Peoplesoft like any other ERP implementation involves huge and concerted effort and intricate planning from Project initiation to Go Live. Implementation in Less time translates to Less Cost for the customer. This assumes more significance in these times of recession where customers are seeking for more value for money and quick returns on investment.
Continue reading "How Quick can Oracle’s PeopleSoft be Implemented" »
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.
Today’s global environment has placed increased pressure on Hi-Tech manufacturers to become more competitive and profitable. Global outsourcing activities have increased in importance and have increasingly emerged as a key strategic tool in achieving cost reduction, quality and delivery improvement, cycle time reduction, and improved responsiveness to customer, competitive, and financial market demands. It is estimated that a well planned and executed global outsourcing strategy can result in a cost savings differential of 15 to 25 percent when compared to manufacturing inhouse.
Using external suppliers to design, manufacture, ship and service products or components - has been a growing trend in recent years as Hi-Tech manufacturers have sought, among other things, to divest themselves of production capacity (and the inherent risks associated with owning capital equipment), lower their labor costs and maintain greater flexibility in the face of ever-shrinking product lifecycles.
Continue reading "Importance of Outsourcing to provide flexibility to Hi-Tech Manufacturers" »
From 2001, the shadow of WEEE Directive (Waste Electrical and Electronics Equipment) and RoHS Directive (Restriction on Hazardous Substances) had begun looming over the world electronics manufacturing industry. By 2007, most EU Member States had implemented WEEE and the deadline for RoHS was achieved in July 2006. Other countries are now building their environment compliance approaches similar to the EU directives, e.g. some states in the USA, Korea, etc have put in place their own regulations. China, Chile, Brazil and Columbia also now have some environment management Directives in place. Japanese laws had been in place even earlier and many Japanese companies are well ahead in implementing cleaner technologies and in greening their supply chain. While the larger companies in most countries have started their compliance measures, most small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) including those in Korea and Taiwan have fallen behind.
To remain competitive in today's environment, manufacturing companies are looking at boosting their supply chain performance. One of the key levers for improving supply chain is 'cost reduction' at various stages of the entire chain.
Continue reading "Using Operational Levers To Boost Supply Chain Performance" »
With the economic meltdown of the financial world and a severe downturn and meltdown in the Automobile and Retail sectors we are possibly headed for tough times ahead.
With the global economy being so intertwined there is no sector or industry vertical that is immune to this crisis.
Continue reading "Business Intelligence and the Economic Gloom: A Perspective" »
Standardization helps businesses develop the ability to "consistently" deliver high quality products and services its customers. It drives manufacturing excellence by raising the efficiencies of operations by reducing process variability, adopting optimal procedures to complete work and then adapting those procedures as effective practice within the organization.
While most organizations understand the importance of process standardizations, there could be confusion with respect to the approach that should be followed. Businesses looking at standardizing its operations can look at the following approaches -
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" »
Are you having to deal with low percentage of on-time completions, high throughput times, frequent line down situations or high WIP? Obviously something is very wrong, particularly if you said "Yes" to more than one of the above. Having consulted for several discrete manufacturing clients has made one thing very apparent to me - a lean and agile manufacturing environment is not an option but an imperative for manufacturing industries to achieve operational excellence. All of the above were contra-indicators of operational excellence. A manufacturing execution system (MES) can support a manufacturing firm in achieving this very objective. An MES system works in tandem with a mainstream ERP system to execute, monitor and manage the production processes on a shop floor. Together with an ERP system, an MES system can nudge (or push, if required!) an enterprise into adopting standardized processes and at the same time creating key data elements for performance measurements.
Consider the ways in which an MES system can assist you:
‘What is the project budget?’, ‘Who approved this capital investment?’, ‘who is monitoring the budget overruns?’, ‘who is tracking the project performance in terms of cost, quality, time and effort?’ and finally ‘Where are we in terms of planned Vs Actuals?’ – These are common questions one will come across, if they have spent some time in utility industries. Utility industry is one of the very few industries that manage their operations as projects. Everything they do is managed in their systems as an outcome of a project or a group of projects. Given this challenge, what does one need to manage these projects? Will there be the organization’s ace project manager available to manage all your projects efficiently? – Probably not. !
Continue reading "Managing large projects - Do you need a piece of paper or an integrated system?" »
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" »
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" »
Last week I was at Oracle partner briefing on technology stack. It was quite interesting and informative. The discussion was around BEA acquisition and integrating the existing Fusion product with BEA.
ERP Implementations are generally time consuming and expensive - more so if the implementation involves multiple geographies with different languages, different business processes, legal requirements and accounting norms. Companies typically go for ERP implementations with the aim of integrating disparate systems spread across different business functions so that the top management can get an integrated view of the operations of the organization. Optimal usage of an ERP system also leads to reduction in operational costs and supports strategic planning.
Continue reading "Key Factors for Success of ERP Implementations" »
With the current slowdown being accelerated by the financial turmoil, companies are increasingly looking at avenues to cut costs yet maintain profitability against all odds. This is a tricky situation given the fact that any decision leads to a bullwhip effect owing to the integrated nature of today’s supply chain. One of the time tested techniques to achieve this is through Reverse Auctions which is quite prevalent in the High Tech industry.
Continue reading "High Tech Industry’s Sourcing Value Proposition: Reverse Auction" »
ERP implementations are a special breed of projects. They are often characterized by aggressive timelines, high budgets and involvement of diverse teams. This emphasizes the need to have a reliable tool to measure the performance of ERP implementations throughout the execution phases.
Continue reading "Earned Value Management for ERP Implementations" »
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?"
There is often a dilemma in the customer’s mind,whether to go for Localization or do a Customization. Here are some of the pros and cons of these two options:
Localization comes pre-built with the product and does not need to be developed. While it can be assumed to have already been tested, effort needs to be estimated for the further rounds of testing.
This is beacuse,Localizations are add-on features which might not have been time-tested to the extent the base application features are.Also,Regional requirements change, all the implications of which might not have been addressed in the Localization in a timely manner. There can always be a lead time between a new requirement and its solution through Localization.
Continue reading "Localization vis-a-vis Customization: Which way to go?" »
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" »
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.
Continue reading "Age of packaged BI and analytics – Should you embark on this journey? Part 2" »
Greetings from OOW - SF, USA
With so much going on - its hard to find time to stop and type:
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
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
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
Continue reading "Large scale HRIT Portfolio Transformation" »
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.
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.
"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
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
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.
Continue reading "Managing Indirect Spend? Slash costs and Save upto 20% of indirect cost" »
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.
1. Ability to Model Demand:
Ability of a forecasting system to generate forecast at the most granular level across Time, Geography, Product and Customer dimensions, with the highest accuracy. This will also decide how effectively the system has been able to model the business requirements.
2. Statistical Rigour:
Forecasting systems need to have exhaustive library of statistical models - starting from simplest to most complex. This can help in choosing the best forecasting model which truly represents demand, yet manages model complexity. For example, there are cases where a simple “Moving Average" model may be adequate, whereas there might be cases that demand more sophisticated models (such as “ARIMA"). Moreover, there might be occasions where a combined model is chosen with a weighted average of different models. As a result, the system should not only provide the means through which different models may be easily applied but also facilitate the collaboration between these models for a true representation of demand.
3. Accuracy and Forecast Generation Time:
The preliminary requirement of any forecasting system to generate accurate forecast may not be enough. For example, an organization requiring daily forecasts for the planning purpose may not be able to use the forecasting system if it takes 10 hours to generate forecasts, regardless of its accuracy. Timely availability of forecast is as important as the accuracy it provides.
4. Interpretability:
Statistical error measures (e.g. MAPE, MSE) are popular yet widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. Quite often, end-users are not equipped to interpret the forecasting accuracy through such error measures. Forecasting system should enable business users with dashboard capabilities that communicate such measures in visually interpretable mediums.
5. Accommodate external issues:
Selecting the best forecasting model may not be enough. In majority of the cases, accuracy could benefit from the consideration of external components. These components could entail information such as the dates of forthcoming national holidays and the occurrence of exceptional events such as marketing campaigns. Hence an automated system should be able to understand such components and should be able to seamlessly combine them with basic forecasting techniques.
6. Automatic self-tuning:
An automated collaboration of the various components generates an additional consideration. When various models are combined, collaborative operation and self tuning becomes a major issue. The challenge arises from the relationships among the models. Although manual operation is a solution, it is associated with two major problems. Firstly, efficiency is reduced due to the required time and secondly, selection of models may be compromised in order to choose simpler alternatives. Hence an automated process for self-tuning would increase the flexibility and efficiency of the system.
Excerpt from the working paper – Shah M., Owusu G., Shoban B., Balkundi N., “Improving Forecasting Accuracy of Traditional Demand Planning System” (2008)
In today’s extremely competitive world any business needs a robust yet adaptable IT infrastructure. The growing information needs make it imperative to replace the old systems with new Enterprise Applications. And even Enterprise applications need to upgrade from time to time. Your organization ends up spending a large amount of IT budgets in managing integrations with each new release and upgrade. You must protect the investments in existing applications and leverage the returns from existing systems. Only then your organization can improve the responsiveness of its changing business needs.
Continue reading "Six questions to analyze if your company is ready for SOA" »
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.
Continue reading "How to make more money with customer information" »
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
&