Infosys-Oracle Blog

For many the word ‘ERP’ conjures up an image of an extremely high priced and complicated set of applications that only a few understand and whose services only big organizations can avail. Over the last many years that I have been working as an ERP consultant I have come across many such instances wherein the managers of SME company are wary of ERP and ask ‘Can it be implemented for a small company like ours?’

With the present economic recessionary environment Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) which have been running on very thin bottomline must look at various avenues to reduce their costs and increase the operational efficiencies. The business applications provided by various ERP packages have over the last few decades evolved from just being a transactional system to one that provides functionalities built around industry specific best practices and standards. Notwithstanding the benefits an ERP may provide the IT and business executives of SMEs face the challenge of convincing the stakeholders that this is an investment towards an ability that provides better productivity which would help lead to better profitability, market share and / or customer service.

Continue reading "ERP for SME – why and why now?" »

Posted by Krishna Josyula at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Past couple of decades manufacturing organizations have focused on improving the quality of their business process to achieve operational excellence. ERP implementation is seen as an opportunity to re-engineer the existing business process, define / review Operational Excellence Metrics and ways to measure these metrics.

Continue reading "Operational Excellence Metrics – Implementation Considerations" »

Posted by Srikanth Sripathi at 05:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Most Product companies flourish by rolling out newer versions every now and then. Most versions are mere bug fixes, is there a difference then in the fusion enabled Oracle R12 version, especially for Retailers who have been long waiting to get an integrated suite of applications to run their business!

Continue reading "R12 Upgrade - What's in it for Retailers?" »

Posted by Venu Kotamraju at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Directive on WEEE (Wastage of Electrical and Electronics Equipment) in EU notes that the content of hazardous components in electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) is a major concern during the waste management phase and recycling of WEEE is not undertaken to a sufficient extent. The WEEE directive places the responsibility of end of life (EOL) disposal responsibility of the products on the manufacturers either individually or by joining a collective scheme. This implies that the cost of disposal of the product and the harmful substances that it contains squarely lies on the manufacturer.  The EU Commission has set new targets for recovery and reuse/recycling by 31-Dec-2008 for all EU countries.

Continue reading "Reuse and Recycle of WEEE (Wastage of Electrical and Electronics Equipment) – Optional or Mandatory?" »

Posted by K N Harilal at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Engineering and design occupies an important role in most Hi-Tech companies due to mounting business pressure on R&D and product development functions. This is due to increasing demand for innovative feature-rich products accompanied by shrinking product life cycles and decreasing prices for the improved products. Thus there is a need for the PLM software to collaborate and communicate with a wide range of users beyond the Engineering department within and outside the company.

Continue reading "Need for expansion of Product Life cycle Management (PLM) beyond engineering to users across the company and its extended enterprise" »

Posted by K N Harilal at 05:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Industry challenges

In my earlier blogs, I had briefly touched upon how a project centric approach will facilitate utilities achieving process efficiencies by integrating its various business functions.  We had also seen how Oracle out of the box capabilities can be leveraged.  Whilst the oracle based project centric solution enables utilities, there are some industry wide challenges that cannot be addressed through any system or solution.   Based on our experience the following are the few industry challenges that need to be considered while implementing any transformational solution to such project organisations.

Continue reading "Large Projects challenges - Beyond applications" »

Posted by Ismail Syed Mohammad at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In continuation with the entry here

Standardised project management process
 

Utilities have a trend of growing through acquiring other companies and hence the project management processes are likely to vary within their business.  For e.g., an organisation that took over a contracting company that specialises in executing rechargeable jobs is likely to have its processes and systems for managing rechargeable jobs different form the rest of the business - unless there is a conscious effort to homogenize the processes.  The project centric solution design addresses this by mapping the processes to the job classification available out of the box in Oracle ie., direct and indirect jobs  Also project management templates can be defined to ensure that the projects are defined in a specific way that is aligned with other projects in the organisation. This substantially reduces the time required by the engineers and/or planners to create projects in Oracle.  In some cases (Large capital projects), the project are likely to be created in best of breed project management software like Primavera or MS Projects etc.,.  The out of the box interface available in Oracle eBusiness suite can be used to reduce the need to duplicate effort in entering project data into Oracle.  With this, the process, the resource assignment and budgeting are the only processes that need to be done in Oracle eBusiness suite, whilst the other core project management processes are managed in the actual Project management suite.

Continue reading "Providing visibility to your large projects through a Project centric solution" »

Posted by Ismail Syed Mohammad at 09:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, probably when every one is cutting cost, investing in a fresh ERP implementation may make the customer think twice. This is primarily because of the size of the initial investment required for such engagements on account of hardware, software and implementation cost.

Hence for an IT service provider, the challenge lies in guiding the customer to make the right amount of investment in a timely manner, so as to minimize the initial CAPEX requirements at these times of turbulence.

Here are some of the ways to my mind, which can be put in practice for proposing new engagements:

1. Partnering with stakeholders
Let us partner with the customer and create a close collaboration between customer, IT service provider and the OEMs to provide the customer the best price

2. Using out-of-box features
Customers should be encouraged to use the standard built in features of the ERP product to the greatest extent possible. Enhancements should be entertained for addressing only the business critical needs.

3. Customer driven design
The need of the hour is more emphasis on incorporating customer’s requirements and his wishlist at the very early stage and designing the solution along-with the customer. This will reduce the number of iterations and rework in the project life cycle. Extensive workshops with the customer on the product and design will help on this aspect.

To add to the above, another aspect which can be explored more can be to bring in more modularity in the solution. We need to work with the customer in identifying the core business needs that need attention on a priority basis and provide a solution on those areas only; however care should be taken to ensure for the future enhancements to be added to the core solution with ease later.

In summary, the impending recession has made customers more cost-conscious than never before; this is probably the right time to sell a limited functionality ERP in a big way. This concept may sell when corporates are trying to just sail through rather than expecting to make huge profits. Customers with basic business processes in place in an ERP framework will be equipped better to scale up in boom times through adding more functionalities.

Posted by Debashis Dey at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

In the first part of the blog, we looked at 7 key factors that an implementing organization should consider before deciding to go ahead with its ERP implementation project.

http://infosysblogs.com/oracle/2008/10/key_factors_for_success_of_erp.html#more

In this blog, we will analyze 3 additional factors that are also vital for success.

Continue reading "Key Factors for Success of ERP Implementations - Part 2" »

Posted by Samir Das at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

To put in simple terms, Reverse Logistics is the flow of Returned goods by the customer to a state where the product is disposed of, repaired, recycled or internally consumed. And because of the strict norms pertaining to disposition of goods in the high tech sector, this is a very strategic area.

Continue reading "High Tech Reverse Logistics: A Potential Cost Cutting Avenue" »

Posted by Sandeep Chatterjee at 09:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We often see ERP Implementations failing because of lack of user acceptance for the new system. The user community is not convinced about the utility of the ERP System simply because they feel that they take a long time to execute the transactions in the new system.

Is there a solution to this? How do we make sure that from day one users start advocating about the new system. The answer to this question starts from the time the future state design of business processes is started. First question that any implementer should ask is" Is this the most efficient and lean way to deploy this process". "Are we deploying the correct tools and techniques offered by the package to design the future state business process?"

Continue reading "Going Lean the ERP Way" »

Posted by Somnath Majumdar at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

 If we look at the world's 2 leading large ERP packaged suites, they are huge applications that offer tremendous flexibility to handle just about all possible kinds of manufacturing systems and business processes spread across all kinds of industries. Can these ERP systems be readily adapted by small & medium-sized companies and how do large ERPs really differ from those that are used by the SMB segment?

Continue reading "ERP Systems for Small & Mid-Sized Companies" »

Posted by Samir Das at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"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)

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)

John G. Smale, the former CEO of Procter and Gamble had once remarked, “Our commitment must be to continue the vitality of this company –its growth in physical terms and also its growth as an institution –so that this company, this institution, will last through another 150 years. Indeed, so it will last through the ages.”

 

Continue reading "Thinking of Acquisition? Keep ERP as one of the decision parameters" »

Posted by Sandeep Chatterjee at 04:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Historians used two approaches to apply the past to the future: reasoning by analogy and projection of trends. The 1970’s saw the emergence of ERP systems in the form of Inventory Control Packages and Manufacturing Resources Planning (MRP II). Then came the integration of Finance, which was followed by the integration of various functional areas like Customer relationship, HR etc.

The evolution of Business Intelligence traces a trajectory similar to this. From a time of specialized tools and long multi-year customized solutions, we are seeing a convergence of enterprise applications, Data warehouse tools and analytic solutions. This is reinforced even further by the takeover and consolidation of BI vendors leaving few large players with capabilities across the value chain.

  ‘No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.’  ~H.E. Luccock

Continue reading "Age of packaged BI and analytics – Should you embark on this journey? Part1" »

Posted by Siddharth Pant at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Call it the bane or boon of an ERP system, companies do not have a choice but to upgrade to a higher version. There are various factors which drive the decision to upgrade namely de-support of the current system by the ERP vendor, availability of new features in higher version which have the potential to give a strategic edge. Typically companies choose the upgrade path to avoid the de-support problem and hence what it finally does is a pure as-is technical upgrade. This has multiple benefits in the sense that it is least risky and also can be done in a shorter timeframe. But once in a while it makes sense to have a look at the new features which can bring efficiencies in the process.

 

Continue reading "Thinking of R12? Go for an Enhanced Upgrade" »

Posted by Sandeep Chatterjee at 05:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Gone is the era when customers would queue to your factory gate to buy the goods produced by you. Remember Bajaj scooter in the 80s when we had a waiting time of up to 10 years. Not any more. With breakthrough advancement in science and technology, we are in a situation where the market place is cluttered with supply surpassing demand. More so in the high tech sector where changes happen in split seconds. Given the current situation, the winner is surely the one who will be able to provide a better buying experience to the customer and yet charge reasonably for providing the service. This includes both choice of products and/or services and delivering it to the customer at a reasonable price.

 

Continue reading "High Tech Industry’s Logistics Woes: Oracle Transportation Management may be the answer" »

Posted by Sandeep Chatterjee at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

R12 is a milestone in Journey to Fusion

Oracle’s E-Business Suite Release 12 is Oracle’s latest version of their business applications with an upgrade path to Oracle Fusion Application. The technology stack is upgraded to Fusion Middleware, the backbone of Fusion Applications.

Continue reading "Upgrading to Oracle R12? Keep Fusion in mind" »

Posted by Malay Kumar at 03:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)