Welcome to the ERP Arena !!

A “Complete Consultant” is a “Conversant Consultant” and vice versa!!

2011-11-16T07:17:00.001+05:30

By: Suren

As ERP Consultants we need to be aware on whats going around us in our ERP World. A clued-up/knowledgeable consultant always stands out from the rest, remember like I mentioned earlier, its not just technical/ consulting skills that makes a complete consultants but its the ability to know whats going on around them , being able to adapt to these changes and stay on top of the new tools of trade !!

My primary goals is to be able to share whatever up-to-date information I have on the latest happenings in the ERP industry with all interested consultants worldwide via www.erparena.com , however there are other sites that have some specific research articles prepared by specialist in their relevant fields as well, going through these would come in very handy as well !!

Here is a list of sites I would recommend:

http://www.cio.com/

http://www.gartner.com

http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/

http://www.contrarianconsulting.com/

http://www.computerworld.com/

http://www.informationweek.com/

Happy reading!!

Click on the article labels “Consulting Tips” or “ERP Arena Updates” for my own articles on various ERP & Consulting subject matters.

Have a nice day!!

Your comments, suggestions and feedback are welcomed at : ssurenlk@msn.com

“Ways of work” in ERP Projects

2011-10-31T06:39:00.003+05:30

By Suren

Most often than not the ways of work listed below tends to take place in a general project context but more than often in a non-controlled manner, there is no straight forward guidelines to set this up or to be able to control this, but as a Project manager or PMO the environment to encourage this can be built. Below are some of the ways of work I have identified together with some recommendation to build the right project environment to encourage this behaviour or at least not discourage them!!

Invisible Work

Most of the time there is an amount of work undertaken in a project that is not recorded in any project document or process documents, yet it adds to the overall process improvement / project implementation and most often than not this is a task the individual takes on not expecting any recognisition. Underlying pre-requisite for this is to give members the ownership of the project, too many controls in the project environment and the positive effects of invisible work dies out and the negative effects spreads within i.e. lack of ownership, team disconnect, work to rule syndrome etc.

Impact groups

This occurs when individuals form a bond together on a particular problem within the project and then work together to solve it and then move away. This group tend to be very efficient than the groups that has been setup to solve an issue since Impact group’s main focus is to get the job done and move on to their routine, so by human nature they work to solving the problem sooner than later. PMO cannot identify these groups until they are formed, but when they do they need to make sure the individuals in them are allowed to move on to other areas once the issue is rectified, if not this group’s efficiency tends to fall if there are not moved around.

Influence teams

An influence team is created by combinations of business users who come in from different areas of the business and external parties to the project. From a project point of view, the PMO needs to be able to identify these influence teams and make sure that either they or their ideas are brought in during project requirement gathering phases, more often that not the business users are the only ones involved, but it wouldn’t hurt to bring in the external parties as well, I’ve seen this happening in only a few projects.

Hope you found this quick post informative, I’ll be adding more of this as it hovers above me......

Have a nice day!!

About the Author

Too basic, it can almost be ignored... but shouldn’t !!

2011-10-17T09:29:00.001+05:30

By Suren

There have been many articles, research papers and books written around the success and failure of ERP projects, and they explain in details on what to do, how to do it, what not to do and so on. However the reality is that it is only human tendency to overlook some basic ground rules which everyone knows and accepts, but somehow has been overlooked.

To keep it simple, I’ll like to breakdown the key areas by their importance in the Initiation & execution project phases, since these areas take up the biggest chunk on a project life cycle.

Initiation & Planning

Scope verification – Freeze the base, with a wobbly base you are not going to get anywhere. Check if a document has been laid out with what are the key requirements of the business, try and define this in tangible terms and how much of it is to be covered in each phase of the project.
Cost / Benefit Analysis – The PMO has got to do this analysis to avoid going over budget.
Stakeholder support –Draw up a stakeholder matrix and pass it onto PMO & all key project members (Leads etc) so they are all on the same page with stakeholder’s roles, responsibilities and power.
Supplier Responsibility Documentation – A document detailing out what the vendor is responsible for and what the client is for.
Draw up initiatives & communicate to project members. It’s always nice to know the rewards of good work before starting on it than after.

Execution

Supplier deliverable checks – Cross check the execution steps with the Supplier responsibility documentation.
Resources - Always a key. Plan for contingencies and move them around. Name and list down those individuals who can fit into multiple roles and keep them happy. A few good guys can take you a long way.
Focus on good sound business decisions / solutions – Don’t let people get carried away with developing and designing solutions that don’t make business sense but is fancy and nice to show to the higher management.
Communicate Deadlines – Keep project members aware of their key milestone, keep it transparent to everyone.

If you’ve been involved in project implementations for a long time the above list almost feels like second nature, but having them actually laid down on the table in a project environment is the key but in most cases a “RARITY”.

Almost there, but not quite!! (Also known as “Time to Market” syndrome)

2011-09-07T05:59:00.000+05:30

By S. Suren

Many companies brand themselves as innovative and want to build a learning and innovative culture within the organisation, whether these are small or large enterprises, all of them tend to strive for the same thing, but what happens eventually is both of them have their own resource problems when it comes to launching the product into the market (time to market).

It is a known fact that any innovative product needs to have the shortest time to market, which means everything else surrounding that product needs to be expedited including its product & project life cycle phases. Examples of some companies who churn out new products on the go are apple, salesforce.com & Virgin.

Most experts would agree that smaller company tend to be more innovative than large ones and typically their time to market would be faster, however this might not necessarily be the case, a few factors, like those listed below tend to show otherwise :

• Shop floor to Shelf time
• Final product’s ecosystem
• Continuity

Shop floor to shelf is the ability to move through the product lifecycle to come out with a base version. Generally smaller companies don’t procrastinate, i.e. they don’t wait until everything is perfect and gone through the various different level of a product life cycle, and they most often have the instinct to go when you feel you are 80% ready. However this could be in their favour or against them.

Final Product’s ecosystem is how best to use the existing business model to sell the new product. Trying to do anything very different if what you are doing presently and which works takes time, because re-inventing the wheel takes time. Large companies tend to try to do something different to satisfy their need to create a new channel to build a business division, a new office block, new designations and what not!! Smaller companies don’t have a choice and go with what they’ve got.

Continuity is the ability to have the resources and systems in place to work on the next version immediately once the first version is out. This is where I feel large companies have the better hand, since they can afford to do this; smaller companies on the other hand generally experience a lag during this time.

Just like as mentioned in growth models (e.g. Greiner’s) in management books, innovativeness tends to die out as companies become larger this is mainly due to red tape, however if the companies can treat each sub unit as business entities with their own entrepreneurs, innovative ideas would come about, most often than not this is practised in only the marketing or development unit of the business, but I feel this can be practised in other areas of the business too.

Most large companies like to believe they have an internal culture to accommodate this innovativeness but deep down they all know that if the simplest of things like a leave approvals takes time it sure is going to take time to launch a new product into the market !!

Hope you found this post informative. Feel free to mail your comments to ssurenlk@msn.com

Picking the right Consultants

2011-08-19T10:14:00.001+05:30

By Suren

Generally there are many ERP Implementations which tend to show resemblance of an implementation of a similar company elsewhere, why is this, the reason can be identified by taking a look at the consultants prior experience, most of them would have implemented what they already had done successfully in a previous project.

Sometime, this is good because it’s a solution that’s been tried, tested and has worked, however this need not always be the best solution for the current business requirements. That’s why I feel it’s always a good idea to have a consulting team with members from diverse implementation experiences from different companies within the same industry, this way as a company you’ll be picking out the best of the tested processes from different companies into your own.

Well, that said, this shouldn’t always have to be the consultants, look at the business users as well, if you’ve got business users in the implementation team all coming in with similar prior experiences from a previous implementation, then it’s likely you can expect the same as with a consultant.

However have no doubt, of the previous implementation experience that the consultants and the business users will bring into the company that should always be valued and rewarded. Just make sure it doesn’t get to a level where the current business requirements are overlooked and instead a solution that worked well for another business’s requirements and processes are being implemented in your business!!

All the best!!

World Economy: What goes down must go UP and down again!!

2011-08-09T07:51:00.002+05:30

By Suren

Massive deficits, enormous debts and asset bubbles ready to pop, everyone is keeping an eye out on if there is going to be another GFC. There are telling signs that this could well in fact happen, but this time the experts predict if there are no proper actions by the countries that are experiencing these debts, we could see countries collapsing instead of companies, like what happened to Lehman brothers that sparked the financial crisis on 2008.

Thing don’t look too good for now, but then it never has, the last 3 years was the slowest move out of a dip in the markets and broadly due to the collective thinking of the general public that the worst is over, and this saw an uplift in many economies.

The stock market is controlled by human emotions and that of the mass general average investors. With the news about the credit rating in US and everything else that’s happening in Europe it’s not going to be surprising that the investors are going to pull out and save, and in effect curtail spending, increasing unemployment and most likely another GFC.

What’s more alarming this time is that the market could take longer to recover since stimulus package are going to be a rarity, international support is going to be a long shot especially since major players like China have their portfolios already tied in on US assets that are wobbly to say the least.

So then with all this what is the impact for ERP Implementations, there sure it going to be a dip but not at least until 2012, the best position for IT Consultants and IT Businesses is to make sure they setup sustainable business deals that will keep them afloat until mid 2013, current projects will continue since these have sunk costs in them and will have to be seen through, but come 2012 the budgets are going to take a beating and IT most probably is going to be the first to have the axe come down on it.

Up skill, expand into cross functional roles, build networks and be on the move would be the call of the day during this GFC period.

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, adapt to it and make it work for you.

Latest in the ERP Arena

2011-06-19T08:25:00.006+05:30

By Suren

In this article I thought I’ll share with you all some of the latest happenings in the ERP Arena.

• SAP & IBM targeting SAGE - The big story right now is the rumours going around that SAP and IBM are looking to acquire SAGE. What this does is, makes the playing field smaller, just like it was forecasted a few years back when we saw a series of acquisitions in the ERP Arena, the number of ERP service providers core brand wise is going to reduce, however hopefully the number of ERP Products out there will continue to remain for some more time before we see any major change. My guess is a lot of products that have been acquired by larger ERP vendors could be eventually phased out in the next 5 -1 0 years, after all some of them have already been given time only until 2014.

• SAP ‘s new Business Analytics tool – SAP has been working hard on its business intelligence suits ever since it took over Business Objects, for all valid reason they don’t want to lose out on the benefits of not using the rich functionalities that BOBJ has to offer when integrated with SAP. SAP’s new applications SAP BusinessObjects Edge 4.0 and SAP Crystal Server are targeted at the small and mid-size companies.

• Sharing of SAP Support Staff: There seems to be a growing trend of companies which have SAP ERP implemented looking to share their SAP support staff with other similar companies in a way to generate some additional revenue and reduce the dependence on external expensive consultants. This trend seems to have picked up in a few companies in California, however time will tell if this approach is successful, I have personally seen one such SAP Support staff sharing model failing miserably and ended up with a company paying a very expensive price.

• A new Spanish based open source ERP is beginning to make its footprints in the US market. It’s called Openbravo.

• A state university which implemented Oracle PeopleSoft ERP suit is now suing ORACLE over Project Cost overruns. The case is in court and proceeding at its own pace as expected.

Those were just some of the news that have made headline over the past couple of weeks, I shall update the site with more as and when new events happen in the ERP Arena. Hope you found this post informative.

Feel free to drop me your comments, suggestions and feedback on ssurenlk@msn.com

Let’s Integrate this, that & that too....!!

2011-04-19T05:17:00.003+05:30

By S.Suren

Well everyone have been talking about the term “Globalization” and how everyone and everything in this world is beginning to make sense of the benefits that arise out of integration of global networks. This is a good thing, because people and systems are accepting the ideas and learning to sync in with this and not be left behind in the growth potential it has to offer.

Given that, it’s no big surprise that over a period of time, these systems become just too big and complicated, are implemented across various geographical location linked via other systems, be it banking interfaces, EDIs, B2B, B2Eco, cloud networking systems etc,...... and after a point of time, no one has any clue as to what’s worth integrating with this system and whats actually bringing in some kind of value addition to the business’s strategic goal, though the truth is everyone would like to think they know the exact business drivers that require this change and the exact ROI the integration is going to bring, but they wouldn’t have thought of a measurement by which to gauge how effective the integration has actually been.

In my opinion, I would state that the best way to gauge the value addition of the integrated system is to simply identify those areas of the system that have a direct interaction point to the customers / clients. It is true there are many back office operations that need to be in place in order to cater to the requirement of those working on the frontend but remember the key element is that the front end operation is only as efficient as the back end operations.

In a previous article I had mentioned that based on research it was identified that an ERP system tends to give back true definable ROI only after 18 Months (this is after taking into consideration user acceptance, systems functional ability, learning curves etc), if this is true then as new systems are being integrated and the system developed further it means it’s just going to prolong the ROI time frame, however there is always a very visible benefit from the 1 month onwards, that cannot be denied.

Integration brings along its business benefits for sure, but unless you have a clear measurement laid down to gauge the effectiveness of the integration and a scope of work set as a base for the basic initial integration points, it’s going to be a long and winding path ahead before you reach your destination.

These are just my opinion, I am sure everyone out there have their own which I’ll love to hear. Your suggestions, feedback and comments are all welcomed at ssurenlk@msn.com.

Staying on your toes !!

2011-01-11T08:03:00.002+05:30

By Suren

Sometime back I had posted an article “The Business Model that worked“, in which I explained how SAP’s business model reaches out to clients far and wide from their backyard Germany.
With the increase in SAP Consulting partners and the lucrative market for senior level SAP Consultants, everyone wants a piece of the pie and hence SAP Vendors kept popping up all over the place.

I am sure SAP has a tough screening process where vendors need to submit a business plan before they are accredited as a SAP Channel Partner, however with the latest developments you just begin to think maybe SAP needs to keep a close eye on the resources deployed on large projects of their SAP Channel Partners.

Only recently Deloitte was being sued by the California's Marin County with a $30M lawsuit over an ERP project with them, which they state was substantially worse than legacy system it was meant to replace and accuses Deloitte of misrepresenting its skills and capabilities when originally pitching for the project in 2004.

Not so long ago we saw one of the largest ERP lawsuits which was for $61M. This was in December, when an Alabama jury awarded pet food manufacturer Sunshine Mills $61 million in connection with a suit it had filed against ERP vendor Ross Systems, a subsidiary of CDC Software.

On another note, if you have been following my article updates, very recently SAP itself was successfully sued by ORACLE over the TomorrowNow saga. The final verdict was that SAP was ordered to pay 1.3 billion dollars in damages in a record-setting copyright infringement award, and now ORACLE wants SAP to pay a further $211M for interest. Oh Larry!!

However it’s important we don’t get carried away by these, since given the number of ERP projects out there, there is always a chance that some could topple over also keep in mind that there are over 1000’s of successful ERP projects rolling out every month.

All this makes you wonder, is it the channel partners or is it the business model, since there are ERP Companies out there who setup their own local offices in every region and market that they enter. This way the top tier management of the actual ERP Company have a direct influence over the large projects, well we can’t expect these from all ERPs since some of them are just too big to maintain control at a project level.

Being aware of these developments in the industry helps you stay on your toes in whatever you do !!

Hope you enjoyed this post.

Have a nice day!!

ssurenlk@msn.com

2010-12-30T08:22:00.003+05:30

Thank you readers for your support during 2010.
Wish you a fabulous New Year ahead !!

Emerging Technologies !!!

2010-12-10T06:17:00.006+05:30

By Suren

With so many new technologies popping up within the already complicated business technology landscape, it is easy to miss out on the new developments emerging in our industry that have an implication on how we do things.

I’ve listed down some good reads about the latest technology to hit the business landscape in consideration to ERP systems:

SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance (HANA) - SAP HANA promises near real-time analysis of dynamic data within SAP applications as well as external systems to deliver time-sensitive insight
Adaptation of Cloud Computing & virtualization (as always) by ERPs
Consumerization of IT (Link to my previous article)
Parallel Computing
B2? – This is something I’ve coined up; I’ll be putting out an article on this soon. It’s just my way of communicating that no longer would businesses always depend on B2B or B2C solutions; instead the new trend is to identify what serves them best in terms of cost and efficiency. So then what is it going to be, B2?? Read about how B2B and B2C work and how they could be aligned together.

Would recommend that you take some time to read about the above, since after all, knowing what is out there is always a good thing.

Have a nice day!!

You comments, suggestions and feedback are welcomed at ssurenlk@msn.com

Modifiying the Drill Down Reports !!

2010-12-09T07:20:00.018+05:30

By Suren

This post is to simply list down some basic steps on how to modify the drill down reports that are built in SAP to reflect the Vendor and Customer balances. The report shows balances in a vertical format, but most often the clients want them in a horizontal format with the balances shown separately under each day range.

For this you simply need to do the following, however I would recommend that you first do this in a sandbox client and then try this in the production client, remember however that once the form is changed, all users would see the new horizontal form.

- Go to FKI2 if you want to change the report parameters. This is how the form would initially look like:

- Go to FKI5 to change the form. These changes can be done in the path in SPRO, under Info System under the AP/AR main node.

- Go to the “Define Form” and choose to “Change. If the client don’t want to see the Not Due and Total OI column in every time intervals then select the “Not Due” column and the “Total OI” column and go to extras “Drill down Display -> Undo Selection”. Then delete these columns from the form.

- After this just rename the date ranges to calculate the balance different for the day ranges that the clients wants to see. Finally the form would look like this:

And voila the report when generated would look like this :

That's about it. Just a few simple steps to change the form in SAP to a more readable format, and in case you want to bring back the old report format then you can overwrite this report by selecting the Environment -> Import Report, option in FKI5.

All the best !!

Oracle and SAP – Show me the MONEY!!

2010-11-11T07:59:00.001+05:30

By Suren

Well if you've been a regular reader of this site, you would know that Oracle and SAP have been going at each other now for close to 2 years, with their law suit on the TomorrowNow scandal.

This is where; Oracle said a SAP subsidiary, TomorrowNow, created bogus accounts to get access to walled-off Oracle websites. Once inside, Oracle said, TomorrowNow deployed computer programs that powered through page after page of support documents, "scraping" and saving the contents of those pages as they went (excerpts from ZDNET).

Oracle claims that this corporate espionage has led to ORACLE losing out close to $4 billion in lost sales and support agreement. Well that’s what Larry Ellison claims anyway; however SAP suggests that this would probably just run into a few 100 millions.

This case has been going on for so long now, however the recent developments suggests that a settlement could happen quite soon. Just a few days back the court cut $500M off Oracle's potential damages, so now the figure as per ORACLE would stand at $3.5 billion.

Well, given the recent developments, executives & lawyers suggests that this could end before the end of this year, which means...someone’s going to pay (most probably SAP) and someone’s going to gain whatever the amount (ORACLE and the lawyers on both sides offcourse, who can forget them).

Given all this, the share prices have been reflecting the court drama just a little up to now, however as we get closer to the final decision, it’s likely to fluctuate.

Anyway as far as SAP Consultants are concerned, just continue to code ABAP and configure using SPRO, cause its very unlikely that this could have a major catastrophic effect on the companies already running SAP or the ones who are to implement it, SAP has spun its web too big now, that certain consulting companies themselves can support SAP in the future, maybe they might even come together to form an alliance....you never know!!

I’m open for comments & insights on ssurenlk@msn.com.

Have a nice day!!

The ERP Arena Update:

2010-08-12T05:25:00.005+05:30

By Suren:

So what been happening in the ERP Arena over the past 2 weeks, well there is quite a lot of interesting events that have unfolded and are still unfolding as you read this article.

SAP and ORACLE are at it again.

We all know that the TomorrowNow saga wasn’t over by a long way. It was just ruled out for sometime but now the court hearing is getting close and many analysts believe this could be the final hearing. If Oracle does succeed in its damage claim of $1B then, SAP’s operating cash flow is going to take a hit; the figure seems to be approx 20%, not to mention the sunk cost of legal administration fees and punitive damages already incurred.

SAP’s & Capgemini Cloud services

SAP has certified Capgemini U.S LLC as their first vendor for their capabilities to deliver and manage SAP® applications via Capgemini’s cloud delivery platform. This could be interesting since other giants like IBM; Accenture will be after SAP for this certification very soon. Once they go for this, then they’ll be all out beginning to convince clients worldwide about the benefits of Cloud computing, give them best rates for this service and move the whole ERP Industry towards cloud computing around the next 10 years itself.

So if you are a consultant I would recommend that you up skill yourself with cloud computing technologies such as hosted solutions SAP has to offer like BusinessByDesign, NetSuite Cloud software, Streamwork etc.

Sybase & SAP

If you have been a regular reader of my site you know that SAP took over Sybase sometime back for circa $5.8bn (£3.63bn),but then the questions was what was SAP’s product strategic for it.

Well just as expected it has come to light that SAP were looking to enter the game of Mobile Apps platform that will be closely integrated with their back-end business solutions. Sybase announced a new version of its mobile application development platform that is tightly integrated with SAP’s back-end business data.

Sybase’s Unwired Platform version 1.5.2 has a SAP connectivity plug-in which allows developers to directly access SAP data sources and develop mobile applications for SAP and other business applications which perhaps are also tightly integrated with SAP. SAP and Sybase were always developer partners for their integrated solutions so; it was just a matter of time for something of this sort to happen.

Hope you found this informative, will keep you posted on new happenings as they unfold. For comments mail me at ssurenlk@msn.com

GREEN ERP !!

2010-08-09T05:33:00.009+05:30

By Suren

Many of you have probably heard the term "Be Green". First Green Planet, Green Energy, then came Green House Manufacturing and now, Green ERP??!! The first question in everyone’s mind would be how can we expect an ERP System to be green and in turn contribute to our planet’s green environment?

Well, I did some reading on this and this is what I have come to unearth (green talk). I am sure you have all at some point of time seen those IBM Ads that talk about how a green system could help the environment; well this was my starting point.

Though people term it as Green ERP what it really means is how the ERP provides different industry specific solution that provides the information necessary for the management to help with their strategic green initiatives. Some of the best industry solutions that the ERP Vendors would need to look at to be able to term their ERP as Greener than others, would be industries associated with transportation and manufacturing.

Simply put, the better functionalities available in the system to be able to track and monitor the logistical operation with a financial view point, will help identify those processes that are not value adding and at the same time have a high consumption of non-renewable resources, and by identifying and eliminating these will help towards the achievement of being a more green company.

Some examples (without going into too many details):

1. Take for instance a manufacturing company that often only ships goods, however if their production takes more time than anticipated, they would have to airfreight them adding to more fuel consumption per unit of the good transported as opposed to sea freight, so there you go with an ERP they could plan better and meet their deadlines and in turn contribute to the environment, evidence of Green ERP!!

2. By using an ERP systems functionality to select the best routes possible for a transportation company, will help reduce their fuel consumption, this was actually practiced by a well known company that helped it reduce their fuel bills by upto 30% and thereby contribute to their global green strategy.

3. In the service sector perhaps by identifying the resource requirements of personals involved will help to better plan their time, so if its identified that the service personal has no need to travel anywhere for a particular day, maybe the management could ask him to work from home, this would save on his/her travelling time and thereby help reduce whatever little fuel he/she might use in getting to work. After all, the energy saved at work by that person working from home is also likely to contribute to a green initiative, and did you know, studies show that employees working from home put it more productive hours than they would at office.

4. With the new software solution model architectures such as “SaaS”, means that hosted solution by the ERP Vendor will help the client’s costs in terms of energy and related costs associated with having to maintain their own server rooms, infrastructure etc. When looking at these implications at a larger scale it does seem to point out that there is a green impact that software model architectures like these have.

5. Not to forget the paperless office that an ERP System can bring to an organization. Less paper means more trees saved which in turn helps in lowering temperatures, filtering dust, and absorbing ozone, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and heavy metals, and by of course releasing oxygen, and there we go a direct connection on how an ERP can be Green!!

The above list is not exhaustive; there are many more examples that can be given, but for now this is it, perhaps in the future I shall posts more!!

Have a nice day!!

Your comments, suggestions and questions are welcomed at: ssurenlk@msn.com

"The World of Consulting"

2010-07-31T06:25:00.017+05:30

By Suren

Having been in the ERP Consulting field ever since I finished high school, and having worked with 3 different ERP Solutions, handling clients from all levels of a business and consulting in 6+ countries, I believe I can confidently say that "The world of consulting doesn’t seem to disappoint in throwing up new challenges just when you thought you’ve seen 'em all", but come on, that’s what makes this job what it is, challenging, exciting and a lot of fun.

Every time you come across a tough client or a requirement and you have taken on that challenge and come out triumph, around the corner there is another one waiting, this is what makes no 2 days the same in a consultant's life.

To get through these challenges, it is very important for a consultant to have a cool head and strong personal skills, because at the end of the day it doesn't matter if you are a wiz in what you do technically, but if you cannot put forward your case to have it done then there is absolutely no point. I strongly believe it’s the mix and match of technical (knowledge area speciality) and personal skills that makes a consultant tick.

Having the right mix of personal and technical skills will surely make you a better consultant, so all the best and keep yourself prepared for the right opportunity when it comes knocking. With the outlook for economies worldwide to rebound still looking good, it just about time for the opportunities to come your way. I for one don’t believe in luck, the definition of luck is “preparation meeting opportunity”, so be prepared and go for it.

Dr.Alan Weiss made a very wise statement that “Consultants are not another pair of hands. They are a new brain.” and I can’t agree more!!

Have a nice day!!

ssurenlk@msn.com

Consumerization in IT, taking over !!

2010-05-10T21:35:00.001+05:30

By Suren

The term “Consumerization” has been used in many IT Seminars and conference throughout the last 10 years, but its prominence is increasing more than ever during the last couple of years and is likely to increase even more so in the future.

Gartner has been predicting that Consumerization is going to be the way forward, all software companies need to begin to understand this concept and build their product to satisfy this neologism.

To put it into simple words, Consumerization of IT is where new technologies are being introduced into consumer markets prior to entry into the industrial market. This is the trend that is taking over and businesses are beginning to understand that as well, for instance software’s like Google desktop, skype, and maybe even twitter for journalist to send out regular updates to the news room.

There are more enterprises now focusing on software’s for consumers as a starting point and then moving onto the industry market. The companies that focus on this would be the ones to thrive and at the end the ones to benefit would be the consumers obviously and the businesses that cater to this growing trend.

So keep yourself updated on these terms since these could come up very handy. After all, all business users also want ERPs that are as simple to use as possible but at the same time satisfying some of the most complex requirements, simple yet powerful and yeah I know that’s a “cliché”!!

Have a nice day!!

Your suggestions, feedbacks and comments are welcome at ssurenlk@msn.com

SAP’s SME Solutions – A Guide to the Product Portfolio

2010-04-23T15:55:00.004+05:30

With all that has been happening around with ERP Solution's in terms of Cloud computing, SaaS, SOA and WOA, it only natural that the markets that these new models would best suit be researched and analysed in detail, to be broken up into its minute forms to identify the absolute potential in it.

My good friend at "Software Advice" has done this research and a complete analysis of the SAP SME Solutions. The article is now available at the below link.

"SAP’s SME Solutions – A Guide to the Product Portfolio"

Hope you find this informative, as well.

Have a nice day !!

ssurenlk@msn.com

Is the cloud getting bigger?!!

2010-04-05T12:02:00.001+05:30

By Suren

As you are probably aware everybody out there is talking about cloud computing and how it could and is already revolutionizing the way businesses operate. Cloud computing has already proved its worth on the internet with social networking sites like facebook , MySpace etc and now it’s just getting bigger with business beginning to realize its true potential.

SAP is all set to move with SaaS solutions into new regions with a more aggressive approach, this time it’s India and SAP is moving in with their BusinessObjects Business Intelligence OnDemand solutions to meet a growing demand from companies of all sizes for software-as-a-service (SaaS) business intelligence (BI) tools in the region.

On the other hand we see ERP Vendors working with web Services' cloud computing infrastructure services provided by companies like Amazon. Lawson ERP is launching a "test drive" service that will enable customers to try out its software on Amazon for up to two weeks, using "their own business processes and data." Lawson being among the top 5 largest ERPs in the world, its only about time before we see other ERP Vendors also following a similar type of business hosting options and this in turn could create new opportunities for companies specializing in providing these cloud services.

The other development has been SAP’s Streamwork real-time collaboration platform which is very much similar to the Google Wave that was introduced by Google sometime back. SAP have introduced this collaboration tool as a meeting solutions for project members to discuss on their tasks etc, and as an analytical tool to analysis data on enterprise applications and/or perform certain functions in an ERP itself. Though many could argue if this is of a cloud computing architecture, since most of the options are hosting and enable people to share and store information in the clouds (so to speak), I believe we would classify this as an advancement in cloud computing solutions.

That’s all for now, I shall keep updating as and when new developments happen in the ERP Arena.

Hope you found this post informative. Your comments, suggestions and feedback can be sent to ssurenlk@msn.com.

Categorizing ERP Components !!

2010-03-15T09:57:00.005+05:30

By Suren :

As an ERP consultant it is very important that we know how the ERP Components are categorized, because be it in pre-sales or implementations we are likely to come across a situation where we need to be able to explain this to the clients. I was surprised when I came across consultants in the field who after years of experience still find it hard to properly categorize the components. So here goes, just make sure you have some idea of this, just in case someone asks.

ERP Components

Transactional Backbone

* Financials
* Distribution
* Human Resources
* Product lifecycle management

Advanced Applications

* Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
* Supply chain management
o Purchasing
o Manufacturing
o Distribution
* Warehouse Management System

Management Portal/Dashboard

* Decision Support System (BI etc)

These modules can exist in a complete system or utilized in an ad-hoc fashion. (Courtesy :Wikipedia)

It also definitely helps to know how ERP evolved and the story behind it. For my previous post on this topic click here.

Hope this info is useful. Feel free to contact me on ssurenlk@msn.com.

Have a nice day !!

Developments in the ERP Arena !!

2010-03-08T09:59:00.003+05:30

The last couple of months have seen many developments in the ERP Arena. In this post I thoughts I'll discuss a few of those.

-- SAP has almost seen a total change of leadership at the senior level. Now they have a lean management structure that has two co-CEOs and a CFO, COO and CTO.

-- The Chinese getting into the game of providing cheaper software. With the recession taking its toll on unemployment and low income, many software companies in China are now going India's way developing softwares and other service sector industries.

-- Cloud computing has become the talk of the town, especially with those companies that have been trying out the SaaS model. Service agreements, cost contracts are all being changed in its core to get the buy in from clients. Rightnow.com seems to be coming up with very innovative yet practical solutions for software buyers. Read more: link

-- The job market for ERP Consultants seems to be picking up too atleast in most regions. I personally have seen a increase in the mails and inquiries on job openings and others. For those interested in part time contracts in Asia in the SAP MM module, feel free to email me.

The next few months are likely to see many more developments in the ERP Arena, I shall do my best to keep posting such updates.

For any suggestions, comments and feedback, mail me at ssurenlk@msn.com

Facts as it is!!

2010-02-10T20:21:00.004+05:30

By S.Suren

In this posts I thought I’ll list out some of the finding that have been uncovered from studies by famous research companies on the ERP Industry and its likely trends forecasted for the coming years.

The statistics below have been collected by an independent consulting group that has performed an ERP benchmark study that polled over 2000 organizations. These are some of the more interesting facts pulled out from that report, together with my own analysis of these facts:

• 64% cited poor integration between functional areas in the old system as a driver for a new system, followed by 62% citing poor visibility to reports and key operational data.

- Though it states there is 64% site poor functional areas integration with their old system how many of the companies actually do start off by conducting a study such as this. This is an initiative that needs to be internally triggered.

• Over 60% of organizations suffer from poor visibility to data and poor integration in their old systems.

• 69% percent of companies expect their systems to improve business performance, while 39% expect the new system to standardize business operations and 39% also expect the new system to make employees’ jobs easier.

- Studies also show that typical ERP implementations tend to generate a tangible return on investment after 18 months in operations. This is expected to be the time that the average user and management would take to understand the potential of the system and begin to adhere to the processes setup.

• Over 40% of companies implementing ERP software are dealing with either a new CEO or the addition of new office locations.

• 53% of implementing organizations self-assess their ability to deal with change as fairly poor or very poor.

- This is where Change management plays a very vital role in any project, especially system implementations. Many PMP books emphasis on this, but when in a project environment as most often the case there is no direct focus on change management in terms of milestones to be achieved and documentations to record the progress. This I would believe should be an integral part of the project manager’s duties.

• Nearly 50% of companies in the process of implementing ERP software have not yet started their organizational change, training, or communication plans. In addition, 42% have not developed a business case and ROI analysis, which suggests companies are not ready to measure and manage the business benefits they expect to achieve.

- So often the case, the business is more concerned about the consulting company addressing all the requirements of the users and being able to satisfy this in the system. Even sometime if the process identified is inefficient they might want the exact same thing in the system, and without their knowledge they have brought in the same inefficiencies into the new system as well.

Courtesy: Anya Ciecierski, CAL Business Solutions (http://www.erpsoftwareblog.com/)

All of these are interesting facts and if you have been long enough in this industry you pretty much have already come across situations such as these, but now since it has been analyzed numerically, it’s easier to quantify the impact.

Feel free to send in your comments/suggestions and feedback to ssurenlk@msn.com.

FICO Certification Exam KIT !!

2010-01-30T20:30:00.002+05:30

Dear Friends,

We have introduced a FICO certification practice software. It has been priced at a nominal $5 to cover our costs. This will certainly help all those preparing for the SAP certification exams. Currently it's available for FI and CO modules. We will release other modules in future. Software can be purchased at

http://store.payloadz.com/details/784249-Software-Training-Passmaster.html

Note : This download version is not supported on Windows 7, the new compatible version will be out soon !!

For more information on software visit : http://www.azione-group.com/

Would appreciate your feedback.

Concept of Content Management !!

2009-12-03T09:28:00.003+05:30

By S.Suren

In this article I thought I’ll discuss on the concept of Content Management and how ERP Vendors are looking to add this to their solution offering. The term they give for it is “Enterprise Content Management Solution”.

Every business has data, for which they need a database to hold it in, a network to share it among the organization and a software to make sense of it all. Just like that, the organization would also want to keep track of the legal paperwork involved in the business transaction, and to do this we need to link document contents to business context and this is where content management solutions comes into the picture.

There are many Content Management Solution out there, that cater specifically to this requirement of managing contents within the organization in the most efficient and effective manner, and most of these solution providers are already working with large ERP vendors in order to build the solution into the ERP itself. A good example of this would where OPENTEXT (ECM Vendor) has partnered up with SAP to provide an integrated solution. SAP will offer for resale the Open Text Extended ECM for SAP under the name of "SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management".

Just like this there are many other ERP Vendors also working with ECM Vendors to come up with integrated solutions.

Listed below are a few benefits that a Content Management Solution could bring to an organization:

• Track business process with information contained in the content

• Better informed decision making due to the available of important documents shared company wide

• Centralized visibility – Get a consolidated view of all information relevant to a transaction on one screen

• Improve operation’s efficiency and productivity

• A complete view of documents involved in a particular business context

• Extract relevant information from the integrated solutions working with the ECM solution

• Reduction in maintenance and invisible costs associated with keeping track of manual documents

• Improve service delivery by integrating disparate systems and processes to increase speed-to-market

• Capture your organization’s ideas, experience and knowledge that drive best practices—from inception to archiving to retrieval—for sustained, steady growth

• Integration with the existing environment – Implement the application quickly with the assurance of linkage with all relevant data and functionality in your existing software

These are just few of the benefits that a company can achieve with Content Management solutions. Hope you found this post informative.

Have a nice day!!

ssurenlk@msn.com

Cloud Computing and its silver lining !!

2009-11-19T16:06:00.001+05:30

By S.Suren

In my previous article I had spoken about various software architectures such as SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), SOCA (Service Oriented Component based Architecture) , SaaS (Software as a service) and WOA (Web Oriented Architecture) and how these are beginning to play an impact on the way software’s and hardwares are going to be distributed in the future.

However, just like anything else, things change and that’s what keeps the world moving forward. So here we go a new term, Cloud Computing, this is new thing around the corner. Many ERP Vendors are talking about, experts are brainstorming if this is the right way forward and then there are those daring companies that have already taken the step forward and doing very well at it.

The concept of cloud computing incorporates many different architectures in it such a Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS) and Software as a service (SaaS) and others that work on some kind of common business application online.

In laments term, cloud computing can be referred to where resources are rented from a third-party provider and billed accordingly to a consumption measure, i.e. more of a variable cost (OPex) than a Fixed Costs (CAPex). This has been the primary reason for its growing acceptance by customers worldwide.

Sun Microsystems, IBM, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are some of the major cloud computing service providers. It is being adopted by individual users through large enterprises including General Electric and Procter & Gamble : Source: Wikipedia.

Columbia law student and tech blogger Luis Villa, identified that Cloud Computing can be observed in 4 kinds of clouds, namely:

· hosted elsewhere (Salesforce.com);
· services involving data that can't (yet) be managed locally (Google Maps);
· services that make creation of new data technically or economically feasible (Wikipedia); and
· Services offering computing and storage, rather than data (Amazon Web Services, or AWS).

So there we go, this new system architecture looks very much feasible in many different aspects and looks like it’s here to stay, but then like I said previously , there is always one better just around the corner, but then how far away are we from the corner is the question !!

Stays informed and stay ahead of these terms, as a consultant in the ERP Field these things come in very handy during discussion with clients and colleagues alike.

Hope you found this post informative and interesting.

Feel free to drop me any queries, suggestions or feedback to ssurenlk@msn.com

Have a nice day!!