SAP

Why introduce IMPACT – now?

We have discussed the proper time to start publicly talking about the IMPACT ™ Business Transformation framework and concluded that SAP’s Sapphire 2009 conference and its focus on the “New Reality” for business transformations and strategies was a perfect fit.  During the last post, I mentioned that IMPACT ™ was a collectively exhaustive framework for business transformations but never really mentioned the details.  Our transformation framework covers three large areas: business capabilities, the company (our client) & their customers, as well as the project management of the transformation.

The capabilities of the organization are defined as a combination of strategy, people, process, technology, information and assets that enable a company to create business value for its customers and business partners.  Any transformation (or engagement for that matter) aims to directly change some of the capabilities of an organization to help them become more competitive.

From our experience and the feedback from companies who are aware of IMPACT™, while the focus on capabilities is a pre-requisite for ensuring a thorough and successful transformation, it’s Infosys’ single solitary focus on creating a positive impact on shareholder value and free cash flow.  We don’t mean just during the pitch and proposal part of the engagement – our Value for Customer and Company Threads of IMPACT™ estimate, design, develop and track the value we’ve promised.

Unleashing value in a company and for its customers is a constant touch stone for us throughout the business transformation.  Real, quantifiable numbers that don’t vanish once we start the transformation.  We aim to find quick wins and then work toward the larger more long term wins throughout the engagement for the company.  

In addition to the company, IMPACT ™ considers the relationship with the customer (demand) to be equal or at times more important than the supply side of the equation.  These days, one doesn’t have to read the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times too long to realize what happens when demand disappears.  And, while we can’t do much about macro-economic conditions, we can certainly ensure that customers are both consulted and informed of any major changes to a business’s capabilities and operating procedures due to a transformation program.   Personally, I’ve seen some of the most innovative and powerful ideas come from working closely with key customers to ensure a business is doing more than meeting their needs – they’re exceeding them. 

I never mentioned how IMPACT ™ is designed for project management.  Another article; another time. One post outlining how Infosys focuses on customer and company value while insuring all strategic capabilities are reviewed, redesigned and implemented is probably enough for now. We hope you have questions so please find us during Sapphire so we can answer them.

Author Eric Rich, Partner, Consulting, Infosys Technologies 

Posted by Guest Author at 6:50 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Globalisation and investment across the globe has resulted in a need for comparable financial statements. Today different countries are following different GAAP as suggested by their local accounting bodies, there by making the financial statements comparison across the geography, a much complex process. IASB has tried to bring down the effort of financial statement normalisation through IFRS. The spend on IFRS convergence is expected to be as high as 0.5% of the revenue of a company.

Is there one solution for IFRS? Is automation a solution for IFRS? Answer is a big "No". There is no one solution for IFRS. We will have to identify and analyse the applicable accounting standards and then come up with a transition plan for convergence. IFRS is a business driven project and not a IT driven project. IT can enable IFRS implementation and has to be approached as such.

Posted by Keerthana Mainkar at 6:51 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Business priorities have changed enormously with the advent of downturn. Now there is an increased focus on improving efficiency and getting more from every dollar spent without compromising on quality. Business now demands better predictability of expenditure, better forecast and better control on dollars spent.  New Engagement Models (NEM) help achieve these areas and some more by aligning clients’ and vendor’s stakes and interests. More specifically it creates an environment where both client and vendor staffs have direct encouragement to work together towards the common goal of improving efficiency and bringing in predictability.

The new engagement models are essentially about linking the cost of service to values derived from them. They are flexible enough to take various shapes and forms depending on the client’s unique situation and the nature of project. We, at Infosys, have proven repeatedly that technology and IT services can be delivered through these New Engagement Models and its increasing popularity amongst our clients is a testimony to that.

Primary drivers for adopting New Engagement Models:
1. Align IT costs with business volumes or value delivered
2. Better visibility to IT spend
3. Better way to cater to fluctuating business demands
4. Share the project risks with vendor and focus on business instead
5. Reduce operational overheads
6. Optimized staffing
7. Difficulties starting projects with high initial Cap-Ex, etc

The New Engagement Models achieve reduced TCO by helping in some or all of the area’s highlighted above.

Do look out for more on New Engagement Models on Sapphire...!

Author: Satish K. Srivastava, NEM Deal Consultant, Infosys Technologies[satish.kumar@infosys.com]

Posted by Guest Author at 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

IT Shared Support Services is nothing but the consolidation of IT support services for multiple customers by a common pool of consultants across various service lines to increase efficiencies while lowering the cost of service delivery for the customer.

In general value is better defined in terms of tangible benefits to customers.. and if this tangibility comes in terms of numbers then that is even better.. whenever you look at value in quantifiable terms, there are two parts to it.. value derived over value expended.. derived value being in terms of business results and expended value in terms of costs.. lower the costs, higher the net value..

So how do you define 'Value' in this context.. by adopting a way or model that helps them drive down the costs while increasing the efficiency of business operations, high value is generated.

But in terms of this innovative model there are additional values that can be enjoyed by the customer.. by having
 access to high skilled pool who can be made available on need basis without paying for their full time,
 access to a wealth of knowledge accumulated by working with multiple other customers across industries on similar technologies,
 access to extended support coverage so that your users can enjoy high service availability,
 access to an innovative pricing model involving 'pay-per-use' concepts giving you the maximum flexibility on your budgets,
 access to a model that can be scaled up and down in line with your business dynamics
 ......

Thats what I call maximization of values. Now, wouldn't you be interested in betting your money on this model?

Walk in to Infosys booth at SAP SAPPHIRE 09 during May11 - 14 2009 at Orlando, for more details.

Author: Ramgopal Natarajan, Head, Maintenance Center of Excellence, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies [ramgopal_natarajan@infosys.com]

Posted by Guest Author at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

How does a company introduce a brand new approach to planning, designing, developing and running a large business transformation?  While we’ve been talking about our new business transformation framework in client meetings and within our firm, there have been few public conversations about it.

Until now.

Let’s start by what IMPACT ^TM (that’s its name) isn’t.  IMPACT ^TM is not a methodology.  We have a few of those too (VRM ^TM for instance) but not this one.  Methodologies are great when the start and finish of an engagement has been done numerous times, or the steps to success must go in some order.

But, are business transformations a step-by-step process?  No.  They are complex, multifaceted, large scale and multi-disciplined.  If during a call or a visit to a booth you hear – methodology – think step - by -step and then quiz them appropriately.

IMPACT ^TM is a framework.  Think of it in the same light as the 4 Ps (product, price, place, and promotion) or 3 Cs (Customer, Competitors, Company) but with a few additional features.  See those other frameworks don’t provide guidance throughout the planning, designing, developing and running phases, nor do they give any type of thought to how a company is structured today and how it should be structured tomorrow.

Frameworks are great when the topics of focus are known, but the answers aren’t.  They provide guidance to our consultants and ensure all areas are covered but provide them enough room to do what we hired them to do – ask questions, analyze results, and develop innovative ideas for a company so it can truly transform.  Then, as an added bonus IMPACT ^TM then goes a step further. 

Our framework provides guidance on how to ensure that the value theorized during the Set Direct Phase is captured when the transformation is complete.  So there, it’s done IMPACT ^TM has been introduced but there’s still more to cover but for now know it’s here and know that it can absolutely help your company think through a business transformation and see it to completion.

Got Questions?

Author Eric Rich, Partner, Infosys Consulting

Posted by Guest Author at 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Historically, businesses have implemented process-enabling applications such as SAP with a view to achieve benefits that are clearly stated but not necessarily based upon measurable factors or traceable attributes. The expected benefits, although documented in business cases may, or may not, have been realized but the progress of realizing the expected value has not been followed throughout the program with a view to keeping the expectations attainable. Also, in typical circumstances, the original business case would have been ‘filed’ for posterity and left to gather dust on a shelf, not reviewed until after the point of no return, and after it has become clear that the intended benefits had evaporated while the program leadership’s back was turned.

Even the most attentive of program leaderships may have looked at the return on their investments at some point after the implementations have been completed, accepting the ensuing process performance dip that the much-flaunted bell curve had forecast during the discovery phases conducted many months earlier. Even if documented benefits could have been achieved, several causes of ‘value leakage’ could have arisen but were not prevented.

By setting metrics by which value realization can be tracked throughout the program, with the stated business case benefits as ever-present targets and by ensuring the causes of value leakage are nullified, the anticipated ROI can be attained.

The team at the Infosys booth can discuss value leakage and how to realize value in a program.

Author: Mike Smythe

Posted by Guest Author at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Quantifying business benefits has not been the norm when it comes to establishing both small-scale and large-scale programs.  Many companies rush off to planning, designing, and executing the programs without first ensuring that there are business benefits that can even be attributed to these programs.  Or, token or "after-hours" effort is put into sizing the benefits and shared with executive management in order to secure funding, and then forgotten in the course of the program when new information that could materially impact the estimated benefits are discovered.  Or, many benefits are not sized because of lack of data or sheer laziness, and simply classified as "non-quantifiable" or "qualitative" benefits when in fact, these benefits could be quantified with a little creativity and legwork.

Finding, designing, and capturing business benefits are critical to ensuring that a business transformation program is "worth it".  In the end, a program is truly justifiable if it is able to positively contribute to shareholder value through its completion.  Without an explicit link to value delivery, programs may not secure sustained executive commitment and funding, new business capabilities will be developed but may not be what the company really needs, and stakeholders across the board may lose interest once the initial thrill of the program start-up has faded away.

If you have embarked on a small-scale or large-scale program, ask yourself if you know what business benefits you will be getting out of it once you reach the go-live date.  Ask yourself if you have determined how shareholder value is influenced by the program.  Ask yourself if the improvements you are introducing are all directly related to what adds value to the organization, and are not innovations that just appeared to be the cool and trendy thing to do.  Hopefully, the answers to these questions are all "yes".  If not, then this is a great opportunity to explore what it takes to "realize value for the company".

Author:  Jon Brizzi

Posted by Guest Author at 2:17 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

In today’s tough time, there is hardly any Organization which has remained unaffected from the jitters of market slow down. The companies are resorting to

·         drastic reduction in budget

·         aggressive business targets to achieve

·         system overhauling for maximizing operational efficiency

Talking about Maintenance of existing IT operations, the companies are eagerly inclined to off-load and blunt in asking for

·         a rock bottom price

·         better quality of service

·          visible value addition by the service provider

·         flexible service offerings tailor made for their requirements

AND this is where Infosys’s SHARED SERVICES offering pitches-in as a classic rejoinder to all the above !!

This is a unique endeavour to provide off-shore application support to multiple clients through a pool of shared resources with multi - fold objectives leading to

·         Reduced TCO for the Customer

·         Maximizing system uptime and delivery continuity

·         Continual Improvement  and maximum utilization

 

The variety of service offerings have the in-built flexibility of getting molded to suite each customer’s requirements broadly aimed at

 

·         Issue resolution and system streamlining

·         Manage Business Process changes

·         System Process Audits and suggesting improvements

·         Identifying training needs based on the data on issues raised

So on and so forth……………

Be it reduced cost, quality of solution, security of information, adherence to agreed upon time lines…. Shared Services has it all !!

The Unit of Work approach, a non- linear pricing strategy based on which following offerings have been outlined.

·         Transaction based, engagement based on number of transactions carried out.

·         Ticket based, engagement based on the number of tickets handled

·         Device based, engagement based on the devices (Servers etc..) maintained.

·         Test Case based, engagement based on the number of test cases handled

·         Work Packet based, engagement based on the work packet (unit of work)

 

I am sure that all this and much more would go a long way in effectively addressing the need of the hour and the time to come !!!

Rajneesh Sharma.

MCOE

Posted by Guest Author at 3:36 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Shared Services - nothing new.. It's a well recognized term widely used across companies.. mostly done as a means of consolidation of the non-core business functions to improve efficiencies. You may also have heard of this model being followed for HR, Purchasing, Finance etc.. across companies. IT, being one of the cost centers, is also being done on shared model in medium to large organizations that are spread across geographies having multiple business units.

Focussing on the IT operations, you will typically have two major types of activities going on.. discretionary work and non-discretionary work. The former would be strategical in nature following the business vision as a means of increasing competitiveness and market presence.. using IT as an enabler to achieve the goals. The latter is typically a 'Keep-the-Lights-On' work to support the business as-usual and to carry out maintenance activities on the IT systems and applications. Though the key focus will be on the discretionary work, companies cannot afford to ignore the importance of the sustenance activities as it will be the life-line of the ongoing business operations.

However, the current need, due to global economic slump, would be to drive down the costs of maintenance and support of the IT systems and applications to effectively reuse the funds on managing the growth of the business. Many organizations have successfully outsourced their IT operations to many low-cost centers across the world and have realized huge benefits.. Especially, under current situations, CxOs are compelled to find newer ways to further reduce their costs while maintaining the service levels agreed upon with the business users..

Here comes the 'Outsourcing of IT services to be delivered on Shared Services model' concept.. nothing but.. An IT service provider located in a low cost place delivering Application Management Services remotely serviced by a pool of engineers and consultants common to multiple customers. This pool can be divided based on various factors.. technology, industry vertical, type of services etc..

Shared Services bring in additional cost savings through optimum resource utilization, improvements due to efficient and standardized processes, leveraging the productivity gain due to the knowledge acquired in supporting multiple other customers.. overall able to achieve significant cost and efficiency benefits in the long run.

Having said that.. I can sense the question in your mind.. 'Is it the right option for me?' Let us look at some of the key situations that could be the criteria or the trigger point to kindle your thoughts on moving to this innovative service model...

  Application landscape has too many applications/modules but does not need FTEs for each one as ticket #s are low
  Looking for 24x7 support but am concerned on the additional cost involved for the extended coverage?
 Looking for a model to load people for average volumes of work and not for peak volumes of work.
  Looking for a Scalable model to include occasional Minor Enhancements work but does not need dedicated FTE all the time?
  Looking for a Flexible model to address sudden surge or fall in tickets due to business dynamics?
  Looking for any low-cost option to ‘Keep-the-lights-on’ while maintaining service levels?
 etc...

Does your current application landscape fit in any of the above.. or you just simply looking for options to reduce costs.. IT Shared Services model could just be the right option for you.

Posted by Guest Author at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

If we take a look at the BI space today , BI  has undergone an active market consolidation and the top BI vendors offer integrated suites which make the earlier ‘best of breed strategy’ more or less unconceivable. With so much of focus on integration, it is imperative that clients realize that the benefits of an integrated suite include a greatly simplified technical landscape, resulting in higher agility, faster speed to market and lower Total Cost of Ownership.

The need of the hour is a complete reporting management system that addresses every need of the targeted users. In particular, allowing users to use BI functionalities ranging from reporting, analysis, and dashboards and visualization, to intuitive discovery and advanced predictive analytics through the various BO tools.

A global reporting architecture with BO integration across the landscape aids global reporting and along with integrated data quality, data from both structured and unstructured, disparate data sources ,provides a unified view of corporate information for efficient decision making.

Crystal Reports has shown great promise in generating highly formatted/canned reports and will report on data from the SAP BW InfoProviders (ODS, Infocubes, etc) directly.
Web Intelligence will add value in the area of querying and ad-hoc reporting.
BW Accelerator drastically improves performance with BO as front-end .Voyager will continue to provide Ajax-based OLAP analysis until Pioneer is released. Voyager will connect with SAP BEx queries and InfoCubes via XMLA.Xcelcius will deploy dashboards on SAP data and will connect with SAP NW BW via ‘Query as a Web-service'.

Posted by Meena Iyer at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

In today’s economic environment every organization realizes the need for planning various business functions and processes to achieve optimum results. The uncertainty of the future has made it mandatory to plan and simulate each of the scenarios business will be facing in time of credit crisis and falling demand levels.

An Integrated Planning and Forecasting Solution will put you in a position to continuously verify, reassess and adjust your strategy and business processes in order to achieve the business objectives.

So, what are the success factors involved in an EPM implementation ? To begin with , unified Processes and Methods are important. User acceptance of planning application and planned data accuracy greatly increases with uniform processes and single user interface. It also ensures high data quality, quicker processes and more transparency.

Secondly we have data modeling.Data modeling plays a key role to integrate data entry reporting and analysis. The right design of data model ensures integrated business planning can be done for various business scenarios.

Finally we have system sizing. Poor performance of the planning application presents major challenges for user acceptability of planning applications. It is recommended to keep performance in mind right from the beginning when looking at infrastructure and system sizing as well during business requirement gathering and design
 

 

Posted by Meena Iyer at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

A blog that highlights how a ‘Performance Measurement KPI Framework’ allows business executives to take a holistic view of strategic goals and link them appropriately to tactical and operational performance indicators.

Today, organizations have realized the importance of Business Intelligence and they have spent millions of dollars on BI implementations; but most of them still struggle to ensure alignment of Business Intelligence with corporate strategy. The KPI framework connects corporate strategy to operation reporting and ensures that each element of Business Intelligence is providing input to achieve corporate goals. 

Critical KPIs are identified through interviews and brainstorming sessions with business users. These KPIs are then linked to PIs (Performance indicators) and operational indicators.Operational level indicators / metrics in KPI network tree are defined clearly and are handed over to Business Analyst teams to create detailed user requirements. KPIs derived from network tree are used to create management dashboards.

The Balanced Score Card methodology is used as the basis for user interviews during strategy formulation.  Customers can see an immediate benefit  of the KPI Framework based implementation as it allows the business to conduct root cause analysis of critical issues.

Posted by Meena Iyer at 7:31 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Compliance is an expensive, inevitable and ongoing activity which many companies find hard to cope with. Though SOX has evolved over a period of time and has brought in  more clarity to controls documentation and assessment, the corporate world is still groping with the fact that compliance is an expensive activity. Is automation the quick solution to compliance?

Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Russian Revolution, said: "Trust is good, but control is better." But stake holders across the globe are wondering if "Control is good but trust is better".  We trust that our employees are executing the control activity as intended. We trust that our auditors are doing a good job of verifying the controls. We trust that the management is keeping a close watch on the day to day activities and will arrest any devision soon.Trust is inevitable as long as at least a part of the control is executed by human beings. Total automation of controls is a myth and can not yield the results in addition to being disproportionately expensive as compared to the risk that the control is mitigating.

Right mix of people, process and technology will make the compliance process more reliable, effective, holistic, integrated and less expensive as against any one of the people, process or technology. Harnessing the right mix of people, process, technology and starting early is the key to success compliance along with large transformation programs.

Posted by Keerthana Mainkar at 6:06 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )