Epicor To Give All Its Applications More Than A Pretty Facelift

Event Summary

The enterprise applications market continues to experience a shake up where the number of independent software vendors (ISV) is decreasing, and one, true global mid-market incumbent vendor Epicor Software Corporation (NASDAQ: EPIC), has been benefiting. Epicor, which conducts business in over 140 countries and 32 languages, has had a healthy financial performance (see Figure 1 & 2) aided through acquisitions which began with Clarus at the end of 2002. It was followed by ROI Systems and TDC Solutions mid-2003, and Scala in 2004 (for more information, see Epicor Picks Clarus' Bargain At The Software Flea Market and Epicor Conducts Its Own ROI Acquisition Rationale and Epicor's Mid-Market Pitch Becomes Higher For (One) Scala).

At the end of August, the vendor announced its revised unified portal strategy that is envisioned to provide rich portal content to all its customers through a more secure and standardized portal platform. In developing Epicor Portal 8.2 (which is scheduled for general availability in late 2005), Epicor is leveraging its platform strategy of Microsoft .NET across all product families—Epicor Enterprise, Epicor Manufacturing, and Epicor iScala. In addition, Epicor Portal will reportedly deliver data exploration and collaboration using Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (which technology provides basic on-line collaboration and content management capability) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (which uses a directory to aggregate multiple SharePoint Web sites and then allows documents and other content to pass between them). Currently, Epicor's portal products do not include on-line discussion or document management features, whereas the upcoming SharePoint-based Epicor Portal will include those features—as well as a search capability—consistently across all Epicor's product lines.

The bottom line of Epicor's portal strategy is to leverage the leading portal infrastructure, Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, and to provide a more secure and collaborative portal environment. Thus, Epicor Portal will reportedly handle user roles, access, security, and personalization by leveraging the SharePoint portal framework. In turn, Epicor will provide rich, industry-specific content like workflows, performance indicators, and reports via server-based .NET control programs called SharePoint Web Parts with role-based security and straightforward end user authoring. With its expertise in creating targeted industry-specific content, combined with the extensible portal framework provided by SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Epicor will strive to provide a feature-rich resource of information that is distributed from a central, secure point of access.

This is Part One of a two-part note.

Part Two will analyze the market impact, discuss challenges, and make user recommendations.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Epicor Portal Strategy

Epicor Portal's value proposition lies within empowering users and ending the usual unproductive game of relying on the information technology (IT) department to anticipate, interpret, and provide valuable business insight within an on-line portal infrastructure. Rather, the solution is designed to put these controls in the hands of the people who find value in the information they seek. To that end, the end users will have data visualization facilities, without requiring knowledge of the database or querying language, which should enable swift information exchange for employees, trading partners, and consumers. That is to say that by using SharePoint Products And Technologies, Epicor Portal will incorporate collaborative tools for multiple audiences. Collaborative user workspaces that combine documents, business data queries, announcements, tasks, and more will then be used by project teams, work groups, departments or should act as a communications tool for the entire organization. Collaboration should also extend to customers, partners, and the suppliers to increase communication, further supply chain visibility and foster greater business transparency.

With the release of Epicor Portal, each of the Epicor product families will eventually leverage a single, consistent portal strategy and platform—Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies—with the idea to have one portal product with one implementation process regardless of industry or region. The convergence of Epicor's product families through the new portal strategy is in line with the company's commitment to continue to support and enhance its existing products. At the same time, Epicor will leverage opportunities to provide standard infrastructures and features where possible.

Basically, the new Microsoft SharePoint-based portal will replace a collection of different portal products the vendor had previously developed for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) product lines. For instance, Epicor currently sells several Web-based access products for its Vantage manufacturing ERP product, such as Customer Connect, Sales Connect, and Buyer Connect. Additionally, the vendor sells a separate but similar product called Enterprise Information Portal (EIP), for the Epicor Enterprise ERP suite. However, a true portal add-on is not currently available for the Epicor iScala product line, where the opportunity seems to be the most apparent.

Epicor also hopes that basing its portal products on the widely-used and trendy SharePoint technologies will increase the number of ERP customers using Epicor's portal offerings. SharePoint has become a near portal commodity with estimated over 40 million users. Its growth has been so large, that some of competitors have, with a heavy heart, resigned themselves to the fact that SharePoint has "sprung up like weeds" across IT departments. As a result, Epicor should eliminate unnecessary and costly multiple portal infrastructure requirements, because the technology fits the needs of the mid-market, offering reasonably rapid deployment, ease of use, and lower cost of entry and total cost of ownership (TCO).

To that end, Epicor hopes to provide the best possible out-of-the-box experience for the user. Both Microsoft SharePoint and Epicor Portal can be installed in under an hour to provide a functional Web site with search, topics, news, document management, and other pertinent capabilities. Also, users will reportedly be able to immediately add Epicor Web Parts without administrative or development resources, and the availability of automatic integration with Microsoft Office 2003 goes without saying.

The move by Epicor to embrace the SharePoint portal technology is also consistent with the company's strategy of becoming more aligned with Microsoft. With respect to technology, mid-sized companies are practical consumers, typically selecting affordable, proven solutions, especially in light of the recent and ongoing dramatic decrease in IT costs. This ,coupled with a simultaneous increase in computing power, has made several key new technologies accessible to this cost-conscious market. Microsoft has, to that end, leveraged these increased computing capabilities to develop Microsoft BackOffice (now the Microsoft Windows Server family), a network operating system (OS) and scaleable relational database management system (RDBMS) that provides smaller businesses with a technology infrastructure previously accessible only to Global 1000 corporations.

Epicor Technology Strategy

The development of cost-effective infrastructures has reportedly increased medium companies' investments in enterprise applications, and Epicor's product offerings, product development efforts, and services are focused on meeting the enterprise business application needs of these growing mid-sized businesses. As a group, mid-sized companies face tremendous global competitive pressures as they compete for business against larger corporations, other mid-sized competitors, and smaller start-ups.

They have to remain close to their customers and suppliers, and to make the most effective use of relatively limited resources. Yet, these prospective user companies demand a quick return on technology investments and require that solutions be affordable not only to acquire and implement, but also to maintain and support throughout the solution's entire operational life span. To that end, with more than 40 million instances of SharePoint Portal Server have been sold since its release, SharePoint Products and Technologies have been offering rapid deployment. It has also been implemented with limited or no support, and presents a competitive price point—which are all critical features for mid-market companies. For more information, see What Do Users Want and Need?.

Consequently, Epicor's technology strategy has been, for some time, to develop enterprise software applications using industry-standard tools where possible, and to take advantage of leading third-party, industry-standard technologies for database management systems, operating systems, user interfaces (UI), infrastructure, and connectivity (including Internet, intranet, and extranet access). For businesses to compete in today's increasingly real time world, they need to adopt an infrastructure that can integrate the Internet, wireless, mobile, voice response, and personal digital assistants (PDA) to support "anytime, anywhere" business. Computing architectures like Microsoft .NET have allowed Epicor enterprise solutions to continue to transition to service oriented architectures (SOAs), and support commerce in a distributed computing world.

The vendor has increasingly been using Web services, which support the integration of computing and communication paradigms as one across multiple devices. It also enables its solutions to be integrated with other applications more easily and supports the increased need for collaboration in today's Internet-based world. Web services are software components that allow the creation of applications that can be programmed and published over the Web. Since Web services are portable and interoperable and because they are not vendor specific, they are rapidly becoming a standard for integrating disparate systems and applications (see Understanding SOA, Web Services, BPM, BPEL, and More).

Epicor has standardized its Web services development on the Microsoft .NET Framework, and the Epicor Clientele CRM.NET, Epicor for Service Enterprises, iScala, Vantage, and Vista product suites have been architected for Web services to more easily integrate and securely share information throughout the enterprise and with trading partners. As a matter of fact, Epicor has embraced .NET even more zealously than its creator Microsoft, often leaving Microsoft staffers in their development labs astonished (if not envious). As a good example, over two years ago, the vendor released Clientele CRM .NET as a pure .NET-based product (see Epicor Claims The Forefront Of CRM.NET-ification).

Hence, at the company level, Epicor's standardized technology direction currently embraces the Microsoft .NET Platform for extensible markup language-based (XML) Web services. Through .NET, which is the next generation of Microsoft's Distributed interNet Applications Architecture (DNA) and Component Object Model (COM), the vendor hopes to be able to provide comprehensive support for Web services deployment and enterprise application integration (EAI). This technology strategy has enabled Epicor's still diverse development teams to leverage Microsoft technology, while allowing each product group to continue to use the individual databases and development tools appropriate to the requirements of each product's target market.

The vendor has also incorporated numerous features into its UIs to simplify the operation of and access to its products. All of the product lines incorporate the popular Microsoft Windows graphical user interface (GUI) metaphor that includes the tools like industry-standard field controls, pull-down menus, tool bars, and tab menus that facilitate the use of the software. The products also incorporate the latest and modern GUI features such as process wizards, cue cards, advanced on-line help and on-line documentation. The UIs are based upon today's single document interface (SDI) standards, while, as the model for distributed computing continues to evolve through the advent of Internet technologies, Epicor offers additional client deployment models, including thin-client, smart-client, browser-based, and mobile client access.

Epicor Portal should bring further guided discovery and business insight to end users who will be able to add filters and prompts to focus on information important to them. They will be able to arrange and title the information for their understanding. Moreover, they should be able to simply pick what data they want to view, without having to know where or how the data is formed. Additionally creating personal views of business or a key performance indicators (KPI) are touted as a simple step-by-step wizard-driven process.


SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/epicor-to-give-all-its-applications-more-than-a-pretty-facelift-18198/

PeopleSoft: Giving Fervent Hope To The Market And Jitters To The Competition. Part 1: The News

Event Summary

PeopleSoft is seeking to make bigger strides in the CRM, SCM and B2B software markets with its recent spate of product releases. The rhetoric and hype aside, the fact is that PeopleSoft has become a fearsome enterprise applications provider. PeopleSoft has joined the elite group of vendors that can deliver a majority of the components of a complete e-business framework. If one considers all aspects of a CRM or SCM evaluation, PeopleSoft has earned the license to be evaluated along with market leaders. Possibly more encouraging is PeopleSoft's upbeat prediction for the rest of the year, optimism only a few of its competitors can currently exhibit.

While Wall Street praises the vendor's new product initiatives and its strong first quarter results and optimism for the future, its direct competitors are far from feeling easy.

About this Article: This is a two part note, the first part discusses the news from PeopleSoft about new products and its first Quarter results. Part two discusses the Market Impact of this news and how it affects Users.

Product Bonanza

Recently, PeopleSoft (NASDAQ: PSFT), one of the largest business applications providers, launched a spate of new product releases with an idea to bolster its foray into customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM) and business-to-business (B2B) collaboration areas and to give a pause to respective leading software vendors. PeopleSoft is seeking to make a bigger brand name in these markets where it traditionally had low market recognition.

Customer Relationship Management

On June 4, PeopleSoft 8 CRM, a comprehensive Internet-based solution, made its debut at the PeopleSoft Leadership Summit 2001 in Las Vegas. PeopleSoft cites that its pure Internet architecture, embedded analytics and seamless integration of enterprise data and business processes will change the paradigm of CRM and propel it to the forefront of the industry. PeopleSoft 8 CRM's pure Internet technology should allow for universal access from any Web device, anywhere in the world, at any time, while the embedded business analytics should provide real-time insight into critical business processes. The support for multiple platforms brings a true collaborative spirit to the enterprise, integrating business processes between applications inside and outside enterprise boundaries. Connecting marketing, sales, and customer service to supply chain, financials and human capital management systems, PeopleSoft 8 CRM might be able not only to fulfill customer requests, but to also anticipate customer expectations.

"Today, we have delivered on our promise to bring a complete, pure Internet CRM solution to market," said Craig Conway, PeopleSoft president and CEO. "We completely re-architected our existing CRM applications to create a best-of-breed CRM solution based entirely on pure Internet architecture. No other vendor can offer customers this level of access and collaboration in a CRM solution."

PeopleSoft 8 CRM has long been aggressively announced and eagerly anticipated and, as a result, it already has the following key strategic alliances in place:

* Cap Gemini Ernst & Young is extending its offerings within the PeopleSoft practice to provide business consulting and implementation services for PeopleSoft 8 CRM.

* KPMG Consulting revealed its role in the launch of PeopleSoft 8 CRM for Communications, a billing-integration solution exclusively for the communications market. KPMG will be providing implementation and support services for the software.

* PeopleSoft 8 CRM on it primary IBM DB2 database software is available across all PeopleSoft-supported operating systems. As a result, PeopleSoft 8 CRM on DB2 is available on IBM AIX, zOS, OS/390, Sun Solaris, HP-UX and Windows NT.

* Deloitte Consulting will leverage its CRM business process experience with its PeopleSoft implementation skills and methodologies to help customers maximize the return on their PeopleSoft 8 CRM investment.

Generally available on June 29, the PeopleSoft 8 CRM suite includes Sales, Marketing, Field Service, Help Desk, Interaction Management and Support applications. PeopleSoft currently expects to deliver the following 10 languages within thirty days of general availability: French, French Canadian, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, traditional Chinese (Taiwan) and Swedish. While IBM DB2 is the primary development platform for PeopleSoft 8, it will also support Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle databases on IBM mainframe, UNIX and Windows NT platforms.

E-Procurement

On May 30, PeopleSoft announced new functionality for PeopleSoft 8 eProcurement that will automate the entire purchasing process from requisition to payment, giving employees self-service capabilities to purchase goods and services. Business intelligence (analytics) will enable purchasing managers to strategically evaluate every aspect of the procurement cycle, including their spend by category, the value of their suppliers, and the effectiveness of their workflow. Based on information provided by the analytics, organizations should be able to quickly renegotiate deals with key suppliers, driving bottom-line savings. In addition, organizations might be able to modify procurement methods in real-time to improve operational efficiency.

Supplier Relationship Management

The PeopleSoft 8 Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) suite, which should allow business partners to communicate their inventory, design and buying plans over the Web through a roles-based, collaborative portal, was announced generally available on May 29. As a follow up to this product, PeopleSoft plans the release in Q1 2002 of new sourcing application, which should let buyers search for suppliers and buy direct materials online over the Web. Embedded analytics should again help organizations evaluate the strategic value of their suppliers by providing insight into key supplier performance metrics.

With the ability to access critical performance indicators almost instantaneously, companies could continuously monitor their business processes ensuring effective management of supplier relationships across the enterprise. PeopleSoft 8 SRM utilizes PeopleSoft's advanced portal technology, bringing an organization's customers, suppliers, and employees directly into critical day-to-day business processes. Possible benefits of real-time interaction could be: reduced costs in product design; improved time to market; and faster response to changes in customer demand.

SkillsVillage Acquisition

On May 1, PeopleSoft acquired services procurement vendor SkillsVillage for $32 million in stock and cash. The company hopes that adding SkillsVillage's system for locating and hiring services and contingent staff will be a strong enhancement of its proverbially strong human resource (HR) product. The addition of the SkillsVillage functionality should provide PeopleSoft with the opportunity to offer an end-to-end system for the sourcing, selection, administration, and management of enterprise services.


SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/peoplesoft-giving-fervent-hope-to-the-market-and-jitters-to-the-competition-part-1-the-news-16407/

Enterprise Content Management Solution Creates the Ultimate Customer Experience

Introduction

Customers are demanding more from organizations. The client wants to receive personalized information, on any device, at any time. Currently, clients receive incorrect, outdated, and poor-quality information, through brochures, the Internet, e-mails, and advertisements.

Business processes are not automated—or not automated correctly—to provide targeted information through the right media at the right time. Enterprise content management (ECM) vendors are trying to provide solutions to help organizations succeed in providing a full "customer experience" to their customers. Organizations aim at strengthening the customer's loyalty, improve brand recognition and corporate image, and optimize processes, including acceleration of time-to-market. Organizations should therefore focus on delivering personalized and relevant content, combined with consistency.

Interwoven is the first vendor to provide a full end-to-end solution for this customer experience. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California (US), the vendor is a provider of ECM solutions. It was founded in 1995, and currently has more than 750 employees across 15 countries. Interwoven provides solutions for a wide variety of industries, but is extremely strong in the legal and financial industries. The vendor categorizes its main focus as being in customer experience, professional services, and financial services solutions.

Interwoven began as a web content management (WCM) vendor, providing a solution for document management, as well as the ability to publish this content to different web sites. Throughout the last five years, Interwoven has acquired companies in digital asset management (DAM), records management, and collaborative document management, and has integrated these solutions with its existing software to offer a full range of functionality in ECM.

Interwoven has struggled financially in the past. In 2001 and 2002, with the downfall of the internet market, Interwoven experienced a decline in revenue, along with a net loss of $47.5 million (USD) in 2003 and a $23.7 million (USD) net loss in 2004. The losses were associated with the acquisition of iManage, among others. But during the last two years, Interwoven has improved its situation, with a 9 percent increase in revenue in 2005 to $175 million (USD), and $130 million (USD) debt-free in cash. Interwoven's current base is over 3,450 customers, which represents a 14 percent increase from 2005. Interwoven had a boost in 2005 as well, when it generated an operating margin of 8 percent (non-generally accepted accounting principles [GAAP]), an increase of 167 percent over 2004.

Interwoven's Solution
Interwoven provides a full ECM solution, covering the main ECM functionalities (document management, WCM, records management, imaging, collaboration, and workflow). See Enterprise Content Management: It Is More than Just Web Content Management. This is in addition to more specific functionality such as e-mail management and DAM (see Document Management and Digital Asset Management: Is There a Difference and What Might It Be?). Interwoven offers these core components in the six products we'll examine next.

TeamSite for Web Content Management
TeamSite remains one of Interwoven's leading products for managing intranets, internal portals and public web sites, dealer portals, and extranets. In addition, Interwoven's LiveSite Content Publishing Server, brings a new interface and presentation to the business user.

Clients using a pre-6.0 version of TeamSite mention that it is less user friendly because TeamSite uses its own interface, and is not available through a browser. Currently, TeamSite has portal interfaces to BEA, IBM, and SAP—and with LiveSite, a fully browser-based interface.

WorkSite for Document Management and Collaboration
Interwoven WorkSite is an inheritance of the acquisition of iManage in 2003. WorkSite revenue mainly stems from the professional services market (legal, accounting, and management consulting), and covers core document-handling features, including check-in/check-out, version control, full-text and metadata search, and document-level security and permissions. WorkSite is offered for both the .Net and Java 2 platforms and is actively supported and developed. Interwoven is aggressively focusing on the financial services market with its WorkSite MP product ("MP" standing for "management platform").

WorkSite also addresses Interwoven's e-mail management functionality. WorkSite can route incoming and outgoing e-mail messages (which reduces the overload of the e-mail servers), and place the e-mails in the appropriate folders of the WorkSite Communication Server. This makes it possible to share the information within the e-mails across the organization.

Interwoven made a smart move by adding e-mail management to their product suite with respect to current compliances and regulations. See Managing the Overflow of E-mails.

MediaBin for Digital Asset Management
Interwoven's MediaBin provides one of the leading DAM solutions. Interwoven acquired MediaBin in June 2003. As a result, there are more customers combining TeamSite with MediaBin in their solution suite to leverage Interwoven's capabilities. With the new development of functionalities for MediaBin, Interwoven is focusing on marketing departments by enabling Microsoft PowerPoint management capabilities to MediaBin.

In the DAM market, Interwoven competes with niche players such as Chuckwalla and ClearStory Systems, as well as other ECM vendors such as EMC/Documentum, and Open Text, which acquired Artesia in August 2004 (Artesia was the market leader at that time).

Records Manager for Records Management
In August 2004, Interwoven acquired Software Intelligence, a pure-play vendor for records management. As this product mainly focuses on the legal industry, Interwoven integrated this solution with WorkSite, providing management of paper, electronic documents, and e-mail, in a single solution. Currently, Interwoven offers a single interface for document and records management, and has extended the integration to all Interwoven repositories, including third-party content repositories, based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA).

MetaTagger for Content Intelligence

Interwoven MetaTagger Studio and MetaTagger Server provide the ability to categorize content in a structured way to ensure accuracy in delivery of content for presentation, search, and navigation of information.

Even though Interwoven offers its solution as a suite of products, Interwoven should focus on creating a suite that uses one repository and server application. Other leading ECM vendors have already made this transition. Through the features of the Content Integration Server, Interwoven has created an interim strategy to improve this integration.

The Content Integration Server provides the ability to leverage and re-use content stored in repositories and file systems throughout the enterprise. This presents the ability to search for content in various repositories, aggregate that content into TeamSite, and re-use this content for deployment.

Enterprise Application Connector Suite
The Interwoven Enterprise Application Connector Suite ensures that team members throughout the enterprise collaborate, share, and manage knowledge through everyday business portals.

Lastly, Interwoven offers its developers the Interwoven Developer Suite. The Interwoven Developer Suite provides a set of tools that assist the development, customization, and integration of applications with Interwoven solutions and products.

Besides the products Interwoven has itself, there are certain features it covers that can be essential for ECM clients, such as imaging. Interwoven has a partner network for scanning and image capture integrations, that integrate with WorkSite, including companies such as Kofax and eCopy. The ability to use imaging in an ECM suite becomes essential for legal documents, contract management, and regulations compliance. However, Interwoven should continue to enhance these features to stay competitive in the ECM market.

The Customer Experience
Interwoven's main focus is to try to create what it calls the "customer experience." Interwoven defines customer experience as the degree to which customers feel that content interactions meet their needs. Interwoven's suite of products, as explained above, provides the client the ability to improve brand recognition and consistency, accelerate the time-to-market, and improve and personalize customer interactions.

Interwoven's suite delivers this customer experience, and the vendor keeps improving the product suite to provide the customer experience to its clients. For example, Interwoven supports integration with the BlackBerry product for document management, which provides professional services organizations with higher mobility and client service. Interwoven also partnered up with SDL, a leading company in global information management solutions for translations, localization, and globalization. Finally, Interwoven announced an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with Ericsson, whereby Ericsson will be using Interwoven technology as an infrastructure for delivering media and content services (ring tones, videos, and so on) to mobile network operators.

Product Strengths
With its latest acquisitions, Interwoven has positioned itself as a full ECM vendor with all the core capabilities. Most products integrate well with each other. The ECM market recognizes Interwoven as the leading vendor in such areas as WCM, DAM, and scalability. Even though the Dutch WCM vendor Tridion is strong in Europe, it cannot compete with the scalability of Interwoven's solution, as Tridion's solution is less robust. The robustness of Interwoven's solution gives larger enterprises a product with the capability of handling its transactions and workload.

Interwoven developed its solution for the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform as well. It built the product using an SOA with the latest standards, in supporting the Java Portlet Specification (JSR) 268, JSR 170, and Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) standards.

In the last years and a half, Interwoven has worked hard on the ease of use of its solution, as well as on integration towards customer-specific applications. Interwoven integrates with Microsoft SharePoint well, which benefits Microsoft users.

Challenges and Vendor Recommendations

Even though the products integrate with each other, back-end integration still requires substantial work. The different repositories for the different applications remain an area that Interwoven should address. Interwoven mentioned that this feature would be available in 2006.

Interwoven does provide e-mail management capabilities, but should improve these features with respect to e-mail protection and compliance, to be more competitive in this area—especially because of its contract management focus and strong presence in the legal market.

Other leading companies such as IBM, EMC, and Microsoft are expanding the scope of ECM with respect to functionality. Interwoven is making the right choice by focusing on developing new functionality based on its existing customers and the strengths of its product, including data integration, search capabilities, and captive imaging.

Another focus point for Interwoven should be the ability to link into other databases and operating systems, such as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle; and the integration of Interwoven's content management solution with the storage capabilities of companies such as EMC.

Interwoven develops its solution for the .Net, J2EE, and Linux platforms. Even though it currently succeeds in these developments, to keep up with the latest developments for all platforms will be a daunting task. Clients and prospects will have to review Interwoven's development strategies when making platform decisions or changes with Interwoven's solution.

Rafiq Mohammadi, Interwoven's chief technology officer (CTO), mentioned that the vendor will focus on some complex problems in 2006 and 2007:

* dealing with the rapid explosion of content;
* driving wide adoptability of enterprise risk mitigation policies;
* linking the software with customer communication strategies;
* expanding support to other professional service processes;
* integrating financial service applications with Interwoven's repositories; and
* improving the architecture and development.

These focus points, and their successful execution, will help Interwoven improve its position as



SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/enterprise-content-management-solution-creates-the-ultimate-customer-experience-18661/

A Supply Chain Applications Vendor Expands Beyond Its Roots

is a thriving provider of on-demand supply chain management (SCM) solutions for a variety of worldwide industries. The vendor has evolved beyond its roots, into a provider of much more comprehensive on-demand supply and demand chain management software, consulting, hosting, and related services that should enable users throughout the world to collaborate (that is, to work jointly with others), in near real time, and conduct commerce (exchange ideas, opinions, sentiments, products, etc.) with business partners across an extended enterprise.

Part Two of the series Will a Tool Manufacturer and a Supply Chain Software Vendor "Click" in Matrimony?

For example, Click Commerce Supply Chain Management (SCM) solutions were acquired in February 2005 via Optum, a former warehouse management systems (WMS) vendor (which in 2004 had acquired V3 Systems and WorldChain, providers of software for supplier management and vendor managed inventory [VMI], respectively). These solutions provide supply chain execution (SCE) and WMS solutions for multi-tiered supply chains, and include a radio frequency identification (RFID)-ready demand fulfillment solution. These solutions also enable supply network communications, coordinate business processes and services, and optimize supply chain functions (see Who Needs Warehousing Management and How Much Thereof?).

With this technology, Click Commerce clients can receive orders and other information from customers who have implemented RFID initiatives, and can run their warehouse and fulfillment operations using the same RFID information that their customers use in their retail operations. The solutions are designed to function independently of one another, or in tandem for tailored enterprise network environments, although each solution includes Click Commerce's integration platform, best business practice methods, and a supply chain intelligence dashboard. Supported supply chain business processes include supplier enablement; fulfillment coordination; service logistics; shipment execution; and warehouse management.

In May 2006, Click Commerce released MOVE version 8.1 of its WMS software, which aims at enabling user companies to offer more value-added services, and provides support for RFID- and voice-enabled operations in the warehouse. MOVE 8.1's value-added services allow companies to offer such services as customer personalization, complex final assembly and light manufacturing operations, and support for reverse logistics requirements in the service supply chain. The release also provides RFID capabilities integrated with basic warehouse operations, such as receiving, put-away, picking, and shipping. In partnership with Vue Technology, the leading provider of item-level RFID, the RFID-integrated solution should increase productivity and inventory accuracy in the warehouse. It should also provide the ability to pull inventory through the supply chain network based on real-time demand to avoid stock-outs, and thus likely deliver increased customer service levels and lower supply chain costs (see RFID—A New Technology Set to Explode?).

In addition, the release further enhances MOVE's voice functionality, which creates a dialogue between warehouse employees and the WMS. MOVE 8.1 uses a voice-directed interface that allows warehouse employees to use a headset to communicate vital warehouse information about inventory operations, rather than inputting the information into a cumbersome handheld device. The solution, which includes technology from Vocollect, should result in increased labor productivity, improved inventory accuracy, and better safety for the company's warehouse workers.

The new release integrates with the Click Commerce Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), which enables extensible markup language (XML), electronic data interchange (EDI), or flat file communications between the WMS and external systems, as opposed to requiring a costly middleware provider. With the Click Commerce ESB, companies can integrate MOVE 8.1 with other applications, since the solution is based on open standards and uses service-oriented architecture (SOA), enabling composite applications to be tailored to users' business processes, instead of having to work in a predefined framework. The ESB integrates Click Commerce applications to work as a suite of products by leveraging Web services and business process execution language (BPEL) to orchestrate the flow of information between disparate applications (see Understanding SOA, Web Services, BPM, and BPEL).

More Acquisition-based Expansions

The Click Commerce Service Parts Planning and Optimization (SPP&O) solutions, which were acquired in May 2005 via former Xelus, are designed to improve the performance of customers' service and repair activities, and their investments in spare parts inventories. These solutions are particularly important for companies in the aerospace and defense (A&D), automotive, and high-technology industries, where maintaining and repairing complex equipment is critical (see Lucrative but 'Risky' Aftermarket Business—Service and Replacement Parts SCM). These products are designed to help optimize the procurement and distribution of spare parts inventories, the deployment of parts to optimal stocking locations, and the flow and disposition of inventory through the repair loop (and back into usable stock).

The SPP&O applications have a broad view of the service network, and provide strong planning capabilities coupled with an integrated tool for bridging the information gaps between partners. Embedded algorithms identify and address issues related to a user company's service parts supply chain, and help companies determine disposition and routing at each step: return, receipt, repair, and restock. Owing to Xelus' forays in leveraging RFID in tracking and analyzing service parts, Click Commerce has broadened its footprint with the service parts planning and reverse logistics expertise of Xelus. This should help them to eventually manage the entire gamut from ordering, moving, and fulfillment of parts (in other words, from raw materials), to subassemblies and finished goods, to aftermarket spare parts. Supported service supply chain business processes include parts planning optimization; product acquisition; reverse logistics; inspection and testing; reconditioning and repair; and distribution and sales.

To further expand its portfolio, in November 2005, Click Commerce acquired Requisite Technology, Inc., which enhanced Click Commerce's catalog offering by adding a master data management (MDM) capability that enables collaborative commerce and RFID programs (see Customer Data Integration: A Primer and SAP Bolsters NetWeaver's MDM Capabilities). Requisite's MDM software, which transforms disorganized plant, material, and finished product data into consistent information repositories, is currently embedded in some of the world's largest enterprise resource planning (ERP) provider's solutions, with approximately 400 of these customers actively using elements of the Requisite solution. The solution had already been in use on a software as a service (SaaS) basis (see What Is Software as a Service?), with various leading business process outsourcing (BPO) providers using the applications to support their procurement operations. Also, Requisite had delivered infrastructure and services (directly and through its global service partners, including Atos Origin) that made manufacturers' MDM and related cost reduction projects successful.

In addition to providing MDM capabilities, the acquisition added patented technology and increased Click Commerce's presence in Europe with additional sales and support staff in key markets. This provided the vendor with additional opportunities to deliver its demand, supply, and service chain collaborative commerce solutions (see Will a Tool Manufacturer and a Supply Chain Software Vendor "Click" in Matrimony? for more information). The acquisition also broadened Click Commerce's solutions portfolio to include Requisite's Bugseye patented search engine, Content Workstation content cleansing, alignment and validation tools, and eMerge content aggregation and workflow management tools. It also provided a framework for using data across many different levels (industries, regions, companies, and departments). Requisite provided software to many different industries and end users, including the A&D, commercial aviation, consumer goods, contract repair, high-tech, telecommunications, petrochemical, and transportation industries. Some of Requisite's leading customers include BASF, Eastman Kodak, Graybar, Marathon Ashland Petroleum, and Union Bank of California.

Mastering Data Management and Synchronization

These Click Commerce solutions enable companies to manage information about any type of item, including finished goods for resale; direct materials used in manufacturing; and indirect materials used in maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) operations. These solutions also enable companies to create, collect, align, and enhance data to provide a uniform version of information, regardless of catalog needs. The search capabilities allow users to search aggregated information to find relevant results, and to have access to item details and images. Consequently, the solution suite, re-branded as Click Commerce Master Data Management (MDM), now consolidates and manages widely distributed master product data within an enterprise. Its solutions provide a single, consolidated version of this information, which should improve the accuracy of dependent systems, and reduce errors arising from data duplication and inaccuracy.

The product suite is intended to address problems caused when a user company maintains its master data in raw or "native" form in multiple, disconnected ERP and other enterprise systems, while lacking the detailed descriptions, product attributes, and classification structures which permit corporate-wide analysis and visibility into cost and performance. Customers thus use MDM solutions to deliver core services and infrastructure to turn raw master data into more readily available product information that can be acted upon to cut costs, deliver products faster, and boost competitiveness. Supported MDM business processes include cleansing and normalizing existing data; organizing and mapping data to internal structures; integrating to MDM or ERP legacy systems; and conducting master data maintenance. The Click Commerce MDM solution does not replace enterprise applications or the data contained therein, but rather enhances the existing ERP system, thereby helping to reduce customer costs by integrating its solution with tools and processes already deployed throughout an organization.

The strategic intent behind these numerous acquisitions might be best shown by the fact that Click Commerce's global data synchronization (GDS) and secure communications solutions (acquired in 2004 via bTrade) complement its MDM capabilities by allowing companies to communicate normalized master data with their trading partner community via the Internet. Data synchronization is an industry-wide retail initiative that requires manufacturers and suppliers to "sync" product information with their retailer customers, and Click Commerce has identified GDS as one of the building blocks for an RFID-enabled supply chain. Conveniently, bTrade was one of the top five solution providers in data synchronization (along with UCCNet and other major standard-setting bodies). UCCNet had previously selected bTrade software to handle communications with the trading partners, and retail supplier on-boarding in North America. Today, this software handles communications for the global registry for the worldwide retailer industry. Furthermore, bTrade had early relationships with leading retailers like Wal-Mart, SUPERVALU, and Home Depot, and was well on its way to establishing itself as one of only ten data pools in the world.

Service Contract Management

Additionally, in February 2006 Click Commerce acquired substantially all of the operating assets of Elance, Inc., based in Mountain View, California (US). This provided on-demand e-commerce solutions for contractor management services business, with capabilities enabling companies to find, evaluate, purchase, manage, and pay contractors and third party service providers. After the sale of the services and contractor management business, Elance concentrated on its Internet business and the growth of its online service for small business outsourcing.

As manufacturing companies outsource more and more of their operations, buying and managing third party services and service providers becomes a real challenge. Click Commerce believes the addition of services and contractor management capabilities creates significant cross-selling opportunities in the A&D and contract manufacturing verticals, as well as in its core markets of high-tech, financial services, and institutional research. Click Commerce has continued to offer Elance outsourcing management software as a service to many other industries, including the energy, manufacturing, transportation, and utilities industries. Elance reportedly estimated that in 2005 its customers used its solutions to manage over $7 billion (USD) of their services and contractor spending on information technology (IT), contingent labor, operations, management consulting, marketing, print, and other service projects. The customers of this Elance business include a number of existing Click Commerce customers, such as FedEx and Motorola, as well as other well-known companies, like American Express and British Petroleum (BP). The acquisition also included two foreign Elance subsidiaries, which expanded Click Commerce internationally by increasing its European presence with additional sales and support staff in the UK, and by adding a small software development facility in India.

In 2006, Click Commerce expects the acquired Elance business to recognize approximately $7.5 million (USD) in recurring revenues from its customers' purchasing maintenance, hosting, and services. The majority of employees from this Elance business unit have become Click Commerce employees since the transaction. Consequently, the on-demand e-commerce solutions for service businesses (re-branded into Click Commerce Contract and Service Management products) should enable customers to manage their services and contractor management life cycles. To that end, customers can use these solutions to find, evaluate, purchase, manage, and pay for a wide variety of outsourcing and professional services, and other services. The solutions handle multiple types of services contracts and payment structures, such as time and materials, retained relationships, milestones, blanket orders, service level-based payments, and volume-based contracts. With these solutions, the customers might also realize the benefits of compliance with key policies, laws, and controls for corporate reporting, including the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). The solution can also help them manage labor and staffing, and provide visibility into spend volumes, supplier performance, and efficiency.

Helping Health Care Research

Last but not least (although this is somewhat unrelated to the other offerings), Click Commerce eResearch and Healthcare solutions help health care and higher education institutions improve response time and accuracy of approval processes by connecting research departments through administrative extranets. The software automates labor-intensive review and approval processes into flexible, more easily navigated sequences of workflows. Supported research and health care business processes include grant and contract management; institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) review; clinical trials discovery; incident reporting; conflict of interest reporting; and institutional review board (IRB) review. An IRB is a committee of physicians, statisticians, researchers, community advocates, and others who ensure that research studies involving human subjects are ethical and that the rights of study participants are protected. All studies involving human subjects in the US must be approved by an IRB before they begin. Click Commerce IRB extranet provides institutions with an Internet submission system for IRB applications that simplifies application creation, eliminates routine errors, and alerts research teams of approaching deadlines. An IACUC, for its part, is a committee charged with reviewing animal welfare issues and approving all research involving use of animal subjects per US federal guidelines. Click Commerce IACUC extranet provides institutions with an Internet submission system for IACUC applications that simplifies application creation, eliminates routine errors, and alerts research teams of approaching deadlines.

In late 2005, Click Commerce released Research Extranet version 5.5, designed for use in the health care and higher education industry. This solution provides new applications and tools that can lead to improved efficiency in complicated human and animal subject research procedures. Leading universities and research institutions such as Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Washington currently use Click Commerce's extranet solutions. It is expected that with the new Research Extranet 5.5, these institutions will be able to develop and deploy customized research procedures more efficiently, and improve their ability to share important research data across the organization.

Research Extranet 5.5 includes Process Studio, which should allow institutions to more easily manage the creation of research processes. It should also enable them to launch these applications more quickly, since with its addition, institutions can take more effective advantage of the Research Extranet and potentially increase productivity immediately. Additionally, the release provides support for Web services, which facilitates easy integration with external applications. The release also added important functionality for users of the Click Commerce IRB Extranet and the IACUC solution. Namely, IRB and IACUC administrators can leverage a new comprehensive reviewer notes feature, which allows review committees to make comments directly in the system, potentially streamlining the research approval process. This new feature also provides the ability to more quickly identify changes in modifications submitted by researchers. The Click IACUC Extranet is currently in use by five institutions to manage animal research compliance requirements, and provides access to pre-award grants, bio-safety committees, and conflict of interest reporting applications.



SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/a-supply-chain-applications-vendor-expands-beyond-its-roots-18806/

The Many Faces of PLM Part Two: The Future of the PLM Suite

The Future of the PLM Suite

The future of the PLM Suite will include more applications that cover product-related functionality and further expand the benefits available. As the PLM Suite matures, companies will benefit from increased functionality and increased integration between business processes. The ultimate expression of this more mature solution will result in a broad suite of focused, integrated applications that leverage a core of unified, structured product data the PLM Platform.

In order to understand the future of the PLM Suite, it is important to understand how suites become suites. If we take what we now call ERP as an example, it has evolved over time. The suite started with Inventory Control systems, then became Material Requirements Planning (MRP), then evolved to MRPII which included extensions to MRP including order management, then transitioned to ERP which firmly included non-manufacturing concerns such as Financials and Human Resources.

What happened with ERP is that the definition of the core system extended as complementary functionality was combined with it. As the footprint expanded, it deserved a new name. This is similar to what has happened with Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) suites. In the final analysis, PDM will probably be to PLM the same thing that Sales Force Automation (SFA) was to CRM. SFA is still a core component within the overall suite of CRM products, and it also served as the catalyst that got the market moving.

PLM seems to be following the same pattern. Software suites naturally grow as suite providers add new products to their offerings, and specialty vendors with complementary value propositions look to take advantage of the marketing awareness that the suite offers. As suites expand, the level of pre-packaged integration typically grows making more functionality available to users. There is a lot of room to grow in the PLM footprint, and as a suite of solutions PLM will probably be as broad as CRM or SCM are today. PLM will continue to expand, as we have seen from the growth strategy of companies like Agile Software. Agile has aggressively expanded their product suite through acquisition, with more than 5 acquisitions announced in less than two years, see "Has Consolidation Made The PLM Market More Agile?"

This is Part Two of a two-part article.

Part One discussed the current state of the PLM Suite and provided insight into how application suites develop.

New Additions to the PLM Suite

What new application areas belong in the PLM footprint? There are many valid opinions, and time will tell which functional areas will be most rewarding to the companies that adopt PLM systems. Today, PLM is being leveraged as the source of consolidated, uniform product information. This provides a platform to serve many other purposes. One such area is the publication, or syndication, of product catalogs and product data. Several leading consumer goods companies, for example, have used solutions from MatrixOne and Prodika to link with exchanges such as Transora and become UCCnet compliant.

Another area that has been regularly included in PLM conversations, that again leverages the single source of focused product data, is Regulatory and Compliance. Vendors such as Advanced Software Design (ASD), a sponsor at the PDMA conference, and Atrion provide regulatory focus in the process industries, for example. Sopheon highlighted the need for regulatory compliance by introducing their capabilities to support FDA 21 CFR Part 11, an important requirement in the Life Sciences industry. This focus is increasingly important as new regulations are being unfurled, such as WEEE (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment) and the TREAD (Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability, and Documentation), whose requirements span large segments of the product lifecycle. PLM focus on regulatory and compliance issues is not entirely new, as SAP has long included Environmental Health and Safety in the definition of their PLM offerings and vendors like Formation Systems support many regulatory requirements for the process industries.

There are additional areas that are moving into the PLM footprint as well. Component Event Management, for example, focuses on managing the disruption that component obsolescence and change place on products that rely on electronic components. This application, from vendors such as PCNalert, provides complementary value in the product lifecycle. Another area that overlaps considerably with PLM is product configuration. While Configuration Management has clearly been included in the PLM footprint, product configurators are just beginning to be looked at as PLM. As more product-related information is included in the PLM application, configuration information in PLM will likely expand from the current design-centric solutions such as PTC's Dynamic Design Link and RuleStream, to include more sales-related information like what is found in solutions from BigMachines, Cincom, Firepond, TDCI and Trilogy. For more information see "Customization Drives Complexity Why It's Hard to Design, Sell and Produce Simple' Products."

Another area that seems destined to collide is Computer Aided Process Planning, or CAPP. CAPP manages and captures the processes by which complex assemblies are produced and maintained. This product-related information is currently addressed by applications from companies like HMS Software and iBASEt, and is more tightly aligned with Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) than with PLM.

Where is the logical end to the expansion of the footprint and the consolidation of markets into PLM? One could argue that there will be continuous innovation in the software industry and that new solution areas will continue to be identified. The inevitable result will, of course, be an overlap with other solution areas in the same way the CRM and SCM collide with functionality in ERP suites today. This natural evolution will continue to provide more pre-integrated functionality, and will make the trade-offs between integration and best of breed functionality more important, requiring more detailed and overlapping product selection criteria. For more information on the tradeoff between PLM functionality and integration, see "Can ERP Speak PLM?"

The PLM Platform

Is every software application that focuses on products really a part of PLM? If you take a broad definition of PLM, such as "a suite of applications that focus on leveraging product information to improve product profitability", the answer is yes. More important than a simple answer to this question is recognition that application "spaces" are artificial boundaries, and that PLM is still a relatively immature market (see" The Different Evolutionary Stages of ERP And PLM"). The most valuable reason to expand an application suite is when integration between business processes spans applications in a way that a lack of integration makes the overall process less effective. Advances in integration technology have greatly improved the ability to pull together disparate applications into coherent processes, (see What's Wrong With Application Software? Business Processes Cross Application Boundaries), but companies still value pre-defined integration and business processes when they are available. Companies would ideally prefer an approach that builds off of a common architecture and data model that can support the related business processes of PLM. This integrated view of the PLM Suite is sometimes referred to as a "PLM Platform".

The PLM Platform provides a central location for product related information and processes. This approach provides for consolidation of product information and processes into a common system. The common system promotes higher levels of data cleanliness because it is focused solely on being the source of product information, as opposed to simply providing enough product information to fulfill a particular function. By naming one system as the core system of record, companies will have a much clearer answer to where they should source product information for other activities and other applications. The common platform also promotes integrated business processes and provides for greater product intelligence and analysis.

Companies that are developing a long-term strategy will need to weigh a vendor's vision to provide an integrated PLM Platform vs. best of breed functionality, and may need to make short-term tradeoffs between integration and functionality. Companies that have stated a strong direction towards a PLM Platform are Agile, PTC, and MatrixOne. The architecture of the PLM Platform must be very flexible to support varying types of information and processes and must provide strong capabilities for information visibility and collaboration.

Don't Forget The PLM Program

More important than what applications belong in the PLM application suite, is what applications can provide increased value for the companies that use them. Manufacturers today are facing a dilemma with PLM. They understand and need the benefits that the PLM value proposition offers, but are also confused about which part of PLM will provide the benefits. There is no single answer to that question that works for every company. There is not even a single answer for every company within a particular industry, although industry does play a critical role in identifying PLM needs and potential solutions. For more information on the impact of industry on the requirements for a PLM solution, see "PLM is an Industry Affair Or Is It".


In order to achieve the value of PLM, manufacturers must carefully prioritize their needs and implement a series of initiatives that not only lead to the long-term value of PLM, but also provide tangible short-term ROI that pays for the program incrementally along the path. The priorities identified will lead to a series of inter-related requirements that should be considered in selecting the appropriate software partner, or partners, for the manufacturer. For more information on selecting the appropriate software partners, see "Selecting a PLM Vendor".

Adding to the confusion for manufacturers is that the same benefits are often touted for different aspects of PLM. For example, faster new product introduction is a common strategic goal for companies starting a PLM initiative. There are multiple paths to improving time to market, all of which may be valid. In fact, the best answer may be a combination of approaches. For example, better project management and the introduction of stage gate processes might help to speed projects along. Reducing the clutter of competing projects through better project selection and portfolio management techniques could help. Design related approaches such as design reuse, parametric search tools and design collaboration can compress the development time. If time to production volume is as important as time to market, then speeding up the handoffs between R&D and manufacturing might help, particularly if outsourced manufacturers are involved. The following table highlights some typical goals in PLM programs, some different approaches to attaining the value, and then some of the tools or solutions that can be used to help. This is not an exhaustive list, but a quick example of how the PLM value proposition overlaps.



SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/the-many-faces-of-plm-part-two-the-future-of-the-plm-suite-17146/

Major Vendors Adapting to User Requirements

SAP and Microsoft Meet Halfway in Mendocino

It is small wonder that the market leaders and largest players have recently had a sudden epiphany concerning user requirements. They have finally realized that they will increasingly be evaluated by how well their products interconnect and interoperate, how intuitive their user interfaces are, and how easily new enterprise-wide business processes (workflows) can change to meet the needs of ever changing working environments. For more information on these user requirements, see Driving Factors in the Enterprise Applications Market.

The prominent and recently announced partnership between SAP and Microsoft for their joint product Mendocino (the name of the town halfway between the companies' US headquarters) promises to deliver familiar Microsoft Office desktop management and productivity tools as the facade for heavy-duty SAP enterprise application processes. At about the same time this announcement was made, Microsoft also announced that it would begin using Microsoft Office open extensible markup language (XML) formats for its Word, Excel, and PowerPoint applications, under the codename Office 12, which should provide better data interoperability, improved security, and reduced file sizes, all with the idea of further blurring the lines between business applications and office productivity tools. This is an attempt to mitigate the current predicament whereby, on the one hand, today's knowledge workers have information overload, but on the other hand, they often still cannot access the pertinent information at the right time.

Mendocino, recently released to fifty pilot customers before going to generally available (GA) release by mid-2006, aims at disseminating useful SAP data among knowledge workers outside its traditionally limited user dispatch list, and to gauge the potential for early composite application development and adoption. It was devised to help workers who spend most of their time in the Office suite but who also need to be in touch with SAP sessions.

To that end, Mendocino tries to eliminate the intermittent (and wasteful) system-to-system steps, since SAP functionality can then automatically be invoked from Microsoft Outlook, for example, with the workflow being completed in SAP. This resembles a composite application modus operandi (MO), since when using Mendocino, corporate data in traditionally pesky SAP business format can be automatically sent to a user's Outlook e-mail inbox, for instance, where any modifications to reports can be made and then sent back to the main SAP data repository. This can all be done without the user having to leave a familiar data processing environment, and reduces the amount of time it takes to modify important business data. The Mendocino 1.0 release will require the latest version of the Microsoft Office suite, Microsoft Office 2003, and will also work with the forthcoming Office 12 suite, which will be available towards the end of 2006.

Microsoft's Approach

Microsoft is citing research indicating that users spend up to 35 percent of their valuable time searching for information needed to do their job, and can miss key information entirely. This is because up to 85 percent of business information is located on desktops, both as structured data and unstructured content. The result is the frequent need to re-key substantial amounts of information, leading to duplicate work, inaccuracies, and a negative impact on the ability of a company to respond, with the net result of lost time and suboptimal performance.

Along the same lines, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said in a recent executive e-mail memo, "The software challenges that lie ahead are less about getting access to the information people need and more about making sense of the information they have—giving them the ability to focus, prioritize and apply their expertise, visualize and understand key data, and reduce the amount of time they spend dealing with the complexity of an information-rich environment."

For these reasons, Microsoft has also begun to deliver roles-based Mendocino-like features, with the familiar Windows look and feel. These features are geared towards a slew of business applications that were recently re-branded under the Microsoft Dynamics umbrella brand, the research and development (R&D) roadmap formerly known as Project Green. Again, the idea is to provide users with a more integrated and contextual working environment (see What Do Users Want and Need?).

Maybe the best example of this is the recently launched Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 product, featuring a native Outlook interface and thus an instantly familiar experience. Also notable in this respect are a slew of reporting and analytic products using the Excel metaphor (see Vendors Harness Excel (and Office) to Win the Lower-end of Business Intelligence Market).

Microsoft Dynamics Snap

Most recently, on February 20, Microsoft announced the release of Microsoft Dynamics Snap, a collection of software programs that, well, snap in to Microsoft Office 2003. Like Mendocino, these four new programs aim for easier data coordination and management for certain Microsoft Dynamics business management solutions, via the familiar Microsoft Office 2003 interface. These applications also have the potential to improve worker performance by allowing direct access and use of business processes and data from business management solutions back-end applications like Microsoft Dynamics AX 3.0 (formerly Microsoft Business Solutions-Axapta) and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, all from within certain Microsoft Office applications.

Microsoft points to this as another example of its strategy of delivering business management solutions that fit with customers' existing information technology (IT) systems. As recently reported, the Microsoft Dynamics vision involves at least two series of releases. One of the most important goals of the first series is to deliver a user experience that is integrated with Microsoft Office, by using a roles-based approach. The release of Microsoft Dynamics Snap should be instrumental in evaluating the progress towards that goal. The first four Snap-Ins announced include:

1. Timesheet Management Snap-In, developed for Microsoft Dynamics AX 3.0, to allow users to use Microsoft Outlook to view or submit time entries for recurring tasks. This solution links Microsoft Dynamics AX time entries to Outlook appointments and meetings, automatically filling in the data and helping track changes made to linked appointments or meetings. This should help save the time and trouble of correlating those tasks, and reduce errors as a result of users having to transpose data from one program to another. This might be useful for Microsoft Dynamics AX customers in service industries, or who have a requirement for employees to track how time is allocated across internal projects;

2. Vacation Management Snap-In, also developed for Microsoft Dynamics AX 3.0, to allow users to submit vacation requests using Microsoft Outlook. This action then triggers an e-mail to the request approver, who can view details of the request along with the requestor's vacation history, and approve or reject the request. The vacation time entry is then automatically updated into the Microsoft Dynamics time and attendance (T&A) module;

3. Business Data Lookup Snap-In, developed for Microsoft Dynamics AX, to allow business workers to use the Microsoft Dynamics AX task pane to search and browse Microsoft Dynamics AX data using Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel or Outlook, and to copy selected data into Office 2003 documents, or to attach the Office documents to Microsoft Dynamics AX records. One of the uses for this includes sending order status e-mails to customers.

4. Business Data Lookup Snap-In, developed for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, to allow searching and browsing of customer relations management (CRM) data within the familiar Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook Office 2003 environments. Using a CRM task pane, it is possible to copy data into Microsoft Office documents, or to attach the Microsoft Office documents to CRM records.

These programs try to make manipulation of business management data less complicated and intimidating, by giving users access to data and business processes from within the familiar Microsoft Office 2003 environment. It's easier to do this without opening two or more programs, pushing data around, or having to master the full complexity of all of the software in a company just because they want, for example, to accurately allocate the amount of time they spend working on a particular assignment. At the macroscopic level, pundits may describe this as "bridging the worlds of business productivity and personal productivity." More fundamentally, it comes down to the fact that software should work the way people really work. To that end, Microsoft and SAP have made significant steps towards delivering a better user experience in a roles-based manner.

The Microsoft Dynamics Snap collection is available for free download under the Microsoft Permissive License, as a Code Gallery project called Microsoft Dynamics Snap on GotDotNet.com, a site where a community of developers and IT professionals can share, evaluate, and build evolving Microsoft .NET applications, code, ideas, and technical documents. Microsoft also pledges to provide the source code for these solutions from the linked web site. This should allow the partners, other independent software vendors (ISVs), and customers to modify and distribute these programs. It should then be possible to enhance or customize the shipped solutions or to use them as examples of how to build new composite applications.

Inherent Challenges

Ideally, overlaying composite applications should be instantly usable in a user's native work environment, and also unite analytics, transactions and collaboration into a single process flow. Further, they must easily be added onto the existing applications, and they must be model-based (ideally visually) for the sake of process flexibility. Some will rightfully notice that Mendocino and Snap-Ins are somewhat limited in scope because they currently only enable four self-service SAP processes, with little in the way of deeper workflow- or process-based integration (which would naturally require a significantly higher investment level from both vendors).

Currently, Mendocino product development is focused on integrating Microsoft's e-mail and calendar programs with SAP's back-office business applications, giving employees a more familiar user interface when accessing and manipulating business data in the following four scenarios:

1. A budget monitoring scenario, purporting to provide managers with access to the financial data they need for budget planning, monitoring, cost analysis, and reconciliation. The functionality includes receiving (as a graphic in an e-mail attachment) budgets, posting alerts, monitoring budgets, transferring budgets, and requesting posting adjustments.

2. A time management scenario, which should enable employees to record and review hours spent on a certain project (within a drop-down list) in the context of the Outlook calendar. The system then posts the update in SAP's Cross-Application Time Sheets (CATS).

3. A leave management scenario, whereby employees can request leave in their Outlook calendar, and then receive managerial approval or disapproval via Outlook mail.

4. An organization management scenario, which incorporates administrative and planning tasks related to human resources (HR) into an Outlook Contact File. Based on authorizations established within mySAP HR, HR managers would then be able to perform self-service functions, such as viewing employee salary information or performance reviews, and suggesting proportional increases, all within Outlook.

Pricing, integration complexity (which depends on the degree of software customization currently in place), and the need for a joint support structure, leave many wondering when more involved processes will be delivered. Such composite applications would be layered on top of Office or mySAP Business Suite, and would also handle both structured and unstructured information. Examples might include complex (but potentially rewarding) business processes to support global trade management (GTM), sales and operations planning (S&OP), market campaign management, or consignment and vendor-managed inventory (VMI). Vertical functionality should then be easier to build, because users and partners could create new types of data objects, and also create relationships between them. In terms of management, users and partners could create the objects, while the master enterprise application would create and manage the metadata (i.e., data about data).



SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/major-vendors-adapting-to-user-requirements-18472/

A Single Software Solution That Enables Business Process Management

Exact e-Synergy as a BPM Enabler

Exact has focused its development on making sure that any user company can significantly benefit from data stored in different places within the organization. Accordingly, it has developed a platform that keeps all departmental data in one central information store, accessible, in near real-time, over the Web, to make sure everyone within the organization works with the same information.

Part three of the Exact Software Continues with Its Share of Judicious Acquisitions series.

For instance, every customer-related phone call can be logged into e-Synergy, whereas faxes and Web site requests can be automatically merged into the system. As a result, every customer touch point should be available through e-Synergy allowing sales staff to know the latest service or credit issues. Likewise, people in customer service and finance can see the latest sales interactions. When the user enterprise has a full history of the interactions, it can better serve the customer, and employees will spend less frustrating time shouting across the office to find out who spoke to whom, and what was said. By focusing on improving and optimizing processes instead of just the departments, any user company should be better aligned and prepared to take on the challenges ahead.

Right now, the traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) mid-market for standard business software remains sluggish and fragmented. Pricing pressures continue to increase on products and services, but a back-office ERP, per se, does not give the same competitive advantage it use to. However, due to globalization and Internet usage within businesses, users are increasingly seeking collaborative and Web-based solutions to find supply chain cost efficiencies and to better organize content.

An example of agility includes how prospects respond to an e-mail and enter personal information. The system should automatically update the contact database, and users can check for duplicates and add or merge the information. A workflow request can then be sent to the appropriate people for follow-up. When a customer places an order, the pricing used in the back-office system should also appear on the Web site or user screen. Finally, the system should offer a centralized view of all customers and their activities, including workflow, financial transactions, support issues, etc. from anywhere, and at any time. Customers, suppliers, and partners should also manage their accounts through secure portals.

Exact's quintessential solution consists of two fully integrated (working from the same central information store) products: Exact Globe and Exact e-Synergy. Both are built on Microsoft technology and open standards and should connect to any application users may have with relative ease. To get to the next level of competitiveness, users should build their ERP investments while reducing the steps it takes to execute key business processes. They should also manage by exception through lean manufacturing concepts. Exact touts e-Synergy as a means of managing by exception and tying together processes, documents, and people. It is a Web-based collaboration platform with portal views, workflow, document, customer relationship, and human resources management (HRM). e-Synergy also integrates office productivity tools such as Microsoft Excel and Outlook.

Exact has integrated e-Synergy with most of its local ERP packages. It has only been available in North American for a couple of years, yet, the product is used by over 400 customers in North America. Exact cites this as evidence of user interest in business process management (BPM) capabilities that layer over back-office ERP solutions. The product is also supportive of the US Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) owing to its workflow and document management capabilities, and it meets the electronic signature requirements under the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "Part 11" rules. The vendor expects standard business applications to drive efficiency by connecting to mobile devices, which is in demand by new generation of users that want better and faster access to more accurate and useful data.

For background information on Exact Software see Exact Software Continues with Its Share of Judicious Acquisitions.

This is Part Three of a multipart note. This series will explore Exact's strategic groups and global aspirations; its BPM strategy and products; and its acquisition of Vanguard. It will also present challenges and make user recommendations.

Exact e-Synergy as the Collaboration Solution

Exact e-Synergy is primarily the collaboration solution, and as the name indicates, it is designed to provide synergy within the user organization. It gives all employees Web-access to instantaneous information from one central information source allowing them to plan, track, and initiate collaboration, and search and retrieve content, documents, and transactional data. By making Exact e-Synergy the platform of communication and collaboration, no data should (in principle) ever be lost at the organization, because information is stored for quick retrieval. Because of its ability to align employees, information, and processes across the enterprise, users of Exact e-Synergy should be able to view the health of the entire value chain, help employees manage time more effectively and execute business processes more efficiently. Key strengths of Exact e-Synergy are

* It integrates all company information by recording data at one time and in context. It links that data to all the relevant people, products, customers, workflow, and financial transactions.

* It encourages collaboration by providing structure and context and by accommodating Web sites and portals creation (see Portals: Necessary But Not Self-sufficient ).

* It supports mobile connectivity and allows on-line add-ons for portal digital assistant (PDA) devices.

* It increases transparency by managing all business processes through electronic workflow. The workflow integrates with Outlook, which is used for external communication (since calendars and contacts can be synchronized, e-mails can be sent to contacts from within the e-Synergy contact database). The system also integrates with Microsoft Office and Exchange.

* It gives access (search and retrieval) to all information and processes, including existing back-office ERP data and non-structured content for the entire organization, since the browser-based system has a "Google box"-type feature that makes it fairly easy to look up records by using multiple parameters.

* It reduces implementation and training costs by using a common Web browser to input and access data.

* It also leverages investments in ERP systems by enabling access to this information for the entire workforce.

The Web user interface (UI) is familiar to users and provides an easy means of navigation. Consequently, Exact e-Synergy is completely built on Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) 3.0 and runs on top of Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), both on Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 platforms. All data is stored in the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database, whereas all supported client platforms are Windows versions that support Internet Explorer (IE) 5.01 or better (i.e., Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and Windows XP). The product also provides support for other devices, including PDAs (such as HP Ipaq) and smart phones.

e-Synergy has a broad rather than deep functional scope that is difficult to pigeonhole into a single enterprise software category. It also represents an enterprise relationship management (ERM) solution that integrates the functionality of traditional front-office applications in a single solution, providing employees, customers, and partners with virtually an immediate view of activity across an entire organization. Front-office activities (such as customer resource management [CRM], e-commerce, and portals); back-office activities (including financials, HRM projects, distribution, and production); and their workflow, event, document, knowledge management modules share one database, Microsoft SQL Server. As a result, users have no integration issues and all of their information is kept current and can be viewed using only Internet Explorer.

E-Synergy Modules

Exact touts that because e-Synergy automatically brings together the CRM solution with the financial database and other back-office databases, users should have a level of visibility into all of the processes that govern the business. Everyone from an administrative assistant to the chief executive officer (CEO) should have access to the information they need to make informed business decisions. This access is given through the features and functionality from the modules described below. Security and administration can take place both at the system level and in each module.

e-HRM has traditional HRM features, including job postings on the company Web site, budgeting, and hiring. However, it also has a module that handles on-line employee management, including task delegation, management of workflows, absence tracking, expenses, special compensation, etc. This allows a user company to maintain roles (jobs) and security levels related to employees and information. The module is actually a core component for managing security levels throughout the organization because it manages roles within an organization. Through the use of security levels and roles, e-HRM allows businesses to establish the rights and tasks an employee has and what information she or he can access. The hiring workflow provides a good model of e-Synergy's workflow and electronic BPM capabilities, since one has to follow the logical steps of associating a job requisition to a role within an organization. This job is then associated to a candidate who had applied for it via the Web (and, in the process, can save an HR manager the trouble of filling out employee record information).

e-Logistics, which is a combination product management tool and supplier management system, takes care of a company's product, catalog, and price management data. It enables users to share this information through an intranet system as well as the Internet.

e-CRM centralizes access to information about customers and prospects that is traditionally spread across the complete ERP system. This information includes contracts, invoices, financial transactions, and meeting reports. A business can thus integrate customers into its service, sales, product, and financial organization to provide a true 360-degree overview of its customer base. The information on the customer card is linked to all the relevant documents and information, such as contracts, invoices, financial transactions, sales sheets, meeting and visit or call reports, customer inquiries and complaints (including the status), and value added reseller (VAR) or distributor information. Inherent portal capabilities across the entire suite, including secure, role-based portal access with a single sign-on, can be supplemented with other security mechanisms like hardware keys or biometric ID, cater to customer self-service needs.

e-Workflow, in addition to offering traditional request functions, ensures electronic management of all of an organization's internal and external business processes. It is a tool that easily creates and manages the rules and procedures associated with specific business tasks, especially vital within the e-HRM and e-CRM modules. The workflow engine has a good set of tools for building workflows and forms in the framework of the application, and existing workflows can easily be repurposed for new ones. While the module is built-in across all e-Synergy modules and includes rules for routing transactions, alerts are also available by integrating with Exact Event Manager. This is an optional module and one that places Exact in the nascent area of business activity monitoring (BAM), a software category that triggers alerts and exception reports on both events and non-events, and both within and outside the four-walls of the enterprise (see Business Activity Monitoring— Watching The Store for You).

Actionable information is the key to success for (near) real time enterprises, which share up-to-date information with employees, customers, and partners in real time. This entails not only accessing data, but also pushing it to the right person and ensuring that person knows what to do about real time, "sizzling hot" information.

e-Documents stores and manages all information and existing artifacts centrally in one database, creating the basis for storing a company's data electronically. For example, while the e-HRM module tracks applicants, delegates tasks, counts absences and expenses, links to payroll, etc., the document management capability stores employees' resumes or skill sets, which eliminates shuffling through stacks of paper. Further, as Microsoft Word documents and other files from all over the business are "published" to the e-Synergy archive. e-Synergy categorizes and tags them as belonging with other documents for cross-referencing. This feature has obvious uses in terms of information retrieval, but can be even more useful in the context of engineering change control (ECC).

e-Project manages most of an organization's project related activities and views an organization's performance from a matrix point of view, including contract information, time inputs, budgets, and people and asset allocation schedules. Although the legacy Progression Series has had built-in job tracking and project accounting capabilities, such as setting up a project job, budgeting against it, and tracking transactions versus the budget, the Macola ES/e-Synergy combination offers a far better project oversight that includes scheduling, document management, and workflow tracking. e-Project is suitable for both internal and external projects, and for creating cost and revenue forecasts and project-based reports (e.g., availability of people and assets, contract information, requests and their status, time input and budgets, etc.).

e-Financials automates data collection at the transaction level using the Internet or an intranet. User organizations can analyze its key performance indicators (KPI) on-line from a consolidated level down to the transaction level with a few clicks of the mouse. The standard e-Financials UI is an organization chart, where the user can specify which KPIs should be shown and at what level of detail. Users can drill-down to individual transactions. While the module provides budgeting, an executive view, and reporting tools for consolidated company financials, the actual accounting transactions must be managed in an external application. The data must also be imported through native connectors or through an XML connector for Exact Software accounting applications (e-Synergy natively supports other Exact Software back-end accounting systems). Otherwise, the system supports connections to accounting and other back-office applications through a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) compliant-XML interface, which also controls data exchange with client applications such as Microsoft Word and Outlook.

Although it admittedly is not as deep as some of the individual, best-of-breed CRM, HRM, professional services automation (PSA), or BPM products in the market, e-Synergy offers most of the nifty functionality a small or medium enterprise may need without the superfluous integration headaches. Its inherent workflow is the application's glue, and the suite furthermore often becomes bigger than the sum of its parts. It starts by being able to create and manage the customer's Web site to include the buy side and the sell side of e-business, document management, and logistics functionality.



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Intentia and Dash Associates Team Up

Event Summary

Stockholm-based Intentia, the third largest enterprise software vendor in Europe, and UK-based Dash Associates have teamed up to enhance the capabilities of Intentia's optimizer by the incorporation of XPRESS-MP modeler and optimizer components. The collaboration aims at providing highly accurate solutions to complex, real-world planning problems in the shortest possible times. Intentia plans to have integrated XPRESS-MP into its supply chain management functionality as early as the end of 1999 (70% probability).

Market Impact

The Intentia-Dash collaboration mirrors a long-standing trend in the enterprise marketplace in which vendors with broad-featured product suites partner with best-of-breed technology shops in order to impart a degree of depth to one or more aspects of their suites. A more familiar example is SAP's 1998 investment in ILOG S.A., in which the ERP giant acquired a 5% stake in return for the use of ILOG's advanced algorithms in its APO supply chain suite. Companies like Dash and ILOG have created a market in licensing advanced algorithms to larger ERP and SCM (Supply Chain Management) vendors. The interaction is symbiotic in that:

1.

Intentia gains best-of-breed optimization functionality to complement its Movex supply chain management and APP (Advanced Production Planner) applications and improves its marketability. Well-known in Europe, Intentia may become more attractive to North American companies provided that the integration is successful; optimization tends to be a strong differentiator among enterprise software vendors.
2.

Dash Associates obtains additional capital for pursuing acquisitions of its own and/or funding internal development projects.




SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/intentia-and-dash-associates-team-up-15541/

DoubleClick Takes Bath, Throws in Towel

Event Summary

In an attempt to stem the flood of criticism that has been leveled at his company since its acquisition of Abacus Direct, CEO Kevin O'Connor announced that DoubleClick (NASDAQ:DCLK) had "made a mistake by planning to merge names with anonymous user activity in the absence of government and industry privacy standards."

The statement came after partners AltaVista and Kozmo.com announced that they were shocked, yes shocked, at the possible violations of user privacy resulting from DoubleClick's plans. DoubleClick's stock price has dipped from $135 at the start of the year to $79 after the announcement by the two web sites.

Abacus Direct is a direct marketing company that collects information from catalog companies. DoubleClick planned to merge information from that source with the anonymous surfing behavior that the company collects by dropping cookies on the machines of users when ads are served to them. This would provide much more information that the company could use to target ads to individuals.

DoubleClick's plan to merge the two data streams, once announced in its privacy statement, drew the ire of consumer groups, caused one California woman to file a class action lawsuit, and launched a Federal Trade Commission investigation of the uses of consumer information collected over the Internet. Also it is possible that the popular search engine HOTBOT was hacked to protest the DoubleClick action. For at least two days a search for DoubleClick brought up as the first entry the DoubleClick home page with a tag line identifying it as "The (in)famous DoubleClick Company." DoubleClick did not answer TEC's queries about this strangely deprecating text.

Market Impact

DoubleClick has not abandoned its plans, as Mr. O'Connor's statement made clear. In fact, as revealed by CNET, the company hired a political strategist, Josh Isay, as Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs to manage its lobbying efforts. With advertisers demanding more return on their dollars, DoubleClick will not give up on this issue without a fight.

However, the outcry may well cause the FTC investigators to develop a creative and workable proposal that allows tracking while giving consumers meaningful and workable ways to opt out. Such a proposal has not yet surfaced. (Here's one offered by TEC, gratis: any ad that might have a connection to personal identification could have an identifying mark, such as a red spyglass, in one corner. As rich media technology becomes more prevalent in ads, this mark could actually be made clickable, to take users to an opt-out page.)

It will be interesting to see how DoubleClick's main rival, Engage (NASDAQ: ENGA), reacts to these investigations. Although Engage has been at pains to point out that their targeting methods do not involve the use of personal information, the company must have concerns that a higher level of targeting may be necessary in the future to meet advertisers' requirements.

We certainly won't suggest that AltaVista's high profile announcement had anything to do with the fact that AltaVista is now owned by CMGI (NASDAQ: CMGI), the power behind Engage. If AltaVista was seeing signs of an impact on its own business as a result of this imbroglio, that would be news. Even though the story reached the mainstream press, most consumers have little idea which agency serves the ads that get on the web pages they see.


SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/doubleclick-takes-bath-throws-in-towel-15590/