Minimize your Customization & Accelerate your Realization - Part II
System Integrators have a key role to play in leveraging the learning
from the industry and reuse the accumulated knowledge by offering
pre-configured package solution. So what is a pre-configured package
solution? In a nutshell, it is standard packages configured to the
industry specific processes covering statutory need of the geography
bundled with must-have custom developments along with documentation,
tested and made available as a hyper package that is ready to be
deployed with minimal tweaking to customer requirements.
What all can be there in a pre-configured solution? The process starts by identifying and configuring the industry and geography's best practice processes that are required to be configured. These processes are also documented at a generic level. Must-have customization due to regulatory or compliance reasons and specific to the industry/geography, where not supported by the package, is identified. These are then built and incorporated into the package, along with relevant design, documentation and testing and training material. Further, templates are built for common objects for data migration like customer, invoice etc. Integration interfaces with common third party systems can also be pre-built, for example interface with a credit score system.
How is a pre-configured system implemented? The standard waterfall methodology may not be the right approach to implement the pre-configured system. A more demonstration driven iterative approach is recommended where the customer reviews the pre-configured processes including the customization and then a delta discovery phase leads to changes required in the configured processes and need for new customization.
What are the benefits? As you see the clear benefit is reduction of customization because a lot of standard 'gaps' have already been developed and made available in the pre-configured solution. Thus the realization of this solution is expedited. The pre-configured solution already is based on industry and geography's best practice processes and hence there is no need to re-invent the wheel. Only customer specific requirements are incorporated during the implementation. Considerable time is also saved in testing, documentation and training. The templates are made available early in the project to the legacy owners to start work. Change management and new system adoption is easier since user involvement is high from early stages.
Part III of this blog series will discuss on the Infosys pre-configured package solution available for utilities industry and is based on the SAP platform.
What all can be there in a pre-configured solution? The process starts by identifying and configuring the industry and geography's best practice processes that are required to be configured. These processes are also documented at a generic level. Must-have customization due to regulatory or compliance reasons and specific to the industry/geography, where not supported by the package, is identified. These are then built and incorporated into the package, along with relevant design, documentation and testing and training material. Further, templates are built for common objects for data migration like customer, invoice etc. Integration interfaces with common third party systems can also be pre-built, for example interface with a credit score system.
How is a pre-configured system implemented? The standard waterfall methodology may not be the right approach to implement the pre-configured system. A more demonstration driven iterative approach is recommended where the customer reviews the pre-configured processes including the customization and then a delta discovery phase leads to changes required in the configured processes and need for new customization.
What are the benefits? As you see the clear benefit is reduction of customization because a lot of standard 'gaps' have already been developed and made available in the pre-configured solution. Thus the realization of this solution is expedited. The pre-configured solution already is based on industry and geography's best practice processes and hence there is no need to re-invent the wheel. Only customer specific requirements are incorporated during the implementation. Considerable time is also saved in testing, documentation and training. The templates are made available early in the project to the legacy owners to start work. Change management and new system adoption is easier since user involvement is high from early stages.
Part III of this blog series will discuss on the Infosys pre-configured package solution available for utilities industry and is based on the SAP platform.
