By .S.Suren
There has been enough debate and discussion on many blogs on how the downturn is likely to affect the ERP Industry and so on. However what can we expect in this industry once the global economy begins to look up again, everything needs to change sometime and so will this.
It was a given that there are certain industry solution of leading ERPs that will continue to be in high demand for the next few years at least, however that was before the global turmoil that caused the recession of the century, so now where do these industry solutions stand. As the “Only thing that is certain in this world is change itself” – as Mgt Guru Tom Peters says, we can expect that these industry would pick up again for the lost time, however there will be many changes that will be forced upon these industry when it comes out of its bad patch, and ERP Vendors should by then have realized the best way to cope with this change in terms of, the implementation methodology of projects after this period of lullness, ERP Selection patterns of potential customers, etc. Trying to follow the same approach of an ERP Implementation would not be bringing in any change, it’s probably too early for anyone to forecast what this change should be, but by keeping options open you could just be a step above the rest.
By now you are probably wondering what these industries we are talking about could be? Let me give you a heads up. Related industries to areas such as Transportation, Energy, Consumer Durables and Banking and Financial Services are likely to be those that will be the main hunting grounds for IT Service Providers.
It is important that with all that is happening around the ERP Industry, we shouldn’t get carried away and lose track of optimizing software architecture and service methods such as SOA and SaaS. Since these would definitely form the platform on which future solutions will be designed on.
Given all of the above, some of the other important areas that need to addressed when the economy picks up again would be such things as middle ware and tools deployable within the industry concentration, support for openness and standards with integrated systems, industry applications strategy would be very vital and last but not the least the mid market strategy, on how best to approach this segment, it’s not necessarily going to be the big firms that are going to be looking for new system but rather the middle market ones, that was how the trend was before the global economic meltdown and that’s how it will be again on the other side as well.
Hope you found this post informative and interesting. I shall update more on this topic and focus on how individual consultants new to the ERP Consulting field should prepare themselves for the time to come.
Have a nice day!!
Any suggestions, comments and questions can be sent to ssurenlk@msn.com.
Dec 24, 2008
Oct 19, 2008
Getting ready for an Enterprise Resource Planning System?
By S.Suren
This is my second posts on this subject. My first post on this subject highlighted some important dos and don’ts when going for an ERP System; in this posts I will be highlighting a few more. Most of what I write on this blog comes from my ERP Implementation experiences with many different companies, if you have anything to add, do contribute.
Think beyond the limits -
Being a Financial Consultant, generally when I come across requirement gatherings, the clients often discuss about generating Financial Statements and the various inputs that need to go into it, but any system can generate financial statements. I would feel more time should be spent on analyzing cost specific activities in the last years, check out their trends and devise measures to reduce those, look for reports to highlight profitability based on product, customers, sales persons etc. Check out these trends and compare with competitors figures (guesstimates) and thereby assist with decision making at the higher management level. You may want to use financial ratios to measure your company’s performance against your competitors.
Identify your business life blood and those that are not –
It is a common practice by the business team to bring in all the processes in the business when preparing the RFP. In this process what generally happens is there is a lot of discussion within the business team and brain storming would be done on as many of the processes possible. However in this stage there is tendency for the business team to concentrate in their core area and discuss about specific issues that does not have a direct impact on the overall business process. However as with ERPs, all modules are integrated and the best results are achieved only when the integration is smooth. Therefore, it is very important to keep in mind the entire business process and the critical issues that need to be eliminated, when preparing an RFP.
Integration is Important -
Integration is key and it very important that you always consider the integration facilities your ERP is to have with the other systems operating in your business, this could help in you have a tight control of various process that span across different systems. Its best to link all functions internally and linking to customers, suppliers, and other business partners externally can dramatically reduce lead times and waste throughout the supply chain.
You can streamline operations and gain a competitive edge by integrating supply chain, customer relationship management and human resource management applications. When evaluating ERP systems, always check to see how seamlessly they integrate with other system as I mentioned earlier. Remember tight integration will save you time, enhance better controls, promote greater efficiencies, and add value to your business.
More to follow soon; hope you found this post informative and interesting. Feel free to contact me on ssurenlk@msn.com.
Have a nice day!!
This is my second posts on this subject. My first post on this subject highlighted some important dos and don’ts when going for an ERP System; in this posts I will be highlighting a few more. Most of what I write on this blog comes from my ERP Implementation experiences with many different companies, if you have anything to add, do contribute.
Think beyond the limits -
Being a Financial Consultant, generally when I come across requirement gatherings, the clients often discuss about generating Financial Statements and the various inputs that need to go into it, but any system can generate financial statements. I would feel more time should be spent on analyzing cost specific activities in the last years, check out their trends and devise measures to reduce those, look for reports to highlight profitability based on product, customers, sales persons etc. Check out these trends and compare with competitors figures (guesstimates) and thereby assist with decision making at the higher management level. You may want to use financial ratios to measure your company’s performance against your competitors.
Identify your business life blood and those that are not –
It is a common practice by the business team to bring in all the processes in the business when preparing the RFP. In this process what generally happens is there is a lot of discussion within the business team and brain storming would be done on as many of the processes possible. However in this stage there is tendency for the business team to concentrate in their core area and discuss about specific issues that does not have a direct impact on the overall business process. However as with ERPs, all modules are integrated and the best results are achieved only when the integration is smooth. Therefore, it is very important to keep in mind the entire business process and the critical issues that need to be eliminated, when preparing an RFP.
Integration is Important -
Integration is key and it very important that you always consider the integration facilities your ERP is to have with the other systems operating in your business, this could help in you have a tight control of various process that span across different systems. Its best to link all functions internally and linking to customers, suppliers, and other business partners externally can dramatically reduce lead times and waste throughout the supply chain.
You can streamline operations and gain a competitive edge by integrating supply chain, customer relationship management and human resource management applications. When evaluating ERP systems, always check to see how seamlessly they integrate with other system as I mentioned earlier. Remember tight integration will save you time, enhance better controls, promote greater efficiencies, and add value to your business.
More to follow soon; hope you found this post informative and interesting. Feel free to contact me on ssurenlk@msn.com.
Have a nice day!!
Sep 29, 2008
AXON takes central stage !!
By S.Suren,
AXON, a London headquartered SAP Consulting company is being sought after by 2 large Indian IT Firms as a possible take over candidate. HCL and Infosys are the 2 companies biding for AXON, and it has been suggested that this take-over could very well build up into a bidding war. As of the now the initial bid proposed by Infosys is for 600 pence p.s saw a counter offer from HCL for 650 pence p.s. Together with these 2 large firms, it estimated that other European and Japanese firms are also having second thoughts of getting into the bidding game, no details have been exposed as yet.
In one my previous article I had mentioned how the subcontinent was being termed the big boy's backyard and how major ERP Vendors experiencing the talent crunch at present is looking to this region to satisfy their needs. Of whats happening right now with the take-over bid and the increasing amount of SAP Partner companies emerging in the subcontinent it very well goes on to prove that this could be the hot bed for other ERP Companies to follow suit very soon.
I hope you found this post informative and interesting. I shall update more on the whats happening on the above as and when things materialise.
Have a nice day !!
ssurenlk@msn.com
Sep 16, 2008
Seeing through the cracks in the Wall !!
By S.Suren
I thought I’ll post this article to keep you aware on whats happening with the global economy. Generally, though we are mostly preoccupied with whats happening in the ERP Arena, it’s also important that we know whats going on around us, since something of this nature could definitely have an impact into many other supporting industries.
The global economy has been experiencing a recession throughout 2008; right from the beginning we have seen major companies feel the pinch. In the last 6 months itself we have seen 3 of the top investment companies in the world disappearing. In March, Bear Sterns’s collapse shocked the markets, and now with what happened on “Bloody Sunday” – September 15th, we see that ML is being bought over by Bank of America for $50 B, Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy after 158 years of operations and AIG’s making preparation for its announcement after it experienced a 61% fall in shares, it sure does signal that the coming signs don’t look too good.
Generally there has been a notion that companies tend to implement new systems when there is a slowdown, if this is indeed the case, it probably because they have can spend more time and prepare themselves better during this lull period. Perhaps this does hold true, given the fact that some ERP Vendors are experiencing higher demand and increasing pay rates for their consultants, and this in turn is leading to better oppurtunities throughout the industry. All this will definitely get more interesting as time goes by, and perhaps this recession could be just short lived, however it’s believed that the last time something like this happened, the expert investor suggested that it was just a temporary phase, and they were wrong.
It’s important that we as ERP Consultant keep a close eye on these events since it could very well have an impact on everything we do as well, I shall keep posting more as and when things materialize.
Read more about the Economic Crisis on “Economic crisis of 2008”.
Hope you found this post informative and interesting.
All the very best…!!!
I thought I’ll post this article to keep you aware on whats happening with the global economy. Generally, though we are mostly preoccupied with whats happening in the ERP Arena, it’s also important that we know whats going on around us, since something of this nature could definitely have an impact into many other supporting industries.
The global economy has been experiencing a recession throughout 2008; right from the beginning we have seen major companies feel the pinch. In the last 6 months itself we have seen 3 of the top investment companies in the world disappearing. In March, Bear Sterns’s collapse shocked the markets, and now with what happened on “Bloody Sunday” – September 15th, we see that ML is being bought over by Bank of America for $50 B, Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy after 158 years of operations and AIG’s making preparation for its announcement after it experienced a 61% fall in shares, it sure does signal that the coming signs don’t look too good.
Generally there has been a notion that companies tend to implement new systems when there is a slowdown, if this is indeed the case, it probably because they have can spend more time and prepare themselves better during this lull period. Perhaps this does hold true, given the fact that some ERP Vendors are experiencing higher demand and increasing pay rates for their consultants, and this in turn is leading to better oppurtunities throughout the industry. All this will definitely get more interesting as time goes by, and perhaps this recession could be just short lived, however it’s believed that the last time something like this happened, the expert investor suggested that it was just a temporary phase, and they were wrong.
It’s important that we as ERP Consultant keep a close eye on these events since it could very well have an impact on everything we do as well, I shall keep posting more as and when things materialize.
Read more about the Economic Crisis on “Economic crisis of 2008”.
Hope you found this post informative and interesting.
All the very best…!!!
Sep 14, 2008
Reverse Engineering Consulting
By S.Suren:
The term reverse engineering is normally something you would come across in the mechanical or industrial engineering field, where object are dismantled into pieces and then put together again in a manner that increases their operational efficiently etc. Well when it comes to consulting, we as consultant’s first need to understand the customers end requirements, emphasizing on the word “end”.
It’s normally the case that over anxiety and enthusiasm leads to the consultant jumping into conclusions and proposing solutions even before the exact end requirements of the clients have been identified. Its not actually the consultants fault, it’s just that he/she wants to make an impression and give the best to the clients, that they are looking to make things happen before actually identifying the base of the client’s needs.
This reminds of the hysterical email with the different sequence of pictures showing that the customer’s requirement was for a simple tire swing hanging from a tree, when the consultant proposed a solution that was a half constructed roller coaster.
Anyway coming back to reverse engineering consulting, it’s the method in which as a consultant you would look at the final outcome the client needs and then begin to work backwards to define and design the necessary processes and practices to be set up and practiced in the business operations.
Looking at it from an ERP Consultants point of view, I would first recommend that you collect the final reports that would be generated from a particular process and then begin working backwards using this report as a base in identifying all the processes throughout the operations involved. This method works very well with MIS reports set as the base. Also remember not to get carried away in designing processes and methods which would again be generating the exact same report information, but try to give them something new, make the leading processes more efficient, take into account exemptions to the process followed etc.
Generally the thinking is that being an ERP Consultant, it’s assumed that what we can deliver rests in what the system has to provide, but if you have the domain experience feel free to express your thoughts on possible best practices to the irreplaceable manual activities that are performed around a system, after all no system is good enough to completely automate all operations of a business, though some managers expect them to, if this were the case, there wouldn’t be those innovative companies that have changed the way we do things. Most importantly remember no system can ever replace the desire and potential of an enthusiastic person.
There are more areas in the consulting field where we could practice this technique of reverse engineering style consulting, which of course is easier said than done, but it’s up to you!! I shall post more of these in the future.
Hope you found this article informative and interesting. Feel free to send in your comments and suggestions to ssurenlk@msn.com.
Have a nice day!!!
The term reverse engineering is normally something you would come across in the mechanical or industrial engineering field, where object are dismantled into pieces and then put together again in a manner that increases their operational efficiently etc. Well when it comes to consulting, we as consultant’s first need to understand the customers end requirements, emphasizing on the word “end”.
It’s normally the case that over anxiety and enthusiasm leads to the consultant jumping into conclusions and proposing solutions even before the exact end requirements of the clients have been identified. Its not actually the consultants fault, it’s just that he/she wants to make an impression and give the best to the clients, that they are looking to make things happen before actually identifying the base of the client’s needs.
This reminds of the hysterical email with the different sequence of pictures showing that the customer’s requirement was for a simple tire swing hanging from a tree, when the consultant proposed a solution that was a half constructed roller coaster.
Anyway coming back to reverse engineering consulting, it’s the method in which as a consultant you would look at the final outcome the client needs and then begin to work backwards to define and design the necessary processes and practices to be set up and practiced in the business operations.
Looking at it from an ERP Consultants point of view, I would first recommend that you collect the final reports that would be generated from a particular process and then begin working backwards using this report as a base in identifying all the processes throughout the operations involved. This method works very well with MIS reports set as the base. Also remember not to get carried away in designing processes and methods which would again be generating the exact same report information, but try to give them something new, make the leading processes more efficient, take into account exemptions to the process followed etc.
Generally the thinking is that being an ERP Consultant, it’s assumed that what we can deliver rests in what the system has to provide, but if you have the domain experience feel free to express your thoughts on possible best practices to the irreplaceable manual activities that are performed around a system, after all no system is good enough to completely automate all operations of a business, though some managers expect them to, if this were the case, there wouldn’t be those innovative companies that have changed the way we do things. Most importantly remember no system can ever replace the desire and potential of an enthusiastic person.
There are more areas in the consulting field where we could practice this technique of reverse engineering style consulting, which of course is easier said than done, but it’s up to you!! I shall post more of these in the future.
Hope you found this article informative and interesting. Feel free to send in your comments and suggestions to ssurenlk@msn.com.
Have a nice day!!!
Sep 6, 2008
SAP’s Business Intelligence solution offerings:
By S.Suren
In my previous article I had mentioned the takeover syndrome that was present in the ERP Arena, and how some companies poached up some other relative mature companies providing Business Intelligence Solutions. Read "The Take-Over Syndrome".
In this article I thought I’ll details out how SAP’s Business Intelligence Solutions offering have changed after the takeover of Business Objects this year January for $6.8 B. It a known fact that prior to the takeover of BO by SAP, BO had itself taken over one of the most commonly used report designing tool, known as Crystal Report. Now with Crystal Report in SAP’s arsenal, it was announced that this is going to be SAP’s main enterprise-grade reporting tool.
On its BI Platform, SAP has revealed that Business Objects XI is going to be SAP’s main BI Platform. One of the main reason for doing this is, BO’s XI being able to access non-sap data sources unlike SAP Net weaver BI.
SAP is also diving deep into Predictive Analysis with Business Objects. Business Objects™ Predictive Workbench is the new tool offering data mining and predictive analytics integrated with Business Objects XI 3.0, the industry’s first unified business intelligence (BI) platform. Given the current economic climate experienced in the world market this solution is going to be up there for the grabs.
Another product that is expected in 2009 is a solution combining the functionalities of the BEx Analyzer and Business Objects Voyager.
Some of the products and solution offerings that SAP is likely to phase out during the coming years are, SEM-BCS, BEx Report Designer, BEx Web Analyzer and BEx Excel Analyzer. These offering will be replaced by one or more of the above mentioned products and solutions.
With close to $7 B going into the acquisition of Business Objects and the large amounts of R&D already spent on SAP’s BIW solutions, it is only likely that the new products and solution offerings are going to come attached with a fancy price tag, only time will tell, and when it does I shall keep this site updated with the details.
Hope you found this article informative. Your suggestions and feedbacks are welcome on ssurenlk@msn.com.
Have a nice day!!
In my previous article I had mentioned the takeover syndrome that was present in the ERP Arena, and how some companies poached up some other relative mature companies providing Business Intelligence Solutions. Read "The Take-Over Syndrome".
In this article I thought I’ll details out how SAP’s Business Intelligence Solutions offering have changed after the takeover of Business Objects this year January for $6.8 B. It a known fact that prior to the takeover of BO by SAP, BO had itself taken over one of the most commonly used report designing tool, known as Crystal Report. Now with Crystal Report in SAP’s arsenal, it was announced that this is going to be SAP’s main enterprise-grade reporting tool.
On its BI Platform, SAP has revealed that Business Objects XI is going to be SAP’s main BI Platform. One of the main reason for doing this is, BO’s XI being able to access non-sap data sources unlike SAP Net weaver BI.
SAP is also diving deep into Predictive Analysis with Business Objects. Business Objects™ Predictive Workbench is the new tool offering data mining and predictive analytics integrated with Business Objects XI 3.0, the industry’s first unified business intelligence (BI) platform. Given the current economic climate experienced in the world market this solution is going to be up there for the grabs.
Another product that is expected in 2009 is a solution combining the functionalities of the BEx Analyzer and Business Objects Voyager.
Some of the products and solution offerings that SAP is likely to phase out during the coming years are, SEM-BCS, BEx Report Designer, BEx Web Analyzer and BEx Excel Analyzer. These offering will be replaced by one or more of the above mentioned products and solutions.
With close to $7 B going into the acquisition of Business Objects and the large amounts of R&D already spent on SAP’s BIW solutions, it is only likely that the new products and solution offerings are going to come attached with a fancy price tag, only time will tell, and when it does I shall keep this site updated with the details.
Hope you found this article informative. Your suggestions and feedbacks are welcome on ssurenlk@msn.com.
Have a nice day!!
Jul 24, 2008
Curtains comedown on TommorowNow !!
By S.Suren
Its finally happened, the much anticipated outcome of the acquisition of TomorrowNow by SAP is finally here. SAP has opted to close down their much troubled subsidiary TomorrowNow, this would come as a major suprise, as this was bound to happen, given ORACLEs continuous lawsuits and the higher management of TomorrowNow moving out one after another.
Its estimated that the 225 customers of TomorrowNow will now be asked to move back to ORACLE for support and future needs. How smooth this transition is going to be, is to be seen.
However, with regard to the lawsuit files by ORACLE, the final hearing is still pending and expected during the mid of next year. I shall keep you updated on the latest on that, with the expected settlement at a $1B, it going to be hard to miss.
With the global recession having its say on Fortune 500 companies too, its understandable that supporting industry are feeling the pinch too and IT is most often considered a supporting industry.
Hope you found this post informative.
Have a nice day !!
ssurenlk@msn.com
Its finally happened, the much anticipated outcome of the acquisition of TomorrowNow by SAP is finally here. SAP has opted to close down their much troubled subsidiary TomorrowNow, this would come as a major suprise, as this was bound to happen, given ORACLEs continuous lawsuits and the higher management of TomorrowNow moving out one after another.
Its estimated that the 225 customers of TomorrowNow will now be asked to move back to ORACLE for support and future needs. How smooth this transition is going to be, is to be seen.
However, with regard to the lawsuit files by ORACLE, the final hearing is still pending and expected during the mid of next year. I shall keep you updated on the latest on that, with the expected settlement at a $1B, it going to be hard to miss.
With the global recession having its say on Fortune 500 companies too, its understandable that supporting industry are feeling the pinch too and IT is most often considered a supporting industry.
Hope you found this post informative.
Have a nice day !!
ssurenlk@msn.com
Jul 13, 2008
Challenges in the Apparel Industry and SAP’s Solutions for them – Article 3:
By S.Suren
Continuing from my previous posts, I shall in this article give you more insight into the challenges faced by companies in the Apparel & Footwear Industry and how SAP AFS Industry Solution caters to them.
• Poor on time delivery
This is a common problem in the AFS Manufacturing Environment, especially for those companies that have overseas operations and have a lengthy supply chain. Delivery dates of the final product is a crucial deadline given the ever so quickly changing fashion trends, and not to the mention the cost of alternative means of transport selected at the last minute to stick to delivering the product on time.
Given this condition SAP AFS has some useful functionality that caters to these needs:
Allocation Run – also known famously as ARUN, this allocation procedure helps determines the best usage of the existing stocks to meet the requirements of those sales orders that would deliver the best return in terms of customer satisfaction. This function is quite unique to the AFS Environment, as it provides many different built in rules and definable rules that are very much in line with the process built in and around the Sales & Distribution functions of the AFS Industry.
Order scheduling Strategy is an additional process in AFS SD processing that helps to optimize the delivery dates for each item. You can define rules to take account of special customer requests or general business requirements. This process also serves in allocating inventory to key customers in liaison with the Allocation Run procedure described above.
For more information visit: LINK
I shall keep posting more on this area in the future. Hope you found this post informative.
ssurenlk@msn.com
Have a nice day!!
Continuing from my previous posts, I shall in this article give you more insight into the challenges faced by companies in the Apparel & Footwear Industry and how SAP AFS Industry Solution caters to them.
• Poor on time delivery
This is a common problem in the AFS Manufacturing Environment, especially for those companies that have overseas operations and have a lengthy supply chain. Delivery dates of the final product is a crucial deadline given the ever so quickly changing fashion trends, and not to the mention the cost of alternative means of transport selected at the last minute to stick to delivering the product on time.
Given this condition SAP AFS has some useful functionality that caters to these needs:
Allocation Run – also known famously as ARUN, this allocation procedure helps determines the best usage of the existing stocks to meet the requirements of those sales orders that would deliver the best return in terms of customer satisfaction. This function is quite unique to the AFS Environment, as it provides many different built in rules and definable rules that are very much in line with the process built in and around the Sales & Distribution functions of the AFS Industry.
Order scheduling Strategy is an additional process in AFS SD processing that helps to optimize the delivery dates for each item. You can define rules to take account of special customer requests or general business requirements. This process also serves in allocating inventory to key customers in liaison with the Allocation Run procedure described above.
For more information visit: LINK
I shall keep posting more on this area in the future. Hope you found this post informative.
ssurenlk@msn.com
Have a nice day!!
Jul 3, 2008
Been busy with the LAW !!!
By S.Suren
Well the recent weeks has been quite busy for the 2 top ERP Giants, when it comes to attending court sessions, meeting with lawyers and appointments with investment analysts.
SAP has been in the spotlight with the suit filed against it by i2. Its stated that SAP could end up paying $83.3 M to settle the i2 patent suit. i2 filed suit against SAP, claiming infringement of a number of its software patents related to supply chain optimization and modeling software techniques. However the good news here for investors in both companies is that, this suit is unlikely to have any significant impact on the market values of both companies.
It is also estimated that SAP could pay close to $1 Billion to settle the suit filed by Oracle. This has been a long standing law suit between the company and some expect that this case could drag on up to the mid of 2009 before a judgment can be made. Will keep you all updated when it does happen !!
SAP on the other hand has also been busy with expanding their portfolio, with the acquisition of Visiprise, a privately held provider of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) to discrete manufacturing. This acquisition is a strategic step for SAP, in moving forward in achieving its vision of the "Perfect Plant", which I had posted an article on, in the past. With SAP concentrating on small business more now and their investments in delivering products for this markets estimated to be close to $520 M, it is only likely that there are many more acquisition to expect in the future.
Oracle has been busy with acquisitions too, this shouldn't come as a surprise since we all know that Oracle find it very hard to resist take-over calls. Oracle, have supposedly recently agreed to acquire insurance policy software supplier AdminServer Inc and as well as Skywire Software's application software business.
I am still sticking to the prediction that this year is the year of the ERPs and we could very well have a clear cut leader in this industry and a new business process platform (perhaps initiated by SOA) at the end of this year. I shall keep you all posted on the latest developments.
Hope you found this post informative.
Have a nice day!!!
Feel free to send me your comments and queries to ssurenlk@msn.com.
Well the recent weeks has been quite busy for the 2 top ERP Giants, when it comes to attending court sessions, meeting with lawyers and appointments with investment analysts.
SAP has been in the spotlight with the suit filed against it by i2. Its stated that SAP could end up paying $83.3 M to settle the i2 patent suit. i2 filed suit against SAP, claiming infringement of a number of its software patents related to supply chain optimization and modeling software techniques. However the good news here for investors in both companies is that, this suit is unlikely to have any significant impact on the market values of both companies.
It is also estimated that SAP could pay close to $1 Billion to settle the suit filed by Oracle. This has been a long standing law suit between the company and some expect that this case could drag on up to the mid of 2009 before a judgment can be made. Will keep you all updated when it does happen !!
SAP on the other hand has also been busy with expanding their portfolio, with the acquisition of Visiprise, a privately held provider of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) to discrete manufacturing. This acquisition is a strategic step for SAP, in moving forward in achieving its vision of the "Perfect Plant", which I had posted an article on, in the past. With SAP concentrating on small business more now and their investments in delivering products for this markets estimated to be close to $520 M, it is only likely that there are many more acquisition to expect in the future.
Oracle has been busy with acquisitions too, this shouldn't come as a surprise since we all know that Oracle find it very hard to resist take-over calls. Oracle, have supposedly recently agreed to acquire insurance policy software supplier AdminServer Inc and as well as Skywire Software's application software business.
I am still sticking to the prediction that this year is the year of the ERPs and we could very well have a clear cut leader in this industry and a new business process platform (perhaps initiated by SOA) at the end of this year. I shall keep you all posted on the latest developments.
Hope you found this post informative.
Have a nice day!!!
Feel free to send me your comments and queries to ssurenlk@msn.com.
Jun 25, 2008
Getting ready for an Enterprise Resource Planning System?
By S.Suren
Going for an ERP System requires a clear cut picture as to what is expected out of the system when users have adjusted to it.
Many businesses generally consider that the system will begin to return on its investment from day one onwards but the unfortunately that’s not exactly how it works, click here or general facts on the Returns on Investment of an ERP Implementation.
In this post I thought I’ll list down as many issues and procedures that the business has to address when considering implementing an ERP system.
Don’t wait until the last minute : The moment you know that the reports you need from your present system or manual process is not available at the time they are needed you know there is something wrong. Money is probably draining out of your business, inferior data is building and worst of all you might be making absurd business decisions. Timely information is crucial, so make immediately provision and plans to start assessing a system.
Understand that good things come at a price: Many people decide to go for an accounting or ERP System and then look to minimize as much as possible on the expenses related to it. Now, I am not saying you should be spending freely on a system, its just that you need to understand and analyse how much is the opportunity costs of not having those additional functions done with your new accounting system.
The fact is that, in most implementations this impact is hardly considered because most often the excuse is that, it is either hard or not logical to quantify the benefits or savings, but I’ll say put it down in paper and just keep jotting all the pros and cons of what you do now, and you’ll be amazed at the list you would end up with.
Get your wish list out : Once you have got vendors knocking at your doorstep, make sure you have the right must have points listed in front of you. Generally the case is the higher management team of the clients would sit in at the vendors first initial sales demo and everyone would be looking at what the vendor has in relation to their specific area of work and will be evaluating the system based on how much it addresses the requirements of that area.
Its very rarely that you would have a senior management team have a meeting within themselves to identify and understand that core business requirements that they need to have and must be evaluating the potential vendors against. Most important make room for compromise, understand that the system will not cater to all 100 % of your business requirement, most likely maybe at least 90%, the remaining 10 % try to decide on how best to tackle them, but avoid trying to get the full 10 % customized, that’s the slippery path that could drag the 90% standard functionality backwards.
More to follow soon, hope you found this post informative and interesting. ssurenlk@msn.com.
Have a nice day!!
Going for an ERP System requires a clear cut picture as to what is expected out of the system when users have adjusted to it.
Many businesses generally consider that the system will begin to return on its investment from day one onwards but the unfortunately that’s not exactly how it works, click here or general facts on the Returns on Investment of an ERP Implementation.
In this post I thought I’ll list down as many issues and procedures that the business has to address when considering implementing an ERP system.
Don’t wait until the last minute : The moment you know that the reports you need from your present system or manual process is not available at the time they are needed you know there is something wrong. Money is probably draining out of your business, inferior data is building and worst of all you might be making absurd business decisions. Timely information is crucial, so make immediately provision and plans to start assessing a system.
Understand that good things come at a price: Many people decide to go for an accounting or ERP System and then look to minimize as much as possible on the expenses related to it. Now, I am not saying you should be spending freely on a system, its just that you need to understand and analyse how much is the opportunity costs of not having those additional functions done with your new accounting system.
The fact is that, in most implementations this impact is hardly considered because most often the excuse is that, it is either hard or not logical to quantify the benefits or savings, but I’ll say put it down in paper and just keep jotting all the pros and cons of what you do now, and you’ll be amazed at the list you would end up with.
Get your wish list out : Once you have got vendors knocking at your doorstep, make sure you have the right must have points listed in front of you. Generally the case is the higher management team of the clients would sit in at the vendors first initial sales demo and everyone would be looking at what the vendor has in relation to their specific area of work and will be evaluating the system based on how much it addresses the requirements of that area.
Its very rarely that you would have a senior management team have a meeting within themselves to identify and understand that core business requirements that they need to have and must be evaluating the potential vendors against. Most important make room for compromise, understand that the system will not cater to all 100 % of your business requirement, most likely maybe at least 90%, the remaining 10 % try to decide on how best to tackle them, but avoid trying to get the full 10 % customized, that’s the slippery path that could drag the 90% standard functionality backwards.
More to follow soon, hope you found this post informative and interesting. ssurenlk@msn.com.
Have a nice day!!
A Perfect Plant !!
What Is a Perfect Plant?
It’s an ideal meant to serve as a blueprint for your own manufacturing transformation, helping you prioritize when and where you should devote resources to produce steady, incremental improvements to your manufacturing processes.
In the perfect plant, you have visibility into all aspects of your manufacturing operations. You can optimize your use of manufacturing assets and drive increased production performance — all in concert with enterprise-wide plans and objectives.
In a perfect plant, personnel no longer waste effort constantly reacting to line failures, supply network disruptions, and operations emergencies.
Manufacturing employees can anticipate change and devise innovative solutions that improve production efficiency, optimally use assets, and reduce waste. Information and processes across your production network deliver
timely, context-sensitive, actionable intelligence. Production managers, supervisors, and operators can use this intelligence to plan and drive responsive execution that exceeds your delivery, quality, and cost objectives.
Becoming a perfect plant involves leveraging your investment in enterprise applications, exploiting your existing manufacturing infrastructure and data sources, and delivering simplified business processes to frontline operators.
How to Become a Perfect Plant: 5 Strategic Steps
With your key metrics in mind, the drive toward the perfect plant includes the following core actions:
· Coordinate the aggregation and analysis of global demand. To have the perfect order, you must clearly see demand across every market and tie it into production.
· Integrate data flowing from enterprise applications and planning and execution systems into a single, harmonized flow of information; it’s critical to coordinate across network partners, suppliers, and customers to deliver that perfect order. In addition, having the ability to combine and recombine systems to support new processes — without ripping and replacing the underlying functionality — is the technological underpinning of the perfect plant.
· Plan accurately. Your ability to do so improves immensely when your systems are completely integrated and you have clear demand signals arriving from your enterprise systems. These systems provide real-time updates to keep the plant informed about strategic changes, and automatically relay local events and disruptions to decision makers. This way, the entire company can react more responsively.
· Embed intelligence into your planning and execution systems. Successful planning and execution depends on your ability to parse, collect, and analyze data arriving from the shop floor and present it in context-appropriate forms for plant managers, the vice president of operations, and the CEO. Greater integration with planning systems means the shop floor can adapt quickly to changes caused by disruptions elsewhere in the business.
· Execute responsively by identifying what is important to your organization’s strategic advantage and deploying execution systems accordingly. This means connecting local systems accordingly. This means connecting local execution processes to business operations in the context of your operating environment. Sometimes it’s as simple as providing work instructions to operators; other times it includes capturing detailed information to support tracking and tracing components to their last identifiable source. Ensure that your execution system provides the flexibility you need to rapidly compose new applications and business processes unique to your environment to support any changes in manufacturing operating requirements.
Each industry and customer must prioritize these steps differently. A consumer goods manufacturer might focus on coordination and planning first, as assessing global demand and harnessing it to develop and launch new products is a top priority. A high tech manufacturer, on the other hand, is more worried about rapidly ramping up production of a hot new product, which requires tight integration between planning and execution systems.
Summary
The perfect plant is a new manufacturing paradigm. It’s an idealistic yet achievable vision that helps an organization align its manufacturing strategy with its corporate objectives, and one that helps IT make its technology decisions more strategic. The pursuit of the perfect plant empowers plant personnel, operations, and IT to collectively design, prioritize, and implement plant strategies. SAP is armed with solutions that are ready to help you make this manufacturing transformation.
Source: SAP Insider - Business Process Excellence
I hardly copy paste other articles on my blog, but when I come across something real good its hard not to share.....
S.Suren
ssurenlk@msn.com
It’s an ideal meant to serve as a blueprint for your own manufacturing transformation, helping you prioritize when and where you should devote resources to produce steady, incremental improvements to your manufacturing processes.
In the perfect plant, you have visibility into all aspects of your manufacturing operations. You can optimize your use of manufacturing assets and drive increased production performance — all in concert with enterprise-wide plans and objectives.
In a perfect plant, personnel no longer waste effort constantly reacting to line failures, supply network disruptions, and operations emergencies.
Manufacturing employees can anticipate change and devise innovative solutions that improve production efficiency, optimally use assets, and reduce waste. Information and processes across your production network deliver
timely, context-sensitive, actionable intelligence. Production managers, supervisors, and operators can use this intelligence to plan and drive responsive execution that exceeds your delivery, quality, and cost objectives.
Becoming a perfect plant involves leveraging your investment in enterprise applications, exploiting your existing manufacturing infrastructure and data sources, and delivering simplified business processes to frontline operators.
How to Become a Perfect Plant: 5 Strategic Steps
With your key metrics in mind, the drive toward the perfect plant includes the following core actions:
· Coordinate the aggregation and analysis of global demand. To have the perfect order, you must clearly see demand across every market and tie it into production.
· Integrate data flowing from enterprise applications and planning and execution systems into a single, harmonized flow of information; it’s critical to coordinate across network partners, suppliers, and customers to deliver that perfect order. In addition, having the ability to combine and recombine systems to support new processes — without ripping and replacing the underlying functionality — is the technological underpinning of the perfect plant.
· Plan accurately. Your ability to do so improves immensely when your systems are completely integrated and you have clear demand signals arriving from your enterprise systems. These systems provide real-time updates to keep the plant informed about strategic changes, and automatically relay local events and disruptions to decision makers. This way, the entire company can react more responsively.
· Embed intelligence into your planning and execution systems. Successful planning and execution depends on your ability to parse, collect, and analyze data arriving from the shop floor and present it in context-appropriate forms for plant managers, the vice president of operations, and the CEO. Greater integration with planning systems means the shop floor can adapt quickly to changes caused by disruptions elsewhere in the business.
· Execute responsively by identifying what is important to your organization’s strategic advantage and deploying execution systems accordingly. This means connecting local systems accordingly. This means connecting local execution processes to business operations in the context of your operating environment. Sometimes it’s as simple as providing work instructions to operators; other times it includes capturing detailed information to support tracking and tracing components to their last identifiable source. Ensure that your execution system provides the flexibility you need to rapidly compose new applications and business processes unique to your environment to support any changes in manufacturing operating requirements.
Each industry and customer must prioritize these steps differently. A consumer goods manufacturer might focus on coordination and planning first, as assessing global demand and harnessing it to develop and launch new products is a top priority. A high tech manufacturer, on the other hand, is more worried about rapidly ramping up production of a hot new product, which requires tight integration between planning and execution systems.
Summary
The perfect plant is a new manufacturing paradigm. It’s an idealistic yet achievable vision that helps an organization align its manufacturing strategy with its corporate objectives, and one that helps IT make its technology decisions more strategic. The pursuit of the perfect plant empowers plant personnel, operations, and IT to collectively design, prioritize, and implement plant strategies. SAP is armed with solutions that are ready to help you make this manufacturing transformation.
Source: SAP Insider - Business Process Excellence
I hardly copy paste other articles on my blog, but when I come across something real good its hard not to share.....
S.Suren
ssurenlk@msn.com
Jun 14, 2008
SAP Future Talents in Demand !!!
By S.Suren
As of now it is apparent that there is high demand in the market for SAP Consultants with the relevant domain experience that those that have been just concerned with standard SAP. Having that in mind, it’s also become evident about the increasing demand for SAP Consultants in certain industries, namely the Apparel, Health Sector, Oil and Gas Industry and Financial Institutions.
Latest research by companies such as Foote Partners have shown that there is certain specific SAP Module Knowledge that is in demand at present and that is likely to be there for a few more years to come.
Modules such as SAP MDM, SAP EDI an SAP Business Intelligence are the modules that seem to be in the spotlight as of now. I read elsewhere that SAP EDI is also beginning to grab the attention of those industry that deal with a lot of commercial papers, yes I know every company does have this requirement, but I am referring to those industries where global regulations related to commercial paper requirements need to be satisfied as per the countries operating in.
The saving that companies can make with an EDI system is truly amazing, commercial documents that ones costs hundreds of dollars with an EDI system could cost just about $2 to $3 and its much faster than the traditional method, remember the savings is on all of the additional activities that go into generating and administering of the commercial papers.
Its been forecasted that SAP could face a talent crunch in 3 years time in certain markets since there are not enough university graduates coming out and also the fact that there is a shortage of soft skills available too, which in the ERP Consulting Industry is a key factor in spelling out success.
Its also good to note that, given the above situation, SAP have already gained a good ground in joining hands with universities to develop relevant curriculums to help turn out graduates with the right skills. This programme is known as SAP UAP (University Alliance Programme), which was started off in the mid 1990s in Germany and now has over 500 universities worldwide as members.
There is whole lot more happening with the SAP Business Intelligence solutions after the Business Objects take-over by SAP, these I will discuss in my future posts.
With so much happening in the ERP industry its of vital importance that all consultants make sure that they make the right decisions and keep their ears up against the right doors to make sure that they hear the knocks coming through!!!
Hope you found this post informative and interesting. I will be glad to answer your queries on ssurenlk@msn.com, and perhaps some counseling too!!!
Wish you the very best and have a great day!!
As of now it is apparent that there is high demand in the market for SAP Consultants with the relevant domain experience that those that have been just concerned with standard SAP. Having that in mind, it’s also become evident about the increasing demand for SAP Consultants in certain industries, namely the Apparel, Health Sector, Oil and Gas Industry and Financial Institutions.
Latest research by companies such as Foote Partners have shown that there is certain specific SAP Module Knowledge that is in demand at present and that is likely to be there for a few more years to come.
Modules such as SAP MDM, SAP EDI an SAP Business Intelligence are the modules that seem to be in the spotlight as of now. I read elsewhere that SAP EDI is also beginning to grab the attention of those industry that deal with a lot of commercial papers, yes I know every company does have this requirement, but I am referring to those industries where global regulations related to commercial paper requirements need to be satisfied as per the countries operating in.
The saving that companies can make with an EDI system is truly amazing, commercial documents that ones costs hundreds of dollars with an EDI system could cost just about $2 to $3 and its much faster than the traditional method, remember the savings is on all of the additional activities that go into generating and administering of the commercial papers.
Its been forecasted that SAP could face a talent crunch in 3 years time in certain markets since there are not enough university graduates coming out and also the fact that there is a shortage of soft skills available too, which in the ERP Consulting Industry is a key factor in spelling out success.
Its also good to note that, given the above situation, SAP have already gained a good ground in joining hands with universities to develop relevant curriculums to help turn out graduates with the right skills. This programme is known as SAP UAP (University Alliance Programme), which was started off in the mid 1990s in Germany and now has over 500 universities worldwide as members.
There is whole lot more happening with the SAP Business Intelligence solutions after the Business Objects take-over by SAP, these I will discuss in my future posts.
With so much happening in the ERP industry its of vital importance that all consultants make sure that they make the right decisions and keep their ears up against the right doors to make sure that they hear the knocks coming through!!!
Hope you found this post informative and interesting. I will be glad to answer your queries on ssurenlk@msn.com, and perhaps some counseling too!!!
Wish you the very best and have a great day!!
Jun 11, 2008
Challenges in the Apparel Industry and SAP’s Solutions for them – Article 2
By S.Suren
As promised in my previous posts I have posted this article to give you more insight into the challenges faced by companies in the Apparel & Footwear Industry and how SAP AFS Industry Solution caters to them.
Excess/redundant inventory or Stock shortages/out of stock
This is quite a familiar occurring scenario in the AFS Industry. It is understood that given the variations in demand patterns in this industry it is likely that the related functions of apparel manufacturers such as procurement and production will have to cater to these variations as much as possible in the most efficient manner.
Given this condition SAP AFS has some useful functionality that caters to these needs:
Material Substitution – This is a function in SAP Sales & Distribution that allows substitution of one material for another within a sales order. The importance of this functionality is that by allowing for substitutions during times of more than expected customer demands, the company can avoid lost sales and helps increase and maintain/or customer satisfaction with on time deliveries.
Availability Check – This is standard function in SAP which helps to identify if there is are available stocks to satisfy the schedule line’s requirements based on the delivery date. If there is not enough stocks it would then check when there will be enough stocks available and will confirm a new delivery date based on the availability.
Over/Under delivery tolerance levels is a standard functionality that SAP provides to avoid having shortages or excess stocks in your inventory. With SAP AFS this can be monitored at SKU level.
ATP Check with the AFS Component – With this function you can view whenever the item is either not available or not completely available in the system. With SAP AFS you can view this information from the system on an AFS Overview Screen that shows the availability status at the SKU levels. With the AFS component multiple schedule lines can be checked during ATP runs at SKU Levels.
Reservation in MM – This standard function allows you to make reservations on certain materials so that it can be used at a later date for a special purpose. This way you can avoid the stock outs that could occur in the future when demand is higher than expected and there is not enough specific stocks to meet the demand. With SAP AFS this processing of reservations can be done at SKU Level.
I shall keep posting more on this area in the future. Hope you found this posts informative.
ssurenlk@msn.com
Have a nice day !!
As promised in my previous posts I have posted this article to give you more insight into the challenges faced by companies in the Apparel & Footwear Industry and how SAP AFS Industry Solution caters to them.
Excess/redundant inventory or Stock shortages/out of stock
This is quite a familiar occurring scenario in the AFS Industry. It is understood that given the variations in demand patterns in this industry it is likely that the related functions of apparel manufacturers such as procurement and production will have to cater to these variations as much as possible in the most efficient manner.
Given this condition SAP AFS has some useful functionality that caters to these needs:
Material Substitution – This is a function in SAP Sales & Distribution that allows substitution of one material for another within a sales order. The importance of this functionality is that by allowing for substitutions during times of more than expected customer demands, the company can avoid lost sales and helps increase and maintain/or customer satisfaction with on time deliveries.
Availability Check – This is standard function in SAP which helps to identify if there is are available stocks to satisfy the schedule line’s requirements based on the delivery date. If there is not enough stocks it would then check when there will be enough stocks available and will confirm a new delivery date based on the availability.
Over/Under delivery tolerance levels is a standard functionality that SAP provides to avoid having shortages or excess stocks in your inventory. With SAP AFS this can be monitored at SKU level.
ATP Check with the AFS Component – With this function you can view whenever the item is either not available or not completely available in the system. With SAP AFS you can view this information from the system on an AFS Overview Screen that shows the availability status at the SKU levels. With the AFS component multiple schedule lines can be checked during ATP runs at SKU Levels.
Reservation in MM – This standard function allows you to make reservations on certain materials so that it can be used at a later date for a special purpose. This way you can avoid the stock outs that could occur in the future when demand is higher than expected and there is not enough specific stocks to meet the demand. With SAP AFS this processing of reservations can be done at SKU Level.
I shall keep posting more on this area in the future. Hope you found this posts informative.
ssurenlk@msn.com
Have a nice day !!
Jun 5, 2008
SAP moving deeper into Asia-Pacific
By S.Suren
In my previous posts I had discussed about how the big boys in the ERP Industry are investing in more resources in India to make sure they make maximum use of the demand of the Asia-Pacific region which is the fastest growing markets for ERP Solutions.
It’s no surprise that companies such as SAP are beginning to invest more in India in the next 2 to 3 months, which would be in the range of USD 4 – 5 Million in new opportunities.
In my previous posts I had mentioned SAP’s Global vision to meet the 15000 SME customer target in the coming years, and this new investment by SAP seems to concentrate on expediting that process since these investments will be targeted at start-up companies in India, via SAP Ventures.
It was stated by a SAP Official that there was a global shortage of 60,000 SAP Consultants, of which 1/3 is in India. The new investments would definitely help in addressing this shortage in the coming years.
For more information on the IT Industry trends read the “2008 IT Skills and Certification Pay Index TM” report published by Foote Partners LLC which is a Vero Beach, Florida based management consultancy and independent market research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice about managing the IT professional workforce.
Visit: http://www.footepartners.com/htscpi_latest.htm
Hope you found this post informative.
Feel free to contact me on ssurenlk@msn.com
In my future posts I shall discuss about the talent crunch faced by ERP Solutions providers and the demographic changes that are having an impact on it, for instance an aging population and declining birth rates in much of the developed world are also beginning to cause a talent crunch in this part of the world.
Have a nice day!!
In my previous posts I had discussed about how the big boys in the ERP Industry are investing in more resources in India to make sure they make maximum use of the demand of the Asia-Pacific region which is the fastest growing markets for ERP Solutions.
It’s no surprise that companies such as SAP are beginning to invest more in India in the next 2 to 3 months, which would be in the range of USD 4 – 5 Million in new opportunities.
In my previous posts I had mentioned SAP’s Global vision to meet the 15000 SME customer target in the coming years, and this new investment by SAP seems to concentrate on expediting that process since these investments will be targeted at start-up companies in India, via SAP Ventures.
It was stated by a SAP Official that there was a global shortage of 60,000 SAP Consultants, of which 1/3 is in India. The new investments would definitely help in addressing this shortage in the coming years.
For more information on the IT Industry trends read the “2008 IT Skills and Certification Pay Index TM” report published by Foote Partners LLC which is a Vero Beach, Florida based management consultancy and independent market research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice about managing the IT professional workforce.
Visit: http://www.footepartners.com/htscpi_latest.htm
Hope you found this post informative.
Feel free to contact me on ssurenlk@msn.com
In my future posts I shall discuss about the talent crunch faced by ERP Solutions providers and the demographic changes that are having an impact on it, for instance an aging population and declining birth rates in much of the developed world are also beginning to cause a talent crunch in this part of the world.
Have a nice day!!
May 30, 2008
Challenges in the Apparel Industry and SAP’s Solutions for them – Article 1:
By S.Suren
Challenges in the Apparel Industry and SAP's Solutions for them:
Optimizing service levels
Service levels with any industry is about servicing customer at a higher level than competitors to make them come back to you, and its no different with the apparel industry. Given the complexities of operating in a fashion conscious industry, with new fashion lines staying in stores for a week before they go out of fashion, it is only understandable on how much pressure the end retailers would have to go through, to service their customers and in turn the amount the pressure they would be passing on to their vendors to support them in maintaining a high service level.
Let’s look at how SAP AFS has been designed to help with this aspect:
Order scheduling Strategy is an additional process in AFS SD processing that helps to optimize the delivery dates for each item. You can define rules to take account of special customer requests or general business requirements.
Distribution Rules – This way you can decide on how to fulfill the multi store orders of your important customers.
Value-Added Services – Using this function in SAP AFS you can add those services or products to the final product that is being delivered to the customer as per the customer’s requirement. By having a clear cut strategy with the value additions made to the product, it helps identifying each operation that go into delivering the value added service and charging a identifiable price for it.
Multi-Store Order – Using this function you can satisfy the requirements of you large corporate customers who have multiple stores with individual requirements for different stores.
Streamlining operations for efficiency
It is a known fact that the logistics operation involved with the apparel industry is one of the most complex and longest sequence of networked operations, given this it is extremely important that valuable time, money and effort is not used in sorting out issues resulting from operating with a such a complicated chain. Hence it is important that you have the right tools and practices built in the chain to make sure issues are highlighted and sorted out at the earliest.
Lean Warehouse Management - Use of reduced functionality of the warehouse management (WM) in simply structured warehouses without inventory management in storage bins.
Source Allocation – This tool is to optimize your procurement activities. As a supplier/recipient relation it supports the control and organization of your business-related and interenterprise procurement structures.
Vendor Capacity Planning – its just so common in this industry where you work with vendors who are located far away from your operating plants. In this case every transaction with them is extremely important in relation to the time and cost involved in procurements reaching its destination. This is where vendor capacity planning really helps this industry.
More on this post to follow soon. Hope you found this informative and interesting. Your comments and suggestions are welcome at ssurenlk@msn.com.
Have a nice day !!
Challenges in the Apparel Industry and SAP's Solutions for them:
Optimizing service levels
Service levels with any industry is about servicing customer at a higher level than competitors to make them come back to you, and its no different with the apparel industry. Given the complexities of operating in a fashion conscious industry, with new fashion lines staying in stores for a week before they go out of fashion, it is only understandable on how much pressure the end retailers would have to go through, to service their customers and in turn the amount the pressure they would be passing on to their vendors to support them in maintaining a high service level.
Let’s look at how SAP AFS has been designed to help with this aspect:
Order scheduling Strategy is an additional process in AFS SD processing that helps to optimize the delivery dates for each item. You can define rules to take account of special customer requests or general business requirements.
Distribution Rules – This way you can decide on how to fulfill the multi store orders of your important customers.
Value-Added Services – Using this function in SAP AFS you can add those services or products to the final product that is being delivered to the customer as per the customer’s requirement. By having a clear cut strategy with the value additions made to the product, it helps identifying each operation that go into delivering the value added service and charging a identifiable price for it.
Multi-Store Order – Using this function you can satisfy the requirements of you large corporate customers who have multiple stores with individual requirements for different stores.
Streamlining operations for efficiency
It is a known fact that the logistics operation involved with the apparel industry is one of the most complex and longest sequence of networked operations, given this it is extremely important that valuable time, money and effort is not used in sorting out issues resulting from operating with a such a complicated chain. Hence it is important that you have the right tools and practices built in the chain to make sure issues are highlighted and sorted out at the earliest.
Lean Warehouse Management - Use of reduced functionality of the warehouse management (WM) in simply structured warehouses without inventory management in storage bins.
Source Allocation – This tool is to optimize your procurement activities. As a supplier/recipient relation it supports the control and organization of your business-related and interenterprise procurement structures.
Vendor Capacity Planning – its just so common in this industry where you work with vendors who are located far away from your operating plants. In this case every transaction with them is extremely important in relation to the time and cost involved in procurements reaching its destination. This is where vendor capacity planning really helps this industry.
More on this post to follow soon. Hope you found this informative and interesting. Your comments and suggestions are welcome at ssurenlk@msn.com.
Have a nice day !!
May 13, 2008
On Demand not so much in Demand ??
By : S.Suren
There has been much speculation over the demand for On Demand softwares with large ERP vendors such as SAP entering the market. However it seems that now the fizz that was once there for this type of software service model is taking a step backwards.
Recent reports stated that SAP is beginning to cut short on its investements on Business ByDesign. Some say this is because they had a tough quarter and felt that they would be in a better position to curb their expenses on R&D in this section than on the SME solutions market, then again isnt SaaS meant for the SME market ??
Even ORACLE have got into the act and state that they are happy to let SAP take the lead role in this area and watch and learn from their mistakes, because ORACLE feels that SAP have a lot to do in just setting up the foundation for this service model style in an ERP Context in the SME Market.
What more, there were even speculations that perhaps ORACLE would take over a few small players in the industry to keep the barrels loaded when they enter the battle field. The way I see things, ORACLE could just be brewing another hot take over around the corner, perhaps even another ERP Vendor that fits the bill with a SOA Architectural style and maybe even moving towards to a SaaSy service model.
Time will tell I guess. Will keep this site updated on the latest happenings.
Feel free to contact me on ssurenlk@msn.com.
Have a nice day !!
There has been much speculation over the demand for On Demand softwares with large ERP vendors such as SAP entering the market. However it seems that now the fizz that was once there for this type of software service model is taking a step backwards.
Recent reports stated that SAP is beginning to cut short on its investements on Business ByDesign. Some say this is because they had a tough quarter and felt that they would be in a better position to curb their expenses on R&D in this section than on the SME solutions market, then again isnt SaaS meant for the SME market ??
Even ORACLE have got into the act and state that they are happy to let SAP take the lead role in this area and watch and learn from their mistakes, because ORACLE feels that SAP have a lot to do in just setting up the foundation for this service model style in an ERP Context in the SME Market.
What more, there were even speculations that perhaps ORACLE would take over a few small players in the industry to keep the barrels loaded when they enter the battle field. The way I see things, ORACLE could just be brewing another hot take over around the corner, perhaps even another ERP Vendor that fits the bill with a SOA Architectural style and maybe even moving towards to a SaaSy service model.
Time will tell I guess. Will keep this site updated on the latest happenings.
Feel free to contact me on ssurenlk@msn.com.
Have a nice day !!
Apr 26, 2008
SRM and SAP AFS
By: S.Suren
In my previous post I listed out a few important things about SCM and the basics that need to be followed to build a efficient Supply Chain Management model. In relation to that post I would like to discuss the importance of SRM (Supplier Relationship Management).
This is not a very widely spoken about subject simply because CRM has taken the spotlight away from this since the golden rule “customers are king” is more prominent in any industry and thats why the sources of supply have not been given that much of attention than the receiving party, the customer.
However, the impact of a good SRM model would definitely help in providing world class customer service. So then, let’s look at SRM in a little more detail in the context of the Apparel Industry.
SRM is more likely to play a vital role in the manufacturing companies and especially those that have very complicated products, and this is exactly what the AFS Industry is all about. Given the unique fashion needs of each and every individual it’s only apparent that this leads to complex BOM Structures that go into producing the garments that caters to these needs.
Given that fact, it’s likely that there are many suppliers that the manufacturing company will need to work with in the most efficient manner to make sure that they receive the right materials at the right quantity and quality to be able to produce quality garments and deliver them to the market at the right time.
In the AFS Industry even a simple BOM (Bill of Material) Structure for a garment would have many different components in it, for example, the button, the thread, the elastic, the embroidery material, the fabric, the embellishments etc etc.
So then how does that SAP Standard R/3 and AFS Solution caters to these needs, below is a listing of some of them:
• Sorting and Vendor ranking criteria – This option in SAP AFS proposed the best vendor to assign the purchase requisition to , based on the criterias specified in here.
• AFS Specific Criteria for Vendor Ranking -These include criterias such as Factory Status, Complexity Factor and Lowest ‘FOB’.
• Ability to use Fixed Criterias (AFS Enhancement available) – Using this option you can also rank and maintain the best vendor to buy from taking into account criterias such as , vendor capacity, quotas the vendor is subject to and political restrictions placed on vendors that are from a particular region.
• Complexity Factors – using this option you can judge the extent to which the vendor has the ability to be able to produce a material that requires complex production steps.
• Route Determination (AFS Enhancement available) – Even the move time, lead time and shipping types can be maintained.
• Subcontracting – With the inclusion of being able to set preference sub. Indicator for those vendors who use provision components in the material that is supplied to you.
So there you go, these are just some of the functions available. It can be argued that the information from transactions done with suppliers can be retrieved and reported in tools available in modules such as BI and FI. Perhaps in my future posts I shall discuss on those aspects.
Hope you found this post informative. Feel free to contact me on ssurenlk@msn.com if you have any queries.
For more information of features available on supplier management, click here.
Have a nice day!!
In my previous post I listed out a few important things about SCM and the basics that need to be followed to build a efficient Supply Chain Management model. In relation to that post I would like to discuss the importance of SRM (Supplier Relationship Management).
This is not a very widely spoken about subject simply because CRM has taken the spotlight away from this since the golden rule “customers are king” is more prominent in any industry and thats why the sources of supply have not been given that much of attention than the receiving party, the customer.
However, the impact of a good SRM model would definitely help in providing world class customer service. So then, let’s look at SRM in a little more detail in the context of the Apparel Industry.
SRM is more likely to play a vital role in the manufacturing companies and especially those that have very complicated products, and this is exactly what the AFS Industry is all about. Given the unique fashion needs of each and every individual it’s only apparent that this leads to complex BOM Structures that go into producing the garments that caters to these needs.
Given that fact, it’s likely that there are many suppliers that the manufacturing company will need to work with in the most efficient manner to make sure that they receive the right materials at the right quantity and quality to be able to produce quality garments and deliver them to the market at the right time.
In the AFS Industry even a simple BOM (Bill of Material) Structure for a garment would have many different components in it, for example, the button, the thread, the elastic, the embroidery material, the fabric, the embellishments etc etc.
So then how does that SAP Standard R/3 and AFS Solution caters to these needs, below is a listing of some of them:
• Sorting and Vendor ranking criteria – This option in SAP AFS proposed the best vendor to assign the purchase requisition to , based on the criterias specified in here.
• AFS Specific Criteria for Vendor Ranking -These include criterias such as Factory Status, Complexity Factor and Lowest ‘FOB’.
• Ability to use Fixed Criterias (AFS Enhancement available) – Using this option you can also rank and maintain the best vendor to buy from taking into account criterias such as , vendor capacity, quotas the vendor is subject to and political restrictions placed on vendors that are from a particular region.
• Complexity Factors – using this option you can judge the extent to which the vendor has the ability to be able to produce a material that requires complex production steps.
• Route Determination (AFS Enhancement available) – Even the move time, lead time and shipping types can be maintained.
• Subcontracting – With the inclusion of being able to set preference sub. Indicator for those vendors who use provision components in the material that is supplied to you.
So there you go, these are just some of the functions available. It can be argued that the information from transactions done with suppliers can be retrieved and reported in tools available in modules such as BI and FI. Perhaps in my future posts I shall discuss on those aspects.
Hope you found this post informative. Feel free to contact me on ssurenlk@msn.com if you have any queries.
For more information of features available on supplier management, click here.
Have a nice day!!
Apr 13, 2008
WOA is in town !!
By S.Suren
Just as you thought we had enough of new service delivery models and system architectural styles to help with development of Enterprise IT for the next 2 years at least, a new pops up from around the corner.
This time we are talking about WOA (Web Oriented Architecture). This is more closely aligned to what we now know as Web 2.0 and looking at it from a business systems development point of view, we could perhaps refer to it as Enterprise Web 2.0.
Given that models such as SaaS have fueled much competition and debate,(click here for a great debate between SAP Chairman and Salesforce.com CEO on the future of SaaS) Enterprise Web 2.0 could be the next best thing for top Enterprise Solution vendors to look at.
Though some would argue that WOA is actually a part of SOA, it is quite noticeable that WOA could make a path of its own when it comes to assisting with designing web services that are interoperable and user friendly for both the implementers as well as the final users.
What ever said and done, at the end of the day we would be rating the success of this architectural style based on where it stands between the 2 axis, richness of application and complexity of business processes and ease of use.
I shall keep this website updated with more info on this issue in the future.
Hope you found this post informative.
For more information on SOA click here to visit my previous post.
ssurenlk@msn.com
Just as you thought we had enough of new service delivery models and system architectural styles to help with development of Enterprise IT for the next 2 years at least, a new pops up from around the corner.
This time we are talking about WOA (Web Oriented Architecture). This is more closely aligned to what we now know as Web 2.0 and looking at it from a business systems development point of view, we could perhaps refer to it as Enterprise Web 2.0.
Given that models such as SaaS have fueled much competition and debate,(click here for a great debate between SAP Chairman and Salesforce.com CEO on the future of SaaS) Enterprise Web 2.0 could be the next best thing for top Enterprise Solution vendors to look at.
Though some would argue that WOA is actually a part of SOA, it is quite noticeable that WOA could make a path of its own when it comes to assisting with designing web services that are interoperable and user friendly for both the implementers as well as the final users.
What ever said and done, at the end of the day we would be rating the success of this architectural style based on where it stands between the 2 axis, richness of application and complexity of business processes and ease of use.
I shall keep this website updated with more info on this issue in the future.
Hope you found this post informative.
For more information on SOA click here to visit my previous post.
ssurenlk@msn.com
Apr 8, 2008
Truth be told...wonderful article !!
8 SECRETS TO A SUCCESSFUL SAP IMPLEMENTATION
Many wonder what constitutes a successful SAP Implementation. Everyone wants to have a great success story to talk about, from the top management to the implementation consultant. Success is a relative term.
You will hear: "Successfully went live on the planned date and on budget" - You should ask though whether the initial scope was implemented or did they have to take business processes out of scope in order to make it. - You should also ask how are things now that you went live? Can you ship to your customers without any problems? Is the system performing well? Are the end users fully trained and are they doing their job well? Do you still need consulting support to go through your day-to-day business?
Once you put these questions into perspective you can really define a successful SAP Implementation in many ways and many levels.
Success Factors
Here is a list of factors that determine the relative success of a project as mentioned above.
1. Communication:
For a successful SAP project implementation the number one factor is good communication among the project team members. Everybody claims that they are good communicators and we surely have the technology to maintain constant communication with land-phones and cell-phones and email, but it is true that they are not used to their maximum ability.
For example, when there is an issue, which needs to be communicated to multiple people, usually one will email to a number of people who should really be involved. It is extremely annoying and brakes the communication chain when somebody replies only to the sender of the email without including the rest of the members.
SAP is such integrated software that has constantly touch points among the modules. As such, constant integration among the teams is of paramount importance.
Not only constant communication is important, but GOOD communication is important. People must be very clear about what they are talking about. There is a little phrase: "Mary had a little lamb" - these five short words can create such confusion and result to numerous different meanings;
• Mary used to have a lamb but does not anymore
• Mary had a little lamb which now has grown into a big one
• Mary "had" (i.e. ate) a little lamb
I am sure you can make a lot of other meanings out of this small sentence
Now imagine, if this little sentence can cause such confusion, what mess would be created when dealing with complex business processes, spanning through several departments within an organization and involving anywhere from fifty to thousands of employees, end users, managers, consultants.
So the key is good, accurate, specific and timely communication. Clarify things several times. Explain them as if you were talking to little children.
In order to achieve this type of good communication team members should have their workplaces physically close together. I have seen in many recent cases where the Consulting firm in order to "minimize" costs for the client, they outsource much of the Development ABAP programming work outside the USA and in most cases to other continents.
Based on all the things mentioned above, how can good communication be achieved? It is not possible to simply create a program spec with a description in writing and expect a programmer located on the other side of the planet to figure out what the Business Process is, and what would make the program work according to the client's requirements.
Some consulting firms that do this practice will argue that "it is possible and they have success stories to tell". Well, remember at the beginning of this article what we talked about "Success".
We have witnessed this type of "success" when we went in to resolve the issues of such implementation method. We have witnessed the never-ending consulting hours that the client has to pay because of this implementation method. Often the client is made to sign a contract which says something like "…when the program is complete (but not really working as per the client's requirements - this is not stated anywhere) any change to it would be considered change of scope…". Such practice force the client to either abandon the effort of making the program work because of the extra scope-change cost or keep paying more, in order to try make the program work.
These tactics are unfair to the clients and give a bad name to the Consulting industry.
The client needs to take charge of these situations. Make the rules of good communication. Make the rules of the type of consultants you want to have. Provide the physical and technological infrastructure for the basis of good communication. Do not allow "consulting" companies to hide behind a "Big" corporate name.
Clients deserve the best for the huge amounts of money a SAP Implementation cost. Communicate well, take control of your project and do not be sold on "air-talk".
2. Full Corporate Management Support:
Nothing will happen, nothing will move, unless Management supports it. There must be full and utter commitment and support for the project. If Management does not show both in words and deeds that the SAP Implementation is important than the team members, end users and so on, will not be on-board, will not be dedicated. Without dedication the project is bound to fail.
The ways management provides support for the project is by actively participating in the planning and management of the project. Proactively getting involved not only in the high level plans and decision making, but also in the lower level and just as important activities of the day-to-day activities of the project. Get in touch with the project team members, know and be interested about their job and where they stand. This will motivate and keep people committed.
When management is involved then issues get resolved easier, conflict is overcome faster, because the management know the details of what is going on. How is this achieved? By keeping weekly status and communication meetings (remember communication?) These meetings are not to judge or interrogate anybody. They are done so that all members are informed as to what is happening keep the pulse of the project.
The management should help the project move forward, not hinder it with too many bureaucratic procedures. Keep meetings short and to the point. Maintain one status report, not 15 different reports. Have procedures but do not overdo it to the point where the project becomes inflexible and time consuming to make a decision or take a corrective action. Manage the project and provide people enough freedom to do their work. This will be appreciated.
3. The Project Plan and a Methodology are Guidelines - Not Rulers:
Make a good plan. Make a Realistic plan. Most projects do not have a realistic plan. People think everything can be done really fast. They do not allow enough time for the unforeseen parts of the projects. The vendors delaying to deliver the hardware, running out of disk space, actual training time takes a lot longer that thought, users need more training or they are overloaded with their every day job that cannot attend training and much more. The Master Data are corrupt and we need a new SAP Client. We can make a copy. We plan one day for the copy, but why is it always that a SAP client copy always fails the first time resulting taking two or three days?
Remember, if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Allow enough time in your plan for travel time, for public holidays, for vacation. There are so many project managers planning to go-live on January 1 - how foolish, inappropriate and disrespectful to the work and dedication of the people. As soon as Thanksgiving comes around things slow down dramatically and especially the last two weeks of the years are down to a crawl. Take these times of the year into account.
If you cannot go live as per the plan then do NOT go live. It is better, cheaper and safer to delay the go-live and being able to serve your customers. Better than going live just to make a big corporate announcement that we went live as planned but then everybody runs around like headless chickens trying to fix problems, help the users, correct errors, serve your customers.
Allow time for errors. Always have contingency plans. What if the go-live fails. Make sure you have a way to regress to the legacy system to be able to function properly as a business.
the most known SAP Implementation Methodology is ASAP or Accelerated SAP. Consultants should be Certified by SAP. Following this methodology can be very helpful and really accelerating your process. It can also be a inhibitor and delaying factor if it gets overused. ASAP contains a huge amount of tools, templates and instructions of how to implement SAP. Use common sense. There is no reason to try to use one hundred percent of the ASAP methodology. Use only the parts that help you. There are excellent templates for documentation, BPP documents, Training and testing documents, which would take a lot of time to create from scratch.
4. Make a proper Scope:
Which parts of SAP will you implement. Often team members get too excited and want to implement a hundred percent of the processes SAP offers. Not possible. SAP should be implemented according to the Business needs and processes. There was a team member once that wanted to use Classification in the Material Master at a time that it did not make sense for their business. There was another team member that wanted to implement Evaluated Receipt Settlement or ERS for Vendor Invoicing at a time when most invoices did not much the Purchase Orders. These members were warned that these processes were not appropriate. They did not listen. The process failed.
Be realistic. Because SAP can do almost everything it does not mean that you should implement almost everything. You must make sure that your users are technologically advanced, computer literate enough and that they understand the business processes, which will allow them to comprehend and manage the change that such an implementation will bring.
5. Motivate, Appreciate, Reward your people:
It may sound a cliché, but it must be done. Do not do it just to be politically correct. Do it because you mean it, put your soul into it, make it personal. This is one of the few things someone should take personally in business!! People will work twice as hard when they are appreciated. In order to be able to know what you are rewarding people for, you must be involved it their day-to-day business - here come back again the Full Corporate Management Support point mentioned above. A "thank you" goes very long way.
6. Manage Change:
One of the most important factors is how the organization handles changes. This is one of the riskiest part of this business. To make your people understand that change is a good thing. To make the embrace change and make it happened.
This challenge is accomplished with all the above points mentioned, i.e.
- Full Corporate Management Support
- Communication
- The Project Plan and the Methodology
- A proper Scope
- Motivate, Appreciate, Reward your people
If these are followed and executed successfully, people will appreciate and embrace the coming changes. Admittedly, very, very hard thing to achieve for many reasons. Human nature is to avoid change. Therefore, going against human nature is starting off the wrong way. People are afraid of business change because often they are afraid of their job security - unfortunately often rightly so.
7. Politics:
Every project has them (politics) to some degree. Make sure politics and hidden agendas do not derail your implementation process. Stay focused and bring out in the open differences sooner than later. Do not allow people with hidden agendas mislead the project to the wrong direction. Stop this soon and stop it hard. Politics should not be tolerated and should be dealt with firmly and tactfully at the same time.
8. Find Excellent Resources:
The client, the management, must be involved in the consulting recruitment process. Do not simply trust the Consulting firm. Make sure the consultants know their stuff. Make sure the consultants do not have "layers" of intermediaries before they reach you - the final client. The more layers, the more the Consultant's rate is reduced, which in turn it means that the consultant who are willing to work for the lower rate are usually the least knowledgeable. In life you get what you pay for - and even though you as a client might be paying dearly for the consultant, too many layers reduce the consultant's rate and therefore the quality.
The next time someone says "we had a successful project", analyze the facts first to determine the degree of success. Some consulting firms (not to mention names) when their relative success of a project is pretty low, they "declare victory and leave the project"!! They announce to the world of the "success" of the project and then they move on leaving the client to suffer the consequences both in business and cost terms.
(Thanks to Evolutionary Consulting, Inc)
Many wonder what constitutes a successful SAP Implementation. Everyone wants to have a great success story to talk about, from the top management to the implementation consultant. Success is a relative term.
You will hear: "Successfully went live on the planned date and on budget" - You should ask though whether the initial scope was implemented or did they have to take business processes out of scope in order to make it. - You should also ask how are things now that you went live? Can you ship to your customers without any problems? Is the system performing well? Are the end users fully trained and are they doing their job well? Do you still need consulting support to go through your day-to-day business?
Once you put these questions into perspective you can really define a successful SAP Implementation in many ways and many levels.
Success Factors
Here is a list of factors that determine the relative success of a project as mentioned above.
1. Communication:
For a successful SAP project implementation the number one factor is good communication among the project team members. Everybody claims that they are good communicators and we surely have the technology to maintain constant communication with land-phones and cell-phones and email, but it is true that they are not used to their maximum ability.
For example, when there is an issue, which needs to be communicated to multiple people, usually one will email to a number of people who should really be involved. It is extremely annoying and brakes the communication chain when somebody replies only to the sender of the email without including the rest of the members.
SAP is such integrated software that has constantly touch points among the modules. As such, constant integration among the teams is of paramount importance.
Not only constant communication is important, but GOOD communication is important. People must be very clear about what they are talking about. There is a little phrase: "Mary had a little lamb" - these five short words can create such confusion and result to numerous different meanings;
• Mary used to have a lamb but does not anymore
• Mary had a little lamb which now has grown into a big one
• Mary "had" (i.e. ate) a little lamb
I am sure you can make a lot of other meanings out of this small sentence
Now imagine, if this little sentence can cause such confusion, what mess would be created when dealing with complex business processes, spanning through several departments within an organization and involving anywhere from fifty to thousands of employees, end users, managers, consultants.
So the key is good, accurate, specific and timely communication. Clarify things several times. Explain them as if you were talking to little children.
In order to achieve this type of good communication team members should have their workplaces physically close together. I have seen in many recent cases where the Consulting firm in order to "minimize" costs for the client, they outsource much of the Development ABAP programming work outside the USA and in most cases to other continents.
Based on all the things mentioned above, how can good communication be achieved? It is not possible to simply create a program spec with a description in writing and expect a programmer located on the other side of the planet to figure out what the Business Process is, and what would make the program work according to the client's requirements.
Some consulting firms that do this practice will argue that "it is possible and they have success stories to tell". Well, remember at the beginning of this article what we talked about "Success".
We have witnessed this type of "success" when we went in to resolve the issues of such implementation method. We have witnessed the never-ending consulting hours that the client has to pay because of this implementation method. Often the client is made to sign a contract which says something like "…when the program is complete (but not really working as per the client's requirements - this is not stated anywhere) any change to it would be considered change of scope…". Such practice force the client to either abandon the effort of making the program work because of the extra scope-change cost or keep paying more, in order to try make the program work.
These tactics are unfair to the clients and give a bad name to the Consulting industry.
The client needs to take charge of these situations. Make the rules of good communication. Make the rules of the type of consultants you want to have. Provide the physical and technological infrastructure for the basis of good communication. Do not allow "consulting" companies to hide behind a "Big" corporate name.
Clients deserve the best for the huge amounts of money a SAP Implementation cost. Communicate well, take control of your project and do not be sold on "air-talk".
2. Full Corporate Management Support:
Nothing will happen, nothing will move, unless Management supports it. There must be full and utter commitment and support for the project. If Management does not show both in words and deeds that the SAP Implementation is important than the team members, end users and so on, will not be on-board, will not be dedicated. Without dedication the project is bound to fail.
The ways management provides support for the project is by actively participating in the planning and management of the project. Proactively getting involved not only in the high level plans and decision making, but also in the lower level and just as important activities of the day-to-day activities of the project. Get in touch with the project team members, know and be interested about their job and where they stand. This will motivate and keep people committed.
When management is involved then issues get resolved easier, conflict is overcome faster, because the management know the details of what is going on. How is this achieved? By keeping weekly status and communication meetings (remember communication?) These meetings are not to judge or interrogate anybody. They are done so that all members are informed as to what is happening keep the pulse of the project.
The management should help the project move forward, not hinder it with too many bureaucratic procedures. Keep meetings short and to the point. Maintain one status report, not 15 different reports. Have procedures but do not overdo it to the point where the project becomes inflexible and time consuming to make a decision or take a corrective action. Manage the project and provide people enough freedom to do their work. This will be appreciated.
3. The Project Plan and a Methodology are Guidelines - Not Rulers:
Make a good plan. Make a Realistic plan. Most projects do not have a realistic plan. People think everything can be done really fast. They do not allow enough time for the unforeseen parts of the projects. The vendors delaying to deliver the hardware, running out of disk space, actual training time takes a lot longer that thought, users need more training or they are overloaded with their every day job that cannot attend training and much more. The Master Data are corrupt and we need a new SAP Client. We can make a copy. We plan one day for the copy, but why is it always that a SAP client copy always fails the first time resulting taking two or three days?
Remember, if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Allow enough time in your plan for travel time, for public holidays, for vacation. There are so many project managers planning to go-live on January 1 - how foolish, inappropriate and disrespectful to the work and dedication of the people. As soon as Thanksgiving comes around things slow down dramatically and especially the last two weeks of the years are down to a crawl. Take these times of the year into account.
If you cannot go live as per the plan then do NOT go live. It is better, cheaper and safer to delay the go-live and being able to serve your customers. Better than going live just to make a big corporate announcement that we went live as planned but then everybody runs around like headless chickens trying to fix problems, help the users, correct errors, serve your customers.
Allow time for errors. Always have contingency plans. What if the go-live fails. Make sure you have a way to regress to the legacy system to be able to function properly as a business.
the most known SAP Implementation Methodology is ASAP or Accelerated SAP. Consultants should be Certified by SAP. Following this methodology can be very helpful and really accelerating your process. It can also be a inhibitor and delaying factor if it gets overused. ASAP contains a huge amount of tools, templates and instructions of how to implement SAP. Use common sense. There is no reason to try to use one hundred percent of the ASAP methodology. Use only the parts that help you. There are excellent templates for documentation, BPP documents, Training and testing documents, which would take a lot of time to create from scratch.
4. Make a proper Scope:
Which parts of SAP will you implement. Often team members get too excited and want to implement a hundred percent of the processes SAP offers. Not possible. SAP should be implemented according to the Business needs and processes. There was a team member once that wanted to use Classification in the Material Master at a time that it did not make sense for their business. There was another team member that wanted to implement Evaluated Receipt Settlement or ERS for Vendor Invoicing at a time when most invoices did not much the Purchase Orders. These members were warned that these processes were not appropriate. They did not listen. The process failed.
Be realistic. Because SAP can do almost everything it does not mean that you should implement almost everything. You must make sure that your users are technologically advanced, computer literate enough and that they understand the business processes, which will allow them to comprehend and manage the change that such an implementation will bring.
5. Motivate, Appreciate, Reward your people:
It may sound a cliché, but it must be done. Do not do it just to be politically correct. Do it because you mean it, put your soul into it, make it personal. This is one of the few things someone should take personally in business!! People will work twice as hard when they are appreciated. In order to be able to know what you are rewarding people for, you must be involved it their day-to-day business - here come back again the Full Corporate Management Support point mentioned above. A "thank you" goes very long way.
6. Manage Change:
One of the most important factors is how the organization handles changes. This is one of the riskiest part of this business. To make your people understand that change is a good thing. To make the embrace change and make it happened.
This challenge is accomplished with all the above points mentioned, i.e.
- Full Corporate Management Support
- Communication
- The Project Plan and the Methodology
- A proper Scope
- Motivate, Appreciate, Reward your people
If these are followed and executed successfully, people will appreciate and embrace the coming changes. Admittedly, very, very hard thing to achieve for many reasons. Human nature is to avoid change. Therefore, going against human nature is starting off the wrong way. People are afraid of business change because often they are afraid of their job security - unfortunately often rightly so.
7. Politics:
Every project has them (politics) to some degree. Make sure politics and hidden agendas do not derail your implementation process. Stay focused and bring out in the open differences sooner than later. Do not allow people with hidden agendas mislead the project to the wrong direction. Stop this soon and stop it hard. Politics should not be tolerated and should be dealt with firmly and tactfully at the same time.
8. Find Excellent Resources:
The client, the management, must be involved in the consulting recruitment process. Do not simply trust the Consulting firm. Make sure the consultants know their stuff. Make sure the consultants do not have "layers" of intermediaries before they reach you - the final client. The more layers, the more the Consultant's rate is reduced, which in turn it means that the consultant who are willing to work for the lower rate are usually the least knowledgeable. In life you get what you pay for - and even though you as a client might be paying dearly for the consultant, too many layers reduce the consultant's rate and therefore the quality.
The next time someone says "we had a successful project", analyze the facts first to determine the degree of success. Some consulting firms (not to mention names) when their relative success of a project is pretty low, they "declare victory and leave the project"!! They announce to the world of the "success" of the project and then they move on leaving the client to suffer the consequences both in business and cost terms.
(Thanks to Evolutionary Consulting, Inc)
Mar 23, 2008
Being SaaSy has its challenges!!
By.S.Suren :
We have some top ERP vendors entering the SaaS ring with their set of application suites, however though many analyst and experts in the field regard this to be the next most important area for software vendors to concentrate, they also emphasis the challenges it bring with it.
Though most of these challenges have been related to technical, service standards, licensing revenue, I feel that an important issue that needs more attention is the client’s acceptability of a solution where they are ready to let their sensitive data reside in a server that they might not have complete control over.
With CRM solutions (e.g. salesforce.com) and certain other business solutions having being operating in SaaS environment, it’s quite understandable to think that since clients have accepted this type of a solution architecture with modules such as CRM which is likely to have more sensitive data, they will not have many concerns with doing the same with their ERP application or will they ??
I guess it would differ based on the clients loyalty to the ERP Vendors, if they have been using the system for a long time and are happy with the solutions provided they would perhaps accept to the decision to operate on a hosted solution, but the level of service standards and solutions given would be the responsibility of the consultancy provider who was involved, so in cases of vendors like SAP, the push to move from a standard locally maintained solution to a hosted solution should come from the consulting partner I would guess.
However, we should not forget the cultures of data ownership in different regions, yes I did say region, its is likely that in some regions clients are more comfortable with being able to see their servers physically and would surely be a bit skeptical about accepting for the vendor to hold their data elsewhere, though there are always likely to be exceptions to this. I believe that this could be because of the laws on data ownership and misappropriation and the lack of strict adherence to them in these regions.
Well, I am sure this subject could well be debated and could very well prove to be wrong with the increasing use of data applications and the impact that globalization is having on these regions, all this I am sure will lead to improvements in all other related aspects, hopefully having a greater impact on the laws as mentioned earlier.Keeping the above in mind, the following is small lists of other issues I feel could not help encouraging being SaaSy:
- · Technical implications of hosting a core business solution.
- · Service Standards – being a hosted solution residing at vendor site, clients will be expecting the service standards to be high.
- · Data Backups coordination with vendors.
- · User licensing considerations
- · For clients, it would be convincing certain stakeholders of solutions such as this.
Hope you found this post informative and useful.
Feel free to send me your comments and suggestions to ssurenlk@msn.com
Have a nice day.
Mar 22, 2008
Business Intelligence & Warehouse solutions with SAP AFS
By: S.Suren
Its fair enough that SAP AFS IS in mainly built into modules such as MM, SD and PP but what about the business intelligence modules, such as SAP SEM and SAP BW. It is arguable that these are standard modules and its relevance in the AFS Environment would be determined by the method in which it is used to access the relevant information and project it on a management dashboard; however given an AFS environment what would be the norms of generating such information from SAP SEM and SAP BW?
Let’s look at a few of the areas in which SAP Business Intelligence Modules could be in relevance with SAP AFS IS installations:
Manage Strategic Planning
Given a manufacturing environment SBUs are normally the factory (plants). Therefore critical strategic business level information can be set as KPIs of these plants and can be monitored, analyzed and controlled.
The KPIs measures that are devised can be turned into financial relevant information, such as SBUs Revenue/ Cost of Production of a particular sales order style etc. This information would form the base for calculating ROCE and making comparisons possible with target rates.
Based on the planning and forecast of possible sales order the user can use this projection to compare information such as SBUs ROCE, RM Efficiency Usage with targets and the future trends of the type of production activity that will take place for the next 10 years etc.
Since in AFS the inventory management function plays a key role, information on stock value and working capital management is crucial. Using information such as stock holding days, lead time in receipt of payments etc, and SAP BI tools could perhaps provide a clear guide on the current efficiency of these functions and help in analyzing problematic areas.
The SBU information can be analyzed together and therefore form company wide figures to make it possible to keep track of strategic goals set company wide. Keeping this in mind lets move on to the area of Analyzing operations.
Analyze operations against strategic goals
The operations in the relevant SBU need to be maintained. All issues such as supply of raw material to the plants can be monitored and strategic decisions can be made.
SAP BI tools could help to obtain a timely insight into making strategic decisions. This is brought to the attention of senior managers via dash boards etc. Using this output the top management have a snapshot view of how the strategic decisions made have contributed towards the results achieved.
Monitor KPI
As per the present needs in the AFS Industry, BI tools could serve the purpose of monitoring KPIs on a regular basis and project those using Management Dashboards.
KPIs from Production Floor Operations to lead times of receiving payments from customers can be monitored and projected using the Management Cockpit option. The definition of KPI’s, Performance Measures & Objectives is what would reflect the usefulness of the SAP BI solution.
Business critical information such as :
The main criteria that would determine the successful implementation of a proper SAP BI solution would be the ability to retrieve relevant data using the various data sources available in the organization.
Respond to business needs
If you are the seller you can identify the sales for the different regions and different product lines perhaps based on the type of style sold and the different stature groups. As in AFS the statures can be maintained in many age groups, this could also be used as a measure in determining the target market and identifying trends.
Hope this post gave you an introductory insight into the potential of a SAP BI solution in the context of a SAP AFS installation, however, more importantly as the KPI’s and Measures that could be setup in an AFS environment are in abundance, its all about identifying and prioritizing them accordingly.
Also note that this post is just to emphasis on the different potential areas SAP BIW could add value to the SAP AFS solution, the best approach and method to do it; I will leave it to the technical experts in the subject.
Your comments are welcome at ssurenlk@msn.com
Have a nice day!!
S.Suren
Its fair enough that SAP AFS IS in mainly built into modules such as MM, SD and PP but what about the business intelligence modules, such as SAP SEM and SAP BW. It is arguable that these are standard modules and its relevance in the AFS Environment would be determined by the method in which it is used to access the relevant information and project it on a management dashboard; however given an AFS environment what would be the norms of generating such information from SAP SEM and SAP BW?
Let’s look at a few of the areas in which SAP Business Intelligence Modules could be in relevance with SAP AFS IS installations:
Manage Strategic Planning
Given a manufacturing environment SBUs are normally the factory (plants). Therefore critical strategic business level information can be set as KPIs of these plants and can be monitored, analyzed and controlled.
The KPIs measures that are devised can be turned into financial relevant information, such as SBUs Revenue/ Cost of Production of a particular sales order style etc. This information would form the base for calculating ROCE and making comparisons possible with target rates.
Based on the planning and forecast of possible sales order the user can use this projection to compare information such as SBUs ROCE, RM Efficiency Usage with targets and the future trends of the type of production activity that will take place for the next 10 years etc.
Since in AFS the inventory management function plays a key role, information on stock value and working capital management is crucial. Using information such as stock holding days, lead time in receipt of payments etc, and SAP BI tools could perhaps provide a clear guide on the current efficiency of these functions and help in analyzing problematic areas.
The SBU information can be analyzed together and therefore form company wide figures to make it possible to keep track of strategic goals set company wide. Keeping this in mind lets move on to the area of Analyzing operations.
Analyze operations against strategic goals
The operations in the relevant SBU need to be maintained. All issues such as supply of raw material to the plants can be monitored and strategic decisions can be made.
SAP BI tools could help to obtain a timely insight into making strategic decisions. This is brought to the attention of senior managers via dash boards etc. Using this output the top management have a snapshot view of how the strategic decisions made have contributed towards the results achieved.
Monitor KPI
As per the present needs in the AFS Industry, BI tools could serve the purpose of monitoring KPIs on a regular basis and project those using Management Dashboards.
KPIs from Production Floor Operations to lead times of receiving payments from customers can be monitored and projected using the Management Cockpit option. The definition of KPI’s, Performance Measures & Objectives is what would reflect the usefulness of the SAP BI solution.
Business critical information such as :
- Write off values occurring at SBUs.
- The Idle time of Raw Material and its relevant holding costs can be monitored and controlled.
- Quality Defects % or Numbers per cluster of garments produced can be analyzed in comparison to target rates.
- On time deliveries done at SBUs can be monitored and projected on management dashboards using speedometers, graphs and/or tables.
The main criteria that would determine the successful implementation of a proper SAP BI solution would be the ability to retrieve relevant data using the various data sources available in the organization.
Respond to business needs
If you are the seller you can identify the sales for the different regions and different product lines perhaps based on the type of style sold and the different stature groups. As in AFS the statures can be maintained in many age groups, this could also be used as a measure in determining the target market and identifying trends.
Hope this post gave you an introductory insight into the potential of a SAP BI solution in the context of a SAP AFS installation, however, more importantly as the KPI’s and Measures that could be setup in an AFS environment are in abundance, its all about identifying and prioritizing them accordingly.
Also note that this post is just to emphasis on the different potential areas SAP BIW could add value to the SAP AFS solution, the best approach and method to do it; I will leave it to the technical experts in the subject.
Your comments are welcome at ssurenlk@msn.com
Have a nice day!!
S.Suren
Mar 15, 2008
Dying Applications !!
By: S.Suren
The phrase "Dying Application" is something that most often is discussed by ERP Vendors in seminars and workshops as a method of getting customers to upgrade or do a transformation from their legacy systems to the ones being proposed by the ERP Vendor.
In my previous posts, I had mentioned how the general analysis on the ROI of ERP Implementations has been and how much of the actual life of an ERP System is used at its potential by the business. This article would fill in some of the questions of how you might classify a dying application and decide that its time to review the existing processes and consider new one.
I've listed below some of the symptoms of a dying application :
Hope you found this post useful. Have a nice day.
ssurenlk@msn.com
The phrase "Dying Application" is something that most often is discussed by ERP Vendors in seminars and workshops as a method of getting customers to upgrade or do a transformation from their legacy systems to the ones being proposed by the ERP Vendor.
In my previous posts, I had mentioned how the general analysis on the ROI of ERP Implementations has been and how much of the actual life of an ERP System is used at its potential by the business. This article would fill in some of the questions of how you might classify a dying application and decide that its time to review the existing processes and consider new one.
I've listed below some of the symptoms of a dying application :
- Users begin requesting for reports that have no base KPI attached to it - This normally happens when the higher level user in charge of the operation that needs to be performed in the module is not directly involved and hence leaves it up to the lower level users to request reports. This costs previous time and money for the business, which could have been used elsewhere more productively.
- The latency of converting raw data entered in the system to structured data for analysis is in days - It is very important for the user of this data to also on a regular basis consider the latency in generating his/her information needs from the system.
- Reports and data grouped as MIS haven't been generated for sometime - It is quite usual during the implementation phase for the user and consultants involved to categories some reports as very important MIS reports and create separate groups for them in the system and special permissions for relevant users only to generate these reports. Once that is done, a formal handshake a sense of achievement rests in everyone, but if you keep a close eye on how often the information in these systems will be used it could be surprising.
- Users spend more time on related applications in generating MIS than in the system - Its understandable that to some extent users will always revert back to excel to organise their information needs, but its important that information that would be reaching higher level users should not be done through excel since it tends to motivate users to use more numbers and details, which shouldn't be the format of reports reaching higher level user.
- The vendors account managers hasn't contacted you for sometime regarding an upgrade or to keep you updated on the latest deliverable of the application - Lets face it, though the blame game is not suggested here, vendors will have to share the blame for a dying application if they have not made any effort to inform the users of the inevitable.
Hope you found this post useful. Have a nice day.
ssurenlk@msn.com
The Big Event this MAY !!
Those interested in watching the big names in the ERP Industry going against each other in one day, make sure to book your seats for the ERP Shoot OUT !!
www.erpshootout.com
I'm promoting this event on behalf of one of my friend who will be involved with this event.
www.erpshootout.com
I'm promoting this event on behalf of one of my friend who will be involved with this event.
Mar 9, 2008
Fashion Conscious !!
By S.Suren
Fashion is one thing that will never stop changing, there are designs being churned out just about everyday, a new design needs to go through the entire cycle from design to development to delivery at the shortest time possible to make sure the market is still there for it, that’s how fast paced this industry is.
Fashion is one thing that will never stop changing, there are designs being churned out just about everyday, a new design needs to go through the entire cycle from design to development to delivery at the shortest time possible to make sure the market is still there for it, that’s how fast paced this industry is.
What more, with the complexity of having different customer demands from different regions and to match and satisfy this, it just makes the whole process more cumbersome and to say the least, close to creating a chaotic situation.
The many demands of the AFS industry places a crushing strain on the IT system that is to support it, which is why it is very important that the right IT System that can withstand this pressure is selected for the job.
With the general perception that any IT system that would cater to this requirement is likely to be complex too, let look at what SAP has to offer with its unique Apparel & Footwear solution.
Enough of the pep talk I guess, lets get to the facts now!!
Take for example a NIKE T-Shirt which has 3 different fabrics, more than 3 colors, many NIKE swooshes (by the way this initially cost the NIKE Founders $35 to get it done) with an excellent finish to it, a cool hang tag, a stunning heat seal and of course, the price tag attached to it.
The SAP AFS Solution provides the right tools to manage your entire supply chain from the initial purchasing of raw material to the final delivery of the finished product.
It supports the large amount of transaction processing in the system that is only normal in this industry. The Bill of Material would have at least a 6 level hierarchy for a simple one piece garment with no designs or maybe even no buttons, I’ll let it to your imagination to guess the structure of a BOM for the Nike T-Shirt mentioned above.
SAP’s AFS Solution helps in maintaining the right on time coordination with suppliers and customers, the different agreements laid out with them and the most effective purchasing and payment integration.
References:
An analyst at Gartner Inc., said “no other major application vendor offers a packaged suite for the apparel industry.”
If you have any suggestions or comments, feel free to mail me on ssurenlk@msn.com.
Have a nice day!!
Mar 4, 2008
My Own Web Environment!!!
Building on from an article I read on the web from one of my favorite bloggers, about the 4 cs that have contributed to open up the web to what it is today, I thought I will talk about this in the context of ERP Solutions.
The web has developed by addressing 3 important C s, they being content, community and commerce.
The initial development of the web was instigating the ability to be able to share information and reach across the globe through a standard medium, this being covered in one of the Cs as CONTENT. The simple idea of being able to communicate and share information with others took a side step and then came about the growing prominence of the other C, being Commerce, where businesses were quickly into the act to see how they can leverage the web with a commercial sense attached to it.
With the growing popularity of commercial websites came the development of some great companies such as eBay etc. Some people would argue that the 3rd C Community came about before Commerce, but however the sequence, we can always win the argument that websites (e.g. facebook, MySpace) that focused on community have grown to a larger extent very recently than it was during the commercial boom on the web.
The new 4th C which is said to be the next driving factor is Context and is reckoned to be the driving force behind what we could be referring to as Web 4.0, this is the C, I am very interested in given the importance it could have on ERP Web Solutions if properly addressed.
Its all about presenting the information that is available to the end users given his/her information needs. Given that ERP experts would already be jumping to say that this is a simple matter that has been dealt with in preparation and generation of the user interface and reports as per the user needs this can be addressed.
But this is not what I am referring to, a good example of context is what you would find in the websites like Google search page and YouTube, where when you search for what you want, based on your search a list of similar items appear asking you if you would also like to check those out, this is a classic example of creating a web environment that understands you.
Given that ERPs most often have their business intelligence modules built on the web; it is not going to be long before we see context related information being introduced here to. Again emphasizing that this is not the standard requirement of being able to generate and setup interfaces and user authorization to cater to the relevant end user, but the ability to propose and create a web module environment that focuses on the needs of the end users given the information that they are interested in.
I shall elaborate more on the importance of addressing the process of User Interface Optimization in projects in my future posts.Hope you found this post informative and interesting.
Have a nice day !!
ssurenlk@msn.com
Mar 1, 2008
SAP AFS Industry Solution !!
By.S.Suren
It is well known that SAP had an integrated single solution to offer to all industries prior to the SAPPHIRE in 1994/95; it was during this event that SAP realized the importance of catering to each industry individually as all of them had their own unique way of doing business.
Let’s look at a few things that SAP AFS IS has to offer:
SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT
This term is more affiliated with the service industry environment and given that customers in this industry are among the most demanding, its only natural that there is a lot of attention given to activities contributing to generating customer satisfaction.
MASS DATA PROCESSING
SAP AFS takes this aspect into account by providing a flexible master data structure and helps to simplify the time-consuming mass data change that would take place in this industry.
I recommend that you also visit: http://help.sap.com/saphelp_afs50/helpdata/en/b2/53ae56cda511d2aca20000e829fbfe/frameset.htm
for more information on SAP AFS IS details.
Feb 18, 2008
Big boys’ backyard !!
By S.Suren
The backyard I am referring to is India. It has been recognised as one of the fastest growing SAP subsidiaries and given the future plans that SAP has, such as to increase the customer base to upto 15000 in 2010 from its present number of 3000 odd, industry analyst are definitely keeping a close eye on proceedings there. Its stated that the increase in customer number from 2006 to 2007 is a 100% increase.
Not forgeting the other Big boy "Oracle", their last quarter of 2007 has been good and industry experts are focusing this to be a continuing trend into this year too. 2007 saw an increase of 28% from their 2006 revenue. Given the abundant supply of IT Graduates in India, a simple ad for a software engineering vacancy could see 35000 applicants, showing the potential of the region, something that many MNCs have come to make use of and at the same time contributing to leverage this driving aspect of India's Booming economy. See how ORACLE has done in India.
With analyst forecasting that 2008 would be the year of the ERPs, expect something this year, the earlier signs you get the better position you'll be able to predict where to place yourself and the oppurtunities to create.
I'll be posting up-to-date info and do my best to give you a head start on on whats shaping up based on my research findings.
All the best...hope you found this article useful !!!
Have a nice day !!
MSN : ssurenlk@msn.com
The backyard I am referring to is India. It has been recognised as one of the fastest growing SAP subsidiaries and given the future plans that SAP has, such as to increase the customer base to upto 15000 in 2010 from its present number of 3000 odd, industry analyst are definitely keeping a close eye on proceedings there. Its stated that the increase in customer number from 2006 to 2007 is a 100% increase.
Not forgeting the other Big boy "Oracle", their last quarter of 2007 has been good and industry experts are focusing this to be a continuing trend into this year too. 2007 saw an increase of 28% from their 2006 revenue. Given the abundant supply of IT Graduates in India, a simple ad for a software engineering vacancy could see 35000 applicants, showing the potential of the region, something that many MNCs have come to make use of and at the same time contributing to leverage this driving aspect of India's Booming economy. See how ORACLE has done in India.
With analyst forecasting that 2008 would be the year of the ERPs, expect something this year, the earlier signs you get the better position you'll be able to predict where to place yourself and the oppurtunities to create.
I'll be posting up-to-date info and do my best to give you a head start on on whats shaping up based on my research findings.
All the best...hope you found this article useful !!!
Have a nice day !!
MSN : ssurenlk@msn.com
Feb 16, 2008
Birth of SAP AFS !!
Hi All,
Upon request from some readers and being in the AFS Domain myself, I shall also update this site with relevant information on SAP AFS.
Starting off I will be posting a few articles I had already posted on some other AFS sites, so please bear with me if you have already read these.
Many people wonder how SAP AFS IS was conceptualized. There needed to be some sort of an activity that spurred the development of the SAP AFS Industry Solution.
Hope you found this post informative and interesting.
S.Suren
MSN : ssurenlk@msn.com
Upon request from some readers and being in the AFS Domain myself, I shall also update this site with relevant information on SAP AFS.
Starting off I will be posting a few articles I had already posted on some other AFS sites, so please bear with me if you have already read these.
Many people wonder how SAP AFS IS was conceptualized. There needed to be some sort of an activity that spurred the development of the SAP AFS Industry Solution.
Hope you found this post informative and interesting.
S.Suren
MSN : ssurenlk@msn.com
Too much of buzz around SCM!!
It mainly concentrates on the exchange of information within the different parties in the supply chain network.
- Supplier Relationship Management (SRM)
- Transportation Management (TM)
- Supply Chain Event management (SCEM)
- Warehouse Management (WM)
- Planning
- Order Management
- Production
- Purchasing Management
- Demand & Supply Management
- Improved GP through the reduction in the cost of good sold.
- Improved Stock Management through
- Reduced inventory holding costs
- Reduced Stock Out situations
- Proper use of a JIT System
- Proper planning of purchase related activities.
- Ability to be flexible as per the demands of the markets.
All this will lead to better customer service, thereby ultimately leading to Increased bottom-line profitability too.
Hope this gave you a brief on what SCM is and its main components.
S.Suren
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