Software Selection, Business Process Improvement and Project Management

2009-11-05T22:33:00.001-05:00

ERP Portal

We have just enhanced our ERP portal. You can now filter systems and Value Added Resellers (VARs) by tier/company size and by industry. Developers of the ERP systems and VARs can easily enter their information online. If you think an organization is missing, please let them know to update our site.

2009-11-05T22:27:00.001-05:00

Larry’s Soft Launch of Oracle Fusion Applications

October 16, 2009 – “This week Mr. Ellison closed his keynote with the soft launch of Fusion Applications. To be honest, we’re not sure why the company waited until the third day of the event… During his keynote Mr. Ellison acknowledged that new products like Fusion Apps will turn E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and Siebel into old, legacy systems. That said, he pledged to support all Oracle Apps Unlimited for another 10+ years and to provide easy connectivity to Fusion Apps through modular upgrades.

The first release of Fusion Apps will include financials, human capital management (HCM), sales and marketing, supply chain management (SCM), project portfolio management, procurement, and governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC). The missing pieces in the initial release include the customer service components of CRM, manufacturing applications, and vertical-specific functionality. No information was provided for the dates or functionality planned for future releases…

We were surprised at how understated the Fusion launch was. One executive told us that this was the intended plan. There’s still a lot of work underway to ensure optimal performance and quality. Oracle didn’t want to overhype the new products for fear that customers might postpone current purchase decisions...”

180 View – Bruce Richardson, the author of the article, is right about customer’s postponing their current purchase decisions. There is no such thing as an easy upgrade path. First, there’s no way that Fusion will contain all the functionality of E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards. Second, any customizations will not be so easy to upgrade. Third, there is a huge internal cost to move to a new system.

2009-11-05T22:22:00.001-05:00

Live from Oracle Open World 2009

October 11, 2009 from The Enterprise System Spectator – “…Larry Ellison, true to form, spoke mostly about Oracle's competition, specifically IBM, claiming Oracle's database running on Sun processors are faster than IBM's DB2. He reassured Sun's customers that Oracle would invest even more in Sun's products than Sun has. And, he also said the right things about continuing to invest in MySQL, Sun's open source database management system…

In the meantime, take a look at what it’s like at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, with thousands of Oracle Open World attendees streaming into the Ellison-McNealy keynote.”

180 View – Just check out the video for a few seconds to get a sense of what it was like there.

2009-11-05T22:19:00.002-05:00

SAP Performance Benchmarking

180 View - This looks like a great service by SAP but it seems like a well kept secret. Benchmarking will allow you to compare your organization to others (that are considered best in class by SAP) to see whether your business processes are working well. The program covers 20+ processes, with 3,500 + participants from over 1,500 companies. But it also only free to SAP customers and select prospects. If you qualify, check it out.

2009-11-05T22:14:00.002-05:00

Why ERP Is Still So Hard

September 9, 2009 from ComputerWorld – “Steve Berg knows what intense pain feels like: The man has been Tasered, in fact-not because he ran afoul of the law, but as VP of IT at Taser International he's partaken in a corporate rite of passage. "It's the worst five seconds of your life," he says. "You cannot move."

Like other IT execs, he also knows pain and suffering as it relates to ERP-from vendor selection and licensing negotiations, to implementation and change management, followed by upgrades and integration. And as he and many other IT leaders have come to know, ERP-induced pain can last much, much longer than a mere five seconds.

Taser's attempt to wrap an ERP package around its corporate processes sounds eerily similar to most companies' experiences. The "before" picture: A mélange of disparate systems that didn't talk to each other and a good deal of "paper pushing" between the systems, Berg says. "When you don't have a centrally managed technology environment," he says, "things can get overly complicated very quickly."

Executives had sought a unified system so that Taser "could do a complete workflow throughout the company without having to run redundant systems that don't communicate," he says. That was 2004. Microsoft's Dynamics AX was eventually selected. And again, like many companies, Taser decided to customize its chosen ERP package to meet the business processes that it already followed. "So rather than take an ERP system-which supposedly out-of-the-box has, say, an accounts receivable [process], with best practices that are inherent to the system, we decided...to modify AX to work like this other application because users were comfortable with it," he says, "and they didn't want to change…"

180 View – You can imagine the rest. What’s wrong with this picture? It should jump off the page that it should be unacceptable to customize a system to work like their old application ‘because users were comfortable with it.” There is no business case for this customization. The entire project also smacks of being run by IT because the main problem discussed is lack of a “centrally managed technology environment.” ERP is not hard because of ERP but because of who is implementing it.

2009-11-05T22:11:00.000-05:00

Saying No To Big Software

November 4, 2009 from Forbes – “The recession has cast a bright light on the tactics used by Big Software companies to lock in their customers through multi-year license agreements. In these agreements, annual fees go up, but can almost never be reduced--even if the customer's business has downsized…

Sims replaced proprietary software with open-source technologies across the company's IT infrastructure with the deployments of the SuSe Linux operating system, the Ingres open-source database, and the Hobbit open-source monitoring tool to monitor the health of Save Mart's servers, applications and networks...”

180 View – The answer in the article is open source. Open source may not be the answer for all types of software especially when a lot of support is required and resources are not easily available. But it should put pressure on software developers to ease up on the maintenance costs. Obviously SAP and Oracle don’t feel threatened by open source.

2009-11-04T22:51:00.001-05:00

XBRL: The Inside Story

August 24, 2009 from CFO magazine – “After more than a decade of hype about the benefits of coding financial data with XBRL, the good news for companies now required to do so is that it seems relatively easy and inexpensive. While in the final analysis XBRL may not add much value, preparers say, at worst it is a minor inconvenience…”

180 View – About 5 years ago, the buzz was about XML (would allow organizations to share their electronic data) and XBRL (same as XML but designed specifically to share financial reports). XML was going to make B2B eCommerce a reality for every company. For example, you would be easily able to send your purchase orders to your supplier who in turn would be able to easily read the data. Both XBRL and XML have lost some of their shine, but I would not count them out yet. The advantages of these technologies are too compelling and it’s just a matter of time.

2009-11-04T22:46:00.001-05:00

Meet 'The Fixer' for Troubled IT Projects

October 20, 2009 from ComputerWorld - “CIO.com Senior Editor spoke with Coyne about the ill-fated patterns and emotional traps that most tech implementation teams fall prey to…

CIO.com: With large enterprise software projects, are there patterns that the people and teams fall into?

Coyne: There are very clear patterns. When the project starts, the technology-buying organization sets out clear outcomes that they wish to achieve. You generally see some strategic-looking documents about what a successful project will be: a percentage increase in the way we do this type of process; greater efficiency here; greater visibility of doing business there; faster this, that and the other thing. That's a very positive stage.

But then what generally happens is the low-level techies get involved – low, meaning detailed rather than skilled. At that point these business objectives get boiled down into technical functions… And generally at this point, there is a loss of vision into why the project was started in the first place…”

180 View – We agree that the business case that launched the project often goes missing during an implementation. But it’s too simplistic to think that there is one reason for all problems. Our top 10 implementation mistakes are:
1. Poor job in system selection process
2. Lack of testing
3. Customization at the get-go
4. Lack of training
5. Lack of knowledge transfer
6. Business goals gone missing
7. Maintaining the status quo
8. Picking the wrong people
9. Missing controls
10. Lack of project management

2009-11-04T22:42:00.001-05:00

Windows 7's real killer feature

November 03, 2009 from InfoWorld – “…Windows 7 runs circles around both Windows Vista and Windows XP. In fact, the results aren't even close… It means that, as customers invest in new PC hardware, they'll be better positioned to reap the improvements in CPU, memory, and chip set performance by deploying Windows 7. It also means that sticking with Windows XP -- ostensibly because it is less bloated and performs better -- is a fool's errand...”

180 View – I (Michael Burns) was one of the first to install Vista and it was not easy. In the end, I was glad I did it. I am taking a more cautious approach to Windows 7 and was looking for a “killer feature” but the one in the article is not good enough for me. I already get good performance with Vista on my Dell that I purchased this year.

2009-11-04T22:36:00.000-05:00

Inventory Optimization Technology Starts to Go Mainstream

August 4, 2009 from SupplyChainDigest – “Inventory Optimization technology, a relatively new category of supply chain software, has started to go mainstream. That’s the conclusion of a new report by IDC’s Manufacturing Insights, which finds that Inventory Optimization is especially valuable in an economic downturn, when the cost of making poor inventory decisions is especially high…”

180 View (written by Lawrence Young) – While we have heard the term “Inventory Optimization” mentioned often in software demonstrations and marketing collaterals, we have to-date seen very little new in the way of software offerings for mid-market distribution and manufacturing companies.

Most inventory replenishment models for mid-market ERP software still utilize the ‘min/max’ model which has serious limitations due to the static nature of the drivers of the model i.e. users are forced to periodically refresh each inventory SKU’s minimum and maximum values based on current historical usage, which can be challenging if the company has hundreds or thousands of SKUs.

A few software products utilize dynamic replenishment models that automatically recalculate each SKU’s optimal order point by automatically taking into account past usage as well as other factors such as seasonality, recent vendor lead time and delivery performance data, etc. These dynamic models are often based on proven methodologies such as Distribution Resource Planning and Gordon Graham. Unfortunately, the deployment of these models has historically resulted in limited user acceptance and success since the software was often perceived to be cumbersome to use and not overly user-friendly.

While we haven’t seen any significantly better inventory replenishment software in mid-market ERP software up until now, we can only hope that this much-needed tool becomes available soon. So for now, it’s ‘wait and see’. But remember, there’s always ‘Tomorrow’, as Little Orphan Annie sang!

2009-10-11T16:58:00.002-04:00

On-Premises ERP Versus Cloud Computing: Too Late for the Sky?

August 28, 2009 from AMR Research written by Bruce Richardson– “Early last week, I spent a morning reviewing SEC filings and Seeking Alpha transcripts for the most recent earnings calls from Epicor, QAD, and NetSuite. I wanted to see how well the two on-premises vendors were doing relative to the ERP-in the-Cloud company. A quick note: Most readers think of vendors like NetSuite as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) or on-demand provider, but I’m going to use the cloud nomenclature, since the term is rapidly replacing the other descriptions in vendor presentations...

Since the start of economic downturn last September, on-premises vendors have been harder hit than their cloud brethren. This is especially true for ERP providers…”

180 View – Bruce Richardson provides useful insights as he follows the money to see how the ERP vendors are doing. He is also in direct contact with the executives of the leading enterprise vendors.

Bruce and the vendors appear to be pushing the cloud vs SaaS terminology. I only recently switched from calling it ASP (Application Service Provider) to SaaS although I thought ASP made more sense. I also prefer SaaS over cloud.

It does make some sense that it is easier for organizations to invest in SaaS as they don’t need to finance the full license and infrastructure cost. However, it may not make as much sense when using an NPV (Net Present Value) approach to cash flow over 10 years.

2009-10-11T16:53:00.001-04:00

Get Your Head Out Of The Clouds

October 6, 2009 from Forbes – “If you believed everything you read, then some time in the next few months companies all across America will be shutting down their data centers, switching off their servers and transferring all of their data and storage tasks to a bookseller by the name of Amazon.com.

It's called "cloud computing," and it's billed as this year's Next Big Thing. The idea is that computing will become like electricity, a commodity that people needn't bother to make themselves. A few big companies will run data centers that everyone else will tap into via the Internet. Amazon's Web services were one of the first in this market, and it's what many point to when discussing the topic…"

180 View – Click here to hear what The Rolling Stones had to say about getting off the cloud.

2009-10-11T16:50:00.000-04:00

ERP Software for Manufacturers

2009 from SearchManufacturingERP.com – “…This directory includes ERP software products for process and discrete manufacturers as well as verticals. It includes software that is meant to be deployed on-premise as well as Software as a Service (SaaS) or m-demand software…

This ERP software directory contains 52 products from 32 vendors…”

180 View – We are not the only game in town when it comes to finding ERP systems.

2009-10-11T16:45:00.003-04:00

Will Oracle Or SAP Blink First On 22% Maintenance Fees?

October 2, 2009 from InformationWeek – “Oracle and SAP seem to be nearing a point of having to make some hard choices about whether to consider modifying their one-size-fits-all 22% annual fees for upgrades and support…

Here's part of what Goldmacher said in that report:

We believe ERP upgrades, the primary motivation to pay maintenance fees, are on the wane because it's a mature market. Vendor investments in R&D are on the decline, innovation is lagging and redeployment costs are multiples of the license fee. As a result, customers are increasingly questioning the value of paying annual maintenance fees of 20% of the cost of the original license for the occasional use of technical support. We believe that as the value proposition around maintenance fees diminishes, there is significant opportunity for third party service providers to offer low cost tech support…”

180 View – The ERP vendors have their customers between a rock and a hard place. They know that the costs to convert to a new system are huge and customers don’t want to bite that bullet unless they really need to. Assuming an original license cost of $500,000 and an interest rate of 5%, the NPV of maintenance fees amounts to about $475,000 over 5 years. Let’s assume that a new system will cost ½ as much as the old one and that maintenance fees will be 18% rather than 22%. Let’s also assume that the cost to implement the new system including both internal and external resources is twice that of the license fees. That amounts to $250,000 (license fees) + $500,000 (internal and external implementation costs) + $200,000 (approximate NPV of new maintenance costs) - $475,000 (NPV of existing maintenance costs) = $475,000 of additional costs to convert to a new system. They got you if price is the only factor.

2009-10-11T16:42:00.001-04:00

New Aberdeen Report Lays Out Road Map for Maximizing ROI on ERP

August 2009 from Oracle – “…Based on input from more than 920 midsize companies (annual revenues under $250 million), the report found that the most successful ERP projects include aggressive, clearly quantified business goals; well-established timelines; and an ongoing commitment to measure return on investment (ROI), including a clear baseline for measuring performance improvements…”

180 View – We agree except with the ROI. Although ROI would be great, it’s usually not possible as many performance improvements are often impossible to calculate. We think the metrics, often called Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), should relate to Critical Success Factors (what an organization must do well in order to be successful) and achievement of these KPI’s is the key.

2009-10-11T16:38:00.001-04:00

Acquire Me! Oracle's and SAP's Next Likely Targets

September 22, 2009 from ComputerWorld – “Oracle and SAP have not been shy about making strategic and expensive acquisitions during the past several years. The numerous deals have been both big and small-some costing billions, others millions-and have filled out specific vertical-industry product offerings that allowed the enterprise software vendors to present a more all-encompassing, horizontal set of goods and services. The buys have also granted access to vast, new customer bases…"

180 View – We predict lots of acquisitions over the next few months. It’s a tough economy and many developers are struggling. They will be prepared to sell out at lower prices. The larger companies with money in the bank know only too well that it’s tough to acquire new customers one at a time.

2009-10-11T16:10:00.002-04:00

IBM's Cognos Express Targets Mid-Sized Firms

September 14, 2009 from InternetNews – “There's a big gulf between what's often barely better than consumer grade software offered to small businesses and the massive packages, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars or even several million, offered to large enterprises.

Into that gap, IBM is pitching Cognos Express, a streamlined version of its business analytics software designed to be easier to use, easier to deploy, and the right price for companies with between 100 and 1,000 employees…”

180 View – I (Michael Burns) recently heard a business intelligence (BI) representative from Microsoft say that the company aims to provide BI to the masses. I recently also heard something similar from a new start-up called Indicee that looks interesting. Most companies struggle with turning all their data into information useful to make decisions (what we call business intelligence). It remains to be seen whether the new crop of tools will solve the problem, but it does seem like the vendors are making progress.

2009-10-11T16:06:00.000-04:00

Oracle looks to planning apps for its next billions

August 17, 2009 from InfoWorld – “Oracle is devoting two full days and 70 sessions at the upcoming OpenWorld conference to its Primavera PPM (project portfolio management) software, which is used to track and manage the torrent of people, assets, timelines and expenses associated with projects and services engagements.

It's no accident that Oracle has decided to give such a high-profile showcase to Primavera, which it acquired last year. While PPM software may not be sexy, demand for it is growing explosively. Forrester Research expects what it defines as the "project based solutions" market to reach $6.5 billion by 2010, up from $4.25 billion in 2007…”

180 View – PPM is more than just managing a project. Primavera does that – so does Microsoft Project and many other products. Per Oracle’s website – “Companies turn to Primavera project portfolio management solutions to help them make better portfolio management decisions, evaluate the risks and rewards associated with projects, and determine whether there are sufficient resources with the right skills to accomplish the work.” PPM makes sense for any company with competing projects, and require a methodology and tools to help evaluate which ones to pursue.

2009-10-11T16:01:00.003-04:00

RFID - Six Years Later

October 8, 2009 from SupplyChainDigest – “About six years ago this week, the EPPglobal organization was launched. So, we’re going take that anniversary as a catalyst to look at both the history and the future of RFID. As many of you know, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been around for decades, and certainly was being deployed in both supply chains and other applications in the 1990s at some reasonable volumes...

In 1999, the MIT Auto-ID Center was born…The Auto-ID center vision was largely oriented on the consumer goods-to-retail supply chain. Parameters were developed for this more simple tag, which came to be known as the Electronic Product Code or EPC, with compelling visions for how this would transform the retail supply chain…

EPC activity in the consumer packaged goods arena, where it all started, is at a virtual standstill. The Walmart program is stalled, and its future uncertain…

On the positive side, EPC-based technology is being adopted in a large array of other types of applications, from aircraft manufacturing to an increasing number of distribution center applications, to asset tracking and more…”

180 View – There was a lot of hype when RFID was mandated by Walmart in 2003, and RFID seemed like the next big thing in technology. Conferences just on RFID were held to pave the way. But a funny thing happened along the way, and it was not the technology. There wasn’t a compelling business case for its adoption. But as the price of the RFID tags fall, that may change.

2009-10-10T21:15:00.011-04:00

Successful Projects; It's not Rocket Science

September 16, 2009 from ProjectTimes –“There is no worse person to be than the project manager at the end of a failed project. As an IT project manager, I have experienced that feeling and I can tell you it's not nice. IT projects are particularly difficult to manage. In fact there really aren't any IT projects, just projects that have elements of IT in them…”

180 View (written by Lawrence Young) – This article talks about the issues that affect the success, and the usual lack thereof, of IT projects. The author talks about the reality that ‘IT projects are particularly difficult to manage. In fact there really aren't any IT projects, just projects that have elements of IT in them.’

The article further states (with which we couldn’t agree more) that ‘avoiding the common pitfalls of IT project management is not rocket science-it is simply a case of taking some sensible measures’.

The article provides practical advice on how to avoid making the five most critical mistakes when managing IT projects, which require the project manager to:

Provide appropriate support for the project
Get users involved
Stop scope creep
Manage expectations
Ensure that project participants ‘understand the lingo’

2009-09-03T16:28:00.001-04:00

ERP Survey

September 2009 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns – “As we present the 11th instalment of our annual CAmagazine software survey, it’s interesting to look back and see just how far we have evolved. When we ran our first survey, many people were unfamiliar with enterprise resource planning and vendors were just beginning to target their ERP products to middle-market companies. Now midsized companies are well served, as are their smaller and larger counterparts. New vendors continue to appear and new functionality continues to be released. We also expand each year on what we include in the survey. This time, for example, you will find a section on human resources. We have also included professional services automation vendors. PSA is really just ERP for professional services organizations...”

2009-09-03T12:18:00.003-04:00

Financial Technology Show / ERP Business Case Webinar

I (Michael Burns) am very pleased to be once again able to present at the Financial Technology Show in Vancouver on October 7 and in Toronto on November 24. (I was out of commission for health reasons last year.)

We are also doing something new with the Financial Technology Show. We will be hosting a series of webinars on ERP business case where I will describe how to do a business case followed by a case study presented by the client of an ERP vendor. SYSPRO kicks off this series of webinars. Register by clicking here.

2009-09-03T12:15:00.001-04:00

Business intelligence for the SME

September 2009 from CAmagazine and written by Mark Canes - “…Michael Burns, a CA and CAmagazine columnist, writes frequently about BI. He states that some mid-range ERP systems are adding dashboards that are configurable, with drill downs, frequently at little or no additional cost. Burns says he is seeing more affordable on-line query and browser-based tools emerging.

But is this being effectively communicated? If the perception among those in the IT industry is that the cost of technology is no longer a barrier to BI for the SME, that view is not necessarily shared by end users. Beth Crawford, CMA, controller for Toppits Foods Ltd. in Vaughan, Ont., has been working on a project to implement a comprehensive BI solution for some time. “It’s hard to find a cost-effective platform that is affordable now, but that you can grow with,” she says…”

180 View – Mark is a good writer as well as extremely knowledgeable about IT. He is also president of Blue Link, a developer of ERP solutions for SMEs. Mark writes about Business Intelligence with no bias for any product including his own software. Mark is someone that I respect for his knowledge and integrity.

2009-09-03T12:09:00.002-04:00

Making sense of IT all

September 2009 from CAmagazine - “…Many companies fail to include critical evaluation functionality that takes into consideration key business process requirements (for Corporate Performance Management systems:

the ability to produce real-time reporting at select points in a business process while scaling the solution to a broad user base; this applies to operational reporting, management reporting and the budgeting process;
the ability to handle large data volumes or data models in a cost-effective manner that meets both end user and IT needs;
the ability to meet a planner’s real-time modelling cycle time (from input of drivers to output of key performance indicators and metrics);
the ability to meet the data access security requirements of your organization’s end users in a cost-effective manner; and
the ability to produce high-quality financial and management information through built-in preventive and detective data integrity controls…"

180 View – Business Intelligence must be a hot topic. There were two good articles about it in CAmagazine this month. This article agrees with Mark Cane’s article (“Business intelligence for the SME”) in that it’s a “struggle for companies to turn the huge amounts of data they produce into the sort of information that is useful at the right time.” This article also includes discussion of Corporate Performance Management (CPM) systems and the quote above adds some good points to consider in the selection of a CPM system that are often not considered.

2009-09-03T12:04:00.002-04:00

Forrester: SAP, others will make analytics acquisitions

August 20, 2009 from InfoWorld – “IBM's recently announced plans to buy SPSS, maker of specialized analytics software, will result in a wave of further consolidation in the space, according to a new Forrester Research report. "IBM's acquisition of SPSS marks an industry tipping point. In the advanced analytics segment, the deal is having the same impact that IBM's Cognos buy had on the BI market," Forrester said.

Advanced analytics software goes beyond the reports and dashboard capabilities of traditional BI (business intelligence) tools, helping users answer questions about future events and explore "what-if" scenarios, as well as pull together and analyze unstructured information from a variety of sources, the report said.

While Oracle, SAP, and other platform companies already have some of these capabilities in their portfolios, IBM's SPSS bid has competitors scrambling for a response, according to Forrester..."

180 View – This article is interesting as it distinguished between business intelligence and analytics. If you are confused by all these terms, you’re not alone. Many vendors might call analytics as described above to be found in a forecasting tool. Others would include it in Business Intelligence and others in Corporate Performance Management. We define Business Intelligence as the transformation of data into information useful to make decisions so we would not distinguish between them. Marketing people are always coming up with new terms to take existing technology and rebranding it to make it sound like they have got something new.

Analyzing unstructured information is mentioned as part of analytics. We think that organizations have enough trouble making sense of structured data and have trouble imagining much business intelligence in unstructured data other than being easily able to find data based on keywords.

Finally we wonder how IBM will be able to incorporate SPSS into their product line. They already have 4 different (but integrated) products. It will be a challenge for IBM to pitch their 5 systems against one unified solution.