical for enterprises.

Continue reading " Intelligence was Never Meant to be Slow: The Accelerated Approach to BI " »

Addressing Enterprise Information Challenges through Effective Master Data Management

Information grows exponentially in most enterprises. The need to analyze and interpret this information is essential to be able to meet business objectives.

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September 21, 2009

Build your Next-Gen Business Transformation with AIA as a Platform

 

Business transformation has become a global phenomenon with very little choice left to the enterprises to operate in a conventional manner. The new business processes are demanding the best of breed applications to support the new requirements.

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September 16, 2009

Reduce Cost, Increase Profit: Get on Cloud !

The current need is to think of a new way of managing computing resources.Organizations iare looking to reduce the cost on IT resourses and avoid maintainance problems with the help of shared resources or pay-per-use basis online.

Continue reading " Reduce Cost, Increase Profit: Get on Cloud ! " »

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.  

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September 10, 2009

Oracle OpenWorld 2009: Infosys sets the stage for Innovation

As the diamond sponsor of the Oracle OpenWorld2009, we will be at the event showcasing the best of breed solutions, demos, client success stories and sessions.  Our CEO, S. Gopalakrishnan would be keynoting on “Seven Game Changing Trends” on Wednesday 14th Oct 2009.

Continue reading " Oracle OpenWorld 2009: Infosys sets the stage for Innovation " »

September 2, 2009

OTM In-a-Box: Demystifying transportation management for Retail industry

Retailers are facing stiff challenges due to globalization, increasing input costs and higher customer service expectations. In addition to this, growing service options from carriers, combined with demand for more frequent and time-definite deliveries are forcing retailers to revisit their transportation planning systems to optimize movement of goods across the distribution channel.

Continue reading " OTM In-a-Box: Demystifying transportation management for Retail industry " »

OTM In-a-Box: Demystifying transportation management for Retail industry

Retailers are facing stiff challenges due to globalization, increasing input costs and higher customer service expectations. In addition to this, growing service options from carriers, combined with demand for more frequent and time-definite deliveries are forcing retailers to revisit their transportation planning systems to optimize movement of goods across the distribution channel.

Continue reading " OTM In-a-Box: Demystifying transportation management for Retail industry " »

August 31, 2009

AIA – The future is here

Business transformation is one of the key needs for the large enterprises. The next generation packages are in making but not all enterprises may be able to move to these new packages. AIA can bridge this gap as it provides a standards based architecture.
Integrations are the key need of today to keep your architecture robust and scalable for tomorrow’s needs. Enterprises having multiple applications need to follow a common architecture strategy. AIA is a step to provide a best practice standard architecture. Typically in an enterprise context, Business and IT are two sides of same coin but AIA can make them work together smartly.
Foundation pack and Process Integration pack (PIP) are the key two offerings of AIA. Wanna know more about AIA???? Come and join me at Oracle Open World to know more on AIA.
Session ID – S310090
Session Title – Oracle Application Integration Architecture – The Future Is Here
Track – APPLICATIONS: Oracle Application Integration Architecture
http://www.oracle.com/openworld/index.html
Lets begin the journey to know more about AIA and understand how enterprise architectures can speak a common architectural language.

August 27, 2009

AIA – A disciplined way of configuring your SOA application

Over the years we have stuck to the approach of building first and integrating later in designing solutions for business problems. This has led to heterogeneity and applications silos. SOA is indeed a powerful solution to address this and many architects are zealous to make SOA a success in their organizations. Ever wondered why SOA initiatives fail. This year at Oracle Open World Infosys AIA team is presenting a point of view to address top challenges and frequently asked questions on SOA initiatives…

Let us look at some of the top most queries our customers have who are on SOA adoption path: 

Continue reading " AIA – A disciplined way of configuring your SOA application " »

November 10, 2008

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 " »

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 22, 2008

Sunday Recap

Greetings from OOW 2008!  We are finally here in SF and the show is underway.

Key Themes

Green - Oracle has gone all out on the Green Theme:  a Marketplace, targeted sessions, a green fashion show (?),  and of course the mandatory green social events.  Reference the earlier blogs on this topic - sustainability and "green" is here to stay on the agenda.

Election - A LOT of people are talking about the election and its potential impact on their business - James Carville and Mary Matalin gave last nights keynote.  Their comments and insights effectively lead to the conclusion that the younger demographic and turnout will likely drive the outcome...but of course anything can happen between now and November.

Economy - in case you missed it this week, the economy is undergoing tectonic plate shifts.  Nearly everyone here wants to know "have you seen anything change".  Interestingly, I met someone from the IMF who is busily working away on a large transformation program...guess THEY don't have a liquidity issue!

Today has US swimming phenom Michael Phelps on tap, and day filled with over 15 Infy-sponsored meetings with customers, prospects, and Oracle.  Time for a quick run and off to Moscone -

Chris

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