Managing Oracle PLM's User Defined Attributes

In the Oracle Product life-cycle management (PLM), the Operational attributes really are really the attributes that are in the inventory modules which falls under the Inventory>Items>Master Items form and they can neither be created nor destroyed because they are internally created by Oracle.

But any Oracle PLM has the power to go some steps further. A user can define his items by making a user-defined attribute group. The ego_mtl_system_items_b table contains a single record which holds the user defined attributes which are defined within groups in the said table. The user can have a choice from a distinct amount of character, numerical or data columns so he can define the attributes in one user defined attribute group. The attribute groups are tied to the items using the item_id, organization_id, and the attribute_group_id within that table. The user can then have a choice whether to have only one row or record of the attribute group per item or enable multiple row option during the definition of the attribute group. After having defined the attribute group, the user can then create a database view of the attribute group so that it would be a lot easier to find the data.

As to the difference between a single row user defined attribute or multi-row user defined attribute, it is often difficult to state the reason for choosing one over the other but in many cases there are many business reasons that can be cited for creating a single row attribute group. For example, in a single row user define attribute group, a user might create three groups “Certification group”, “Label Group”, and “Legacy Data Group”. The “Certification group” is defined so that it shows what certifications a certain item has. The “Label Group” contains the values of the attribute to be printed on a particular item and “Legacy Data Group” is for bringing oven the item information from the system that Oracles is replacing because they don’t map to the operational attributes.

Using the multi-row user defined attribute allows the user to possess more than one row, record or instance of the attribute group per item record. The user can have the choice of storing additional types of definitions which would depend on the item, organization, attribute group as well as a unique value within the attribute group. Although there is no need for defining an attribute within the multi-row attribute group, it can help doing such in cases when the user tries to mass update the attribute group through Oracle “Web ADI”. One of the circumstances when there is a need for using a multi-row user-defined attribute group is when there is a conditional need for label and the user wants to select from multiple rows of the same attribute group based on the label type. The unique key attribute of the group would be the Labels type so that no items will have multiple rows of the group for the same label type.

But whether single or multi row user defined group is used, both can be controlled at the view or edit by assigning or creating a role that gives access privileges.

ERP in the different industries

I have been blogging about the very specifics of ERP for sometime now. For instance, my blogs have tackled not just individual vendors like SAP, Oracle, Baan, Saleforce and Microsoft also their individual components as well.

I remember having blogged before about the individual SAP xApps and how each of them have been designed to leave smaller footprints and that some of them have been design for specific industries. One such example I pointed out was SAP xApp Integrated Exploration and Production (SAP xIEP) for the oil industry.

I like to point out how ERP in general has been received in the different industries which have positive effects in the ERP implementations.

In the Manufacturing Industry, ERP has greatly given benefit by increasing the efficiency, quality and throughput of complex manufacturing processes. Before the advent of advanced ERP software applications solutions, the manufacturing industry has been plagued by problems coming out from inefficient management of communication. With ERP implementation, all barriers to communications have been torn down and those such complex areas of manufacturing like supply chains, ware house and logistics have been closely linked and coordinated. Also, in the past, customers would have to go from pillar to post just to make an inquiry about the status of the products or any query about technical problems and difficulties. ERP has helped track down product status so that both customers and the company will not be wasting time digging through records or running from one department to another. The Manufacturing industry is biggest industry to benefit from ERP.

In the Insurance industry, ERP has seamlessly integrated three general areas into one efficient working group. These areas involve the company, the insurers and the insurance agents. With ERP for the insurance industry, transactions and monitoring of performance of the agents can be easier. ERP has helped speed up coordination between agents and insurers. In the area of government insurance, ERP has eliminated or minimized red tapes and bureaucracy as decisions are so crystal clearly based in database data.

ERP has benefited the Healthcare industry by efficiently managing large government hospitals and sorting out hundreds and thousand of clients and different degree of medical attention. In some really huge hospitals, an ERP that focuses on the vertical market segment is commonly implemented. Of course, the healthcare industry has accounting and human resources too so they the bigger the company in this industry is, the more it would need ERP.

In the Hospitality industry, ERP are used by big hotels and resorts. It is very common for world wide chain of hotels to implement an ERP to keep track of operations from different geographic locations. Even in the local level, hotels have different sections like housekeeping, food and beverage, customer service, and many more. The hotel and resort industry is one of the most personalized industry in terms of transactions so data should be fresh and updated all the time to avoid embarrassment and eventual loss of customers.

So there it is. Whatever the industry, will always have a solution.

Linking business process analysis and SOA

Last week, Oracle announced that they have enhanced the version of its business process analysis software so that it can give better collaboration between the business processes modelers and implementers.

The Oracle Business Process Analysis Suite 10.1.3.3 will be the first "closed loop support" for business analyst and IT collaboration, sharing a common process model format with the Oracle SOA Suite according to Oracle in their website.

Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) has revolutionized the day information systems with distributed computing and modular programming serving very large and intrinsically unassociated units of functionality, which have no calls to each other embedded in them. The services try to mimic human functionalities such as filling out an online application for an account, viewing an online bank statement, or placing an online book or airline ticket order.

According to Amlan Debnath, vice president of server technologies at Oracle:
"The new business process analysis suite features round-trip engineering. What it lets you do is share the business process model with IT."

With this linkage, it would become extremely easy for a developer to make alterations to any business process which would then be shared with business persons.

The Oracle SOA Suite features a SOA execution engine which has the BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) that executes the modeling process done in the business process analysis package. This is an efficient feature wherein the IT users can view and modify business processes with the SOA packages while the business end users can build and change business models in the business process suite. Vital optimization effects in the Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Business Process Analysis Suite integration are the seamless linking of business process analysis, execution, and monitoring tools.

In the past, it has been a common occurrence to experience round tripping problems when it comes with dealing with business persons modeling a certain process and then handing the said process to the IT department which is responsible for implementing the process. Oracle has addressed this problem by intelligently "sensing" what the business person means and what the IT person interprets the idea to be.

Analyst Bruce Silver said: "Oracle has created an intermediate format based on shared metadata between the modeling tool and the implementation tool, which is the SOA suite. You solve this round-tripping problem now because the model is not just initial requirements for the implementation, but it's a continuous business view of the business process throughout the business process implementation lifecycle."

Oracle Business Process Suite is a component of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Platform. The suite's main strength lies in its efficient modeling, publishing, simulating and optimizing of end to end business processes. It is based on open standards and hot pluggable architecture and can be used with both Oracle and non-Oracle application servers and packaged applications but is uniquely optimized for Oracle's family of enterprise Applications. The price of the Oracle Business Process Suite starts at $5,000 for five users.

No Money in Saas?

SaaS stands for Software as a service as is fast rising in popularity over the internet. As the name suggest, Saas software is not sold, meaning that customers will no buy the software or own it for free but they pay for using it. A Saas software is hosted and operated over the internet will the customers will avail of the services through an API accessible over the Web and often written using Web Services or REST

But when Oracle CEO Larry Ellison implied: "Where’s the big money in SaaS?" he caused quite a stir the ERP industry where it is in tight competition with SAP. Ellison remarked that Saas and the small to mid sized markets are very interesting for ERP vendors but not terribly profitable. And as many understood it, it was a word dismissing SAP’s Business ByDesign.

But the real puzzling thing was that Ellison owns NetSuite which is a SaaS ERP provider. Yes, when Ellison remarked about where the big money is SaaS it, he was talking about Oracle and for it to go down-market with an on-demand would mean having less profit compared to Oracle's current business model. But then if he was thinking that there was less money in SaaS ERP, then why is he owning Netsuite still?

The answer, as it was obvious to many, lies in the Oracle strategy. Oracle will not be trying to do a SAP. Ellison's move is having to let SAP figure SaaS out and it SAP become successful, Ellision would buy Netsuite for himself. In other words, if Oracle will buy Netsuite when at the right time. Sounds confusing? Yes, it does as Ellison would really be basically buying his own venture but will done with independent committee when the time comes.

Ellison's long take on the difference between Oracle and SAP strategies is:
"What I’d like to highlight here is the radically different strategies of the two companies for growth. Our strategy for growth is to find a way to add more value to the same customers we already serve, which are the large end of the mid-market and large companies. What we’re doing here is moving beyond ERP to industry specific software. So in the telecommunications industry that would be billing systems and network provisioning systems and network inventory systems; core applications to run their business, to run telco, core applications to run a bank, core applications to run a retail chain of stores. core applications to run a utility. That’s our focus, and that allows us to leverage the existing relationships that we have because we already sell databases to these companies, we sell middleware to these companies. We sell ERP and CRM to these companies, and now we want to sell this industry-specific software.

It’s very different than SAP’s strategy which is to go after small companies; small companies with their new Business ByDesign, formerly known as A1S product. Now, we see the problem in that because we’ve looked at going down market. We’ve looked very closely at it, and we think it’s very hard to make money because there is no synergy. To go down market you need a new product and new product development teams. You spend a lot of money developing a whole new product for the low end. But you also need an all new sales force because we don’t call on those customers. We don’t call on small businesses, and it’s very expensive to call on small businesses. It’s very expensive to do ERP implementations in small businesses. The cost of sales is high. The cost of implementation is high. There are virtually no synergies in sales, marketing, and product development and support."

Well, there is afterall money in SaaS. Everything is just a matter of strategy.

When you have got the hang of ABAP

In yesterday's blog, I mentioned about getting the hang out of ABAP. As it is a fact that SAP professionals are some of the best paid IT professionals in the world, many programmers from different disciplines are jumping into the bandwagon and discovering that coding skill alone is not enough to be a good ABAP programmer but knowing about the ins and outs of ERP is as important as having the programming skill itself.

Okay, so in yesterday's blog, I mentioned that ABAP certification is not enough. To make it clear, what I meant was, according to my friend who has been working with SAP for almost ten years in Graz, Austria, if he was the screening personnel, he would not immediately jump at hiring a person who shows an ABAP certification right in his face. He said he does not get impressed with the piece of paper. But that is from his perspective. An ABAP certification could be an indication of certain level or proficiency or certain degree of knowledge that has been achieved. But then, this knowledge may only be in theory if most highly likely, there will be a hands-on screening (and an intensive one at that) to determine the deserving candidate.

So for anybody who has jumped into ABAP from another discipline but no real life experience, what would be the best way to get started? Well, if you are not that confident with passing an intensive human resource screening, the best way may be to start with consultancy. It does not matter how the small the client is to begin with. The more small clients you handle, the more collection you have under your belt transforms into an impressive portfolio. It is not uncommon for newly trained or newly certified ABAP programming with no real life experience to have difficulty in breaking into the SAP field. ABAP in particular is very different from mainstream programming language as the applications it is designed for are already in the mold of the classic R/3 modules, BW, SEM and many others. An ABAP programmer needs to have intensive knowledge on commercial or enterprise processes. Remember what the acronym ABAP means - Advanced Business Application Programming.

So, if you are really determined to form your niche in ASAP, make good at ABAP programming. Persevere in learning deeply on commercial and business realities. Remember that SAP is one of the biggest solutions for business applications and the biggest supplier of enterprise resource planning applications. Make your code work for long term uses and ensure that they can strictly follow all business rules.

You should bear in the mind that the competition is not just between two or more programmers from different disciplines learning ABAP. Other competitors are coming from business degrees trying to learn IT and programming. So try to weigh and ask the question: is it easier for an IT guy to learn business intensively or is it easier for a business guy to learn intensive programming? Never be complacent.

New Battle Foe for SAP?

In the general field of enterprise resource planning, SAP and Oracle has been on very tight competition for the last five years. Despite the very close competition, SAP has always remained number one.

But now, in the particular field of customer relationship management (CRM), SAP has meet a new and smaller but nevertheless fierce competitor in Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com has built its niche in selling of on demand customer relationship management software applications and other development platforms for enabling partners and customers to develop add-on applications which includes enterprise resource planning that can integrate with the development platform of Salesforce.com.

Similarly, SAP also plans of selling in as early as year 2008 an integrated suite of ERP and CRM software which ultilizes a a development platform for building add-on composite applications.

Both Salesforce.com and SAP are rolling out their new applications and platforms and yet they have denied any competition. But take this: During the week of September 17 when Salesforce.com unveiled Force.com as its new development platform's name in San Francisco during its Dreamforce user conference, SAP as also launching at the same times its on-demand suite Business By Design, which as the former A1S code, in New York.

SAP Deputy CEO Leo Apotheker said: "It is comparing a little hors d'oeuvre, an appetizer, and a complete three-star meal. Salesforce has a CRM application. It happens to be that the vast majority of businesses on this planet do a little more than just CRM. Our attempt is to get rid of all these acronyms. Businesses don't really buy acronyms, they buy a processes flow, a business model. We provide a complete solution and we provide a complete suite, lock stock and barrel, which is Business ByDesign] You don't need CRM from Salesforce any more. It's superfluous. No wonder Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is worried. It is disconcerting. He has every right to be concerned."

The final piece of the Force.com platform will be the VisualForce which can let developers build any user interface for any application. Salesforce.com also announced that it will add two more new applications to its CRM portfolio. These two new applications will be called Content and Ideas and will be designed to appeal to a broader user base. Content will be more about Web 2.0 technologies while Ideas is move of a service for building communities where people meet and post and vote ideas.
On the other hand, SAP has been dominating the ERP software industry and is not new in full ERP integration with on-demand. Although not yet available, SAP's Business ByDesign will be able to deliver suites for common back-office functions such as finance, human resources, CRM, supply chain management, supplier relationship management and corporate governance.

SAP and Salesforce.com have been reaching the midmarket with the latter more aggressively looking for inroads leading to enterprise markets. SAP, well, has of course built a niche on the enterprise markets.

Whoever wins in this battle, if ever there is a battle, will benefit two entities: the winner and the consumers.

Getting the hang of ABAP

In my last blog, I did a comparative picture of the salaries for SAP professionals and while the salary rate varied from one SAP specialization to another, it has been shown that in general, SAP professional are earning a lot higher compared to other IT fields of specialization. It is no wonder that many programmers and IT specialists have been planning to jump into the SAP bandwagon.

But today's SAP has become more sophisticated than ever and with that comes a more powerful ABAP too. This means that programmers from other disciplines may think that just because they have mastered the basic programming constructs, learning ABAP would come as a breeze.

Getting the most out of ABAP requires a lot more than just having an knowing coding and even having an ABAP certification. ABAP works with SAP and SAP is dealing with business solutions and the business world is full of complexities greater than any non-business programmer could ever expect.

For those who want to go ABAP, and SAP professionals say advance programmers are the most preferred, understanding the complexities of enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the key. According to ABAP trainers, most people who into training were Visual Basic and Java programmers and one the basic problems they have encountered is in making them understand the complex architecture of SAP based on the three-tier design.

The three-tier client / server design is composed of the database, the applications and presentation logic. All these components are ran on three separate physical computers. Both the database and the applications components function in extracting and pushing data through the presentation logic tier.

When programmers become more and more familiar with SAP ERP, the step is focusing on the ABAP reports generation. In this step, these programmers need to have an in-depth working understanding of the ABAP dictionary which handles all of the processes pertaining to system data. Under the ABAP dictionary which is an interfaced part of the ABAP Development Workbench can be found the definitions of user all data types including the user defined types such as data elements, structures and table types. It is extremely important to know the dictionary by heart as this is the core of ABAP development where almost all the data are filtered through it.

After learning about SAP ERP and taking the ABAP dictionary by hear, the new developers must learn proficiency in performance optimization and upgrades. ERP is all about data and systems integration and it is critical to have a seamless integration of various data sources and disparate systems. As SAP is a world leader in business solutions, its ERP is top of the line with solutions for all types of industries including some in which people have never dreamed of to be possibly addressed by SAP.
Constant practice makes perfect. A certification is not enough because the theory just slips away. Hands-on, like in any other fields of IT, is what makes ABAP developers master the area of ABAP language in particular and ERP implementation in general.

First-quarter profit soars for Oracle

The world's third largest software developer Oracle is smiling cheek to cheek this month as it reported to have gained higher profit for this year's quarter compared to last year's. And just as many people in the industry have been speculating, the increase in profit has been boosted by the company's acquisition of other products. The results of the of the financial conference call was broadcast live at 2:00 p.m. (PDT) / 5:00 p.m. (EDT).

Oracle, whose specialization in software application is in business solution, reported that during this fiscal first quarter year, it has gained about $840 million which translates into 16 cents per share. In comparison, it only gained $670 million or 13 cents last year during the same period. Its revenue soared from $3.59 billion to $4.53 billion.

According to Safra Catz, Oracle President and CFO: “We reported new software license revenues up 35%, the strongest growth of any quarter in ten years. Software sales growth is translating nicely into EPS growth. We’ve now completed thirteen quarters of our five year EPS growth plan of 20% per year, and we are delivering earnings growth well ahead of that target."

Says an elated Oracle President Charles Phillips:

“We continue to take applications market share from SAP. In Q1 Oracle’s applications new license sales grew 65% compared to SAP’s new license sales growth rate of 18% in their most recently completed quarter. We like our growth strategy of expanding into high-end industry specific vertical software as opposed to SAP’s growth strategy of moving down market to sell software to small companies.

"Our Q1 database and middleware new license sales growth rate of 23% was the
highest in seven years. Oracle passed IBM to become the number one database company a long time ago. If we continue to grow our middleware software business at the same rate we grew it this quarter, Oracle will challenge IBM for the number one position in middleware by the end of this year.” quipped CEO, Larry Ellison.

This year's higher earning has been greatly buoyed up the sale of some products which were in the Oracle roster last year. These added products came from Hyperion Solutions, Stellent, MetaSolv and several other software solutions vendors.
Oracle now trades at about 16 times compared to the average outlook for the earnings per share of next year. This is slightly about Microsoft's 16 future price-to-earnings ratio.

Meanwhile, IBM, a technology services company and the number 2 software maker trades at 15 time earning. In terms of database technology, Oracle is still the leader ahead of IMB. In terms of business applications solution, Oracle ranks number 2 just behind Germany's SAP AG. Sap currently trades at 22 times estimated 2008 earnings. Oracle and SAP have been in constant tight competition for top spot in term so enterprise resource planning (ERP) software applications.
Oracle is the world’s largest enterprise software company and innovative solutions for virtually kinds of industries.

High Marks for Oracle

A couple of day ago, a research revealed that Oracle has been recognized for offering high vertical specialization capabilities for small and medium sized businesses. It has become a larger trend for business solutions to target the small to mid-sized market and this is a good development because both the smaller companies can already employ affordable and high end ERP solutions while business solutions vendor can get a wide market base from this section. As SAP indicated in their website, more than 65 percent of its customers are from the small to medium sized enterprises.

Okay, so going to back to Oracles high marks, Forrester Research, a leading independent research firm recognized Oracle's contribution to smaller business with a high mark for its innovation in providing vertical specialization capabilities within the public sector, financial services, utilities, telecom, retail and wholesales industry.

The Forrester Research report was published August 13, 2007 and was entitled "Competition Intensifies for the SMB ERP Customer". There were 25 ERP vendors addressing the business requirements of SMBs reviewed by the Forrester Research analysts. As the report stated, "Oracle Accelerate "represents the centerpiece of the vendor's go-to-market SMB strategy." The report also pointed out Oracle Accelerate application "solutions catalog identifies 70 target industry segments across four product lines (i.e., Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle's JD Edwards, Oracle's PeopleSoft and Oracle's Siebel) and 72 geographies/localizations to offer more than 20,000 possible solutions."

Tony Kender, Oracle Senior Vice President, Global SMB Business Unit
Said: "We continue to hear from our SMB customers that in order to succeed, they require applications that deliver out-of-the-box, industry-specific capabilities to address their unique business requirements. We are pleased to see Forrester's study validate Oracle's strength in delivering vertical specialization capabilities across multiple industries."

Oracle Accelerate has been developed by Oracle specifically for small and medium sized businesses so that these companies, along with government entities can get comprehensive business solutions which are low-cost, low-risk, and the same time very industry specific functionalities. The main benefit to be derived from this application, aside from its very low price, is that it can provide for pre-packaged applications which can be rapidly implemented. Another important aspect of Oracle Accelerate is that Oracle has partnered this solution with Oracle Business Accelerators where smaller and mid-sized business enterprises can take advantage of easy to use templates and process flows so that customers can be made to realize immediate benefits from using the application. Other key features of Oracle Accelerate are automatic upgrading to save time from complex and risky migrating processes. It also offers integration with back office and front office processes.

For the high mark that Oracle has garnered from the Forrester Research, I say congratulations. I am sure that more innovative products will come our way especially now that Oracles has long been longing to get the top spot from SAP as the leader in ERP solutions. And with SAP not just standing by as Oracle is getting accolade, for sure more business innovations are coming from SAP too. The result is that it is the small and mid-sized enterprises getting the best of both worlds.

The joy of SMBs with IBM and Oracle ERP Solution

It is just over a year since IBM announced a business solution for small and medium business (SMB) with a special price intended for easy affordability. This business solution was uniquely configured for SMB customers who have adapted to Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications and is specifically designed to be used for companies with at most 100 users.

The IBM System i 520 Solution Edition for Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne has been developed based on the IBM “all-in-one” System i business computing platform which ca offer a comparable acquisition cost to analogous Windows-based solutions.

The IBM System i 520 has been providing small companies with a solution that can be at par with some expensive ones with comparable configuration on Windows-based systems like Dell PowerEdge. The IBM System i has what other pricey solutions offer: database and storage features that can handle large data volumes, easy systems management, intact integration and open standards along with high built in security and virus resistance.

If in the past only large companies can afford a sophisticated system like this, things have changed. Small and medium sized companies can now implement their own program that can manage accounting, emails, supply chain and disaster recovery in with one robust application from big names like Oracle and IBM at a much lesser price.

It can still be vividly remembered what Mark Shearer, general manager of IBM System I said a year back: “SMB customers typically operate in lean environments with little or no IT personnel and limited resources. Some of these customers have previously selected Windows-based environments to support their JD Edwards applications – believing it was the most economical choice – then found themselves acting as the systems integrators for their business as they managed multiple servers and added the operating system and storage they needed to make the solution actually run. Today’s announcement removes price from the equation, giving SMBs a simpler ERP solution that requires minimal technical expertise."

The System i Solution Edition for Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne integrates both software and hardware solutions. It also comes with additional storage devices for about 100 users and include key function for business like from customer relationship management to supply chain management.

I tried to visit the IBM website and try to see what developments they have with the System i Solution Edition one year later. I specifically looked the hardware and found some interesting information. The wide array of selections include The IBM System i 515 Express, IBM System i 525 Express, IBM System i 520 Express, IBM System i 520, IBM System I 550, IBM System I 570 and IBM System I 595.

Each of these packages has its own specifications and they vary depending on the intended target. But despite all their slight variations, the point which boils down to one thing is that it can be very easy for SMBs under their budgetary limitation to implement a sophisticated ERP system.

Oracle and in the face of the planet

Oracle has long been a leader in global business solutions. But when one mentions the words Oracle and ERP, the idea that easy comes to mind is all those shopping spree that Oracles has done in the past few years in a desperate move to outshine its closes competitor SAP as the number provider of ERP solutions. But as I blogged in the past, I do not see anything wrong with these shopping sprees. My thing is that if Oracle can afford it and the potential acquisition gets a good deal, then fine. This healthy competition between SAP and Oracle will result in the consumers benefiting in the end. This is what business competition is all about.

Perhaps the United Nations thinks the same. There is nothing wrong with Oracle's moves. The important thing is the quality of the products. So much so that the United Nations development Programme (UNDP) has deployed and implemented an Oracle ERP module on a mass scale spreading out to all continents. This partnership is getting stronger with new efforts in trying to increase the user base and penetrating new segments in the market. It has been reported that UNDP has saved about 10 percent in time and money and has decided to embark on a new campaign of using PeopleSoft.


The romance between Sun Microsystems and Oracle has served greater benefits to the consumer public. New developments spring from the partnership include some products designed to benefit organizations in all aspects from economical to procedural. One of these benefits is the an implementation of ERP which does away with so many servers at the local level. Small and medium sized companies can install a smaller number of computer servers to facilitate their operations and thus save money.

An example of the "beneficiaries" of Oracle is a hospital company in Ohio City. Because of better hospital resource management, there has been an increase in the number of lives saved or reduced extent of loss or intensity of injury incurred on people. But along the way to the hospital's success in better management, the encountered problem with an Oracle implementation failed. But the mistake was not mainly due to the inefficiency or Oracle but in the people implementing it who depended heavily on the software as a magical cure it all remedy even to basic problems requiring only a simple common sense. In social speak, this incident is called an area for new lessons learned. Oracle ERP softwares are simply mechanical instructions and for now, they cannot totally "think for themselves".

Oracle's easy adaptability to local markets has greatly helped smaller companies in poorest countries. In Brazil, Oracle has fast become a favorite ERP application as many companies have experience the benefits. Because of globalization, many companies from poorest countries and smaller economies have to face the industry giants from the industrialized nations. But with the help of ERP solutions, the competition may not be as tough as could be expected.

Faster Growth for PeopleSoft ERP Applications in The Public Sector

Who says that enterprise resource planning is only for the business sector? Wikipedia defines ERP as "a system to integrate (or attempt to integrate) all data and processes of an organization into a unified system. A typical ERP system will use multiple components of computer software and hardware to achieve the integration. A key ingredient of most ERP systems is the use of a unified database to store data for the various system modules."

So there it goes, it can be used for any organization trying to unify high volumes of data processes.

To prove that ERP is gaining more widespread use in the public sector, in two of the largest school districts in the United States, The School District of Palm Beach County in Florida (having 165,000 students) and Fort Bend Independent School District in Texas (having 68,000 students) PeopleSoft ERP applications is experiencing continued strong growth. These two giant school districts have recently partnered with company specializing in systems integration and Oracle Certified Partner called eVerge Group so that they can convert their financial and human resource systems to PeopleSoft.

Accordingly, during the last twelve months, there has been a marked increase in the number of currently customers of PeopleSoft who have upgraded their existing PeopleSoft applications and acquiring new functionalities. Records showed that those customers had been upgrading to PeopleSoft version 8.9. Even the newly released Version 9, just release in early 2007, has enjoyed relatively huge purchases.
Looking back, the Cleveland State University licensed PeopleSoft's software for tracking student records in 1997. The system was adopted by the California State University system in the early 2000s.

Indeed, when talking about ERP, it is the business sector that easily comes to mind. But the fact is that PeopleSoft ERP applications have already been traditionally popular in the public sector in most of the United States. This can be attributed to PeopleSoft's ease of use and great flexibility in address unique local government as well as needs of school districts like in the field of commitment accounting and budgeting, as well as departmental position requirements.
Despite past issues such as the Decmber 1999 quality and performance issues complaints of seven of the eight "Big Ten" Midwestern universities and the California State University complaint of having spent $500 million on a deficient system, PeopleSoft has now stabilized and made more robust as it is now part of the Oracle family of applications. Customers of PeopleSoft can now benefit from the new middleware applications that enhance the integration applications and databases throughout their organization.

Oracle is in very aggressive in all of its efforts to gain the top spot in the business software applications industry. The number one spot is now being held by SAP. The move has result in Oracle making shopping sprees of other top notch applications.

Well, definitely, Oracle is doing its best efforts to enhance itself should it want to be on top. And these enhancements can trickle down to other products as well, including of course PeopleSoft.

IPhone and ERP

If I may ask, what is the common thing beween and iPhone and an enterprise resource planning software?

Of course we know the iPhone to be an ultra fashionable device with multimedia and Internet-enabled quad-band GSM EDGE-supported mobile phone developed and marketed by Apply and many young people are going gaga over it…blah blah.

But an iPhone for an ERP? Sounds like a far fetched idea! But then again, with information technology, there is disparity which cannot be merged together. If oil and water were digital stuff, definitely, there would be an easy method to get them together the IT way.

A couple of weeks ago, Netsuite, a business solutions / ERP vendor, introduced a mobile application access interface that it calls SuitePhone. The SuitePhone can allows users of the iPhone a link up to information which stored in the latest version of Netsuite's software, the NetSuite 2007.

The synchronization offered SuitePhone takes advantage of the many functionalities available with the iPhone.

According to Malin Huffman, senior manager of product management at NetSuite:
"Traditionally in a mobile environment business applications provide a scope of functionality that is limited—typically customer relationship management or access to the back office, but it's a defined set of capabilities. With iPhone, all of NetSuite's CRM, all of enterprise resource planning is available—even the ability to manage e-commerce activities."

Netsuite has been a provider of integrated on-demand CRM and ERP and has been on-going in its deepening support for Apple's Safari browser as well as intensifying its use of AJAX technology. And this all makes sense: AJAX as open standard and Safari as Apple's browser can surely optimize and expose the many features of the iPhone!

Developments like this are just exciting and for sure many businessmen are enthused about accessing enterprise while being in remote places with only their phones. Well, there is the laptop but that is different thing. A laptop is heavier and bulkier and needs an internet service provider. With the iPhone, there is nothing to add except the SuitePhone software. Enterprise data consumer from CEO down to admin staff can remotely access financial data functionalities such as invoicing, accounts
receivable and payroll.

As of the moment, there are still certain limitations. This is of course a natural thing since the technology is still new. As Huffman said: "There are things like printing that just aren't supported yet. This is really about accessing information in NetSuite and entering new information. We're expecting people to check dashboards or run an income statement. We don't really think people are going to spend 8 hours a day on the iPhone".

For sure this software and the Netsuite – iPhone partnership, like all other things in information technology, will evolve fast. For now, I want to imagine myself listening to my favorite music or watching my favorite video on my iPhonewhile on a remote island. And while doing all that, I can still get my financial alerts. Wow, the beauty of being a mobile worker!

Let's get to the core first

For the past few weeks, I had been blogging about SAP and all its applications such as those tiny xApps for specialized industries. I figured to understand all those, we need to dissect the very foundation where most of these applications run on.

Enter SAP Netweaver.

SAP NetWeaver is the technology platform of this ERP giant. It is also the very foundation for all SAP solutions ever since the SAP Business Suite and is marketed both as integration technology and service oriented application as well. Most of the development and runtime environment for SAP applications are taken cared of by Netweaver systems integration and custom development.

SAP NetWeaver is built on open and de facto standards in the industry. As such, it could be quite easy to extend and interoperate with other technologies coming from other developers such as IBM WebSphere, Java EE and even its competitor Microsoft .NET (Well, Microsoft offers ERP applications too).

Having a business enterprise run on a single and integrated platform can greatly boost performance. For one, it could be easy to manage all enterprise data so that a company can get an accurate picture on the strong and weak points of the operations. From that, business decision makers can take appropriate actions and innovate for the weaker aspects of the business in order to keep up with the competition. Netweaver has been referred by ERP professionals as a type of "applistructure", referring to "applications + infrastructure". This is not really exclusive to SAP in general or Netweaver in particular as other vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle are into this technology as well. Some of the advantages of "applistructure" include operations flexibility (such as the ability to manage various industries operated by one company), easy applications integration (ability to integrate different modules from a software suite) and open standards (integrating different business solutions coming from different vendors).

SAP NetWeaver platform is composed of the following core components anchoring on an active professional SAP community and SAP Development Network (SDN) knowledge repository: SAP NetWeaver Application Server , SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence, SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management, SAP NetWeaver Process Integration, SAP NetWeaver Mobile, SAP NetWeaver Portal, Knowledge Management and SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment.

SAP has been the world's top Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions vendors. Its influence on the business applications industry has resulted in team ups with top hardware vendors like IBM and HP for the development of appliances – technically hardware + software – which are geared towards simplification and enhancement of the deployment of SAP Netweaver components.

The SAP BI Accelerator is one such appliance. This technology is preinstalled on a particular hardware and is used in speeding up Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) queries and in eliminating the need for aggregations.

SAP NetWeaver is just one of the products in the SAP stack. Tomorrow, I will try elaborate on the run time environment for all SAP applications, the SAP Web Application Server.

Until then, have a profitable day!

Enhancing SAP ERP 6.0

The competition for ERP applications has always been stiff among SAP, Oracle and Microsoft with many more coming in such as Salesforce which is currently in team up with the gain Google.
SAP, the world leader in ERP application, of course does not want to be outdone. To further push its products, SAP released a second enhancement product last month. This enhancement is targeted for large enterprise customers.

The enhancement package encompasses as lot of applications with the vast SAP Enterprise Resource Planning Suite. Upgrades include both horizontal and industry specific components as well as those for the core application and web services which are derived from SAP business solutions.

SAP intends to release these upgrades progressively about two upgrades every year. I think this is a good strategy so as not to overwhelm users with both expenses and learning about new upgrades. Also having to progressively release updates breaks up the massively expensive and time consuming cycle that may IT shops go through in order to have upgrades.
SAP announced its strategy in 2006 and its continuing effort to keep the ERP 6 platform stable until 2010. But for now, the problem that SAP will have to tackle is how customers will scamper to get the upgrades.

It is still hard to say how these upgrades will be accepted by customers. Although many of them say that the strategy of SAP for maintaining a stable core for several years at a time have a good effect, many customers are unsure whether they want to spend some more money or not. Those who have been implementing MySAP ERP 2004 will need to upgrade to ERP 6.0 so that they can get the switch framework functionality which is a required in order for the system to be able to utilize the enhancement packages.

SAP introduced MySAP 2004 two years ago, and SAP ERP 6.0 was introduced just last year in 2006. As of today, there are about 2,800 customers for SAP ERP 6.0. Compared to the approximately 33,000 customers that the company has on its roster, this is a tiny number. As for the MySAP ERP 2004 platform, there are about 6,000 customers.
According to Judith Hurwitz, an analyst with Hurwitz & Associates, "It's always better to have software that is more modular and easier to upgrade, absolutely. That said, these [SAP] implementations are really large. Customers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. I remember talking to a customer who said that to do even a point release is six months of work, and that's just a point release. Upgrading an entire system, you have to check and recheck every area you've done customized work to. You have to test it all."

But for my part, if it was my company that gets confused whether or not to get upgrades, my first consideration would be if my company desperately needs. I am aware that companies need to evolve. If getting SAP ERP 6.0 is beneficial to the evolution and my company can afford it without sacrificing other aspects of the business process, I would acquire it.

SAP xApp Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (SAP xMII)

So, how is your business today? I hope yesterday's blog on the SAP xApp Lean Planning and Operations (SAP xLPO) has made you gain better insights on how to have manufacturing operations with less wastes and more profit.

Today, let us still focus on the manufacturing aspect of a business but this time we will take the aspect to a broader sense by including integration and business intelligence.

The SAP xApp Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (SAP xMII) is an application which makes it possible to connect manufacturing with the processes in a business enterprise. Because it also helps deliver actionable intelligence to production personnel, the company will be able to achieve superior performance in production.

Today's business moves very quickly as they are driven by information and information comes from ubiquitous data with the internet and other advance communications technology as conduit. The success or failure of a manufacturer depends on how he can manage his business in real time as information exchange among manufacturing and supply networks and the end customers need to take place any minute of the day (yes, even in one's sleep!).

SAP xMII is a great tool to help a manufacturer become adaptive to the constantly changing industry trends by helping profitably replenish his supply network and responding dynamically to the demands.

Let's break down SAP xMII into its two major parts. The Manufacturing Integration integrates the plant process and business operations seamlessly. Many companies find themselves manually intervening to enter production batch data when they are not implementing factory and ERP systems integration. This manual process is both time consuming and very costly as the company will need to spend more on staff hour salary. Also, because it is a manual operation, it is more prone to human error resulting data redundancy and inaccuracies. SAP xMII can make rapid integration between the mySAP ERP solution and other manufacturing software applications.

On the other part, the Manufacturing Intelligence, SAP xMII comes with manufacturing dashboards leveraging on a powerful real time analytics engine. The rich analytics feature aggregates data in order to deliver actionable intelligence to the staff behind the company. The nicely graphical and easy to use dashboards provide views so one can have visualization of plant floor systems, monitor production for Six Sigma violations and other exceptions, and dig deep into problems to know the root causes and have effective measures in correcting them. The dashboard also displays key performance indicators (KPI) which be configured to suit the organization's needs. The system can also be set to alert key people for expeditious actions under certain circumstances.

Implementing the SAP xMII may be cost effective as it takes advantage of the company's existing IT infrastructure so there is no need to spend extra tools because there is building of a system from scratch. Overall, investing in SAP xMII definitely help in manufacturing performance at the same time decrease total cost of ownership.

I wish you a productive day! Tomorrow, another SAP xAPP.

PLM and the Oracle E-Business Suite

Yesterday I blogged about Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and how giant enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendors are trying to development their own implementations of PLM.

To begin with, many IT professionals and business decision makers who have implemented ERP applications have exclaimed that the PLM is one of the best things which has come along in the Oracle E-Business suite since the descriptive flex field (DFF).
Oracle Product Lifecycle Management was known before by different names like Engineering Online and Advance Product Catalog. Compared to the Oracle Inventory or Engineering Modules, this products can changed documents in an HTML interface there is become a lot easier to manage items master and BOM's because with HTML, managing can be done using a web browser. The Oracle PLM has many functionalities which did not exist before in the Oracle E-Business Suite such as being able to ad more information to a part number using dynamic item attributes or ability to mass load items through Microsoft Excel and WebADI.

Before we go into details about PLM and the Oracle E-Business Suite, I would like define some common terms.

PLM Item Catalog – this could be considered the main component which is organized by the Catalog groups of the Inventory Module in order to extend definition into a hierarchy. Such hierarchy can have nodes called “Item Catalog Category” (ICC).
Item Catalog Categories (ICC) – This is the node or catalog group wherein all items in the item master are assigned. Only one item can be assigned to an ICC. In order to have a PLM functionality, an item must be assigned to the item master. ICC in PLM is the same as the Catalog Group in Oracle Inventory.

Catalog – In PLM, Catalogs are the Category sets in the Inventory Modules but there is a difference. In the PLM, there is added security feature which is not found in Oracle Inventory even if they have the same category.
Operational Attributes – This refer to attributes existing only the mtl_system_items table. These operational attributes could neither be created nor deleted from the system as they come with Oracle when it is shipped and there are used in defining items for other modules. Typically, they exists as mapped groups to a module in Oracle like Inventory, Purchasing, Order Management, WIP, Planning, and other modules.

PLM User Defined attribute groups – These groups form one of PLM's major functionality advantages. Users of Oracle EBS who want additional ability for adding information to an items and then use the same added information for defining, searching and integrating data can use these groups in customization. The attributes should be defined withing a group or tied up to an ICC.

One of the good things about PLM is its security feature, which, needless to say, is very important when dealing with business data. In PLM, Roles are objects based on their functionality. The role can be defined against an item, group, change inventory, ICC and just about any object within the Oracle EBS/PLM. Privileges, like in other applications, refer to the allowed function a user can have. Groups are a related cluster of user assigned to certain sets of privileges. For example, a group could be customers groups, accounting group, supplier group and many other divisions in the company.

Now that some vital terms are defined, tomorrow we will go into details of the functionalities of Oracle PLM.