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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.

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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.

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September 21, 2010

Oracle's promising BI Roadmap - Taking the joy ride together (Part 2) !!

(continued from Part 1)

Oracle BI Applications are pre-built analytic applications compatible with any IT environment, consisting of prebuilt metadata for common industry analytics processing such as Sales, Service, Order Fulfillment, Supply Chain, Financial Analytics, Procurement and Spend and so on.

Continue reading " Oracle's promising BI Roadmap - Taking the joy ride together (Part 2) !! " »

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 " »

Reinforcing the Transportation Space

Transportation is often identified as a cost intensive arena where a company's margins can be greatly squeezed, when not managed effectively. Moreover, it has a direct bearing on the end customer's experience as the delivery times and other lead times are impacted by the management of transportation activities. Such strategic significance is acknowledged by the Transportation Management Systems  (TMS) which aim at reducing the transportation cost by optimum carrier selection and efficient route planning.

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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 18, 2010

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's Top 10 Priorities At Oracle Open World

In reference to the note Global CIO: Larry Ellison's Top 10 Priorities At Oracle Open World (http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227400524&itc=ref-true), The most-compelling element of the entire 5-day mega-show of oracle open world will be the public comments of CEO Larry Ellison in his key note. While Ellison always draws a huge crowd and frequently enjoys playing to those crowds with some intentionally provocative comments, the showmanship angle of his presentations is vastly overstated.

Some of the Top 10 strategic issues that Ellison will focus on in is public comments at Oracle Open World

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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 16, 2010

Oracle's promising BI Roadmap - Taking the joy ride together (Part 1) !!

The relevance of information is defined by the accuracy, timeliness and efficiency with which it can be leveraged. 'Change' is a constantly happening process that reflects the present and defines the future, overcoming the flaws of the past. A company's legacy applications and technology might be outdated and needs to be modernized to perform and deal with competition.

Continue reading " Oracle's promising BI Roadmap - Taking the joy ride together (Part 1) !! " »

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 " »

Oracle OpenWorld 2010: Logistics Optimization & Beyond

For global enterprises, 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: Logistics Optimization & Beyond " »

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 " »

How to Handle Complex Application Integration Challenges? With Oracle AIA

Enterprises today are seeking technologies that would enable them to deploy cross-functional business processes. Majority of enterprise applications are monolithic within individual lines of business - and this makes coordinating activity between them very difficult.

Continue reading " How to Handle Complex Application Integration Challenges? With Oracle AIA " »

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).

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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.

Continue reading " Key differentiators in Oracle Fusion Applications when compared to Oracle Applications Unlimited " »

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.

Continue reading " Smart Grid - The future in Utilities - II " »

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.

Continue reading " Resolve Supplier Collaboration Problems with Oracle Supplier MDM " »

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.

 

Continue reading " Managing your engineering changes in a multi divisional Oracle Global single instance environment " »

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.

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

August 27, 2010

How can you make a smart choice by modernizing your existing information delivery?

The constant demand for analytical information, coupled with frequent BI product consolidation has often left organizations wondering if they should retain their existing products and applications or migrate to a new BI/EPM platform. Thus, organizations have a constant pressure to modernize their BI/ EPM tools and technologies at a faster pace while meeting the objective of lowering costs. Does this scenario resonate with you?

Continue reading " How can you make a smart choice by modernizing your existing information delivery? " »

Is "On-Time Delivery" Just a Promise or a Process to Gain Competitive Advantage?

Over the years, transportation remains one of the top five expenditures for Hi-Tech manufacturers, Retailers and Distributors. As Hi-Tech manufacturers strive to be competitively responsive to the marketplace demands in order to leverage the economic growth, and be a step ahead of their competitors, gaining control over pace and the cost of the transportation activity becomes imperative. As per leading industry analyst firm "A 5% reduction in transportation cost has the same P&L impact as a 5-30% increase in sales".

Continue reading " Is "On-Time Delivery" Just a Promise or a Process to Gain Competitive Advantage? " »

Integrated Risk & performance Management

For long Risk management and Performance management are considered as two independent functions. While performance has always been at the center stage of organization's efforts, risk has been limited to being a regulatory compliance function. But crisis has again highlighted the need of adjusting performance for the different kind of risks taken. While almost ever organization agrees on the need to do integrate risk with performance management, not many are enabled to convert concepts into real systems.

Continue reading " Integrated Risk & performance Management " »

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.

Continue reading " Social CRM : Prospects and Pitfalls " »

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.

Continue reading " Smart Grid - The future in Utilities " »

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.

Continue reading " Demystifying Legal Entity in Oracle R12 Architecture " »

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? " »

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