Happy New Year 2013 !!

Wishing all my readers the very best of everything that 2013 has to offer. 

Thanks for your support over the years.

Turning to the Clouds – “Cloud Transformation role changes”

By Suren

As more and more vendors begin to expand their packaged solution offerings around the cloud based architecture model, there are going to be more companies looking to cash in on the early discounts available on these packaged deals. Given that there are various factors that are likely to contribute to the success of the adoption of the new model, the "transformational changes" is key and the company need to embrace this new IT infrastructure model with some careful planning.

The nature of the model is such that it is likely that this will be embraced more by the business departments of a company as more IT roles will change as end-user computing requirements in an enterprise takes the lead. This would mean successful cloud transformation requires partnership between lines of business and the IT sub unit within the organisation.

 Gartner predicts that “By 2015, 35% of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside IT department’s budget” this clearly highlights that the cultural shifts, combined with cloud as an enabler, have given end-users and business department more influence over IT infrastructure in the enterprise.

All this would likely mean that in the future the IT staff’s role in a business is going to change significantly from just supporting the business to developing transformation strategy by analyzing which applications can move to the cloud with least disruption and greatest benefit, for this the IT teams will have to evolve to be part of the business, leading to more cross-departmental functional IT staff, as previously mentioned in my article “IT Teams of the future”.

Therefore, when it come to your companies turn to move on to a cloud based model, make sure there is some careful planning around the transformation also keeping in mind the resulting changes in IT staff roles within the organisation. All the best.

Process Vs Practice

By Suren

In this article I thought I’ll discuss about how various organizations have their own definitions for the terms “Process” and “Practice”.  Given the nature of the consulting industry these words are used interchangeably. In the present world what consultant like to talk about is processes, when they enter the customer site, they want to analyze the existing processes, then the next phase is to identify the pros and cons in the process and then identify the changing business needs and change the processes accordingly.

However, one thing that is generally overlooked though this phase is whether these processes were in fact practices early on, or were they genuine business processes that were put into action after having brainstormed upon and tested for its feasibility and efficiency.

If you are consulting for a very mature company, which has been in operations for a long period of time, the chances are if you were to ask your clients about how these processes were designed and on what condition, the probable answer would go something like “Well, when I first joined, my senior taught me to do it this way…”, and this would indicate that these processes are indeed practices that have come about from adhoc operations and events that have come across during the beginning and growth stages of the company.

If this were the case, it’s likely that there are many disconnections in the process chain and perhaps some duplication of efforts too, since practices is more focused on individual’s areas and responsibilities than the overall big picture of connecting operations. In situations like this it’s going to be more important to identify a process with an overall view of the connecting points and introduce best practices (ways of doing things) within the sub-components of the process. This is what founded the ideology of “Best in class practices”.

Therefore, keep in mind that practices may lead to processes in the long run, but these could be disconnected due to its individualistic occurrences. The simple solutions is to have build best  practices built into the connecting components of a process, this makes the entire process chain efficient.

As one of my client once said “This company is more than a century old, we are like deadwood, practices have been drilled deep into us, changing us now is going to take another 100 years”….but now the same company  runs completely new processes and all of it through a web hosted solution, this is after implementing a a brand new vertical of a renowned ERP system.

Hope you found this post informative.

Have a nice day !!

ssurenlk@msn.com

IT Teams of the future

By Suren

With the evolution of IT going though quantum leaps in the last decade, its only common sense to assume that it going to be bigger leaps in the coming decade. Given this it is likely that IT department of various companies that embrace the new technology coming their way, will see a change in working patterns, and that’s what I’ve looked to cover in this post.

Some of which are likely to be along the lines mentioned below:

Everyone is going to be working in the cloud – physical team are likely to become a thing of the past. Collaborative and collective working is going to be done through in the clouds through cloud devices.

BYOD – Bring you own devices – In the future the way staffs are going to work is to bring their own devices into work to use in their day to day tasks. The IT departments will just have to make sure that the devices are securely updated to work within the office space and adhere to their security protocols etc.

Divide and Conquer is going to disappear – The famous methodology which is to divide tasks and operates efficiently in that space is going to disappear with tasks interconnected and the need for IT staff to know more than just one area. Though not the intrinsic details staff will have to be aware of the details on how to activate and use devices which in itself will get most of the detail level jobs done.

Higher possibility cyber attacks – There is likely to be more cyber warfare as most devices will be run remotely via cloud like infrastructure and hence this would call for IT Departments and CIOs to keep a close eye on confidential company information, regular updates means more technological enhancement done more often and related upgrades of hardware and software too.

Hyper connections would mean more networks – the ratios of an IT Staff to an end user is going to be in the 1000’s all through hyper connected platforms and devices. IT staff will link mainly with end users on a platform that extends across departments and functions, which would also see this platform being remotely accessed and in turn means more home working and “Device on you” style of working (this is where you are expected to support on issues wherever you are if you’ve got the “Device on you“to do the tasks).

These are just some o the thoughts and ideas I’ve come across when looking into how  a technologically driven IT Department is going to perform their tasks in the future given the changes coming our way.

Hope you found this post informative and interesting.

ERPs in the cloud !!

By Suren

Cloud computing is the talk of the town with everything from social media websites where you have you have your entire life’s details laid down,  to a  simple comment you leave on the some website in some corner of the world wide web.

Given the popularity that cloud computing is gaining, you could ask why haven’t those large ERP vendors yet to break into this as you would have expected them to?

Well some of the basic challenges that would crop up would be:

• Transitioning from onsite revenue streams to in-house ones. Business models need to be revamped at the source to make this transition smooth, and with more than million clients it’s not an easy task.
• Confused  clients when it comes to clear vision laid out by a vendor in terms of support and maintenance on how the infrastructure would be setup.
• Difficulty for the vendors in being able to pin point which existing systems will be brought in house, due to integrational aspects and 3rd party’s existing cloudless computing solutions in the overall landscape.
• Another challenge is to be able to distinguish between cloud services for core applications and those on the peripheries. This will always be a point of discussion to consider.  
• Being able to align the cloud and SaaS applications together on a common platform  in a client organization is always a time consuming and painstaking task.

These are just some of the basic challenges that come to mind when considering a shif to a cloud service from the regular on-site service setup, from a vendors perspective. However, the large ERP vendors have already taken irreversible steps in this direction, but it’s likely that the these changes will take time to stabilize and yield tangible results.

Just some points to ponder. Have a nice day !!

Reading outside the lines...for a Consultant!!

By Suren

Well, I’m sure this is the first time you’ve heard of this term “Reading outside the lines”!! .

This is what I’ll like to term doing something different in a different way, phrases such as “Thinking out of the box” have been used too often that it has actually distorted what people make of it, some think doing something new is thinking out of the box, but in fact in today’s world it’s a matter of how you do that new thing different to the way others might have done it, that could be the success factor!!

This article focuses on some of the important areas; I feel could help a consultant read outside the lines...!!

1. Be on the lookout to take on result oriented tasks, what I mean by this is, take on tasks that once completed will clearly reflect the positive results generated by the high quality of the completed task and in a tangible manner. At the end of the day, immediate results are what counts, and that’s what clients are after as well.

2. Non-routine work – Everything that can be automated will be done eventually, update and enhance your skill on those tasks which cannot be automated, in short, it’s your soft skills and your ability to identify process improvements, in order to do this, study and analyse the best in class practices deployed out there.

3. Begin to work together with teams more often – As time goes, individualistic work is going to be redundant, it’s all going to be teams. Sure you could think of yourself as someone who can perform on your own, but systems are going to be so much integrated at one point of time, where it’s just going to be impossible to do a process on your own. Just like anything else, it’s a cycle, initially systems are developed to be able to function on its own, then they are integrated for a complete process to be completed on its own, then it just keeps growing until it gets to that point, where you need some amount of manual intervention to make sure everything is working as it should be. If this doesn’t take place from time to time, it could be the case as with a large telecom where the system kept billing clients for data they didn’t use, and I’m sure the system there was too big,.

4. Think like a systems auditor, this is going to be a key factor in determining the validity of your solutions, have a record of the things you performed during the project and rationale behind those. You can’t be a good systems auditor if you don’t know how the whole process works, and the best way to get to that is to work as a team and learn all the connecting cogs.

5. Don’t always assume more information is good information: Loading the clients table with heaps of report makes up for nothing but confusion.  Facts and figures are only useful if you can do something about it; understand that facts and figures work differently at different levels of an organisation.

6. Do your job: As a consultant, you are often looked upon to provide your expert opinion, given your experience you should be selling ideas of best practises from your experience of dealing with clients from various different industries and domains. Sell ideas, but ask for opinions and implement the best mix for the company.

That’s it folks, hope this serves as food for thought. Have a nice day !!

Ahhh ... The Package deal!!

By Suren

No matter what you had in mind to buy, whenever you come across a package deal it’s always something that makes us stop and think.

Package deals are found practically everywhere these days from hair cut salons to ERP solutions. Of course decisions made on buying a packaged ERP Solution is subject to a much more long-term drive and vision than a haircut, and given that, that’s going to be my main focus today!!

Given the benefits that come from an packaged deal such as, low cost, quicker turnaround time, easier buying process, lower risk in terms of process coverage and better governance, it’s easy to get too excited about these deals and jump to conclusions.

As an enterprise buyer there are few important criteria’s you need to tick off if you would want to make sure you are getting the most out of a packaged deal, like:

Segmentalise:

You always got to segmentalise the different components and analysis them for their individual CBA (Cost benefit analysis) separately. This would give you a good base to start drawing up your objective you would want to achieve from each of these components in reaching your business goals. Also assess the trade offs, risks, pros and cons of making an investment in the packaged solution.

Integration Maturity


Identify how long this package solution has been in existence, try and get a list of some companies that have implemented these and how they have done. Understand how mature the solution is in terms of integration within its own modules and how much open they are to allow for external interfaces to interact with. Most often than not, packaged solution tend to be more rigid than individual components, due to the so called “system architecture” that is sold along with it, that allows it to talk to each other modules internally but not much so externally.

Domain specifics


Most packaged solution are advertised as a “One fit All” solution, something that I don’t quite find fascinating because if you are ever going to buy a one fit all solution you are not differentiating yourself from the others and in essence losing out a possible competitive edge you could have had. Check with vendor how best in class practises for your domain have been built into the solution and how flexible it is in terms of catering to changing business needs. As a buyer, f you don’t already have a road map of your organisations informational needs for the next couple of year, its important you draw up one before asking this question.

Packaged deals seem to be the new trend in ERP Solutions and with large ERP vendors moving to the cloud and SaaS architecture, it makes for a perfect solution for companies looking out for low TCO, TCI (total cost of implementation) and low risks in project implementation, so keep an eye out on packaged deals and keep you checklist handy !!

All the best and have a nice day, cheers !!

Keeping a close eye on an ERP’s Eco-system !!

By Suren

An ecosystem is generally the biotic components around your immediate surrounding that make up for the atmosphere around you, this could be both living and non-living.

Just as it is with us human beings, it’s the same with systems. A systems ecosystem is everything that links to it, either directly or indirectly. This could be from an integrated link with another system or be a maintenance service on the system hardware. Most often than not, in large scale implementations you would come across the term “Planning the Ecosystem”, this basically is making sure everything around the implementation is working in such a way as to provide either directly or indirectly a beneficial impact on the EPP implementation.

I would say it’s a good thing to always list down the components in an ERP’s Ecosystem to be able to provide to the stakeholders of an ERP Implementation a snap shot of what constitutes the ecosystem and the measures in place to make sure they are administered to act in a positive way around the implementation itself.

Some example of components in an ERP’s Ecosystem:

• Hardware Infrastructure – servers, printers, networks
• Services – maintenance agreements, consulting, process improvements, implementation partners
• Products – software versions, integrating tools & equipment
• Vendors – direct (i.e. consulting partners, hardware vendors) and non-direct (i.e. organisation wide vendors for utilities, other services)
• Training & Support departments
• ERP enhancement  & sustainability development plans (this would more often than not be a part of the PMO’s responsibility itself)
• Competitor
• Customers – end users, management teams and external customer as well.

Generally, the above list will be broken down into an impact matrix with key variables identified in them in terms of impact and controllability, to assess how much of a significant impact it can have on the ERP Implementation, which  need to be addressed and should form part of the risk register. This process could be a lengthy one but if done properly will help minimise risks.

Hope you found this post informative. I can be contact on ssurenlk@msn.com.

Have a nice day!!