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Enterprise Asset Management

August 2nd, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

Manufacturing facilities are comprised of very complex and expensive assets. Enterprise Asset Management (EAS) software helps senior management to protect those assets by ensuring that the necessary maintenance schedule is adhered to and that the investment is protected. Best practices of EAM installation and implementation include several ideas that help enterprises to maximize the output of their assets.

IT systems that are used to manage asset data should allow for organization-wide information sharing and knowledge retention. In conjunction, the EAM software must deal with the asset lifecycle phases including planning, engineering, maintenance and operation, and eventually the decommissioning of the assets.

The EAM application should be opened to vendors and suppliers such as engineering firms and maintenance contractors who work with the enterprise. This will allow better and more efficient communication and scheduling. The EAM application will also reduce repeated data entry into enterprise resources planning (ERP) applications and/or computerized maintenance management (CMMS) applications. Real-time data entry, on the other hand, provides better coordination between the contractors and the internal enterprise maintenance personnel and ultimately more efficient use of the assets.

An effective EAM package will support plant design and engineering during the often years-long lifecycle of an asset. The EAM software can assist the maintenance department of the enterprise to manage and record all data from the various projects it is responsible for on a daily basis.

During the evaluation process of a potential EAM solution, it is important to determine if incorporating enterprise 2.0 features that will contribute to an open, communicative environment for the sharing of ideas and expertise. Additionally, decision-makers should evaluate the usability enhancements that provide managerial support for real-time maintenance tasks.

Lastly, EAM solutions should be implemented as a part of a broader set of applications that capture data failures, schedule people, projects, and materials, and outline purchasing requirements–leveraging the functionality of the EFP applications. The selection of a effective EAM software solution to manage assets can enhance and improve the value of the enterprise.

Posted in Applications, Business Processes, Hosting, Physical Inventory, Shop Floor Control, Smart Warehouse, Systems Integration | No Comments »

Better Business Performance with Better Business Intelligence

July 19th, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

A well-executed business intelligence (BI) strategy gives companies and their employees the ability to efficiently access and share the data that will help to improve business performance.

Business intelligence enables companies to view their business in ways that will assist them in making more effective strategic, tactical, and operational decisions.

The goals of an effective implementation of BI include:

To align the day-to-day operations with the overall strategy and objectives of the company.
To identify and understand the relationship between the various business processes and performance indicators.
To ensure that the information and data are relevant to the roles of the specific users and their responsibilities.
To be able to easily analyze the data contained in documents and spreadsheets.
To gain contextual insight into the drivers of the business.
To be able to monitor vital business indicators such as essential financial ratios, profitability of sales channels, and crucial operational metrics.

BI incorporates the people, processes, and knowledge needed to support the operational actions of the company. Because of this, businesses understand the need to acquire the business development insight necessary to improve the overall business performance of all divisions and departments.

With a successful implementation of a business intelligence strategy, engaged and proactive corporate executives and other decision-makers can produce information that is actionable while also identifying the constant emerging changes needed to undertake the meeting of business challenges.

Posted in Applications, Business Processes, Outsourcing | No Comments »

The Top Five Concerns to Guide Your Business Intelligence Decisions

July 5th, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

A comprehensive business intelligence strategy includes procedures for data collection, data integration, and data analysis for all of the information in the various databases of an enterprise. Small and mid-sized companies need to balance their business intelligence needs with the realities of their budgets and organizational structures. By doing critical needs assessments before the purchase of a BI software package, companies can maximize their budget allocations while simultaneously providing their employees with BI access that is user-friendly. The top five questions to ask include:

What is the balance between usability and unnecessary features? Too many features on a software application can be overwhelming for the end user and expensive for the company. Look for applications that offer only the necessary functions of integration, publishing, and analysis.
How much metadata is too much? Manual creation of possibly redundant metadata can be expensive and unnecessary. A cost-effective BI software package will offer a balance between existing and new metadata information.
How many additional support packages and consulting services are needed? Many times, vendors who specialize in working with very large enterprise organizations are unable or unwilling to customize their packages for smaller companies. Before signing up for very expensive add-on services, ascertain which services your company really needs and investigate whether some of those services such as installation can be done in-house or outsourced to other, less expensive specialists in your industry.
Are there any “hidden” fees that could negatively impact your bottom line? Licenses, maintenance, and upgrades can become very costly with customized software packages. Fee options to investigate include flexible numbers of user licenses, flat-fee maintenance plans, and the number of processors on your servers.
Will a recommended business intelligence software vendor meet the needs of my enterprise? Often a vendor is recommended because it is popular, well known, or has a particular client. Impressive information such as this may not necessarily translate into the best choice for your company.

A comprehensive yet cost-effective business intelligence software solution will give your enterprise the ability to make accurate and quantifiable decisions. When the goals and objectives of your company are kept in the forefront for all purchase decisions, the likelihood of finding the right solution for your business needs is increased.

Posted in Applications, Business Processes | No Comments »

The Business Unit and Operational Technology Implementation

May 24th, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

Operational technology (OT) can be defined as technology utilized for a company’s physical equipment that is developed, implemented and supported as a separate entity from the regular IT department. According to the Gartner Group, by successfully converging the IT and OT environments, IT specialists could capitalize on their business practices, reduce costs for their organizations, and lower risks for their co,ponies and shareholders.

Various current systems can be considered part of an OT environment: systems that run a site and its physical equipment, systems for the management and delivery of processes, and real-time software applications. The foundational technology of OT systems are increasing becoming more like IT systems: the platforms, the software applications, the security issues, and the communications infrastructure; this situation is an opportunity for IT specialists to create an alignment model for their organizations.

The areas where IT/OT convergence could occur are software management standards, enterprise architecture support, security models and the integration of information and processes. Benefits are accrued when IT specialists consolidate the people, the resources, and the tools needed to manage and support both IT and OT.

By moving towards the integration of the IT and OT environments, the IT specialists can avoid business units that develop separate technology “islands” that make future integration of technologies within the enterprise difficult; lessen the risks of cyber security by streamlining technology approaches; and eliminate the various standards and policies that can negatively affect the technology infrastructure.

The IT department should be continuously involved in the acquisition, management and development of any new technologies by a company’s business units.

Posted in Business Processes, Systems Integration | No Comments »

The Benefits of Supply-Chain Automation

May 10th, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

Years ago, at the beginning of the internet age, it was predicted that the United States would soon become a “paperless” society… but it still hasn’t turned out that way. The majority of businesses still rely on paper documents to process transactions: paper has to be purchased, stored, printed, signed, filed, delivered and re-filed at the final destination.

The cost to businesses of transacting business by paper continues to mount. It can cost anywhere between $5.00 and $20.00 just to send a 6 oz. legal-sized envelope. Additional costs for handling paper transactions include printer ink, paper, employee costs, on-site and off-site storage, and handling costs. There is also the efficiency costs: the preparing, handling, and processing of paper documents take enormous amounts of time; companies who waste time with paper transactions actually increase their costs and risk losing market share and sales.

Supply-chain automation (SCA) offers many environmental, economic and efficiency benefits to companies by helping them to securely transition from manual and paper-based transaction processing to automated electronic transaction processing. SCA allows seamless collaboration among customers, vendors, and partners; reducing paper and ink usage, and saving significant line-item expenses such as postage and shipping and employee time.

Transaction processing tasks that can be automated include invoice generation, mailing of paper order confirmations and order status updates, and accounts receivable and accounts payable. The Aberdeen Group has estimated that by implementing SCA, companies can reduce the cost of manually processing invoices by up to 60 per cent. Environmental benefits include much more than just the savings of paper and ink: fuel needed for transportation, wastewater generated for paper production, and overall BTUs for energy consumption are all reduced when companies convert to SCA.

The initial transition to SCA involves updates in technology and changes in manual processes, but the cost and environmental savings are substantial; the cost to manually process a single invoice amounts to over $35.00. Conversion to SCA helps all companies compete effectively with large procurement departments that will eventually ask their suppliers to invest in SCA to stay in compliance with their policies and procedures.

Posted in Business Processes | No Comments »

Effective Employee Collaboration Platforms

July 27th, 2010 by Bharath Lanka

In today’s business climate, many companies have employees scattered across many states and time zones. Keeping employees informed and engaged even though they are geographically distant can bring increased employee performance and innovation to your company.

Businesses can implement effective employee collaboration platforms with the many online tools available. Some examples are internal blogs, software that encourages real-time status updates for specific departments, knowledge management documents, podcasts, RSS feeds, communication facilitation and professional networking opportunities.

Recruiting, training and retaining quality employees entails development of an effective employee “lifecycle” which spans the entirety of an employee’s time with your business.

Oftentimes, finding new employees can be accomplished through the networking ability and referral of contacts from current employees. Using these resources can cut the time and cost of finding new talent that may better match your current corporate culture.

“Onboarding” is a relatively new term that defines the process for incorporating new hires into the company quickly and effectively. A successful onboarding program can help to reduce employee turnover and increase new hire success. Onboarding includes automated information routing, new hire information, new employee development plans, effective communication of company goals and expectations, and onboarding process tracking.

Employee networking is an important benefit for the company and for the employees. Although companies spend a large part of their training budget on formal training programs, the greatest amount of information sharing is usually much more informal between employees. Companies will realize a greater return on their training dollars when they help to facilitate ways for employees to network internally and exchange ideas.

Developing employee profiles help to foster a sense of community among your employees, whether they share a physical location or are separated by wide geographical distances. This workplace community in turn fosters increased communication, a sense of shared corporate memory, and a way to form partnerships through internal social networks.

One of the most valuable assets a company possesses is its human capital: its employees. The success of a business depends on the success of its employees, and businesses are increasing realizing the value of “talent management”. Successful businesses implement platforms that tie their training programs to the goals of their organizations and design ways for their business units to meet their performance goals. Human resource departments realize that they should address the issues of their Generation Y employees as well as those employees who are nearing retirement. Employees value being offered effective career development plans; businesses benefit by identifying those employees who can be positioned for future leadership roles.

With today’s online hosted conferencing solutions and communications platforms, companies can provide all of the benefits of personalized training and seminars while simultaneously reducing travel time and expenses. Real-time training sessions and business unit collaboration meetings can be supplied to specified groups of users based on employee position, department location or communication needs. These same sessions can be recorded for access at any time with permission-based applications.

With effective and ongoing employee collaboration practices, business performance can be tracked and enhanced throughout all areas of a company in a time-efficient and cost-effective manner. Employee collaboration service providers design and implement unique approaches that are flexible and match your companies current workflow and business process and practices.

Posted in Applications, Business Processes, Hosting, Outsourcing, SaaS | No Comments »

Business Process Outsourcing

July 5th, 2010 by Bharath Lanka

Outsourcing for enterprise organizations comes in many forms. Many people first think of outsourcing in terms of IT third-party service providers, but another type of outsourcing is becoming more and more common.

Business process outsourcing (BPO) entails hiring another company to handle specific types of business activities for your company. BPO can consist of payroll services, employee benefits management, call center services, customer services activities, human resources, accounting, and other “non-core” functions.

Depending on the strategic business plan and the size of the company, BPO contracts can run for multiple years and cost millions of dollars. But companies utilizing BPO also can realize savings in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars over the life of the contract through savings over implementing the outsourced activities in-house.

The typical traditional corporate structure in the last half of the twentieth century was to build companies as large as possible with all business functions kept within the company. The bigger, the better. Today, however, “lean and mean” is more of the norm, and taking advantage of service providers that specialize in certain business functions often makes better sense for many corporations; helping companies of all sizes stay more competitive in the present business environment. When deciding whether or not outsourcing is right for your company, however, means taking the time necessary to ask the right questions and putting the right internal processes in place first.

Michael Motonen, a vice-president at the Gartner Consulting Sourcing Team, and the BPO lead principal, offers several tips:

Develop an outsourcing life-cycle model and strategy first. Garter has four phases.

1. The sourcing strategy phase considers questions such as: “What are the risks for our company?” “Why are we considering outsourcing?” “What kind of relationship are we looking for with our service provider?” “Will the resulting partnership be enhancing our current processes, or will it be transformative–helping our company change by driving cost savings or increasing revenue?”

2. Selection phase: Evaluate several prospective companies and make the final selection.

3. Contract phase: Develop and finalize the contract.

4. Sourcing Management phase: Included here is the service level agreement (SLA) for milestone benchmarks and other mutual assessment tools.

Take into consideration all aspects of contract duration. BPO contracts are often long-term for a reason. Strategic changes in business functions and relationships with BPO providers take time. A balance is needed between the short-term assessment of results and long enough to meet the stated goals. Most BPO contracts last for three to five years or more. Montonen recommends shorter contracts that allow for periodic reviews and renewals rather than tying yourself into long-term contracts with ten year time frames. It is also recommended that you include in the contract policies and procedures for bringing the business activities back in-house if necessary.

Identify, assess and evaluate any potential risks.

1. Ensure that your vendor is actually able to provide the services within your contract and SLA, and

2. Retain a certain amount of control and internal oversight for the entire process and project.

Ensure that compliance procedures are stipulated in the contract. Your service provider should be able to prove that what compliance regulations apply to your company can be applied to the entire project.

Keep the lines of communication open. On-going and open communication is important for the success of the BPO relationship; not only with your vendor, but also internally with everyone concerned in your own company. Outside vendors often make employees nervous. Proper management of all types of external and internal changes is critical to the overall success of the project and overall company morale.

Posted in Business Processes, Outsourcing, SaaS | No Comments »