April 23rd, 2009

Process Readiness: Are you ready to run a Marathon?

Posted by AMR Research @ 12:05 pm

Categories: ERP, Enterprise Applications, Supply Chain

Tags: Business Process, Training, Workforce Management, Training And Certification, Operational Planning, Human Resources, Business Operations, AMR Research

April 19 is Patriot’s Day in Boston.  The reenactment of the Shot Heard Round the World on Lexington Green, the parades, the Red Sox—maybe I’ll pop over to Hopkinton and run the 26 miles of the Boston Marathon.  I think not – I’ve never run more than three miles in my life!.  The real marathoners have been training on dark mornings since January getting in shape and spent years trying to qualify for a number.

 

So why do some executives think they can heard everyone into a conference room and direct the squabbling business units and departments to quickly improve business results?  Like any other high performance endeavor, this takes years of developing skills, capabilities, and organizational effectiveness.  Try to take a short cut and you may fall and be trampled miles before Heartbreak Hill.  You assess a business units readiness before rolling out the ERP system and likewise to succeed at global process improvement you need to assess your process readiness.

 

On a recent teleconference, a member of AMR Research’s SAP Peer Forum described their journey to what they called “process excellence.”  The global pharmaceutical company is subject strict regulatory requirements and President of Supply Chain was concerned that widely varied business processes across sites were not only inefficient, but exposed the company to significant compliance risk.  Over the next few years it established the three critical pillars of process readiness:

 

• Clear Goals and Process Governance – The top leader set the goal for globally harmonized business processes for efficiency, compliance, and ease of moving personnel between sites.  A process governance organization was built to drive consensus on common processes, define globally consistent metrics, direct IT projects to enhance processes, and strive for continuous improvement.
• Holistic View of the Process – Limiting the view of the process to ERP or a Six Sigma project is a recipe for underperformance.  Workers need every aspect of a process they deal with to be consistent.  The company coordinates the activity of many groups to ensure consistency of process across its multiple IT systems, manual activities, training materials, job classifications, and performance metrics.
• Business Repository and Tools – Maintaining this consistency across dozens of processes and communicating them to tens of thousands of global employees is impossible with simple documents.  Instead, the documents are brought together in a repository and a rich five layer process model links them.  Analytical tools are used to assess the impact of proposed changes and a process portal to make the process overview and training available globally.

 

The company is using IDS Scheer’s ARIS as the tool to support its process readiness efforts.  It is synchronizing it with Solution Manager on its SAP systems and linking training materials and its business intelligence systems in as well.  Similar tools exist in the Oracle E-business Suite, with the vendor reselling ARIS as Business Process Analyst (BPA) and building automated links between BPA and its Tutor process documentation and UPK training system. 

 

Just like I’m not going to run a Marathon without a lot of training, you aren’t going to improve your processes without attaining process readiness.  Over several years of effort, our SAP Peer Forum member has attained the capability of quickly implementing process improvements.  Less focused competitor may soon fall far behind.

March 19th, 2009

IBM and Sun: Is it about the hardware or the software?

Posted by Ian Finley @ 8:02 am

Categories: Enterprise Applications, Enterprise Architecture

Tags: Software, Revenue, Sun Microsystems Inc., Hardware, IBM Corp., Programming Languages, Java, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Ian Finley

The Wall Street Journal reports IBM is in acquisition talks with Sun Microsystems. At this point, the companies are refusing to comment on the rumor. If it comes to pass, the acquisition would give IBM a larger share of the high-end server and storage markets and enhanced access to certain customers, especially in the financial services and telecommunications industries. However, the software aspect of the deal might have a larger impact on IBM and the industry as a whole.

Today, IBM is best thought of as a services and software company with a computer hardware division. In 2008, services and software represented 79% of IBM’s revenue and 82% of its pre-tax income. In contrast, hardware represented only 19% of revenue and 9% of pre-tax income. The Sun acquisition would undoubtedly boost IBM hardware revenue and might improve hardware profitability, but the positive impact to IBM’s services and software businesses could easily dwarf these benefits. Read the rest of this entry »