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February 26, 2010

How can IT help in implementing Activity Based Costing (Part 2 of 2)?

This week I got a chance to get a view from senior management of two companies on Activity Based Costing (ABC) for their organizations. Neither of these companies is using ABC, nor do they have any plans to go for it in a near future. In this part of the blog series - “How can IT help in implementing Activity Based Costing?”, let’s discuss the perspective of these two companies. Let’s also see how IT can make ABC viable for more and more organizations.

Continue reading "How can IT help in implementing Activity Based Costing (Part 2 of 2)?" »

Posted by Vivek Madhav at 09:36 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

February 23, 2010

Copenhagen, Kyoto - Do we have something in it for our Business?

 

Erik Rasmussen, Founder of the Copenhagen Climate Council, explains: "Reducing the emissions that until now have been so linked to our economic growth and betterment will be an enormous, unprecedented global challenge but will also provide significant opportunities for sustainable growth, green jobs, development and innovation."

Continue reading "Copenhagen, Kyoto - Do we have something in it for our Business?" »

Posted by Abhishek Jain at 09:06 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 19, 2010

Win the last mile battle by addressing Performance and Usability of SAP Netweaver based Web apps…PART I of IV- Browser Layer

Historically functional requirements have remained the key focus of organizations working with enterprise applications such as SAP. However, in their race to meet the functional requirements of business users, many times non-functional requirements (NFR) and usability may take back stage and are not updated.

Business demands for flexibility and responsiveness have always put pressure on IT departments to increase the speed at which new applications are created or changes are implemented. Newer tools (such as Portal, MDM, Composites etc.) and new way of architecting (SOA, Virtualization etc.) the solution are being used by IT for being quick and efficient to support business of the enterprise. Each of these new tools and architecture has their own demands for NFR (performance, availability and security) and usability.

From performance point of view, following four key layers play important role:

  • Browser layer
  • Network layer
  • Application server layer
  • Database layer

Continue reading "Win the last mile battle by addressing Performance and Usability of SAP Netweaver based Web apps…PART I of IV- Browser Layer" »

Posted by Ashish Tewary at 12:49 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

January 31, 2010

How can IT help in implementing Activity Based Costing (Part 1 of 2)?

My previous blogs series- “Why do you need profitability analysis?” and “Activity based costing for profitability analysis” highlights  the need for profitability analysis and discusses the challenges expected in ABC implementation. As a next step, this blog discusses the role of IT in adoption of Activity Based Costing (ABC) methodology.

Continue reading "How can IT help in implementing Activity Based Costing (Part 1 of 2)?" »

Posted by Vivek Madhav at 12:18 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 31, 2009

Activity based costing for profitability analysis (Part 2 of 2)

My previous blogs series “Why do you need profitability analysis?” sets the context for profitability analysis. The next blog “Activity based costing for profitability analysis (Part 1)” highlights the need for Activity Based Costing (ABC) for profitability analysis. Once we are convinced about the need for profitability analysis and ABC, we have to figure out how to go about implementing ABC for our organization. This blog discusses the typical challenges in implementing ABC.

Continue reading "Activity based costing for profitability analysis (Part 2 of 2)" »

Posted by Vivek Madhav at 04:12 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 29, 2009

The new weapon for the CFO’s knights (Part 2 of 3) – Conquering IFRS

In my previous blog of this series, I briefly spoke about the capabilities of SAP EPM financial consolidation tool(s) - inherent as well as the ones over and above legal & management consolidation and reporting functionalities. In the following discussion, I’ll talk about IFRS, the possible solutions for transition and finally share some of our learning’s from an experiment we carried out involving US GAAP and IFRS.

Continue reading "The new weapon for the CFO’s knights (Part 2 of 3) – Conquering IFRS" »

Posted by Bharat Chadha at 01:07 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“SAP BPC Owned by Business developed by IT” is it a reality or myth.

It is a general perception that SAP BPC can be easily managed or supported by Business which helps in reducing total cost of ownership and reducing dependency of business on IT dept.

Continue reading "“SAP BPC Owned by Business developed by IT” is it a reality or myth." »

Posted by Aalok Kumar at 08:12 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 07, 2009

Activity based costing for profitability analysis (Part 1 of 2)

In the previous blog series titled - “Why do you need profitability analysis?” we discussed how profitability analysis can help a business analyze the profitability of one’s offerings (product, customer, channels etc); manage costs by identifying the non-value adding activities; and provide a benchmark to measure the output of an improvement initiative.

Continue reading "Activity based costing for profitability analysis (Part 1 of 2)" »

Posted by Vivek Madhav at 05:44 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

November 10, 2009

SAP BPC: Unified tool for Planning & Consolidation (Part II of II)

In my previous blog, I have discussed pros and cons of SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation as a unified tool for planning and consolidation vs. multiple planning applications. In this blog, I will further illustrate benefit of using SAP BPC for planning and consolidation. SAP BPC as a single application for planning, budgeting, forecasting, consolidation, and reporting functionalities, eliminates the need  of multiple applications that require manual integration.SAP BPC offers  following features and functionality from a single enterprise scale application.

Strategic planning
Budgeting
Forecasting
Statutory consolidation
Reporting & analysis
Predictive analytics

Continue reading "SAP BPC: Unified tool for Planning & Consolidation (Part II of II)" »

Posted by Aalok Kumar at 12:59 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The new weapon for the CFO’s knights – An Introduction (Part 1 of 3)

In my previous blog posts, I spoke about how volatile economic cycles, the ensuing regulatory requirements and thus evolving business expectations, are leading to a shift in the epicenter of the CFOs office - towards business strategy and growth alongside financial stewardship.

Continue reading "The new weapon for the CFO’s knights – An Introduction (Part 1 of 3)" »

Posted by Bharat Chadha at 05:20 AM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

October 21, 2009

Why do you need profitability analysis? (Part - 2)

In the part 1 of this blog (http://www.infosysblogs.com/sap/2009/09/why_need_profitability_analysi.html#more), we discussed few of the pain points that business are facing today. Moving ahead let’s see how would profitability analysis help solve them and how can such a solution be implemented.

Consider a scenario where your company creates profitability report for its products, product lines, customers, channels and geography; or any combination thereof. You as a sales manager sort the customers based on their profitability and know the most profitable and least profitable customers. You treat your most profitable customers best. You also analyze the unprofitable customers and devise plan either to make them profitable or divest them. You have information about the customer-product profitability and clearly know which products to focus for maximizing the company’s profit.

Continue reading "Why do you need profitability analysis? (Part - 2)" »

Posted by Vivek Madhav at 06:26 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 12, 2009

Enterprise Performance Management – what’s there in it for your organization? – Part 2

First of all my apologies to friends who were following this blog, it took me a while to post the second part … there has been a lot of interest in EPM and I’ve been kept busy. Smile

So, starting with where we left in the first part (http://www.infosysblogs.com/sap/2009/08/enterprise_performance_managem.html#more). There are a few broad areas that EPM covers at the strategic and operational levels – Strategy Management; Business Planning, Forecasting and Budgeting; Financial Consolidation; Profitability Management; Management Reporting & Analytics for your Business Functions (e.g. Supply Chain Performance Management).

Continue reading "Enterprise Performance Management – what’s there in it for your organization? – Part 2" »

Posted by Rakhi Makad at 08:24 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

September 25, 2009

SAP BPC: Unified tool for Planning & Consolidation (Part I of II)

In my last project, the planning and consolidation landscape was characterized by multiple tools for planning, budgeting and consolidation. The client had implemented sales planning in SAP BPS while financial planning & budgeting in SAP BPC. For consolidation the parent company is using SEM BCS whereas its subsidiary is using SAP BPC. Due to this, the reconciliation of consolidated figures was a challenge due to different tools, dimensionality and account structure.

Continue reading "SAP BPC: Unified tool for Planning & Consolidation (Part I of II)" »

Posted by Aalok Kumar at 06:46 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

September 22, 2009

The Evolving Financial Consolidation Landscape (Part 2 of 2)

In my previous post, I introduced you to the new ‘financial controlling’ order and how SAP has evolved to keep abreast with the ever changing business requirements, especially the CFO’s office.

Continue reading "The Evolving Financial Consolidation Landscape (Part 2 of 2)" »

Posted by Bharat Chadha at 06:59 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

September 20, 2009

BCP in ERP Business Processes

Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a proactive plan to develop advance arrangements and procedures that enable an organisation to respond to an interruption in such a manner that critical business functions continue with planned levels of interruption. Most organizations’ BCP processes in practice only remain at a “talk” or “good definition” level and worst some organizations view this as an unutilized asset providing almost no returns to everyday business processes. Especially in  tried economies, some organizations even abandoned their BCP teams due to its non-utilization (or less utilized) and re-directing back them for core processes. More so, other organizations view BCP only as a infrastructure (“hot site”) arrangement.

Continue reading "BCP in ERP Business Processes" »

Posted by Senthil Muthuvelu at 01:27 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

September 11, 2009

Why do you need profitability analysis? (Part - 1)

“Treat your best customers best; focus on your most profitable products” - is no brainer. But knowing the best customers and identifying the most profitable offering definitely is. In fact, it is more difficult than ever before as companies have been expanding their customer base across the globe and offering more complex products bundled with various services.

Continue reading "Why do you need profitability analysis? (Part - 1)" »

Posted by Vivek Madhav at 07:50 AM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

September 08, 2009

The Evolving Financial Consolidation Landscape (Part 1 of 2)

Over the past decade, the financial regulatory and management landscape has changed rapidly in response to the volatile economic and business environment. In an attempt to ward off economic pressures due to various asset bubbles, governments globally have tightened the regulatory noose, thus, escalating the compliance costs. This has, hence, initiated a change in power dynamics, in the top enterprise echelons, towards a more distributed governance structure. 

Continue reading "The Evolving Financial Consolidation Landscape (Part 1 of 2)" »

Posted by Bharat Chadha at 09:40 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

August 31, 2009

Enterprise Performance Management – what’s there in it for your organization? – Part 1

A few weeks ago when I was at a seminar, a customer put forth a question on why his organization should go in for EPM since they already had a strong BI platform in place that gave them an excellent insight of their business and supported informed and speedy decision making.

Continue reading "Enterprise Performance Management – what’s there in it for your organization? – Part 1" »

Posted by Rakhi Makad at 06:28 AM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

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