Archive for December, 2009
ERP & Project Management Come Together for Oracle Users
Last week, Oracle launched a new version of their Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Release 2.5 PPM Process Integration Packs (PIPs), which integrates project management and ERP.
The new offering is called Project Portfolio Management Integration Pack, and it connects Primavera P6 with E-Business Suite. In addition to integrating project management data, the new integrator also connects Oracle ERP users to invaluable financial information. It also allows them to synchronize information regardless of which platform houses the project information.
There is also a PPM Integration Pack for Primavera P6 and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, which facilitates the integration of timesheets between the two platforms.
According the press release, the project management PIPs in Oracle AIA Release 2.5 will help project managers and accounting teams to join their business objectives. One of the best things about the new integrator is that it is a standards-based method for companies to integrate their processes across both Oracle and third-party applications.
It’s nice to see a big ERP play bridging the gap between ERP and project management, and hopefully other companies will follow suit.
No commentsCould Mobility Suites Help ERP Move toward The Future?
ClickSoftware is positioned as a service optimization provider rather than an ERP company, but their latest innovation could foreshadow some progressive improvements in the ERP market. The company recently released a standalone mobility suite that aims to close the gap between the back offices and the employees in the field.
ClickSoftware has offered mobile capabilities in their ServiceOptimizatoin Suite for a couple years, but the company decided to offer the detached mobile suite due to the heightened interest in mobility they saw among their customers. Mobility Suite will connect the back-office with the field representatives through mobile workflows, optimized routing, real-time inventory data, time and attendance recording, and more. Interestingly, ClickSoftware noted that while many people prefer to get mobile platforms from a vendor they’re using for CRM, they found plenty of people looking elsewhere for those capabilities, and their seizing the opportunity to land and expand.
William McNeill of AMR Research (who evidently partnered with ClickSoftware on the development of Mobility Suite) told CRM Magazine that the product is about “getting to where technicians are, what they’re doing, the parts they’re using,” and ultimately helping them make the best decisions efficiently. Mobility Suite also offers a jumpstart on billing processes that might previously have taken weeks to fulfill. McNeill states that this expedited turnaround with curry favor with customers who’ll be able to explain billing to their CFOs within a number of days.
Ultimately, ClickSoftware’s Mobility Suite isn’t entirely a standalone product, because it does rely on information from desktop databases, but it’s a smart offering and it bodes well for the ERP market, which has been stuck in the on-premise past. It’ll be interesting to see if their offering a mobile component does in fact increase business.
No commentsFusionOps Insight: The New Business Analytics Dashboard
FusionOps’ business analytics products have been getting quite a bit of attention lately. The general consensus on their offerings—which integrate with users’ existing ERP platforms—is that they are fine products, but in many ways they could potentially threaten the companies FusionOps wants to partner with. Just last month they launched a new metrics delivery dashboard, aptly named FusionOps Insight, and we’re going to take a look at it here.
Insight is being marketed as a Performance Management application, but it’s really an analytic dashboard environment that delivers metrics on inventory management, procurement and spending, supply chain management, and supplier performance. Customers can download a trial version of the support software, then grant FusionOps read-only access to SAP ERP information, and from there the data is uploaded and customers are notified when particular metrics and reports are available online. Some are considering it business intelligence rather than business performance management because the data supplied by the dashboard is not focused on a company’s strategic goals.
FusionOps Insight works alongside another on-demand service, FusionOps Streamline, which automates supply chain and procurement processes for SAP and Oracle ERP environments (Insight for Oracle will be available in future). Streamline was launched in January of this year, and as a SaaS ERP product, it has been lauded for it cost-effectiveness and speedy deployment times.
While FusionOps (which is not related to Oracle Fusion…this confused me at first)offers a lightweight product and good ROI, it’s tough to disagree with critics pointing out that the company will have some difficulty staying afloat if they continue running on a partner system. Oracle and SAP both have business intelligence and analytics modules, so the idea that they’d give FusionOps that business for very long is doubtful. But only time will tell.
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