SAP systems integration, re-engineering, business process management

In the 1980’s, Manufacturing Requirements Planning (MRP-II) extended the paradigm to include manufacturing processes and product distribution.

But it wasn’t until the emergence of ERP in the 1990’s that the entire enterprise came under the control of a single unified system. Enterprise Resource Planning made possible the advent of truly integrated, real-time information systems that transcended geo-political boundaries and addressed the entire enterprise.

But today ERP is no longer enough of a business advantage because in today’s connected economy where outsourcing is the norm, true efficiency can no longer arise from merely optimizing the internal resources.

SCM extends the ERP paradigm outside the enterprise. With the globalization of commerce and the advances in disseminating information electronically, just controlling resources within the enterprise has ceased to be an adequate business advantage for optimal performance and market competition. Now the system must seek to reach the supplier’s supplier and the buyer’s buyer through Advanced Planning & Scheduling of material flow along the entire supply chain.

We believe technology should become indistinguishable from the business process that drives value in your business. SAP implementations sometimes involve a comprehensive business-transformation exercise that touches every part of the your business, even all the way to the supply-chain. Our perpetual goal is aligning processes with technology.
Some of the principal business challenges that hamper effective use of SCM/ERP technology are as follows:

The inherent tendency of organizations to focus exclusively on data and data management, instead of adopting a process-oriented approach that makes no distinction between work done by a human and a computer.
The lack of seamless transparency of all processes within a business organization.
The need to continuously and rapidly adjust to changing internal and external (i.e., market) conditions.
Lack of proper modeling of enterprise-wide business processes so that the effect of any change on any part of the system on any other part of the system can be accurately and immediately determined.
Communicating changes within the enterprise quickly enough to outside suppliers.

Our Business Process Management (BPM) practice aims to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of any organization by focusing on understanding, automating and optimizing the organization's business processes. We seek to bring processes, people and information together.

Identifying the business processes is relatively easy. Breaking down the barriers between business areas, and finding owners for the processes is difficult. Our supply-chain approach to BPM involves not only managing business processes within the enterprise but also real-time integration of the processes of a company with those of its suppliers, business partners, and customers.

Our 25+ years’ systems experience means we have actually lived and participated in I.T. history during which the following important evolutions occurred:

The BUSINESS SCOPE changed from a focus on only internal operations (inventory, production, sales, logistics, finance, HR, payroll, etc.) to a focus on internal and external operations (which includes not only ERP, but also supply chain, CRM, SRM etc.)
The TECHNOLOGY ARCHITECTURE migrated from integrated applications (of the 80’s) to monolithic ERP systems (of the 90’s) to today’s portal-based networked object applications.
The CRITICAL I.T. SKILLS changed from custom software development (in the 80’s) to ERP systems configuration (in the 90’s) to architecture & distributed computing (today).

When you talk to our best consultants, you will discover sharp I.T. minds that were raised on the most basic computer systems where loaders and assemblers ruled the day, but who today practice Model Driven Architecture and discourse on SAP xApps composite applications with equal authority.

Dissect your business needs
Identify your I.T. baseline apps: which are “declining”, which are “core”, which are “emerging”, which are still in “R&D”, etc.
Determine what your information systems must deliver in order to meet your business goals
Establish how your information systems must deliver it in order to make optimum use of cost-effective state-of-the-art technology
And design your I.T. strategy

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is the natural evolution of our long-standing concentration on object technology and component based software engineering. SOA is integral to our BPM-centric approach. SOA and BPM are inextricably linked, with BPM providing the essential link between business and services.

For years we have developed business objects to eliminate complexity, isolate & encapsulate knowledge for re-use, speed up software development, facilitate easy maintenance & growth, and reduce costs. We have called our development centers “Components Factories” and referred to software modules as “software bricks”.

SOA now enables our mature component expertise to utilize SAP’s middleware to modularize your systems and applications into discrete business components with well-defined interfaces, and then combine and recombine them in ways that meet your company’s needs within your SAP framework.

With SOA, we supplant old enterprise application integration (EAI) techniques with the assistance of Web services standards. These standards simplify the creation and consumption of tasks through SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), WSDL (Web Services Description Language), and XML (eXtensible Markup Language). Working with standard protocols eliminates much of the complexity of EAI, so companies can focus on improving their services instead of getting bogged down by integration difficulties.

Business processes are the key to an SOA’s long-term success and provide the greatest top-line value. BPM answers the question, “What can you do with a set of services?” Services do not manage themselves and run your business. Businesspeople need to decide how to use services to meet customer needs, fill orders, collect receivables, and dream up new products. Companies can better attain SOA’s full promised value of when they choreograph workflows into business processes.

As practitioners of OMG’s Model Driven Architecture, we effectively utilize SOA and BPM to create enterprise applications that are easier to build and easier to maintain. Future integration is much easier and less costly. Best of all, IT managers can now run more agile businesses, by putting together combinations of services that streamline workflow and adapt to changing conditions with ease.

SAP is the foremost amongst enterprise applications in adopting SOA across the board and building its new middleware – NetWeaver – on a SOA platform. SAP’s ESA (Enterprise Service Architecture) actually envisions a world order based on a “Service Layer” where SAP already has 30,000+ services. SAP, in fact, extends the SOA paradigm into its SOBA (Service Oriented Business Architecture) world vision where 50+ cross-industry scenarios are based on 200 mega-processes and use 30,000+ web services. SOBA web services already cover legal rules of 110+ countries across and 23 industry verticals.

SAP has evolved from their simple 90’s architecture of a monolithic R/3 application running on a BASIS platform within a three-tiered structure, to one where multiple application components (R/3, SCM, PLM, SRM, SEM, APO, etc.) are supported by a multi-capability layered platform (WAS, XI, MDM, EP, BW, MP etc.) within a highly networked structure.

We have acquired formidable SAP technical know-how in all the latest technologies, including SAP NetWeaver, SAP composite application framework, Enterprise Portal, Web Application Server, Knowledge Management Portals, Business Information Warehouse, Exchange Infrastructure, Mobile Infrastructure, SAP xApps, Web Services, Master Data Management, and so on.

But we do not force SAP Portals, or SAP NetWeaver or SAP Web Server on you unless there is a compelling business necessity to do so. Instead, we blend SAP with your existing legacy and non-legacy platforms and implement interoperability amongst the co-existing components in order to give you the best value for money and the best ROI while enjoying optimum systems performance. We offer SAP web integration regardless of portal platform. For clients already using NetWeaver and/or the SAP Portal, the task is more straightforward. But even for those who are already committed to a non-SAP portal platform, such as WebSphere or WebLogic or Oracle Portal, we utilize .NET and/or J2EE technology to deliver SAP functionality on the company Intranet, Extranet or the Internet. Our ABAP professionals develop BAPI wrappers or RFC code on the SAP end, while our .NET/J2EE developers focus on developing the web interface using ASP or JSP.

Because ERP implementation involves taking moving parts out of disparate machines and constructing one single unified machine out of them, while all the parts are still moving (the enterprise never shuts down to facilitate the implementation).
Because ERP addresses the whole enterprise: the millions of pieces of business logic and business processes that make up a global or local company, some of which are constantly changing.

Using top-notch ERP software like SAP makes successful ERP implementation an achievable possibility, but it remains one of the hardest tasks in IT. Technologically, all the individual parts are quite well understood by someone or the other in the team. Technologically, the software is not rocket science (it is mostly meat-and-potatoes type of code). But try tailoring all the functionality to exactly suit the target organization’s business and then implement it all into a perfectly executing unified system — while some parts are in a state of flux. It hasn’t been done yet!

There is difference of opinion amongst the experts of ERP implementation, but it is generally felt that an organization which has “successfully” implemented a first-rate ERP software like SAP, might be using no more than 45% of the functionality SAP provides.

Whether the truth is 45% or 50% or 60%, the fact remains that a large portion of the company’s investment in SAP is never realized.

While we provide the entire gamut of SAP implementation services, we have domain experts, generalists and specialists who can unlock some of the hidden powers of SAP and make an additional contribution towards your ROI that was not realized by a normal “successful” SAP implementation.

Although eBusiness is not yet a ubiquitous reality, we are already focusing on mBusiness, because we believe that is the future.

We are today moving towards the Internet Economy of a billion connected computers and a trillion connected dollars. In the near future, business will happen anytime, anywhere, not just in the offices or homes.

We are leveraging mobile technologies to extend the eBusiness paradigm to the mobile plane, and the sSCM functionality to mSCM.

We are involved in developing, in collaboration wit IMU America, an SAP plug-in product that is based on the principles of flow cost accounting and can potentially save manufacturing companies between 9-17% of their material cost.