Infosys-Oracle Blog

In the first part of the blog we looked at the rise of packaged BI http://infosysblogs.com/oracle/2008/08/age_of_packaged_bi_and_analyti.html

In this blog we analyze when and how should organizations evaluate packaged BI

Organizations today, are under pressure to improve efficiency and margins. Analytics has become an indispensible part of their existence. Large organizations face a challenge owing to constraints of increasing visibility across value chain in terms of analytics, BI in multiple silos, and heterogeneous systems from the legacy era.

Today, when corporate decision making has become more and more information-driven, there is a paradigm shift, accuracy and completeness of information has become an essential parameter for:

• Analyzing and predicting business changes
  
• Tracking Operational Effectiveness
  
• Preparing and Addressing competitive threats
  

This means that information driven approach drives a better business than the competition. Packaged BI Apps facilitates this, in an efficient and effective way by providing complete, pre built solutions that provide all necessary technology and business logic to transform enterprise data into actionable insights.

Before embarking on implementing the packaged BI solutions, organizations should focus on the following:

i.   What are the future BI requirements of the organization?
ii.  Does the organization require a packaged BI solution?
iii. Is there any roadmap in place for the existing BI investments?
iv. Would packaged BI solution work efficiently with online and offline heterogeneous source systems?
v.  What would be the BI Complexity of the existing implementation if packaged BI solution is implemented?

Posted by Siddharth Pant at 01:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Greetings from OOW - SF, USA

 With so much going on - its hard to find time to stop and type:

• Newly announced Oracle business units
• Aggressive solution development plans to address industry whitespace
• Larry's keynote later today...

Last night our own Kakal (ES Head) presented his Hi-Tech Leaders Circle keynote:  "Innovation Through Collaboration" - showcasing Infy thought leadership in what is arguably the most intensely competitive crucible today: the fickle, product-centric hi-tech marketplace.  In the end, hi-tech companies that combine traditional and emergent technologies will be better positioned to create competitive advantage in the flattening world.  Over 100 senior executives (a who's who of hi-tech) were present to hear these key messages - and did you note the big announcement by one of our key Oracle clients, Cisco?  Collaboration tools (Jabber, Webex, etc) are expanding their markets ---immediate proof points that we are riding and defining the front edge of the next wave.

Our leadership hosted over 150 Infy clients, partners, and team members from around the globe to celebrate and thank all for the exceptional dedication and effort that has resulted in a thriving Oracle professional services powerhouse here at Infy and most importantly driven our clients success.  Both Srinath Batni and Kakal warmly welcomed and thanked the group, and we enjoyed a brief respite from the hectic schedule of the conference to reflect on past, present, and future.

Back to Day 3 - the always engaging Larry Ellison will deliver the keynote today - watch for one final show update tomorrow before we pack up and head back to the field.

Chris

Posted by Christopher Spangler at 04:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Greetings from OOW 2008!  We are finally here in SF and the show is underway.

Key Themes

Green - Oracle has gone all out on the Green Theme:  a Marketplace, targeted sessions, a green fashion show (?),  and of course the mandatory green social events.  Reference the earlier blogs on this topic - sustainability and "green" is here to stay on the agenda.

Election - A LOT of people are talking about the election and its potential impact on their business - James Carville and Mary Matalin gave last nights keynote.  Their comments and insights effectively lead to the conclusion that the younger demographic and turnout will likely drive the outcome...but of course anything can happen between now and November.

Economy - in case you missed it this week, the economy is undergoing tectonic plate shifts.  Nearly everyone here wants to know "have you seen anything change".  Interestingly, I met someone from the IMF who is busily working away on a large transformation program...guess THEY don't have a liquidity issue!

Today has US swimming phenom Michael Phelps on tap, and day filled with over 15 Infy-sponsored meetings with customers, prospects, and Oracle.  Time for a quick run and off to Moscone -

Chris

Posted by Christopher Spangler at 02:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When there is a need to bring about large scale HRIT portfolio transformation (post merger, for example) it is important to use this opportunity to maximize the business value , while minimizing the TCO and risk of transition.

Infosys has a comprehensive framework, approach and accelerators to look at this transformation scenario in a global delivery model

Posted by Ajay_Gachhi at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Organizations who want to strengthen their ability to attract and retain employees at all levels to meet the needs of Organic and Inorganic Growth, need to have an Integrated approach to Talent Management. This would not only offer sustainable competitive advantage, but also operational benefits like reduced time to productivity, developing targeted capabilities, and Talent mobility across the organization. Integrated Talent Management is a lot more than yet another HR process. It is a mindset that goes beyond the rhetoric towards a holistic and integrated approach. Based on our experience, we’ve identified three critical elements to achieve Integrated Talent Management: Strategy Integration, Process Integration, and Technology Integration.

Posted by Ajay_Gachhi at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week when I was in Kansas City presenting a paper at the 2008 APICS International Conference, I had an interesting observation. There was a tremendous emphasis on Sustainability. We talk about Lean Supply Chain but companies were one step ahead discussing Green Supply Chain. Initially I had dismissed it as another fad but I was amazed at the commitment more so in the High Tech Domain.

To put in simple terms, sustainability has been expressed as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In light of rising energy costs, the inevitability of stricter carbon regulations, and higher expectations for corporate social responsibility, going green is not just good for the planet. Companies have taken it one step ahead saying that it is good for business.

"Business case?  What business case?  This is a "strategic" investment"....ever heard that one?

Can any executive team pull that off in today's economy?  Something tells me that those days are O-V-E-R.

"That which gets measured gets done"....so here's the secret:  build a Value Story, define the core metrics, and measure, track, and transform using the Oracle OBIEE solution.

That's a mouthful.  Let's talk about it live at Oracle OpenWorld.  Ask for me at the Infy booth.

See you in SF -

Chris

http://www.linkedin.com/in/cspangler

Posted by Christopher Spangler at 02:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You only need to open one consulting proposal to see the classic (trite?) framework of "people/process/technology" being touted as the exhaustive framework that should drive your transformation.  It's that easy (yeah right).  Is it a coincidence that those 3 words correspond to the stock-in-trade consulting presentation package (.ppt)?....thats for another post.

Where is Value?  Where is Capability?  What about Accountability? Exactly how does this all happen without a well-aligned roadmap?

Our IMPACTtm frameworkhas been developed to address these areas.  It also speaks to integrating the EXTENDED enterprise (where to work), new capabilities (what to work on) and managing the overall tranformation (how to do it).

Reach out to our Infosys team at Oracle Open World and ask for me - I will be happy to give you a personal guided tour to a whole new way of transforming your business in an Oracle-enabled environment.

Till next time,

Chris

Posted by Christopher Spangler at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Across Industries, specifically utilities and process industries, because of their capital intensive environments, typically spend a substantial amount on indirect procurement, especially services.  Typically services account for more than 60% of the indirect spend for companies in these industries yet this area has remained unexplored for either automation or transformation efforts.
 

The Services Supply Chain comprises of unique and complex activities. This is then the reason why streamlining the process coupled with adequate systems support can lead to a large savings in this area. But how do we really go about it? Our experience tells us that this is definitely possible and is a huge opportunity for savings. Oracle Advanced Procurement Suite with its Services Procurement processes help organizations in streamlining processes in achieving these savings.

A Process driven approach coupled with the requisite functionalities within the ERP products would help align the ERP to play a big role in helping unleash the power in the services procurement processes.

Posted by Balakrishna Rao at 05:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

How was that possible we wondered? and performed a very quick analysis. What we found was that the Campaign Management platform used data from a data mart inside the enterprise data warehouse to create the target list. Due to the inherent nature of the data warehouse architecture and the design of the refresh frequency inside the data warehouse, the data being used to run the campaigns was at least 24-48 hours old.
In a dynamic world of mobile telephony 48 hours could be equivalent to an era. In an environment  where  the subscriber can change his/her profile/plan/products/service offerings online(24/7) on the internet self service portal and the services/products are activated real time, the marketing department just cannot rely on data as old as 48 hours, to churn campaigns. This is just not a viable way of running business.
In the modern day of e-business and a 24/7 services that businesses need to provide, we cannot work with and run our enterprises by using data which are days, weeks or even months old.   The mantra today is to react to a situation that 'is happening’ rather than knowing what ‘had happened’ a day or a week or even a month earlier. In today’s business, things are quite random and dynamic without much of a regular or stable pattern. Just because you sold well last Thanks giving season does not mean that you will be selling well this time around. So many other things can come in between like an economic slump, a hurricane or any other natural calamity which would make the last years data meaningless. The emphasis would be to try to track your business as and when it happens, gather the  intelligence real time, analyze it rapidly  and react on a ‘real time basis’.
Business Intelligence /Information Systems before the era of internet or e-business were typically used by a select group of analysts running some complex queries/reports for the use of  CEO/CFO/CTO/directors. In that by-gone climate of doing business, most enterprises were not ‘real time’ and dare I say not as dynamic, and were able to afford the delay in analyzing the enterprise data. Reaction time was not paramount!
Come the era internet and e-business of mid or late 90’s and the concepts of business hours, location,, geographic presence etc. became blurred. Most business or parts of it  were run on the wire and on a 24/7 basis. Customer/client and quality of services became the central theme of every business. Every other enterprise/organization had to be ‘e-enabled’ in order to survive and remain competitive. Along with the systems becoming online and e-enabled, it also became apparent that in order to understand the business situation and its behaviour and react to the situation ,the age old way of gathering information in a batch mode for analysis would not be of any ‘real ‘ benefit. To maximize the benefits in this new era Business Intelligence would need to be ‘real time’ and ‘pervasive’.
In my opinion these are the two key aspects which are going to drive business intelligence and data warehousing architecture and landscape of the next generation.
A) Real Time Data Integration:
Making data available on a real time to the users for use is going to be something that the next generation datawarehouse/BI platform is going to stand on. What we are possibly going to  to see is a strong amalgamation of the EAI technologies(real-time integration) with the traditional ETL/ELT technologies. While the EAI tools are likey to be scaled up to handle higher data volumes than what they are currently capable of, the ETL/ELT tools would be provided the capabilities of real time data integration. Many of the current Business Intelligence product vendors are working towards that direction. Oracle Corporation for one is definitely an early adopter of this philosophy. It has come up with many real time integration features in its BI products. In its data base product it has added features like Change Data Capture(CDC) to provide real time integration capabilities and use of materialized views. A lot of advanced features on real time integration are being provided with Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) the flagship ELT tol from Oracle.
B).Pervasive BI:
Gone are the days when data was used by a set of analysts or a few IT professionals to create reports which were mailed every morning to the CxO. BI as a concept has come of age, today organizations are looking at the making BI relevant at the bottom most layer of the organization’s value chain.
Making analyzed and vital customer buying pattern available to the Call centre agent while the customer has called up for an issue could enable the agent to cross-sell a suitable product. This is just one simple example of pervasive BI, there could be so many other places where BI could be made pervasive. Keeping vital and essential operational data locked up in the mail boxes/folders of the directors is not going to help business prosper in the long run. Utilizing operational Business Intelligence and making it pervasive is what is going to drive the business of the next generation. Many of the OLAP vendors in the market, including Oracle, are taking to this and coming up with utilities and features in their OLAP offerings  by which an end user can easily and very quickly create reports by dragging and dropping objects and be immediately be able to see results.

Posted by Somnath Mukherjee at 09:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Forecasting has been rated as one of the top supply chain issues in the globalized world. Organizations are striving to predict customer demand as accurately as possible. Accurate forecasting kick-starts demand and supply chain planning. A large number of products-geography-customer combinations require system enabled forecasting capabilities. A holistic forecasting system brings in Statistical Rigour and Modeling, Dashboards and Simulation capabilities and automatically tunes its models to suit changing business requirements. Sharing here excerpts from one of our working paper – the criteria in choosing the holistic forecasting system.

Posted by Mitul Shah at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

1)  Is your IT expense more on managing your applications and their integrations? Will you incur a huge cost when you will migrate or upgrade your existing applications?  
If the answer to above is yes, your organization is right candidate for SOA. By using Service Oriented Architecture you can protect yourself against spending huge budgets with every new application, new release and upgrade without worrying about the integration and interoperability aspects. Applications can work together without relying on custom-coded point to point connections. This enables decoupling and enhances flexibility. The cost that otherwise would have been spent on complex integration scenarios can be protected by introducing a service oriented architecture much before the problem becomes a nightmare.
2) Protect your Future Now - Embark on SOA Wave today                            
New business scenarios are inevitable that force the systems for upgrade. When a system upgrades or undergoes any migration all its interfaces with other systems get affected. Integration becomes a challenging and a high expense activity. Imagine a scenario where your company is undergoing a merger or is in acquisition process. There will be plethora of application stacks that will emerge in the IT landscape of the organization. Result is stovepipes of applications exchanging information, which is highly fragmented; the processes are application-driven, inconsistent and inefficient. Integrations if they are point-to-point interfaces and difficult and costly to change. 
3) Gear Up For SOA - What are the most common mistakes while implementing SOA?
To protect your existing and future investments, it is essential that the technology you pick up to develop your service-oriented architecture adheres to industry standards and has a strong vendor support. At the same time it is vital to know that a service-oriented architecture is not just a design or technology, there is beyond to that and that is your business process.  Choose a right consulting partner that is trustable and that can provide future proof solution and as well as full lifecycle support.
Most common mistakes that are made in SOA initiatives are
x      Failure to assess SOA maturity level and defining appropriate roadmap
x      Failure to obtain buy in from all stakeholders and internal application owners
x      Failure to identify common data models leading to frequent changes
x      Tendency to build point to point interfaces even with SOA.
x      Failure to setup a PMO team for audits and reviews for SOA Governance
4) Do not struggle - Get a framework to build SOA
Path to SOA is challenging. We must realize it early. As per Gartner, “By 2010, less that 25 percent of large companies will have the sufficient technical and organizational skills necessary to deliver enterprise wide SOA.” One big reason why SOA initiatives fail or do not get enough momentum is lack of reference architecture and a robust framework. Oracle AIA (Application Integration Architecture) provides a robust and yet flexible architecture. You may look at AIA as an application independent standardized framework based on common object model. Majority of enterprise applications are monolithic within individual lines of business – and this makes coordinating activity between them very difficult. A composite application based on common object model is the new direction where technologists are heading for. A composite application automates business processes across the boundaries of multiple applications and is future-proof. However it is a laborious, complex and time consuming task to build composite applications. Oracle AIA simplifies this process and makes it more seamless - and far less costly.

5)    Do not re-invent the wheel - Leverage Oracle AIA
AIA brings to the table following key components
· Best Practice Processes- To leverage best practices available out of the box
· AIA Foundation Pack - You can create custom business processes across any of your applications utilizing predefined, application independent objects and service definitions
· Process Integration Packs - Pre-built, out of the box, integrated services for quick implementation of business processes, without the risks
AIA is built on top of SOA, an open standards based platform. It enables you to
o    Expedite your Enterprise SOA Initiative
o    Build adaptable composite processes
o    Stop redeveloping integrations with every new release and upgrade
o    Focus on core business, and not on integration nightmares

6) Choose a right partner
Choosing a right consulting partner is a key success factor. With a vast experience in SOA implementations across the Globe and a strong workforce behind, Infosys can help you in your SOA Journey reinforced with Oracle AIA. Lot of our customers have chosen Oracle AIA path to strengthen their SOA initiative. We can provide you future proof solutions with full lifecycle support.

Posted by Gaurav Sharma at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Proliferating customer touch points has increased complexities in understanding the customer relationship. Increased globalization of businesses and its customers / consumers has put stress on ensuring apt customer experience. Businesses are facing new customer acquistion very difficult, specially in matured markets - turning their focus to sustain existing customer base and increase potential.

With so much information laying around across the enterprise in disperate systems, enterprises are struggling to get common data into one place - let alone using it for business decisions. To make right and effective business decisions enterprises need to leap from current discrete data elements to an integrated intelligenc on its customers. Customer Inelligence should include customer information across all channels with enterprise and outside to possible extend. 

Posted by lax_gopisetty at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Where is my Order????? When will it get shipped???? Another delay, yet again!!!! These are some of the very common and frequently asked questions by the Customers.
The challenging business needs, difficult to hold enough inventory, increase in cost of manufacturing and more so frequent re-org’s have made manufacturers to re-think about their business strategy. The business drivers are changing and increasing at a fast pace and Enterprises using ERP’s expect the product vendors to be more than up to speed to offer capabilities in the standard product and also provide an Integration strategy to offer seamless out-of-box integrations.These capabilities are targeted towards Increase in Agent Productivity, Significant reduction in cycle time, Automating Business flows, Orchestrating Business flows spread across disparate applications and Enabling Shared service operations etc.
Oracle has a taken a step forward to meet the above objectives and much more than that. The latest release of Oracle EBS (eBusiness Suite), which is popularly known as R12, is a significant step to meet the complex and demanding business objectives. The features like Multi Org Access Control (MOAC) allow agents to access data spread across Operating units from a single responsibility. The enhancements done as part of EBS R12 in Order Management, Advanced Pricing, iStore help in increase of Agent productivity and shorten the Order cycles.
Come and join the journey if you wanna know on how to expedite and streamline your prolonged Order cycles…….
This session will elucidate how Oracle R12 features can be leveraged to enable shared service operations with features like MOAC. It will elaborate the New R12 features in the areas of Order Management, Advance Pricing and iStore with suitable examples. The session will explain on how the new features like Price book will join the core stream and make it more transparent to the customers. This session will also talk about how the new R12 features and Fusion middleware product BPEL came together and delivered a composite Application model for a big Hi-Tech giant.

Oracle's latest version of its E-Business Suite (EBS) is a significant release. Current users need to determine if and when this upgrade will be appropriate, if they have not already done so. New users of Oracle applications need to ensure that Release 12 is the appropriate release to implement.  – Gartner

The journey begins in the biggest Oracle Technology symposium – Oracle Open World, 21st-25th Sep 2008……

Session ID: S300276
Session Title: Shorten Your Order Cycles with New Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 Features: Wanna Know How?
Track: Oracle E-Business Suite

Posted by vikas khurana at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)