Agility by Design - eprentise Blog

The Business vs. IT: Can't We All Just Get Along?

PDFPrintE-mail

Written by Helene Abrams Tuesday, December 14 2010

It is no surprise that IT is not always aligned with business goals.  The conflicts arise because IT is often unaware of how the business uses the systems that IT is responsible for installing and supporting, and the business is often unaware of exactly what is involved in an IT project.  There are several other reasons for the disconnect between IT and the business.

The Fundamental Disconnects

The first of these conflicts occurs because of the way IT projects are often initiated and funded.  The business determines that they need a system to perform a certain function and decides how much they are willing to spend on the system.  IT, with a desire to bring a project in under budget, often selects an enterprise system that meets most of the needs (and is a new technology that they want to learn) without thoroughly identifying the business requirements and performing a gap analysis between the selected system and the identified requirements.  As a result, the selected system needs extensive modification to meet the business needs, or else the business user develops work arounds in the form of spreadsheets or many smaller stand-alone systems that need to be integrated with the enterprise system.  The calculated costs of maintenance and support are often restricted to that required by the enterprise system without consideration for the additional costs of spreadsheets or the stand-alone systems.  Also, the budget may include the initial costs of the license and implementing the system, but may not consider the total cost of ownership over a period of time.

Add new comment

Read more: The Business vs. IT: Can't We All Just Get Along?

 

E-Business Suite Organizations Spend As Much As $19 Million Annually on Finance Operations

PDFPrintE-mail

Written by Chris Busbee Monday, April 19 2010

A few years ago, we conducted a survey among 264 Oracle Applications users in order to get a better idea of how businesses that use Oracle were financially structured, whether they had attempted a restructure in the past, and if so, the reasons, problems, and costs associated with fundamentally changing the underlying financial structure. Some selected results from that survey include: 

   

Getting the CFO to Pick Up His Bottom...Line: Best Practices in Cutting Costs

PDFPrintE-mail

Written by Helene Abrams Monday, February 15 2010

In the past, improving business processes was the primary objective of most ERP implementations, and welcome outcomes were cost savings and productivity improvements. When ERP systems were initially implemented, the opportunities and gains in back office operations were considered significant strategic advantages. But although the strategic advantages of having robust ERP systems persist, today’s economy is forcing companies to look for ways to cut costs rather just improve their systems. The good news is that focusing on cost savings and improving ERP can go hand-in-hand and lead to better business processes if they are managed properly.

Add new comment

Read more: Getting the CFO to Pick Up His Bottom...Line: Best Practices in Cutting Costs

   

Everyone Takes the Hit: What You Can Do About It – 5 Key Business Metrics and Oracle E-Business Suite

PDFPrintE-mail

Written by Helene Abrams Monday, January 18 2010

Before the onset of the recession and the meltdown in the financial sector, for businesses addressing change meant adapting to more cash coming in and what to do with it to keep investors happy or adapting to unprecedented growth – one of those “good problems to have”. Organizations were looking at 3, 5, and 7 year strategic plans with upwards of 20% growth year over year. A company doing $100 million in revenue might have had plans to double in size in four or five years.

As businesses were growing, building their customer base, and hiring, they may also have been planning to implement lean manufacturing or otherwise improve a host of business processes, from financial and R&D to product management, sales, and marketing. Along with the business processes improvements, IT managers were retooling their IT systems, upgrading their infrastructures, improving performance and security, or adding functionality for a host of business users.

Add new comment

Read more: Everyone Takes the Hit: What You Can Do About It – 5 Key Business Metrics and Oracle E-Business Suite

   

More Articles...

Page 1 of 3

Email Newsletter icon, E-mail Newsletter icon, Email List icon, E-mail List icon Enter your email address to sign up for our Newsletter

Sign up now

captcha
TEChanges - Agility by Design

May Puzzle

David is often referred to as Rainman due to his peculiar ability to effortlessly figure out a certain date's day of the week. He recently displayed this talent when I asked him if there was a conflict with the upcoming Fuzzy Dice Conference and our weekly court-ordered community service. He asked the date of the convention. It was April 20th, 2012.

"Oh, that’s a Friday," he said, effortlessly. "And your sentences have you committed for the next few dozen Wednesdays so you'll be able to go." And of course he was right.

One day a few weeks ago I asked out loud in the office about the date June 5th. And of all people, my brother Tommy piped up and said "Oh, that's a Tuesday."

"That's right," said David.

Well how about Otcober 3rd?

"That's a Wednesday," said Tommy. Then I asked about Christmas Day 2012.

"Oh, that's a Tuesday." David nodded in agreement.

Do we now have two rainmen? Or had Tommy figured something out?

Show solution...

Solution

Here's what was going on. Tommy was using something called anchor dates. And these dates apply to each and every year. April 4th, or 4/4 we’ll call it from now on, June 6th or 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, 12/12, are all the same day of the week, each and every year.

So too are 5/9 and 9/5, May 9th and September 5th. So too are 7/11 and 11/7, and all the above dates are the same day of the week, as is the last day in February, Leap Year or not. And they’re all the same day as January 4th, it would otherwise be January 3rd, but this was a leap year, and that’s changes the anchor day from January 3rd to January 4th.

Tommy also knew that New Year's Day was a Sunday. He was sobered up by then. And he knew it was a Sunday because Christmas was a Sunday in 2011, so New Year's Day is a Sunday, so the Anchor Day for 2012, January 4th, has to be a Wednesday!

So if that's a Wednesday, then 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, 12/12, 5/9, 9/5, 7/11, 11/7, and February 29th are all the same day of the week, and they're all Wednesdays. So when I ask for example, about October 3rd, he knew October 10th was a Wednesday, 10/10. So 10/3 must also be a Wednesday. 12/12 is a Wednesday in 2012, so it’s 12/26, which is two weeks later. So 12/25, or Christmas Day, must be a Tuesday.

Success Tips for Oracle Project Management

  • Create a standard for documentation at the beginning of your project, and hold team members accountable for completing documentation requirements as well as keeping them at and above the standards required.
  • Before promulgating user documentation or training, it’s also a good idea to choose a representative from the among the business users base to review materials first.
  • If you are not sure about the resources and budget required, obtain several estimates from people that have experience with the same size and scope of your project.
  • Be explicit, before beginning the project, what internal resources are required for execution. This includes people, infrastructure, hardware, and software.
  • Help the project champion understand the impact your project will have on the organization and how its successful completion will make him or her an internal hero or heroine for supporting it.
  • Break up your project into smaller projects (try for projects that can be completed in 4-6 months, especially early on) to get success and demonstrate momentum.
  • Make sure that your testing includes reports, upstream and downstream interfaces, customizations, enhancements, and workflows.
  • Ensure that comprehensive transition reports and meetings between departing and incoming personnel are completed.
  • Instead of spending time and resources implementing third-party reporting, consider consolidating multiple instances, moving to a global chart of accounts (CoA), and/or standardizing on a consistent calendar.
  • Include governance, risk, and compliance management as part of the project plan.
  • Finally, celebrate the successes. Too many projects focus on defects, failures, or small cost over-runs without looking at the big picture and what was accomplished.

The Analyst Corner

John Van Decker, Research VP of Gartner, states:

"A single chart of accounts allows consistency in financial reporting across the enterprise by standardizing on common metrics and reporting structures, reduces dependencies on a separate financial consolidation system, and significantly reduces the costs incurred with ongoing, complex conversions and translations."

Popular Articles


Copyright © 2012 eprentise.com. All Rights Reserved.   |   Privacy Policy   |   Terms of Service