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May 16, 2012

Enterprise Mobility with Sybase Unwired Platform

Many organizations face the need for making an important decision of choosing the right development approach after selecting a mobile platform  like SUP (Sybase Unwired Platform).  While there is no best solution that works all the time, this paper attempts to bring in the pros and cons that each of the approaches carries with reference to enterprise requirements and different business cases.

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Posted by Suresh Santhana at 3:03 PM | | Comments ( 0 )

March 2, 2012

Industry Perspective: Production supply with EWM execution - Part 2

By Yudhishthir Shrikant Joshi

In the last part, we discussed about the different unique requirements of warehousing for specialized industries like Aerospace. This industry also faces some unique challenges which stand apart from Auto or Retail industry in terma of its business lifecycle.

Continue reading " Industry Perspective: Production supply with EWM execution - Part 2 " »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 10:07 AM | | Comments ( 0 )

February 24, 2012

Industry Perspective: Production supply with EWM execution - Part 1

By Yudhishthir Shrikant Joshi

The Warehouse Management solutions are traditionally used for granular level tracking of inventory and assisting inbound and outbound processes. EWM was rolled out to improve this solution for higher inventory turnover, multi geographical landscape of the system and complex warehouse processes. But our recent experience with EWM project, gave us an insight on how useful is EWM in assisting the Production process. First, let us understand why warehousing is important from the manufacturer's perspective.

Continue reading " Industry Perspective: Production supply with EWM execution - Part 1 " »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 1:13 PM | | Comments ( 0 )

January 6, 2011

The Need for Spend Performance Management - Part 1

As the economy is coming out of recession, the office of chief procurement officer (CPOs) in every organization is hard-pressed to look beyond the low hanging fruits of cost saving.  The top management is expecting them to deliver the savings to the bottom line of company's result. They are looking for insights from their past spending data to unearth the inefficiencies in their procurement process in terms of transparency, compliance, supplier risk management and complexity handling to identify  saving opportunities to drive the next round of cost saving.

Continue reading " The Need for Spend Performance Management - Part 1 " »

Posted by Madhan Kumar at 1:32 AM | | Comments ( 0 )

October 1, 2010

Software evaluation for activity based costing systems (Part 1 of 2)

I am back with the next blog on profitability analysis and activity based costing (ABC). For the benefit of new readers, I blog on profitability analysis and ABC and you can click here to view the previous blogs on related topics.

First of all, my sincere thanks for your comments on my previous blog - How can IT help in implementing Activity Based Costing? It's really good to get the views from practitioners. One common view in these comments is that the output of ABC system should be relevant and must assist in future decisions. I completely agree to this. It makes all the more important for the business to perform due diligence in identifying the right purpose and the right software for their ABC system. The other view is ABC hasn't translated from concept to practice for large number of companies. I believe this will change over time as the ABC software evolves further to deliver more value in terms of relevant and insightful information it provides at a lesser TCO.

Continue reading " Software evaluation for activity based costing systems (Part 1 of 2) " »

Posted by Vivek Madhav at 11:23 AM | | Comments ( 0 )

May 9, 2010

IT Trends in Manufacturing

The recent global recession has forced many manufacturing companies to look into extreme cost cutting measures and liquidate their inventories. With the world now in a stage of economic recovery, consumers are opening their wallets again and are demanding more goods, leading to an increase in production output for manufacturing organizations. But rather than simply ramping up productivity, workforce and inventory levels to pre global recession levels, many manufacturers are first carefully investigating now how they can accommodate the increasing demand with their existing organization and production assets. After an era and years of industry wider restructuring, with increased globalization, mergers and acquisitions,  many global organizations however now come to the rude awakening that their existing tools, structures, processes and data don't provide them the insights they are looking for to make sound strategic and operational decisions.

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Posted by Dirk Leifer at 1:44 AM | | Comments ( 0 )

May 8, 2010

Outcome and value based pricing engagement models

Thanks largely to the recent global recession, many organizations were forced to take a hard look at their IT spend and find more cost effective ways to invest their reduced IT budgets. Alternate IT service contracts such as value-based or outcome-based pricing became more popular providing clients with greater means for cost control and tying stringent budgets to result driven service contracts.

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Posted by Dirk Leifer at 5:27 PM | | Comments ( 0 )

March 26, 2010

IFRS adoption or convergence goes beyond just being another regulatory mandate

A lot has already been spoken about IFRS. For one reason being that, currently, there are 117 countries that have either adopted or committed to adopt IFRS. But, last month the US SEC announced that companies could start using IFRS no sooner than 2015 - a year after from the earlier timeline of 2014. However, according to a recent survey conducted by KPMG, 49% US executives said they would like the option to adopt IFRS before 2015.

Continue reading " IFRS adoption or convergence goes beyond just being another regulatory mandate " »

Posted by Bharat Chadha at 5:20 AM | | Comments ( 0 )

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 9:36 AM | | Comments ( 5 )

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 )

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 4:12 AM | | Comments ( 1 )

December 29, 2009

“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.

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Posted by Aalok Kumar at 8:12 AM | | Comments ( 0 )

December 7, 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 5:44 AM | | Comments ( 1 )

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 ( 4 )

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 5:20 AM | | Comments ( 3 )

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 6:26 AM | | Comments ( 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 6:46 PM | | Comments ( 1 )

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 6:59 AM | | Comments ( 1 )

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 1:27 AM | | Comments ( 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 7:50 AM | | Comments ( 3 )

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 6:28 AM | | Comments ( 3 )

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