Oracle Fusion & Oracle Application Unlimited - WIFM ( What's in For Me )

Dears,

This article is in continuum to the last 2 of my articles on Oracle Fusion . I am quiet  happy & surprised by the responses and Queries  I received for my last two articles on Oracle Fusion from different parts of the world enquiring more about the future strategies and directions. This article would provide some more insight about Oracle Fusion and answers to the queries asked by our good friends.At Oracle Open World 2010, Oracle announced the upcoming availability of its Fusion Applications across ERP, CRM and supply chain management, as well as continued support for its entire application portfolio. Its our time to determine how to absorb new capabilities and upgrade older applications and infrastructure.

Some Key Findings/Recap


• Six years into its acquisition strategy for business applications, Oracle has maintained the user base of its Applications Unlimited product lines (Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle PeopleSoft, Oracle JD Edwards, Oracle Siebel and Oracle Value Chain Planning & Execution); continued to sell existing products; continued to provide enhancements to products (to varying degrees); and maintained leadership with some of its products.


• Oracle customers remain comfortable with the Applications Unlimited strategy and don't feel pressured to migrate.


• Those Oracle Fusion Applications modules that can be stand-alone or targeted at augmenting existing business application suites contain significant new functionality and some best-in-class technology, but they are not market-proven.


• Oracle Fusion Applications may be positioned as a new suite of applications in the future, which may be more of a reimplementation than an upgrade for most users of Oracle Applications. However, users will not have to deal with this reimplementation consideration until they begin replacing system-of-record applications.


What Next


• Consider upgrading Oracle Applications Unlimited products for business value or support window concerns; however, few ERP suite users are finding the business justification they need for this upgrade. Some pockets of users, such as those with Supply Chain Management (SCM) and PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM), are finding more value here.


• Evaluate opportunities to enhance business application technologies, such as middleware and business intelligence (BI).


• Consider augmentation strategies for Oracle Applications, but don't limit your thinking to Oracle Fusion Applications.


• For augmentation strategies, anticipate assuming the costs and responsibilities of cross-product integration.


Fact Sheet


Almost six years after beginning a major application acquisition spree, Oracle has moved from a modest applications vendor to the second-largest enterprise applications vendor in the world. Through this, Oracle has managed the remarkable balancing act of maintaining its installed base, providing ongoing support and enhancement (although of varying quality) across products and even advancing product leadership in some areas of its vast portfolio of application, while developing a next-generation set of applications — Oracle Fusion Applications. In some cases, such as JD Edwards, Oracle has even managed to improve perceived levels of support among customers.


Oracle delivered credible road maps for each Oracle Applications Unlimited product at Oracle OpenWorld; however, the time frames on these road maps continue to be relatively short (although they are longer than have been presented in the past, now going 24 months out). Users should press for longer and more-substantiated road maps before making longer-term commitments to Applications Unlimited products.These achievements present Oracle with a new challenge: bringing an entirely new set of products to market and potentially converting customers to this new product line.


Coexistence Strategies


I have provided an overall analysis of Oracle Fusion Applications in prior article. Oracle made its long-anticipated general availability announcement for Oracle Fusion Applications (see Figure 1). It went to great lengths to position the new product line as complementary to existing Oracle Applications Unlimited products. In the keynote speeches and the Oracle Fusion Applications sessions, Oracle executives introduced a set of "coexistence scenarios," which explain how the "augmentation" approach to Oracle Fusion Applications can work and to guide customers on how they might deploy Oracle Fusion Applications alongside existing Oracle products or even applications from other vendors.


Scenarios


The first scenario is an Oracle Applications Unlimited customer that chooses not to use Oracle Fusion Applications at all. Oracle acknowledged that, in the near term, this was the most likely choice for most customers, and they used this point to reassure customers that they would not be forced to adopt Oracle Fusion Applications. The next three scenarios were variations on the idea of deploying Oracle Fusion Application modules alongside current Oracle Applications Unlimited products. The differences between the scenarios were the levels of interoperability, which ranged from a complete stand-alone deployment to loosely coupled to tightly integrated. Oracle would like its Oracle Application Unlimited customers to consider Oracle Fusion Applications modules as potential add-on or best-of-breed products. We will explore each scenario in more depth in future

Oracle is in no hurry to ramp up Oracle Fusion Applications sales. Having been affected by quality problems in new architectures in the past (Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and, to a lesser extent, 12.0), the company is setting expectations carefully until the application proves itself in the field. The augmentation strategy gets new Oracle Fusion Applications functionality and the architecture into the field with less risk to customers' business. The company is managing ramp-up customers carefully and focusing on ensuring that any proposed pilot will be well-controlled and successful. Don't expect the sales machine to be turned on until at least 2012.

Fusion Future Ahead

To set up a transition to Oracle Fusion Applications, while balancing focus on existing products, Oracle delivered three key messages to its applications customers and prospects at Oracle Open World 2010.

• Upgrade to the Latest Versions of Oracle Applications Unlimited Products


This is sensible advice in many situations (particularly with point solutions). However, many users are struggling with the business case for an upgrade of full-suite products, due to the lack of sufficient enhancements across the full-suite products to give business justification to the upgrades. We view Oracle's statements about proportion of customer base that has upgraded, especially for EBS, as overstated. Some point solution users, such as EBS Financials, PeopleSoft HCM and SCM users, are finding business value. We see an increasing number of users and system integrators and seeing an uptrend in upgrade activity, but this is being driven primarily by support window concerns.


Although Oracle states that this will facilitate a transition to Oracle Fusion Applications We are not sure how this upgrade would significantly and tangibly facilitate an upgrade. Oracle Fusion Applications Financials shares a number of conceptual design elements with EBS R12, and we now see the transition from EBS R12 Financials to Oracle Fusion Applications Financials as being more of an upgrade than a reimplementation. We need to evaluate the upgrade versus replacement effort for other pairs of Oracle Applications Unlimited modules with Oracle Fusion Applications modules.


Given the difficulty in finding business value in this upgrade, a significant question users asked at Oracle OpenWorld is whether they can skip this upgrade, wait for Oracle Fusion Applications to become commercially viable and make a single move at that point — saving the costs of an interim upgrade. However, we believe through 2013, Oracle Fusion Applications will not be a viable replacement for most Applications Unlimited users. The current timeframes on support windows create unacceptable gaps for this strategy to work for many users, depending on module, version, and support level. Additionally, given that Oracle did not announce any support window extensions; we see risk in pursuing a strategy that is predicated on skipping this upgrade due to the complications of securing upgrade resources at the end of a support window and trying to rush such an upgrade.


Due to customer pressure, Oracle might extend support windows in the future; however, if these applications are strategic to your business, you should not be planning based on an assumption of support window extensions. (In some cases, product support windows may more easily coincide with Oracle Fusion Applications commercial readiness, which would enable users to skip the interim upgrade, so users should evaluate on a module-by-module basis.)

Upgrade Application Technologies (e.g., Infrastructure, BI and Middleware)

Several infrastructure components, such as Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE), Oracle Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Suite and Oracle Enterprise Manager, can provide additional value through IT cost savings, or enhancements to enterprise value, without significant disruption of business processes. Users should explore these options, as these infrastructure moves can provide immediate value and legitimately prepare IT shops with some of the skills they will need under Oracle Fusion Applications.


Extend the Value of Your Portfolio With Augmentation Applications


In addition to augmentation through Oracle Fusion Applications, Oracle has several products across its portfolio that can add incremental value to your applications landscape with less disruption to existing applications or processes than, for example, upgrading or replacing an ERP. This is because a number of the horizontal, as well as the industry-specific applications in Oracle's portfolio, are actually point solutions (sometimes called best-of-breed), so they have fewer dependencies and entailments that make their implementation and use simpler than components of a large enterprise suite would be. Users should explore these options, such as Demantra or Agile. In addition (as noted below), users should expect costs and responsibilities associated with cross-application integration and should be careful to look for partners with experience using these tools.


Some augmentation products and modules, such as Demantra, spare parts planning and Talent Reviews in HCM, can be used across Oracle Applications Unlimited and Oracle Fusion Applications product lines. Although there may be some changes in interface components, this type of leveraged deployment may help ease the transition to Oracle Fusion Applications, as different parts of the applications portfolio can move at different speeds with this strategy.


Oracle customers that were shown as early adopters of Oracle Fusion Applications were using Oracle Fusion Applications in a coexistence strategy, not as a full-suite replacement for systems of record. These customers reported working closely with Oracle, which is providing high levels of support and co-development for these projects. Nonetheless, we still see these as early stage products, and early-release Oracle Fusion Applications customers are not yet live on beta instances. We don't expect customers to begin go-live experiences with augmentation Oracle Fusion Applications components on production instances until 1Q11. System-of-record, full-suite replacements will come after that.


AIA Is a Valuable Integration Accelerator, but Evaluate Each Integration Point


Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA): Have the PIPs Gone Pop?" Oracle is building packaged integrations, but they're not 100% complete — 60% is Oracle's design goal. This means companies need to carefully consider their alternatives for integrating their application landscapes. AIA has significant value, but customers need to understand that they will need to build up their integration skills and will "own" the maintenance of the integration going forward.


Oracle Fusion Middleware 10g lacked tools to manage code and configurations adequately; 11g provides more robust code and configuration capabilities from the BEA Systems acquisition, but has not been used by any of the references. AIA 2.5 is the most common release, and it is viewed as far superior to previous versions, also because it offers a standardized "user exit" capability to make it easier for customer-developed extensions to survive the upgrade.


Some companies that started an AIA project believed that they would receive out-of-the-box integration, but found that this was not true. However, the AIA foundation pack that provides the canonical business objects and architectural framework for building integration can save a great deal of effort.


Hope you find this Oracle Fusion series useful and Good Luck for your New Initiatives in the New Year 2011

 
Your P&C


DC*

Oracle Fusion - Enterprise Solutions Reloaded – Part 2

Dears,

The second part of our article has some more interesting facts about Oracle Fusion, Hold on to your cockpit and enjoys the ride.

Oracle states that it has designed Oracle Fusion Applications on the principle of modular independence. The promise of this design principle is that users will be able to deploy modules of Oracle Fusion Applications with fewer dependencies than in a conventional application or ERP suite. For example, in Oracle E-Business Suite, if users want to deploy Warehouse Management, they would have to have inventory management set up first because of the data and functional dependencies.

In a more modularly independent suite, one might be able to deploy Warehouse Management without the dependencies. The task is to enable modular independence while maintaining process integrity across the suite. For example, best-of-breed software modules are necessarily modularly independent, because they aren't part of a suite. As Oracle Fusion Applications have yet to be generally released, we have not had an opportunity to evaluate fully the degree to which modular independence has been carried out.

Modular independence is important because it affects the degree to which users will be able to replace or deploy modules of Oracle Fusion Applications into their existing applications. If there is a high degree of modularity, then replacement and deployment will likely be high. However, the issue that users will need to deal with is whether they can cope with the level of integration work that likely will be necessary to maintain process integrity if they employ more than one to two uses of Oracle Fusion Applications as point solutions. While service-oriented architecture (SOA) will help here, We estimate that the integration effort may not be small. There may be modular independence, but there may not be integrations built for the permutation of modules plus Oracle Applications Unlimited applications that a particular user will want to use. We believes that at some point, this will likely tip users from using Oracle Fusion Applications as an augmentation strategy to Oracle Fusion Applications as a core ERP or applications strategy, because the cost for transitioning the core will be less than maintaining the integrations between the add-on modules.

Initial demonstrations of Oracle Fusion Applications that we have seen indicate that the product has been designed as a model-driven packaged application with embedded analytics, including social networking and collaboration, embedded business intelligence, and a multichannel user interface. If the product lives up to these design principles and becomes functionally robust, then it will have a breakthrough position in the market. These design principles enable substantially greater process agility and a more sophisticated execution of Pattern-Based Strategies by users employing these applications.

We will continue to investigate these capabilities to ascertain if the product will deliver on this promise. From what We have seen, a true augmentation strategy will be available for a certain number of modules — for example, Compensation Management, Talent Management, Payroll, Sourcing Distributed Order Management, Marketing & Territory Management, Incentive Compensation, and Financial Governance . These modules can work in conjunction with existing Oracle products and, in general, provide new functionality. As Oracle Fusion Applications modules become available that mirror existing products, then Oracle Fusion Applications will be a replacement and not an augmentation.

Early adopters of Oracle Fusion Applications will likely be users operating modules in a coexistence mode. Oracle reports some users are implementing Incentive Compensation, Sourcing and Projects in coexistence scenarios. Oracle has spent time in the laboratory improving the user interface for Oracle Fusion Applications. User feedback has enabled Oracle to reduce the number of user interventions in any given workflow, and therefore reduce the time it takes to process tasks. In addition, the user interface has been designed to incorporate analytics as part of that workflow design.

Oracle Fusion Applications – Preview

Oracle Fusion Administrative ERP

We expect that in the initial release for the ERP module of Oracle Fusion Applications, the focus will be on finance, human capital management and procurement — i.e., administrative ERP. There is limited support for core order management, distribution, logistics or manufacturing that is required for most operational ERP strategies. Another aspect of the ERP module is whether there will be support for industry-specific functionality outside of manufacturing and distribution. It is early in the development cycle for Oracle Fusion Applications, and some of the functionality being developed could be considered core to some of these vertical-specific applications that have long been stated as central to Oracle's applications strategy. Organizations that want to use Oracle Fusion Applications to augment their operational ERP strategies will likely be able to use some augmentation components; however, they should not assume that integrations provided by AIA will be of value to them. Rather, Oracle's upgrade tools and Oracle Fusion Middleware likely will be the mainstay of integrations. Additionally, as users adopt more than two to three augmentation components from Oracle Fusion Applications, they will likely want to consider making a transition to Oracle Fusion Applications for core ERP functionality, as the cost of maintaining integrations may outstrip the cost of a change in the core application. The first release of Oracle Fusion Applications has some functionality to support administrative ERP footprints, but is not suitable for most operational ERP installations.

Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management Applications



The first release of Oracle Fusion Applications Human Capital Management includes three broad product areas:

• Workforce Deployment — Human Resources, Global Payroll, and Workforce Lifecycle Manager (used for on boarding, for example)

• Workforce Development — Profile Management, Network at Work (Social Software features are included leveraging the Oracle WebCenter platform), Performance & Goal Management, and Talent Review

• Workforce Rewards — Compensation Management, Incentive Management, and Benefits Management

There are also some innovations that are not found in the Oracle PeopleSoft and Oracle E-Business Suite product lines — for example, Workforce Predictions (predictive workforce analytics that provide a different way of looking at Human Capital Management data), Network at Work, and Talent Review. Recruiting and Learning, Labor Scheduling, Time and Attendance, and Leave Management are absent from the initial release of Oracle Fusion Applications Human Capital Management. However, previews of Profile Management, Talent Review, and Compensation Management show solid functionality and a good user interface for an initial release.

We expect Oracle to position Oracle Fusion Applications Human Capital Management for new customers who want a Human Capital Management application built from the ground up using SOA. In addition, we expect Oracle to use this as a competitive block versus SaaS solutions. Specifically, we believe Oracle will offer the full Human Capital Management solution via the SaaS model as an alternative to existing Oracle PeopleSoft customers considering alternatives such as Workday and Ultimate Software. In addition, we believe Oracle will offer the Talent Management applications stand-alone as a SaaS offering for existing Oracle PeopleSoft customers considering alternatives such as SuccessFactors.



Oracle Fusion Core Financial Management Applications

The first release of Oracle Fusion Applications Financials covers general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable and collection management, fixed assets, cash management and employee expenses. There will be no support for encumbrance and commitment accounting in the first release, so this module will not be suitable for most public-sector organizations. There will not be support for treasury management functionality, apart from cash management. Oracle Imaging and Process Management provides an integrated document management capability to support accounts payable invoice automations.

Some of the fundamental architectural concepts come from a combination of Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle PeopleSoft. The general ledger (GL) coding structure and ledger architecture is the same as Oracle E-Business Suite, with an Accounting Flexfield of 30 segments each of 25 characters, while the subledger accounting concept from Release 12 of Oracle E-Business Suite is also used. Tree structures and effective dates are carried over from Oracle PeopleSoft. However, the most significant innovation is the use of the Oracle Essbase multidimensional database to hold aggregate GL balances. This is a major architectural development that overcomes the inherent difficulty of creating hierarchical financial aggregations in a relational database, and is a significant first for Oracle. Performance of such a hybrid architecture will be a concern, but Oracle does not perceive this to be an issue. Incremental updates are performed to the Oracle Essbase aggregates whenever a journal is posted, and Oracle claims that performance of these updates is better than updating summary GL balances in the relational environment.

While the underlying architecture is a significant innovation, its use in the applications is underwhelming. Oracle had the opportunity to introduce the kind of visualization of financial balances that its users have been dreaming of since the initial release of Oracle E-Business Suite in 1989. Based on what we have seen so far, it is possible to drill down through the hierarchy levels in an easy way, but the visualization is not new (unlike other functional areas, such as HR). Oracle may have missed an opportunity to introduce functionality that would create clear differentiation for Oracle Fusion Applications Financials.

Oracle Fusion Extended Financial Management Applications

In addition to Core Financial Management applications, the first release of Oracle Fusion Applications includes Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and Procurement.

PPM covers project costing, project billing, project control, performance reporting and integration with project management systems (the first integration will be Primavera). There is two-way synchronization with Microsoft Project Server. The functionality appears comprehensive, with a focus on the financial aspects of PPM. There is also integration with Oracle Fusion Applications Enterprise Contract Management for contract-related data. Future releases may feature integration with Hyperion Planning to hold plan data. Oracle has leveraged the underlying Oracle Fusion Middleware to provide collaboration capabilities along project inquiries and dashboards (which have excellent visualization). PPM makes good use of the multidimensional capabilities provided by the inclusion of Oracle Essbase.



Oracle Fusion Procurement

This covers the entire procurement process (focusing on indirect procurement), providing purchasing, self-service procurement, sourcing, procurement contracts, and supplier portal and spend analysis. The data model is primarily from Oracle E-Business Suite, but with some significant changes — for example, the introduction of center-driven procurement, which supports centralized and local centers of category expertise. Spend analysis leverages Oracle Essbase to provide multidimensional and what-if analysis.

The first release of Oracle Fusion Financials has fairly comprehensive functionality, a highly innovative architecture and some interesting new features. Although it is primarily aimed at new Oracle customers, midsize E-Business Suite Financials users could consider becoming early adopters if they have an Oracle-centric technology strategy. Oracle PeopleSoft and Oracle JD Edwards users should wait until Oracle Fusion Applications become more of a known quantity in the market.


Oracle Fusion CRM -Sales & Marketing

The first release of Oracle Fusion CRM Application will support Sales & Marketing functionality — for example, Sales Opportunity Management, Lead Management, Campaign Marketing, Customer Hub, Sales Prospecting, Territory Management, Incentive Compensation, and Quota Management. We do not expect to see deployment of Oracle Fusion Applications aimed at Customer Service Contact Centers, Web Customer Service or Field Service until 2012.

Oracle has confirmed that it plans to deliver all Oracle Fusion Applications as multitenant SaaS, on-demand/hosted and on-premises offerings. We have yet to see a technology provider do this successfully, due to the inherent conflicts between supporting two delivery models with the same product targeted at the same user. As yet, we have not had sufficient details on whether Oracle plans to promise clients a migration between the two as needed.Oracle cites that is will continue to support its current SaaS offering, Oracle CRM On Demand, beyond Release 18 — i.e., to 19 and 20 version releases. This means that it will have two SaaS offerings targeted at the same market. Oracle will have four sales force automation (SFA) offerings targeted at the same user base. We believe that some rationalization is inevitable. Furthermore, we have not received conclusive information about migration tools from Oracle CRM On Demand to the new SaaS Oracle Fusion Applications Sales & Marketing offerings.Clients should plan for a reimplementation in moving from Oracle Fusion Applications Sales & Marketing On-Premise to Oracle Fusion Applications Sales & Marketing SaaS. There may be some savings due to some consistency in data model and tools.

Oracle Fusion Applications: Supply Chain Management

Oracle has a component of Oracle Fusion Applications that is called Supply Chain Management (SCM). At this time, the only component in the SCM portfolio is what We has called "distributed order management," which is targeted to be sold to Oracle and non-Oracle customers. This distributed order management component, along with Oracle's SCM framework, which contains data structures for product management, global order processing, logistics and cost management, will form the basis for Oracle's future SCM products in Oracle Fusion Applications. While the product suite is not a full SCM suite, this initial component is an interesting piece of stand-alone functionality that could be used to augment existing ERP or other order-execution environments.

There are two basic kinds of distributed order management: order capture and supply chain-oriented. Oracle is focused on the latter with the initial release of Oracle Fusion Applications. Supply chain-oriented Distributed Order Management emerged in the middle of the dot-com era to manage drop-ship orders that had to be executed across multiple fulfillment entities. That is, an organization might have had one order with three order lines, each line being fulfilled by a different vendor.

The reason a new category of order management systems is needed is because traditional ERP-based views of order management assume that the application manages both the orchestration of the order as well as the execution of the order. These systems basically take order orchestration and management (such as status information and promising information) and enable that to run against multiple execution environments.



Oracle breaks its order management platform into:

• Capture

• Decomposition

• Orchestration

• Task Layer Services

• External Interface Layer

• Global Order Promising

• Fulfill



This is a robust vision of overall order management, but Oracle has not built out mature functionality within each of these layers. Decomposition and orchestration appear to be the most-robust components, along with the external interface layer, at this point. This functionality supports the scenarios for usage that Oracle envisions with this product.

This product is not intended to perform significant order-capture functions or to perform pricing. Additionally, the product relies on the Oracle Fusion Applications Product Data model that can be populated through product master solutions or through service calls. As such, this product cannot replace an existing order management environment, but it can overlay existing environments to provide basic order orchestration components. Oracle states that it has worked with customers in high-tech, manufacturing, retail, communications, media and financial services industries to validate functionality.

The use of a Gantt chart to manage overall order execution and to perform "jeopardy management" is a promising model; however, significant work on how to populate the lead-time data into this system is required. The system will need a more sophisticated model than simple linear lead time flows to be useful in the real world. The ability to manage costs within the system is also promising, but there are only high-level examples of how this would be used so far. Finally, the capability to have a resource-based view of fulfillment resources could help Oracle's Distributed Order Management solve more-complex problems than other order-management environments have been able to tackle.

The major functionality gap in the initial release of Oracle Fusion Applications is that the Oracle Distributed Order Management product does not use a graphical user interface to define the orchestrations of processes/orders this reduces the usefulness of a product whose main value to users will be to enable agile business process flows via such orchestration. However, we expect Oracle to address this issue as the product matures, particularly since Oracle Distributed Order Management doesn't appear to have fundamental architectural limitations in the area of fulfillment.

Oracle Fusion Applications and AIA

Oracle's stated long-term strategy has been to create the Oracle Fusion Applications, bringing the functionality of its various products to a common platform built on Oracle Fusion Middleware. Although its next-generation product is an engineered suite, the new product will have to coexist with the existing applications for many years, until all the functionality needed by a customer has migrated to the new platform. Oracle envisions a "pillar" strategy, where companies replace older applications on a piece-by-piece basis with Oracle Fusion Applications as they reach critical mass for a customer's needs.

AIA and the PIPs were supposed to make this transition easier, as Oracle Fusion Applications core objects are consistent with the canonicals in AIA. While Oracle Fusion Applications incorporate attractive user interface, analytic and social networking capabilities, it may be many years before they attain functional parity with what they replace in certain product families. Oracle believes it can use the simpler techniques to integrate the pillars. Customization for each customer, however, will add to the cost of adopting a pillar approach, further reducing business justification for using the product.


Migration to Oracle Fusion Applications

With the initial release of Oracle Fusion Applications likely focused on point solutions, most users will be concerned with how to integrate Oracle Fusion Applications into their core applications. This will be a substantially easier effort than migrating the entire core functionality.

At this point, there is not enough functionality in Oracle Fusion Applications for most users to consider a full migration of their existing Oracle products to Oracle Fusion Applications, unless organizations have purely financial management usage of their applications' core. However, as Oracle fills out the functional footprint of Oracle Fusion Applications, full migration will become a real choice for more users.

Based on demonstrations that Oracle provided,we see Oracle Fusion Applications as having a substantially different process and data model from other Oracle Applications Unlimited applications. While there are carryover elements from some of the Oracle Applications Unlimited products, there is no Oracle Applications Unlimited product family that looks substantially like what is in most of Oracle Fusion Applications. Additionally, there is some complexity in the use of embedded analytics and model-driven packaged applications that are not present in Oracle Applications Unlimited products.
Oracle has stated that it will provide data migration "automated upgrade tools" for this. While we expect the tools to be of high quality, data migration is not a significant portion of the effort in migrating from a legacy environment to a new process model, especially with the new technologies embedded in Oracle Fusion Applications. For replacement or augmented modules(s), the implementation effort will vary widely, with costs similar to reimplementation levels for replacement modules. This will be highly dependent on the Oracle product family, level of customizations, degree of latest release versions installed, and the availability of migration tools.

Many organization & users will need new skills, such as BPM and process governance, to manage an Oracle Fusion Applications implementation. Organizations will need to assess the level of skills available to them prior to moving to Oracle Fusion Applications.

Overall Fusion is a innovation and Interesting recipe from Oracle for the new IT economy but the real success of Fusion relies on how well it fuses with existing IT infrastructure and help companies to enhance efficiencies and cost effectiveness of IT operation.

Your P&C

DC*

Oracle Fusion - Enterprise Solutions Reloaded – Part 1

Dears,


The wait is over. Since 2005, the business applications world has watched and waited for Oracle Fusion Applications to be brought to market. With the promise of creating business applications based on modern technology, Oracle Fusion Applications were seen as Oracle's long-term replacement for its existing products. The introduction of Oracle Applications Unlimited in 2006 indicated a change in Oracle's strategy as a coexistent product development path chosen over a replacement convergence path. This dual strategy raised concerns with users who wanted clarity about the road map and which product to plan for. By the end of 2008, Oracle Fusion Applications was still a mystery. With Oracle Fusion Applications now scheduled for delivery, its time to unveil the Oracle Fusion Take away

First let resolve some mysteries around Oracle Fusion and get things straight for us to move forward in the Fusion Ride.

Fusion Strategy

• Oracle Fusion Applications are not positioned to replace Oracle Applications Unlimited product lines. Oracle Fusion Applications or modules that mirror equivalent functionality will dictate a replacement (unless it is on a separate instance in which they can coexist). New functionality provided by Oracle Fusion Applications module(s) will be an "augmentation" to Oracle Applications Unlimited.

• Oracle Fusion Applications serve the purpose of showing what a model-driven application looks like with embedded analytics, embedded collaboration and Web 2.0 technology — for example, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, flexible business process management (BPM) and a flexible, efficient and role-based user interface.

• We believe that Oracle Fusion Applications are most relevant for users of Oracle Applications; it is not a competitive stand-alone business applications suite yet. Oracle has reported some use cases of Distributed Order Management and Sales & Marketing functionality working outside an Oracle environment.

Fusion Market

• There are 101 Oracle Fusion Applications modules targeted for release in late 2010 & early 2011, distributed across the following product families: 34 — Sales & Marketing; 21 — Human Resources; 13 — Financials; 6 — Purchasing; 7 — Projects Portfolio Management; 10 — Supply Chain Management; and 10 — Governance, Risk and Compliance. Oracle Fusion Applications will not serve as a complete ERP suite before year-end 2013. An Oracle Fusion Applications Administrative ERP suite is possible by year-end 2011.

• Oracle Fusion Applications are not targeted at the midmarket segment. Oracle JD Edwards and Oracle E-Business Suite will continue to be Oracle's products in that market. We expect to see Oracle offer modules from Oracle Fusion Applications as stand-alone, augmented add-ons to its core midmarket products.

• Oracle Fusion Applications are designed to operate in on-premises, on-demand/software-as-a-service (SaaS) or business process outsourcing (BPO) modes. For year-end 2010, Oracle has committed to having all modules "SaaS Ready." This means that Oracle intends to issue the first release of Oracle Fusion Applications as multitenant SaaS, on-demand/hosted and on-premises.

• The end-user clients may find Oracle's positioning difficult to understand. With Oracle Fusion Applications as the future suite product, Oracle Applications Unlimited products having strong road maps, and Oracle Fusion Applications positioned as an augmentation or replacement product, Oracle sales may be challenged to provide clear guidance to end users, despite Oracle's investments in customer-facing centers of excellence.

• Oracle has yet to announce pricing for Oracle Fusion Applications. The pricing structure will follow the one used for Oracle Applications Unlimited products; that most users will be required to pay additional license costs to be able to access meaningful uplift functionality within Oracle Fusion Applications; and that some users will be compelled to license Oracle Essbase to use some of the modules of Oracle Fusion Applications — specifically users of Financials, Projects and CRM Territory.

Fusion Implementation

• Oracle customers who are planning to deploy Oracle Fusion Applications and who have a functional overlap with an existing module will have to replace the existing module, unless it is on a different instance (in which case, they can coexist). Oracle Fusion Applications can also augment as point solutions or product families (module sets) with Oracle Applications Unlimited. Oracle will need to advise clients on the implication of various "mix and match" scenarios (particularly on the needed integration, differences in user interface and impact on data transparency).

• Many users will need new skills, such as BPM and process governance, to manage an Oracle Fusion Applications implementation. Similarly, professional services firms will need to prove their capabilities to implement Oracle Fusion Applications.

• Oracle had cited its Application Integration Architecture (AIA) as the way for Oracle clients to help prepare for the adoption of Oracle Fusion Applications. The recent shift in Oracle's Process Integration Pack (PIP) strategy (caused by low takeup and the complexity of providing PIPs for all scenarios) means a refocus to new Oracle Fusion Middleware and a promise of new "automated upgrade tools."

• For replacement or augmented modules(s), the implementation effort will vary widely, with costs similar to reimplementation levels for replacement modules. Costs will be highly dependent on the Oracle product family, level of customizations, degree of latest release versions installed, and the availability of migration tools.

Recommendations

• Monitor Oracle's ongoing road map and pricing announcements, and focus on specific functional solutions to see if they can add value to your Oracle applications portfolio. Understand the full scope of the pricing model.

• Understand how the different product lines can be combined with Oracle Fusion Applications and their impact on process integrity, integration costs, user interface designs and data model consistency.

• Do not plan for Oracle Fusion Applications completely replacing Oracle Applications Unlimited products before year-end 2011 for administrative ERP implementations; and year-end 2013 for operational ERP suite implementations.

• Notify on-premises clients looking for CRM that the first release of Oracle Fusion Applications supports Sales & Marketing. Clients should consider Oracle Fusion Applications Sales & Marketing for Core Sales Force Automation, and Partner Relationship Management, including Territory Management. Due to the newness of the product, users should conduct an extended trial period.

• Ensure that your enterprise has restructured its support and governance models to enable it to support Oracle Fusion Applications. Enterprises should plan to add process governance before implementing a model-driven packaged application such as Oracle Fusion Applications.

• Detail the integrations needed to bring Oracle Fusion Applications augmentation functionality to your applications environment and look for definitional differences — for example, in the format for an "order" used by multiple functions.

• The cost of integration, the usefulness of upgrade tools and the availability of AIA/PIPs should be costed as part of the business-value validation. Equally, users will need clear escalation paths to Oracle Fusion Applications engineers in the early phases of any implementation.

Watch this space for the second part of the Article.

You’re P&C

DC*

The CRM Desktop, the Workforce Empower Tool.

Dears,

Recently I had an opportunity to evaluate  multiple enterprise crm applications with office productivity tool integration. Very interestingly the Oracle has a product by name Siebel Desktop which has immense value to the CRM workforce. By providing critical sales data within the applications that knowledge workers are already using, Siebel CRM Desktop improves access to timely information and increases adoption throughout the organization.


Siebel CRM Desktop sets the standard for providing users access to CRM data within the context of the desktop productivity applications—such as IBM Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook—they use most frequently.

Drive User Adoption

With Siebel CRM Desktop, organizations can dramatically increase adoption by giving users access to the critical CRM data within the productivity applications they already use most frequently. Because they inherently update the CRM application simply by maintaining their data, critical information within CRM Applications are quickly and easily updated since this data is available in applications that users are already accessing throughout the day.

Leverage Shared Data Synchronization

Siebel CRM Desktop allows users to maintain a single calendar, task, and contact list in their productivity application and have it synchronized with the CRM application. This sharing approach allows users to work in a familiar environment while capturing important customer interactions and synchronizing information into the common Siebel CRM database. The synchronization process of this data takes into account CRM validation rules such as required fields, constrained pick lists, and security rules. This customizable set of rules ensures that data will synchronize successfully, even in highly configured CRM environments.

Add Critical Context to Data

Siebel CRM Desktop goes beyond the capabilities of a simple synchronization solution. It allows users to relate Personal Information Manager (PIM) data to CRM data from inside the desktop client. This capability gives context to PIM data in the CRM application.

Some Practical Examples
• When working with a PIM calendar item, the user can associate it to a CRM account or opportunity as an activity, allowing sales team members and management to see customer touch points in the context of sales activity.
• When creating a calendar item, any invitee will automatically be added to the contact or employee list for the related CRM activity.
• Users may relate an inbound or outbound email to a particular customer account, sales opportunity, or any other syncing object. The user can also set up automatic associations of all inbound and outbound email for a given contact or customer account.

Maintain CRM Data in Desktop Productivity Applications

Siebel CRM Desktop provides CRM business logic, including availability of custom fields and enforcement of validation rules (required fields, pick lists, calculated fields, etc.) within the PIM application. Providing validation at the time of data entry ensures that users are notified immediately of any validation issues, which helps ensure they can address them quickly.

Offline Capability
All functions available in Siebel CRM Desktop are available to users regardless of whether they are online or offline. Any changes made in their desktop productivity application are maintained regardless of whether there is immediate access to the CRM application. When users reconnect, any data updated on the client are uploaded to the server and vice versa. Any conflicts are reported to the user, who can determine the appropriate resolution.

Improved Quality of Training
Since users are already familiar with navigation, search, data entry, and other features of their desktop productivity application, organizations can allocate valuable training time on topics vital to the success of the CRM implementation, such as how individual opportunity status information feeds overall sales pipeline forecast through the back office to support and manufacturing.

Your P&C
DC*

CRM Web 2.0 , The new CRM Avatar

Dears,

One of the hottest trends in e-Commerce and retail marketing is the adaptation of Web 2.0 applications like blogs, wikis, video, RSS, widgets and podcasting into the marketing and customer relationship management process. Catching on quickly among enterprises of various sizes and scopes, some simply call this smart e-commerce while others have begun applying a label to it- CRM 2.0. Building upon the classic customer relationship management platforms and processes, many of these world-leading businesses are actively merging together best of breed Web 2.0 technologies, partnerships and alliances. Their mission is to engage and involve their customer in order to create a truly collaborative customer experience that makes the customer feel as though they are an essential element in the entire business relationship.

By creating this central customer centric ecosystem where the customers reside within core of multiple business units and connection points, businesses can communicate to the customer in the manner that they the customer, want to be marketed. Not only does this alleviate a lot of marketing waste, the customer is happy to not receive spam, get another unwanted voicemail or toss yet another direct mail piece into the recycle bin.These businesses are implementing a new way to do business – a direction away from customers just being the targets of the business ecosystem and towards a paradigm that engages the customer and makes them part of the marketing process.To make this transition towards a customer centric marketing ecosystem work, and to be informed of their customer’s wants and preferences, requires a centralized customer profile platform that can retrieve information from multiple data points, update the info in real time, and also leverage appropriate customer interaction and Web 2.0 applications.These new CRM systems must power customized, meaningful, and automated communications that benefit the customer on a superior and personal level.

What is CRM 2.0?

CRM 2.0 describes an interactive exchange that businesses and customers can “engage into”, that matches customer needs, requirements and expectations with the business that can best fulfill them. More than just a one-time action, this matching relationship could be extended over time, even years, and be a multi-phase, multi-channel interaction for more involved purchasing relationships.

The next generation of e-commerce has to be a unique customer experience that will enable companies and their customers to function as a community, creating new solutions and using existing ones in close collaboration. The free flow of information will allow the community to identify the respective needs immediately and seamlessly deliver the right solutions.

The organizing foundation of CRM 2.0 is to build high value relationships via applications and services that promote this ongoing dialogue, both online and offline. These principles create personal relationships that drive advocacy and continuous communication improvement as customers start to take ownership of the relationship. Corporations also achieve continuous improvement by embracing collaboration between all members of its customer ecosystem. The result of doing so is an improvement in the quality of product and service delivery, an upgrade of the customer experience and new classification within the enterprise’s value proposition. The experience and insights of one customer, partner, or employee benefits the common experience of all.

Recognizing the importance of making the sales and marketing process an interactive conversation, smart companies worldwide are leveraging User groups, social networks, message boards, blogs and video sharing. They are engaging the customer via personal pages, RSS, social filters and making it on-demand through mobile web, mobile applications, SMS, podcasting, streaming video and so forth.

Today, companies are taking the first steps towards incorporating Web 2.0 applications into their marketing and CRM processes. For example at Retail Giant in , a company with over 1000 retail outlets, they successfully increased their Web traffic by 200% and the number of first-time visitors who returned to the site by over 50 times. They were able to develop and implement a combination of creative emails, blogs, and online videos targeted to the individual interests of each specific visitor.In addition, the sales team, management, and POS databases. Now, when a customer visits ecommerce website, they are prompted to sign up for the VIP Club in hundreds of strategic locations across their website. Based on zip code, this new prospect’s information is distributed to the nearest store enabling local sales managers the capability to easily follow-up. In addition, once a purchase is made, the customer automatically receives monthly follow up emails with valuable information on how to use the specific product or products that they purchased.

Other companies are also learning how to better integrate their database with marketing. One of the US Country Airlines was able to improve their customers’ flight experience just by getting a deeper understanding of its customers’ behavior- what they responded to and what they wanted. The airlines monitored how prospects and customers interacted with their website, emails, PPC campaigns and landing pages as well as several offline advertising channels. They were able to track specifically which elements of their marketing campaigns were driving the revenue. By combining these analytics with their flight and reservation information, purchase history (both direct and channel) and Affinity Program, airlines established a series of highly effective “super campaigns” throughout multiple marketing channels. The results? An increase in overall customer satisfaction and return customers.

As you can see, businesses of all sizes and types are recognizing the value of this new marketing and customer interaction paradigm. By understanding how to craft the collaborative customer experience and better engage the customer, next generation businesses will be able to increase profits while improving their marketing team efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Marketing to customers in the manner that they prefer is a win-win for all, That CRM Avatar 2.0 for you

Your P&C

DC*

Oracle Fusion CRM - Leads the Fusion League

Dears,
Oracle's long march toward Fusion Applications, a massive effort to bring together the best functionality of its many acquisitions, took a significant step forward at Open World when CEO Larry Ellison demonstrated the forthcoming Oracle Fusion Applications. Ellison Said "We basically decided to take all the best features of PeopleSoft, Oracle and Siebel and re implement those features on top of a fusion middleware infrastructure entirely written from Java.

It’s a significant step for an effort "more than five years in the making," according to Ellison, but for customers, it is only the beginning. While Oracle has continued to support, and even update, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel under its Applications Unlimited program, the new applications require some careful thinking.

CRM represents the early Fusion Applications

In fact, CRM has led the way for Fusion Applications. It was three years ago that Ellison first announced that Fusion Applications had arrived, demonstrating a couple of Social CRM tools for sales collaboration. In addition, it was clear from sessions at Open World that the Fusion CRM capabilities received a lot of attention. It will probably get a lot of customer attention as well, thanks partly to the core customer data model. One of the core things in Fusion CRM is that as people are starting to use different pieces, it all comes back to the data model. The customer record gets tied back to Fusion CRM. People will gravitate to that because a lot of the core Fusion CRM product has been built on the Siebel customer model.

While the "first" Fusion Applications were Oracle's Social CRM tools, the company has poured most of its CRM development efforts into CRM on Demand, its Software as a Service (SaaS) applications based on what was originally Siebel On Demand. Most new sales of CRM at Oracle have been the CRM On Demand product. The key thing for customers is if you're coming in from Siebel try to get to the latest version of Siebel first. The upgrade path is encompassing more and more Fusion components. Basically, a lot of the Fusion middleware components that are required are showing up in later releases. As long as you're in an upgradeable release, you're on the right path.

Oracle CRM customers thinking ahead

The upgrades are painful but they're worth it. They definitely justify themselves. If we start doing point upgrades on certain areas, will that get us out of sync in our total integration? Is there a chance one area gets behind, one gets ahead, and I can't take advantage of something?.The new Fusion CRM applications have the comprehensive hub around customers and contacts, planning capacity and integrations. Oracle did not release pricing information on any of the Fusion Applications. It is making the applications available to beta testers at the end of this year, and the applications will be generally available in the first quarter of 2011.Customers up to date on their maintenance and support will be able to do a like-to-like swap. They’ve taken the time to figure out what the largest Siebel customer wants and what their footprint is. Customers would have to pay for modules they do not already have installed. In two to three years, the first of the functionality will be built out, and in the next three to four years, Fusion CRM will have complete parity with the base horizontal functionality.

PeopleSoft CRM upgrade to Fusion CRM would be a great challenge but unfortunately there is limited option for them way ahead.
One thing that look very promising is the way Fusion CRM march forward when compared to other Fusion apps where still people are not completely aware of the benefits over Oracle R12.X application but at the same time its way behind to catch up on the industry specific modules like the ones Siebel Industry vertical applications offer. We look forward Larry to invest on this and make a quick buck out of Fusion CRM Industry application.


Good Luck Oracle Amigos

Your P&C

DC*

Think before you leap, CRM Incubator Series – Part 1

Dears,


Why do companies spend the time and money to implement a Customer Relationship Management system? The reasons vary, but near the top of the list you’ll almost always find:

1. Generate more sales.
2. Get control of their contacts with a central database
3. Reduce operating inefficiencies and costs

Companies get sold on how slick everything fits together and the flashy reports that will give magical insight into their business. CRM demos are designed to give maximum WOW factor and all of the scenarios used in the sales presentation are tailored to show off the CRM system at its very best and completely side step any product deficiencies. Those selling CRM systems get good at selling the “sizzle”.

However, the “steak” usually falls well short of expectations. And that’s because the sales process they’re using has been purposely designed to distract you from a critical fact. More on that later…but first..Most of the resources (time, money, patience and political capital) get burned up just trying to get a system installed and users using it in a minimal way. This means that very little enthusiasm for the project is left to get into the really meaningful and valuable aspects of a CRM system.

If you think of a mining company that has just found a rich gold deposit deep within the earth; they understand a very important distinction that makes all of the difference between success and failure. Once a gold deposit is found, most of the investment in the mine is to move equipment in, build the infrastructure and dig to where the gold is. Most of the time and money goes into developing the site without any gold coming out. Only after the site is ready does the business of mining gold begin. Successful mines do not confuse set-up with production.

With your CRM project, you need to understand that there is a set-up phase and a production phase. You need a clear plan for both phases. Most companies only plan around buying, installing and training and fail to have a plan for production.


Ask yourself: “How, specifically, are we going to use our CRM system to achieve our goals:

1. How, specifically, is a CRM system going to generate more sales for us?


2. How, specifically, is a CRM system going to give us more control of our contacts?


3. How, specifically, is a CRM system going to reduce our operating inefficiencies and costs?

Your CRM project should not start until you have a very clear and detailed answer to that question.

Now, experience tells me that even when given this advice, companies are pressing ahead with their project without taking the time to answer that question. The warning to stop and think it through will go unheeded.

Most  entrepreneurial companies that are used to running on lean budgets and making decisions quickly find it difficult to stop and ask questions that sound simple but are actually difficult to answer. It can be a very frustrating, very aggravating process to figure out exactly how a CRM system is going to pay-off. If you understand and accept that fact, then getting through it becomes much easier.

I call it the Leadership Challenge. And this is where all successful CRM projects must start. This is where CRM begins with philosophy and not software. This is where CRM is about organizing your business around the idea that:

“If all we do is born out of a desire to Identify, Attract and Retain our Most Profitable Customer, then we will be a successful company.”

Of course, this is not what the people trying to sell you a CRM system want you to hear. They want you to get signed-up on a trial period…they want you to defer this thinking until after you’ve got the system in. They want you to pay them now and think about it later. Of course they do…they make no money from you internal soul searching, mapping out processes and really understanding your customer and how it relates to your business. They make their money when you buy software and implementation services.

Their sales process is at odds with your buying process. And your buying process should begin only after you’ve got a very clear understanding of your relationship to your customer and how adopting a CRM system is going to help you achieve your business goals.

Fit With IT
It’s a good idea to pick a CRM system that your IT staff are capable of supporting. That said, be careful not to dismiss very good choices because your IT staff may not be familiar with current, main stream technologies. Being that you’re in business, your IT staff should be reasonably up to speed on main stream business technologies.
You need to look at how well the CRM technology fits in with the skills and competencies of your IT staff. For example, if your IT staff is familiar with MS SQL Server (common for small businesses) as a database back-end and the CRM solution is Oracle based (usually used in larger Enterprises), this could cause some problems. Certainly, your IT staff will not have a comfort level (at first) of working in that new environment for back-ups and database maintenance issues.

Contact vs. Account Centric

There are two basic paradigms for CRM systems:

1. Contact Centric: In Contact Centric systems, the primary organization is around independent contacts.

2. Account Centric: In Account Centric systems, there are two levels to the basic organization: a company or account layer to which multiple contacts can be related.

Reasons for Compromising on Technology
Contact Centric

In a contact centric system, the database is organized around individual contacts. So, if you have dealings with 3 different people all from the same company, you would have 3 different contact records and in each record would be the company name.

There may be ways to relate different contacts together, but these will be in the “workaround” class. A Contact centric organization makes sense if you are dealing with individuals and you do not need to do such things as look at an organization’s combined history. It is very difficult/clumsy to track company related information separately from contact information.
For example, if you want to track information about a company (e.g. sic code, # employees, annual budget, etc.) separately from contact related information (e.g. favourite hobby, home phone number, spouse’s name, etc.). there isn’t an easy way to do that:
 Under which contact do you store the company information,

 Which contact becomes the primary record,

 Do you store the information under both contacts…which makes updating difficult.

 Do you create a “contact” record to serve as the company record and somehow relate the contacts to it?

Account Centric

Account centric CRM systems have a layer above contact, the organization or account, that can tie multiple contacts together. This has the advantage of being able to track company-related information entirely separately from contact-related information. This approach is usually easier to:

 See all opportunities for an account/company.

 See combined history.

 Do address updates.

 See the organization and all its contacts in one view.

 Report on company vs. individuals easier.

Unless you are working in an industry where you only need one contact record per account, choose an Account centric CRM system.

The idea behind this article to is open your window to get some fresh thoughts about the CRM initiative which is not biased by your organization challenges or some vendor demonstrations. Just think for a while before you leap. Watch this space for more such information in the future.

Good Luck
You’re P&C

DC*

Taking on Goliath (Terrorism), CRM.GOV in Action

Dears,

CRM pundits predict the biggest growth area in CRM over the next three years will be in the public sector, especially within state and local governments. The good news is not only this going to enhance Citizen Relationship but also to contain terrorism, the Goliath of new era.

Organizations that use CRM have long been raising the bar of customers' service expectations in the private sector. Those expectations are now crossing over into the public sector. Government agencies are feeling the same pressures as their corporate cousins--both financially and from customers. Recognizing the necessity and opportunities presented by those challenges, government agencies are embracing CRM to conquer them. we expects the government sector to spend at least $3 billion on CRM software over the next three years, and at least $3 billion on CRM services over the same period. This is the number one growth sector in the CRM industry today..

Currently, the three most common areas for governments' CRM investments are emergency call initiatives (phone calls to a toll free government number) case management, and getting accurate Citizen record for multiple purpose the most critical one is counter measure against terrorism.

The U.S. GOVERNMENT has now realized what corporate America has know for years: Data is king. As a result, data management companies are now using their data cleansing technology to help the U.S. government hunt down suspected terrorists in a massive effort to avoid another large-scale attack. Simply put, having the most current and accurate data on an individual could save lives by preventing a terrorist from carrying out any plans of destruction. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Government agencies in US insisted there must be a way to track known terrorists through the use of the airlines' customer databases. There was a pattern with the terrorists. And where there's a pattern that could be detected and fixed.

This resulted in the quick release Vality's Veri-Quest, which matches the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list of wanted terrorists and criminals to transactional and other customer records to pinpoint and track possible suspects. Veri-Quest searches companies and organizations' databases for known terrorists and criminals from the OFAC list. The application works in batch and real time, and helps companies and charitable organizations to comply with the OFAC requirements for reporting and blocking suspects' transactions.

The OFAC list is a list of known terrorists and drug dealers that are suspected of providing funds. It's the black list. If you are a bank, the government wants you to process your existing customer list against the OFAC list. Banks need to do this to spot terrorist activity and freeze accounts. If they do not run the data matching technology against the OFAC list regularly, he says, they can be fined up to $250,000.

Due to a heightened sense of security, the OFAC list went from being updated on a monthly basis to a weekly basis. Thanks to Vality, more organizations, such as universities, are required to check their databases against the OFAC list as well. Specifically, universities are being asked to compare their lists of foreign exchange students against the OFAC list to make sure known terrorists are not infiltrating U.S. schools.

The process of comparing databases against the OFAC list is done using Vality's probabilistic matching technique. So accurate is this process it is "justifiable and can be upheld in a court of law.

Vality is not the only data management vendor trying to work with the U.S. government. Experian, California based provider of credit reports and related services, maintains it can also help fight terrorists by combining its credit reports information with its recent data matching and cleansing technology. As a powerhouse in the credit services industry and owner of one of the largest consumer databases in the U.S., Experian can track the movement of money perhaps better than any company in America. Once the money is linked to terrorists the government can freeze the account, making it impossible for anyone to withdraw money from it.

Taking it to Rest of the World

Things we discussed are in US and today Terrorism is omnipresent and every part of the world is seeking the solution to counter measure the goliath’s effect. Today when we look at wiki leaks disclosures we feel ashamed of the disgruntled politics and no universal effort to win against terrorism. Given this scenario every country should plan for his own shield and CRM can help the government agencies to a great extent provide they have the vision and might to do the Citizen Management Programs. The provision of National ID and enablement of variety of Data quality measures would be great value add to our current defense infrastructure.

My dear Diplomats, It’s time to get into action.

Your P&C
DC*

CRM Vigilance: Securing Customer Data

Dears,

Securing customer data is vital and requires examining vendors as well as internal and external threats. The average cost of a data breach is $200 per customer record sometime it could be worth some thousands or even millions, whether the breach comes from a hacker, inadequate systems, or a disgruntled employee. Here are some tips on how to protect your customer data inside and outside the company.

Keeping CRM customer data secure isn't a one-size-fits-all task. Indeed, tackling security issues around CRM data demands close examination of vendors as well as internal and external threats -- and it's a vital part of customer relationship management
The alternative is devastating. The data breaches have serious financial consequences for an organization. According to the most recent Data Breach study, the average cost of a data breach has risen to $200 per customer record. The average cost of a data breach over four years is $7 million.

Considering the regulations around customer information plus the value of keeping it secure, companies really need to think about security as part of a holistic IT governance strategy.CRM is just one application, but customer data lives in many parts of an organization, typically connecting to ERP or financial systems, supplier management systems, or even living outside the company if in a CRM on-demand solution, and so on."

Pick the Right CRM Vendor for Right CRM Security:
The most important tip for keeping CRM data secure is to choose the right CRM vendor. He suggested considering a vendor that supplies CRM solutions and can also advise on how to ensure the security of the entire IT landscape. This vendor needs to show that it works with and certifies solutions from security software partners, such as encryption software. It should also be able to show that it can integrate its CRM software with other vendors' solutions where customer data might live, such as ERP and financial systems, supplier relationship management systems, etc.Buying from a vendor that offers a suite of these applications can significantly simplify this as well, as the integration work is done before it even arrives at the company.
As we move into an age of mobility , where sales reps and other customer-facing employees are using mobile devices to access and update customer data remotely, make sure the vendors you choose are working with best-of-breed mobile-platform providers. This will ensure that regardless of where the customer data is traveling, whether inside the company or outside, it is still secure and protected.


Beware of Disgruntled Employees
Another aspect of CRM security is who has access to the customer data. This is where solutions such as governance, risk and compliance software can help a company control access and do so in an auditable and trackable way. Tremendous amounts of private data are at risk in CRM databases because so many people access them. How many times companies complain that they've had disgruntled employees steal very sensitive customer data. The number-one comment is, 'We thought we could trust them’. With the economy the way it is, no company can afford to have their data assets compromised. And with the data-privacy compliance, state laws and federal standards craze occurring now, the pressure is really on for companies to proactively prevent theft."

Customer data is one of the highest-value targets for disgruntled employees who may believe they can use it to help them get or succeed in a new position. For this reason, as well as many others, be sure you monitor who has access to your CRM data and pay close attention to where the data goes, even for those with legitimate access.

10 Security-Specific CRM Tips

Here are some quick tips to secure your customer data.

1. Encrypt all sensitive data and contacts shared with third parties or transported out of company-owned facilities.
2. Create a Data Loss Plan (DLP) to be prepared for loss and breeches.
3. Regularly scan systems, including servers and desktops, for known vulnerabilities in operating systems and applications.
4. Implement protection against phishing, spam, viruses, data loss, and malware.
5. Encrypt all wireless data access points.
6. Require employees and vendors to upgrade to the most current browser.
7. Audit all third-party code and links used or referenced on internal sites.
8. Limit access to data on a need-to-know basis.
9. Archive inactive customer data.
10. Collect data for only real or expected business purposes.

Too many companies don't take CRM data seriously, What would happen if your top 10 deals for next quarter were leaked to your closest competitor? How would your customers feel if confidential data about their businesses were stolen from your systems? Imagine the long-term damage this could inflict on your business and Its better to act wise proactively than to lament later.

Good Luck
Your P&C

DC*

Art of Selecting the Right BI Tool - Part 2

Dears,

As promised please find the concluding part of this Blog Article covering the next 3 significant steps in selecting the Right BI Tool.

6. Vendor scripted demos


Vendor demos should be scripted so participants can objectively compare vendors and products. Prepare a consistent agenda for each vendor to follow. In the agenda, allow time for a discussion of strategic considerations as well as specific product capabilities identified as critical. Be sure to invite an extended user base to the demos so you can elicit qualitative feedback and ensure users have a stake in the decision-making process. Based on your priorities defined in step 4, ask demo participants to score the vendors on their ability to meet the various requirements.

Collect these scores immediately following the vendor scripted demos. If you do not gather quantitative feedback immediately after these sessions, users will later forget the differences, or worse, confuse the products and vendors!

Scripted demos can either be based on the vendor’s sample data or based on your own. Using internal corporate data further identifies how each vendor’s tool is different, yet it requires a large investment from both you and the vendor. Such an investment is advisable with a handful of vendors but is impractical with many vendors.

7. Determine the best fit

Determine the best fit using your requirements matrix  score the RFI responses and demo feedback. Incorporate strategic considerations, qualitative research, and customer feedback to determine which vendor(s) most closely matches your company’s short and long-term BI needs. If you have one clear leader, do not fully dismiss the runners-up. You may find out during the proof of concept, contract negotiations, or pilot that your first choice has insurmountable issues.

8. Proof of concept

You may only have one or two vendors that move onto the proof of concept stage. The proof of concept stage is your chance to test the tool in your environment. It is only a test, though. At this point, it’s important to keep the selection committee focused on the critical requirements rather than endlessly playing with the software or attempting to create usable reports. The proof of concept may be a throwaway: its sole purpose is to confirm that the product works as you expect it to. Carefully manage the scope to use one subject area and a handful of sample reports for the proof of concept. The sample reports should be based on information requirements defined in step 3 and be of moderate complexity (don’t waste your time with simple list reports that all BI tools can handle, or, conversely, the killer report that took your best programmer a full month to design). The proof of concept will give you insight into how you may need to adapt the rest of your BI architecture, but it is not the point at which you solve all the implementation problems.

Did I mention that these eight steps only get you to a BI product decision? You then of course have to negotiate a contract, implement, deploy, leverage, and promote the tool!

The BI market has changed significantly in the last few years. Emerging technology, vendor innovation, and acquisition have changed the BI landscape dramatically. Recognize the importance of selecting the right vendor and solution to the overall success of your BI deployment. Ultimately, the more important question is not which tool, but rather: how will you use business intelligence to provide business value?
 
All the Best & (B)e (I)ntelligent with BI
 
Your P&C
DC*

Art of Selecting the Right BI Tool - Part 1

Dears,


The business intelligence (BI) market has changed considerably in the last three years: BI pure-play vendors have broadened and integrated their solution sets, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) and relational database management system (RDMBS) vendors have stepped up their pursuit of the BI market.


The good news for customers is better products, increasingly able to meet a broad range of user needs, with solutions that scale across the enterprise. Mixing and matching best-of-breed BI modules from multiple vendors is no longer necessary. The bad news for customers is that what once were obvious vendor and product differences are now less clear; some vendors are pursuing similar strategies, and while product differences still exist, they are much less apparent.

Given these changes, The Selection of Right Fit BI Tool is complex and customers should plan for the following:

• Selections and standardizations may be made based more on strategic considerations, with the assumption that existing product capabilities are “good enough.”

• Selections and standardizations will take longer, as customers must spend more time evaluating and understanding product differences. Ultimately, certain specific product differences may tip the scale toward one vendor, or when there is a “tie” in best fit, strategic differences will be the deciding criteria.

With either approach, it’s critical that customers understand the role of the BI platform in delivering measurable business value. It is the face of BI. If you underestimate its importance to engage users and facilitate fact-based decision making, your BI project will have mediocre success. Conversely, technology issues should not be allowed to overshadow the business objectives of the BI initiative. No matter which solution you select for an enterprise standard or new BI implementation, naysayers will second-guess that decision. The key to managing such second-guessers is to follow an objective, agreed-upon methodology.

This blot article highlights eight steps toward selecting the best BI tool for your company. In this blog I will cover the first 5 and Next 5 in my subsequent Blog.

1. Form the BI selection committee

The selection committee should be comprised of a cross-section of stakeholders from different functional areas and user segments. This includes IT report developers, data warehouse modelers, power users and information consumers (report consumers who may or may not log into the BI tool but who need the information for decision making). Current BI application owners are prime candidates for serving on the core selection committee as they have unique insights on current successes and unmet needs. Giving them ownership in the selection process minimizes the risk of their second-guessing you later. At the same time, keep the selection committee small enough to be effective. The selection committee will elicit feedback from a larger user constituency to ensure buy-in. A number of companies skip this process entirely and make BI purchase decisions at the departmental level. While this may work for point solutions, companies that take an enterprise view of business intelligence report greater success rates.


2. Define target users and usage scenarios

Despite BI’s maturity, As an industry we do a poor job of understanding different user profiles and correspondingly matching product capabilities. In the overall BI life cycle, the focus is too much on creating a data mart or a report, rather than on who will interact with that report and how. Different user types require different tools or interfaces. This is not to say that you cannot buy a complete solution from one vendor: increasingly, BI vendors offer a full spectrum of products including production reporting, business query, dashboards, OLAP, and predictive analytics. But as you define your user profiles and use cases, you may discover that one group has unique needs with specific functional requirements. Understanding these user segments is critical in managing the scope of your selection and resolving conflicting requirements.

3. Refine information requirements

In our quest to see these BI tools with all their “sexy” appeal, refining the information requirements is the most overlooked and least understood. For companies that have multiple BI tools, they know the harsh reality that every tool handles data and schemas slightly differently. Unless you simply want another pretty report with “bad” data, you have to incorporate information requirements into your BI selection process. This step is different from defining the data elements and data sources to build the data warehouse, and instead, considers how the data will be analyzed. For example: users may express the requirement to view sales with inventory to calculate Days Sales Inventory by various product groupings and time periods. This single requirement translates into a host of technical features such as:



• Multipass SQL to query two fact tables in a data warehouse or multiple measures in an OLAP database,

• Semi-additive measures to aggregate inventory across product groupings but not across time periods, and

• Automatic aggregation of individual rows of data to view totals for the year or product group.



I’d venture to say that all the major BI tools can handle this type of business requirement, but they do handle them in drastically different ways, with varying degrees of ease, and by leveraging different components in the BI architecture. The selection committee must understand these differences and know which approach fits within the desired architecture and organizational abilities.


4. Define and rank selection criteria

This is the juicy bit of the selection process and one that customers and vendors meet with a fair degree of trepidation. There are multiple methods to capturing user requirements: individual user interviews, gap analysis, and brainstorming sessions, to name a few. Key, though, is translating a requirement into a BI tool capability. For example, users will rarely say, “We want a BI tool with a business metadata layer.” However, they may say something like, “We want to create our own reports without having to know SQL.” The feature of a business metadata layer fulfills this requirement. In order to develop a list of requirements, you need to know what’s possible and you need to consider emerging capabilities. In this regard, developing and ranking your selection criteria is an iterative process.

Product features are often easier to rank than strategic considerations. Agreeing on the relative importance of something like “BI market leadership” versus a capability like “real-time spreadsheet integration” is a difficult and often contentious task. Ideally, the same vendor will score high in both strategic considerations and product capabilities, but currently that’s not the case.

Price and cost of ownership is an important strategic consideration. If you have made substantial investments in existing software and training, you need to capture this information. Determine the switching costs and estimate the associated benefits.

5. Request for information (RFI)
It would seem like a glaring omission to skip this step, yet increasingly, I question the value of it. RFIs create a lot of work for the vendor and not much value for the customer. Of recent RFI responses I’ve reviewed, there is an increasing tendency for vendors to say “yes” to each requirement, even when a better answer is “not really, but possible with lots of workarounds.” To be fair, some vendors are more honest than others and requirements are subject to interpretation.

Some requirements are show-stoppers that an RFI can help weed out. For example, if your company’s standard operating system is Linux and the vendor doesn’t support Linux, that requirement might cause the vendor to be removed from your short-list. Other requirements are not so clear-cut. To improve the value of an RFI, define your requirements well to avoid misunderstandings between you and the vendor. Second, ask for specific product names, feature names, and explanations for how the requirement is fulfilled. Know when the answer requires a yes/no response. Third, keep the RFI short, emphasizing the critical requirements that will be decisive in your selection or standardization. Finally, complement vendor RFI responses with a heavy dose of your own research from customer references, discussion groups, and published product reviews.
Watch this space for the concluding Portion.

Good Luck

Your P&C

DC*