Interesting snippet from the recent Oracle earnings call:

Question (Kash Rangan – Merrill Lynch) So if I read it correctly, it is going to be ERP supply chain [cerium] for everything, HR, everything on demand, delivered as a multi [inaudible] service from your data sectors to add to the subscription model, right.

Answer (Larry Ellison) Absolutely but it’s not necessarily. The interesting thing is its not necessarily from our data center. We have three models. One is, we have on premise where you run it. We have on demand in our data center. I should say on premise in your data center where you run it. We have on demand in our data center where we run it. But then there is an on demand in your data center where we run it. So the computer is actually on your floor, behind your firewall, attached to your very fast local area network but we provide all the services.

And we think that’s where the real value is and we think that’s the interesting model. It’s a model that Salesforce.com does not offer. It’s a single tenancy on demand model, with a computer on your data center, highly secure, highly performance, but we provide all of the upgrade services and we administer the applications.

That’s proven to be a significant differentiator between us and Salesforce and what is allowing us to win virtually every large-scale deal.

Ellison is onto something, because the two top objections to on-demand are (1) confidential data being moved offsite into another entity’s care, and (2) end user performance.  The third model Ellison talks about – where the Oracle on-demand application infrastructure is in your datacenter, in your care, on your network – overcomes both of these.  It’s a compelling hybrid, and I suspect you’ll see other firms scramble to copy it.

(Via Dave C.)

(click to enlarge)

Requirements gathering.  So many organizations don’t realize this is often where success in a Business Intelligence (BI) deployment lives or dies.

When it comes to BI, we have all heard that BI is more than just simple reporting.  That’s become the BI vendor’s mantra.

However, the challenge we see all the time is how to realize the tremendous benefits of BI beyond reporting or even making existing reporting more valuable.  Through our experience and working with our clients, we have developed a proven, repeatable process to help make the vast promises of BI a reality.

It all begins with the premise that BI is not a tool, but rather part of the business process that should be used to improve business processes. Unfortunately, traditional report requirements gathering procedures have focused on – wait for it! – reports.  In essence, that process is flawed from the start.

If an organization simply wants reports that may or may not assist the business process or answer business questions, then the old, outmoded approach is fine.

What happens if you go down this road?

Well, tunnel-vision happens: if you ask users what type of reports they need, they will provide an answer based upon the limits of their experience and job domain.  Answers will be derived from what they use now, problems they have experienced in getting data or information, and “individualized” not process-based needs.  Their perception is based upon the knowledge or lack of knowledge of the true capabilities of BI.

That’s a myopic – and oft-committed – error when trying to establish a real BI practice.

Embedding Bi into the business process is really an exercise of peeling back the metaphorical onion. In looking at the diagram below, if we think of a business process such as AP invoice payment, each process is surrounded by six key questions/considerations.  By securing answers to these questions, we can help ensure that the requirements gathered do not result in a siloed report and that the downstream and upstream impact of this information is understood and usable.  As these questions are asked and answers interpreted, they ultimately influence and refine what is being asked for. This inevitably leads to improved business intelligence far beyond glorified reporting.

This is only the tip of this discussion.  If you would like to see additional detail and a practical example laid out in real-world terms, register for our free whitepaper, MiPro’s Business Intelligence Manifesto: Six Requirements for an Effective BI Deployment.  It provides much more information and expands upon the theoretical with plain English examples.

Also, if you would like further information on an enterprise BI strategy or BI applications in general, please email me.  I’m a nice guy.  If social media is more  your thing, you can follow us on Twitter or become our fan on Facebook.  Or, if old school RSS is your gig, you can subscribe here.

Related posts:

• Business Intelligence Apps: Build vs. Buy
• Business Intelligence: A Picture (or Flash Demo) Is Worth a Thousand Words
• Twitter vs. Enterprise Software
• Living Together: Oracle BI and PeopleSoft
• Back to basics: Why choose an enterprise Business Intelligence tool, anyway?
• Using BI to Survive the Recession, Part I
• Using BI to Survive the Recession, Part II
• Business Intelligence in the real world: Aligning metrics (Part I)
• Business Intelligence in the real world: Aligning metrics (Part II)

Related whitepapers (PDF):

• MiPro’s Business Intelligence Manifesto: Six Requirements for an Effective BI Deployment

Last week we dove into the Real Estate Management module included within PeopleSoft’s ALM product suite.  This week I’m going to dig into another module within the ALM product suite — Maintenance Management (MM).  For anyone interested in asset maintenance and reliability, this one’s for you.

Given the rough sledding in the economy right now, managing a company’s assets is hugely topical.  Here’s a quote from a June 2009 AMR Research Report entitled Asset Management Algebra: EAM = ROI:

“Companies don’t have the luxury of large capital budgets in today’s economy. They have to do more—or at least as much—with less. This means that, in respect to their assets, they have to wring out efficiency and extend the life and usefulness of their existing plants, property, and equipment. This is at the core of many organizations’ enterprise asset management programs.”

The PeopleSoft MM system is a full function, end-to-end solution providing complete visibility and control of a company’s capital and non-capital assets. Assets are managed throughout their entire lifecycle, from acquisition through in-service and ultimately to retirement. PeopleSoft customers using the MM system enjoy the benefits of reduced capital equipment downtime, lower costs to maintain these assets, and ease of compliance with safety regulations. In addition, the fully integrated solution minimizes the TCO of the software solution.

Besides providing robust functionality, I believe the biggest benefit PeopleSoft customers receive is the integration into their existing PeopleSoft Financial, HCM, and Supply Chain systems. Interfacing a third-party MM system is expensive, complex, and time consuming. The PeopleSoft MM application ships with native integrations with the following PeopleSoft modules:

• PeopleSoft Asset Management
• PeopleSoft Project Costing
• PeopleSoft Resource Management
• PeopleSoft HCM
• PeopleSoft Purchasing
• PeopleSoft eProcurement
• PeopleSoft Inventory
• PeopleSoft Accounts Payable

To illustrate my point, consider the lifecycle of a work order and all the systems it touches, from generation of the work order to performing the work required, closing out the work order, as well as all the associated accounting.  It’s a lot and complex, so let’s walk through an example.

When a work order is generated, it may access the inventory system for spare parts availability, the purchasing system if parts or other MRO items are not on hand and need to be purchased, the accounts payable system to handle the payment of the purchased MRO items or spare parts, the HCM system to determine what person(s) has the skills to perform the work, and the general ledger and asset management systems after the work is performed.  Lots and lots of touchpoints, and this is a relatively limited example.

It is not uncommon for a PeopleSoft customer using a third-party MM system to develop and maintain over 20 bi-directional interfaces to the GL, AP, Inventory, Procurement, HCM and Asset Management systems. PeopleSoft MM eliminates these integration headaches with its native ties to other PeopleSoft systems.  If you think this is just spec sheet fodder, it’s not: these out-of-box integrations save massive amounts of time and effort.

So, what about the ROI?  Let’s again go back to what AMR Research says:

“EAM systems can provide demonstrable results in a relatively short time frame. In today’s environment, where budgets are tight and freeing up or conserving working capital is paramount, developing and implementing a robust EAM solution can help deliver incremental profit to the bottom line.”

PeopleSoft customers operating in asset-intensive verticals such as Mining, Utilities, Hospitality, Education, State/Local Government, Manufacturing and Oil/Gas would be well advised to review the benefits offered in the PeopleSoft MM system.  Likewise, if your organization has a fleet of vehicles, multiple capital assets used for production, or multiple facilities requiring ongoing maintenance, take the time to learn more about PeopleSoft Maintenance Management.

For more information on the PeopleSoft MM product, please email me or give us a call at 800-774-5187.  In addition, you can check out Oracle’s website and download some of the collateral related to the product.  If you’d like more of a in-depth primer on PeopleSoft MM’s and a deeper explanation of its benefits (especially compared to point solutions), download our free whitepaper entitled PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: An Introduction and Overview of Benefits.

Next week we’ll discuss the features and benefits of the PeopleSoft IT Asset Management (ITAM) application, the third asset management application contained in the PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) suite.  Be sure to come back (or subscribe to our RSS) if you’re interested.  Alternatively, if you’re into social media, hit us up on Twitter or become our fan on Facebook.

Related posts:

PeopleSoft Real Estate Management: A Deeper Look

An Introduction to PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management

Sneak Peek: PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal 9.1

PeopleTools 8.5: A Look Inside

Related whitepapers (PDF):

PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: An Introduction and Overview of Benefits

I gave this a passing link in our Oracle BI and PeopleSoft post last week, but I’m staring at it again and think it deserves its own post.

Here’s Jeff McQuigg, writing for IT Toolbox, on the total costs of Oracle’s BI apps vs. 100% custom:

When you add everything up, we estimate about a 7X effort increment to deliver a similar piece of functionality as the BI Apps. Although this seems high, when you really sit down and think about all of the moving parts that are needed, plus all of the complexities and start-up costs, the numbers become more realistic.

In other words, if you want to build your own BI apps — complete with all requirements gathering, data models, ETL, reports, and dashboard definitions — you’re looking at a cost, in sum, that’s seven times what you’d pay for Oracle’s excellent BI apps.

BI isn’t just technology, it’s a great deal of process engineering and planning.  If you look at it as merely a technology exercise, you may indeed get a functioning BI system, but will you legitimately get something above and beyond a few new reports?  Or will you get a platform on which your senior officers can make real-world business decisions?

Cost is a major factor, but solution value is the end game.  Keep that in mind when you’re juggling BI cost numbers.

(Thanks Larry Z.)

Related whitepapers (PDF):

MiPro’s Business Intelligence Manifesto: Six Requirements for an Effective BI Deployment

Vinnie Mirchandani:

Read this Google paper Data Center as Computer to understand why the average software company which cannot talk about PUEs and CRACs is going to be hopelessly outflanked by the amazon’s and salesforce’s.

Read this note by Dennis Howlett on why “not our problem” will be less and less acceptable as an excuse for a software vendor. Operations Management will become as important a competency as architecture, interface design and testing.

Either software vendors will pick up those competencies really quick, or they will leverage the infrastructure and operations experience of one of the pioneers – as Coda is doing with salesforce.

The disruption is here.  To sloppily paraphrase Bob Dylan, software companies have to get busy being born or get busy dying.  It’s not even about living anymore: if software vendors can’t be reborn into the new market, then they simply won’t survive.  Taking the “same as it ever was” approach is tantamount to getting busy dying.

Dramatic?  Probably.  But there’s lots of drama and noise and gnashing of teeth when something – anything – is facing disruption.  If you’re smart, you see the change coming and adapt to it, even if it means cost, re-org and effort.  If you’re myopic or a serial denier, you’ll get pulled into the event horizon and, well, don’t say you weren’t warned.

If you can remember last week through the Pre and iPhone hype, you’ll recall I discussed PeopleSoft’s ALM product suite at an introductory level. This  week we’ll take a deeper dive into Real Estate Management (REM), one of the modules included within the ALM suite. At the 10,000 foot level, PeopleSoft REM enables organizations to manage and track lease contracts, monitor and optimize space utilization and allocations, and ensure compliance with FASB and other regulatory entities.

The REM system also allows PeopleSoft customers to manage leases both as a landlord and/or a tenant, providing flexibility and visibility into all their lease obligations.  Many organizations we have worked with use a third-party application or Excel spreadsheets to manage their leases, which forces them to manually enter their lease payment information into the PeopleSoft Accounts Payable/Billing application.  This redundant data entry is completely eliminated with PeopleSoft Real Estate Management system, mainly because of prebuilt integrations to:

• PeopleSoft Asset Management
• PeopleSoft General Ledger
• PeopleSoft Accounts Payable
• PeopleSoft Customer Contracts
• PeopleSoft Billing

With this level of workflow integration, customers can take advantage of their current PeopleSoft investment and eliminate both the rekeying of information and/or the cost of interfacing to a third-party application.  In addition, PeopleSoft customers gain access to the workflow technologies built into PeopleSoft, allowing automatic notifications of lease expirations, options, key milestones, and other user defined events.  From a reporting perspective, there are a number of predefined pagelets available that give a user insight into the status of their leases, as well as query capabilities to meet the needs of even the most complex organizations.

Not only does REM make it easy to manage lease obligations, but it makes easy work of tracking and managing the operating expenses related to the lease. The system is designed so that operating expenses can be predefined or entered ad-hoc as they occur against the related lease.  It also provides the ability to reconcile operating expenses that have been incurred over a period of time and “true them up” based on actual values.

The PeopleSoft REM system also supports Computer-Aided Facilities Management (CAFM), with prebuilt integrations to CenterStone’s facility management system.  This allows users to update and review a company’s physical assets and their related occupancy and space information.  If your organization is not using CenterStone, the prebuilt integrations can be fitted to support most other facility management applications.

If your organization has multiple lease obligations, such as a retailer with multiple store locations, a bank or financial institution with multiple branches, a healthcare organization with multiple clinics or locations, or a restaurant or hotel chain with many locations, you should take the time to check out PeopleSoft’s Real Estate Management system. The functionality rivals or exceeds that of a best of breed third-party system with none of the integration headaches, and there is typically a strong ROI.

To gain more information on the PeopleSoft Real Estate Product, please email me or give us a call at 800-774-5187.  In addition, you can check out Oracle’s website and download some of the collateral related to the product.

Next week I’ll discuss the features and functions of the PeopleSoft Maintenance Management application, so be sure to come back (or subscribe to our RSS) if you’re interested.  Alternatively, if you’re into social media, hit us up on Twitter or become our fan on Facebook.

If you’ll indulge me a moment: our firm has become a noted authority on the PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution suite, particularly along the Maintenance Management (MM) and Real Estate Management (REM) lines.  (Our own PeopleSoft Maintenance Management whitepaper is a popular download.)

It’s in this context that I’m going to recommend Joshua Greenbaum’s excellent PDF whitepaper about why companies should be looking at an enterprise approach to real estate management.  It doesn’t delve into the PeopleSoft side of the market – where we specialize – but it does do an excellent job of illustrating why companies should be looking at REM for cost control, managing large real estate portfolios and making the most of revenue opportunities.

Incidentally, Greenbaum has an excellent blog.  Check out Enterprise Matters (or his old ZDNet blog) if you’re interested in some astute analysis of enterprise happenings.

(Via Tom A.)

In my last post, I tried to lay the foundation for the value of aligning business metrics to make all areas of your business more strategic and value-rich.  Let’s see if I can take it a step further by way of illustration.

Let’s assume a scenario involving a roadway construction company. The top priority corporate objective and commitment to shareholders is to increase overall margin by 1%. In order to support that objective, each area of the business must put in place objectives to help impact the bottom line, including the HR organization.  In many organizations HR is traditionally viewed as necessary, but not necessarily strategic or a contributor to the bottom line.

So, work with me.

In our scenario, let’s assume the operation’s business unit has determined the best way they can contribute to the overall margin objective is to make 25% more use of a new type of machine which can lay pavement more efficiently and effectively and overall lay more pavement per day. However, this particular machine is more complex than other machines and requires specialized training and more experienced users. Remember, in order to hit the new margin objective, the new pavement machine requires an increased of usage by 25% for the year.

The HR business partner supporting the operations business unit now has to tie their goals and metrics to help operations hit their goals and thus directly contributing to the overall corporate objective. HR must put in place objectives to retain the skills required for this machines operation, cross-train individuals to operate the new machines and hire new skills that can operate the new machines. HR’s metrics map specifically to the operations team’s metrics which map directly to the overall corporate metrics. In this specific example, metrics are aligned top to bottom and across the organization.

It goes without saying that the data and data structure must be available and appropriate in order to successfully measure these metrics and create dashboards that monitor progress and success. However, if the data structure is present and objectives are in alignment, all aspects of an organization can be strategic and contribute to the overall success of the company. The HR business unit measures the cross-training it conducted which contributed to the number of qualified operators of the new machinery. The operations leader measures the number of hours the new machine was operated compared to last year. The finance team measures the profitability of the operations this year compared to last and quantifies operations increase in margin. Everyone works together towards a common objective, sets up metrics to monitor and measure their success and link them accordingly.

Sound like Pretendville?  It’s not.  BI, done properly, enables exactly this sort of objective alignment and cross-silo vision.

In last week’s post, we discussed embedding Business Intelligence (BI) into the business process in order to create a workflow that is more value-add and beneficial. Now that we have explored that concept, I want to look at BI as a mechanism to make all areas of business strategic and value-add.

So, work with me here.

When one thinks about the value-add departments or business units within an organization, typically sales, product manufacturing, consulting are areas that immediately come to mind as revenue-generating critical entities to a company’s success. Often IT, HR, Finance or operations are considered enablers and required to do do business, but not necessarily critical to the revenue-generating or margin performance of a company.

With the right mindset, metrics and data, that thought process can change.

Early versions of BI certainly provided information and insight into the business, but they tended to focus on siloed information. Metrics were created by functional areas such as Finance, Sales, Marketing and HR. In order to truly provide value to the organization from top to bottom, the metrics must align from top to bottom across business units and eliminate silos. Certainly there is still value in maintaining HR, Finance and Sales-specific metrics, but if each area of the organization can align their metrics to corporate metrics and objectives, it can prove to be a powerful tool to help both the top and bottom lines of an organization.

This is a topic of massive interest these days as businesses struggle to make intelligent decisions that will help them run a strategic operation and be poised for the recovery in terms of competitive advantage.

It’s as simple as this: line leaders to middle managers to executives must have metrics and dashboards that are congruent and support one another.  In an upcoming post, I’ll detail a scenario that attempts to describe the alignment of metrics top to bottom across functional areas.  It sounds chock full of buzzwords, but really, it’s a key aspect of a proper BI deployment.

Stay tuned!

In my last post, we took a look at what BI is and isn’t and how it can really be used to make real-world business decisions.  I promised you an example to help illustrate my point, so here we go.

Let’s take a buyer of raw materials in a production facility.  If that buyer is asked what type of report they would find useful, the answer may be a report that shows all purchase orders that have not been fulfilled and delivered and are overdue by 10 days or more.  That could be a very useful report, right?

Problem is, the report itself does not answer a key business issue, but does provide insight into issues that require further analysis.  It’s a standalone datapoint.  Let’s assume that we now want to provide that same buyer a dashboard that answers a key business question and supports a positive financial influence on the organization.

When asked what we (MiPro) would do, it’s simple: we would execute a proper requirements-gathering effort based upon understanding an individual’s main work responsibilities.  Through this effort, we would come to better understand what information would provide value in a dashboard.  Asking that same buyer what they would do next with that information regarding 10 day overdue deliveries, the scenario may unfold such as this:

1. The buyer takes every purchase order from the report and looks up (queries) what materials are on each purchase order (which would be another valuable report for that buyer).
2. Then, based upon the materials that are on each purchase order, the buyer reviews the production schedule and determines if any production will be impacted (another valuable report).
3. If a production line is negatively impacted, then the buyer works jointly with the production scheduler to determine whether materials need to be expedited or the production schedule can be changed.
4. The buyer then works with the suppliers to communicate whether the materials require expediting.

As you can begin to see, in this scenario the true requirement would be a dashboard that identifies what production lines will be shut down due to overdue purchase orders not being fulfilled.  That’s real business value.  That’s way more than graphs and nice colors.  From our original user and problem, we find tremendous downstream effects leading to real business disruption.

With an intelligent BI implementation, our buyer could drill back into the details to take actionable measures.  The dashboard could offer true business value, answer key business questions and present significant risk mitigation to operational business and (ultimately) financial metrics.

In all of this, the buyer’s daily work process is used to define the dashboard that provides him/her with the most value.  The buyer may have been able to get to the answer without this process or dashboard, but it would have been through a time-consuming series of individual reports as opposed to logging in, identifying the issue at a glance and drilling back to the details.

There’s working hard and working smart, right?

So, how does this tie back to the original statement of using BI to improve the bottom line?  Certainly shutting down a production line is a Bad Thing, but being surprised by not being able to fulfill orders is an Even Badder Thing that still leads to a shutdown.  BI can help in preventing this from happening by making the buyer’s workflow more effective and mitigating risk, both of which contribute to financial success.

In my next post we will talk about making HR strategic and turning non revenue-generating business units into contributors to the top and bottom lines and provide another example of how to do this.  Stay tuned.