KPIT SYSTIME
The Definitive
JD Edwards Experts Hear what industry leaders are saying about KPIT | SYSTIME… “KPIT Cummins delivers a powerful combination of industry expertise and Oracle knowledge. SYSTIME, the global JD Edwards Practice for KPIT, has earned the highest number of Advanced Specializations possible for JD Edwards. This is a partner with a track record of helping companies apply the depth and breadth of Oracle's capabilities to transform their business.”
“We can count on KPIT | SYSTIME to go above and beyond. They have delivered results on some of our most strategic applications and are a great partner.”
Barry Libenson Senior VP & CIO Information Systems, Land O’Lakes, Inc
World’s Largest JD Edwards Practice Industry Experience + Oracle Knowledge = Unsurpassed Expertise
Sonny Singh SVP, Industries Business Unit, Oracle
Only Partner Awarded 3 Oracle Advanced Specializations in JD Edwards 20 Oracle Specializations | 5 Oracle Advanced Specializations
“KPIT | SYSTIME is a high performing, proactive business partner, a true leader in the JD Edwards space. Our relationship has always been a positive one where we work together to identify and implement system and process improvements. We appreciate KPIT | SYSTIME’s continued commitment to Buckeye’s success.”
“KPIT | SYSTIME has been Pioneer’s trusted partner for over 2 years. The combination of KPIT | SYSTIME’s deep expertise in Brazil localizations and excellent understanding of Pioneer’s business processes makes them a very reliable and effective partner.”
Kathleen J Sinatore
Eduardo Nakamura
Chief Information Officer, Buckeye Partners, LP
General Manager, Pioneer
“Our long partnership with KPIT | SYSTIME has been very unique due to their proactive approach of continually raising the bar on quality, responsiveness and continuous improvements. No partner compares when it comes to JD Edwards expertise, experience, resources, flexibility and reliability. Any large company using JD Edwards looking for a partner must consider KPIT | SYSTIME.”
Thomas Spiegel Vice President Enterprise Applications, Lafarge
oracle@kpitcummins.com | www.kpitcummins.com/oracle | www.systime.net Copyright @ 2012 KPIT Cummins. All Rights Reserved. KPIT and SYSTIME are registered trademarks. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
T e c h n o l o gy P o w e r e d . B u s i n e s s D r i v e n .
+
oracle.com/profit
JD Edwards Special Issue 2012
Business Energy
“
It’s no longer IT and business. . . . is part of the business. IT
”
–James Watson, Chief Process Officer, Energy Alloys
In this issue
Triple play p. 02 Building on community p. 06 Lyle Ekdahl’s strategic roadmap p. 14 Oracle’s JD Edwards solutions go public with shared services p. 40
from our partners
Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne One View Reporting p. 08 Oracle’s JD Edwards solutions and third-party logistics p. 10 Partner showcase p. 50
Redfaire - A new kind of partner for a new kind of Oracle JD Edwards. ®
Oracle’s JD Edwards is evolving. Ensure your business is ready for the road ahead. Redfaire was speciÄcally created to ensure
Mobility - EnterpriseOne applications on Apple iPad
businesses are ready for the future evolution
& other mobile devices.
of Oracle’s JD Edwards.
Upgrades - Upgrade JD Edwards in 100 days or less.
Redfaire have heavily invested in the latest technology, research and development, and certiÄcation to provide the highest level of JD Edwards consultancy and support.
International Rollouts - Rollout an Oracle JD Edwards core model internationally. Cloud - Complete set of software management services.
Visit our website to Änd out more: www.redfaire.com France +33 (0)1 80 88 44 10
Ireland +353 (0)61 503 109
UK +44 (0)20 7659 2004
e ditorial
Editor in Chief Aaron Lazenby
aaron.lazenby@oracle.com
Managing Editor Jan Rogers
Contributing Editor and Writer Blair Campbell
Contributors david baum, marta Bright, Jeff Erickson, Bobbie Hartman, alan joch, Margaret Lindquist, Monica Mehta,Christopher Null, Kate Pavao, Leslie Steere, Alison Weiss, minda zetlin
Senior Creative Director Francisco G Delgadillo
Senior Design Director suemi lam
Design Director Richard Merchán Production Designers Sheila Brennan, Kathy Cygnarowicz
Contributing Designers Jaime Ferrand, Nicholas Pavkovic
publish in g
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Profit JD EDWARDS SPECIAL EDITION August 2012
02 EDITOR’S NOTE
Triple Play After three issues, the Profit JD Edwards special issue is really hitting its stride. But the strong showing of this magic-numbered edition is not a result of numerological forces. It’s the consequence of the hard work and commitment of people throughout Oracle’s JD Edwards community. And it’s those people I want to thank for their support. First off, much appreciation is due to the JD Edwards team for continued innovation within the JD Edwards products. In the past year, the team has released a major update to Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne solutions, debuted a significant new reporting technology, and evolved the products for next-generation computing platforms and form factors. It’s much easier to make an interesting publication when you have something interesting to write about, and you’ll see in the stories that follow that the JD Edwards team has really delivered. Second, the partner community has shown amazing support for this publication. Through their long-standing commitment to the JD Edwards product lines, partners understand the nuances of JD Edwards solutions and can deliver real value to the customers they share with Oracle. That value is demonstrated through the access partners have given us to their customers’ stories, several of which are included in this special edition. Third, JD Edwards customers represent the real magic of enterprise IT. After all the functional data sheets are reviewed and the Microsoft PowerPoint presentations delivered, it’s the business results that shine through. Customers’ trust that Profit is a worthy forum for sharing these results makes the whole endeavor possible in the first place. The end result: more stories, more partner content, and a new look for the Profit JD Edwards Special Issue 2012. If we can duplicate this same formula moving forward, future editions will have the same impact.
JD Edwards customers represent the real magic of enterprise IT.
Aaron Lazenby Editor in Chief, Profit
Bob Adler
aaron.lazenby@oracle.com
Technology Powered. Business Driven.
ad v ertisin g s u pple m ent
PROFIT JD EDWARDS SPECIAL EDITION
The Quantifiable Value of Mobility Bill Branit and Steve Russell of Data Systems International outline how a value measurement system can optimize your mobility projects from a strategic, financial, and operational perspective.
W
ith a value measurement system, IT organizations are able to demonstrate how enterprise mobility makes positive financial contributions to a business’s bottom line. Bill Branit and Steve Russell, business process value engineers with Data Systems International (DSI), define best practices for creating and maintaining a value measurement system.
Why is a value measurement system important for mobility projects? As with any IT project, it’s important that businesses define, capture, and measure value because it assists decision-makers in justifying spend, prioritizing among investment alternatives, and facilitating ongoing performance and results-based management. What are common mistakes businesses make when defining value in mobility projects? Businesses often develop mobile projects without understanding how they support strategic, financial, and operational objectives. The truth is many businesses assume that an IT project manager or analyst understands key objectives and metrics, and rely on them to provide data points to justify mobile investments. It’s difficult to define and measure value across the organization when different perceptions of value have not been collected and addressed. Be sure to involve executive-level personnel and other key stakeholders in the planning and design process. Another mistake businesses make is that they approach mobility projects the same way they approach other IT projects. In addition to addressing unique constraints such as form factor, offline usage, and bandwidth, businesses must consider how to leverage mobility to bridge enterprise systems, automate data collection, and utilize on-device capabilities such as location services, environmental sensors, and RFID readers. Don’t limit the vision to IT capabilities of the past. Mobility, when combined with a vision that is aligned with strategic values, has the potential to become transformative. What are the best practices for building a value measurement system for mobility projects? First, identify meaningful metrics. Often, businesses collect data that is not used to measure performance, drive decisions, or take actions. In these cases, the act of analyzing the data can negatively impact
At Oracle OpenWorld 2012? Visit DSI at booth 711. Or, learn more at DSIonline.com
productivity. A meaningful metric must be a value that drives the success of the business and maps to measurable categories such as revenue growth, cost reduction, regulatory compliance, and customer satisfaction, to name just a few. While a value measurement system generates many kinds of value, decide which ones are most important and make sure all stakeholders clearly understand them. Then, take a snapshot of current measurements. After identifying metrics for each critical business process, document current measurements before beginning a mobility project. This sounds simple, but many businesses find they don’t track key metrics or have the infrastructure in place to measure
“Mobility, when combined with a vision that is aligned with strategic values, has the potential to become transformative.” -Steve Russell, business process value engineer, DSI™
or quantify business processes. Take the time to build value collection mechanisms to establish benchmarks that will serve as a reference by which process performance, improvement, and value are measured. Finally, adjust course when necessary. Once current benchmarks are documented and target goals are established for each business process, metrics are best reported as trend data, which compares current performance against the target goal. Remember, data gleaned from the value measurement system should drive decisions or actions. Mobility connects tactical execution to strategic objectives in near real time, allowing businesses to quickly and effectively adjust course when necessary. How should businesses begin developing their value measurement system? For businesses that lack in-house expertise, tools, and techniques to build a value measurement system, engage a business process value engineer. Mobility vendors serious about business will have them on staff. A business process value engineer facilitates cross-functional input into defining meaningful metrics for each critical business process. They are experts in identifying areas where bottlenecks, delays, complexities, and inefficiencies occur. And they are adept at guiding cross-functional teams to arrive at new methods, processes, and procedures to improve productivity and efficiency.
The world’s leading IT research firm recently called DSI® the largest mobile application development platform provider you’ve never heard of.
That’s about to change. DSI at Oracle OpenWorld September 30 – October 4, 2012 San Francisco, CA Booth 711 See what else the research firm said about DSI. Read the report at http://bit.ly/Magic-Quadrant
+1 816.416.5000 www.DSIonline.com © Data Systems International, Inc. 2012. All rights reserved.
06 VIEWPOINT By Denise Grills
Building on Community
Loyal users and active partners helped JD Edwards make major strides in the past 12 months.
Technology Powered. Business Driven.
our sales and partner community much more to offer our customers. Schiff, who was honored at the conference for his 25 years of service with the JD Edwards product lines, said there is excitement globally—with partners attending from 29 countries this year. Industry analysts have also noted the success of JD Edwards. For example, Christine Dover, research manager for International Data Corporation’s Software Channels research service recently shared her thoughts on the advances made by the JD Edwards community. “The collaboration and alignment that the JD Edwards product team has with its partners and customers is remarkable,” says Dover. “That, added to the identity that JD Edwards has retained for itself in the midst of all the other Oracle products, is what makes this a special organization. Lyle Ekdahl [group vice president and general manager of Oracle’s JD Edwards product family] and his team are to be congratulated.” We invite you to learn more about JD Edwards partners, products, and customers in this special issue. With new products, strong partner support, and positive analyst feedback, there has never been a better time to be part of the JD Edwards community. is senior director of strategy for Oracle’s JD Edwards and has worked with the JD Edwards product lines for 18 years.
Denise Grills
Ray Ng
With new products, strong partner support, and positive analyst feedback, there has never been a better time to be part of the JD Edwards community.
What a year this has been for Oracle’s JD Edwards community: new products and platforms, record commitment from our partner network, and the publication of the third annual special JD Edwards edition of Profit magazine! The JD Edwards development organization recently completed a six-month release cycle that delivered more products to the market at one time than in the entire 35-year history of the JD Edwards product lines. We brought the first enterprise resource planning full application suite to the iPad, bringing JD Edwards into the tablet era. A new JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools release introduced a revolutionary user interface to the applications. Four new mobile applications support JD Edwards users on the go. Major releases of both JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World product lines bring modern functionality to our customers. And a new set of modules deliver easy reporting functionality to the end user. In addition, the JD Edwards Summit — held in Colorado in January 2012— demonstrated the strength of the JD Edwards partner community. More than 600 select partners, JD Edwards sales and consulting personnel, and guests met for three days of product education, sales training, and networking. The buzz during the breaks and networking sessions was phenomenal, as partners discussed joining products and skills to benefit their prospects and customers. According to John Schiff, vice president of Oracle’s JD Edwards business unit and the host of the JD Edwards Summit, the JD Edwards community and product line is sronger than it has ever been. Oracle’s continued investment in JD Edwards products as well as the leverage from Oracle R&D investment in Oracle Fusion Middleware, database solutions, complementary applications, and now hardware gives
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Andrews ConsulƟng Group As a cerƟĮed Oracle Gold Partner and a recognized industry leader, Andrews specializes in providing a broad spectrum of business, funcƟonal and technical consulƟng services centered on the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World applicaƟons.
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08 Partner Spotlight
Many Views, Single Focus
Terillium helps Des-Case get new visibility with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne One View Reporting. By Logan Kugler
—Brian Gleason, CEO, Des-Case
Technology Powered. Business Driven.
CEO Brian Gleason. “They’re a group of folks who have values that are aligned with our company’s values. That’s the right combination.” Another winning combination for DesCase was the match between JD Edwards EnterpriseOne One View Reporting’s easy-touse real-time reporting and the Terillium team’s understanding of the Des-Case culture. “We were impressed by our new ability to shape the data that helps us make important decisions,” says Gleason. “And the partnership with Terillium pushed us across the finish line.” According to Steve May, vice president of sales operations at Terillium, the enthusiasm at DesCase for Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne One View Reporting applications is representative of what his team is finding in the market. “We were all blown away by the number of people that were interested in this reporting tool,” he says. “JD Edwards EnterpriseOne One View Reporting allows you to build what you want, on your own and with few restrictions.” Logan Kugler has written for more than 50 national
magazines, including Biztech, Success, and PC Magazine. Gil Adams
“
We were impressed by our new ability to shape the data that helps us make important decisions.”
When representatives from Oracle partner Terillium called on a new customer—the Goodlettsville, Tennessee–based lubrication manufacturer Des-Case Corporation—they first spent several weeks studying the Des-Case business. While a mastery of internal operations and an understanding of external market factors played a key role in devising an IT plan for Des-Case, the Terillium team discovered that Des-Case’s culture played a big role in how the company approached IT spend decisions. “Des-Case promotes an extremely entrepreneurial spirit,” says Terillium Vice President Todd Miller. “They believe that if you can figure out a better, easier, or more efficient way to get something done, you should just do it.” Management at Des-Case, a business with about US$12 million in annual revenue, was looking to replace the company’s enterprise resource planning solution to meet an aggressive goal: increase revenue by a factor of five in the next five years. Terillium’s leaders recommended Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne solutions including a new Oracle technology that would support the goal and the Des-Case culture: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne One View Reporting applications. Released in the spring of 2012, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne One View Reporting applications extend the power of enterprise reporting onto the desktops of staff at midsize businesses. With an enhanced user interface and 178 prebuilt reports, even casual users can view data, create reports, and personalize analysis to reflect unique business needs—all with the speed needed to make key decisions fast. With the solution, anyone can build, customize, and analyze reports, while the firm’s IT resources focused on achieving long-term growth. Terillium’s attention to detail impressed DesCase management. With a partner dedicated to the company’s continued success, Des-Case management could move forward with confidence— and better manage business risks. “Terillium’s expertise with JD Edwards, [as well as] their work ethic and candor during the process, really gave us a level of comfort,” says Des-Case
10 Partner Spotlight
Integrated Display
Executives at Christie sharpen their business visibility with an integrated enterprise solution.
“
Customer service, sales order, and inventory information all come from JD Edwards in Real time.” —Jason Perry, Director of Global IT Applications, Christie
When creating a perfectly sharp image is your business, anything that blurs the picture is a distraction. At Christie—the only single-source provider of digital cinema projection equipment in North America, and one of only a few in the world— Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne solutions bring transactional operations into crisp focus. The modern iteration of Christie, formed in 1999, is the result of the merger of a mechanical film projector maker and an electronic projector pioneer. Today, Christie designs and manufactures high-performance digital cinema projectors and other visual display solutions, including flat panels, virtual reality displays, and medical equipment. Employees worked with multiple enterprise resource planning solutions until 2004, when management elected to consolidate operations onto JD Edwards applications and, later, to upgrade to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, which pervades the 1,500-employee company today. “Most of our organization that lives in a transactional world—finance, distribution, sales, procurement, manufacturing—uses JD Edwards every day,” explains Jason Perry, Christie’s director of global IT applications. “If we’re creating or moving or buying or selling inventory, or creating a service call or a return merchandise authorization—all of these key processes are controlled by JD Edwards.” But until recently, Christie’s operations in Europe weren’t consolidated; inventory resided in small sales offices, and staff spent too much time and money transferring inventory and computing taxes and tariffs. In 2010 a third-party logistics (3PL) company, Kintetsu World Express (KWE), was hired to manage Christie’s inventory throughout Europe, and Oracle Platinum Partner KPIT|SYSTIME, was engaged to integrate KWE’s systems with JD Edwards solutions at Christie. “It was very clear that users at Christie should not have to do anything different when talking to the 3PL than when they talked to their own warehouses,” recalls Ravi Reddy, technical architect with KPIT|SYSTIME. Reddy and KPIT|SYSTIME’s Oracle Fusion Middleware expert, Mangesh Umbrajkar, presented Perry
Technology Powered. Business Driven.
with three options: a custom solution, integration using a Microsoft solution, or integration based on service-oriented architecture (SOA) using Oracle B2B solutions. Perry chose SOA-based Oracle B2B integration—called SYSTIME 3PL—to provide real-time integration between Christie and 3PL companies. Choosing SOA-based integration makes expansion of the logistics system straightforward, as evidenced when KWE took on some of Christie’s logistics in Asia and North America. “As we added more branch offices or distribution centers, it’s been literally a cut-and-paste of the original implementation,” Perry says. Even as logistics evolves at Christie, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne solutions remain the focus. “The more systems you have, the more difficult it becomes to manage,” Perry says. “That’s why we wanted to keep it all in JD Edwards as much as we could.” He adds that Christie management is “very pleased” with JD Edwards solutions, especially when it comes to financial reporting. “Because all of our offices around the world use JD Edwards, financial consolidation becomes much simpler,” Perry says. “And with our 3PL implementation, customer service, sales order, and inventory information all come from JD Edwards in real time.” And in perfect focus. Fred Sandsmark is a regular contributor to Profit.
Gil Adams
By Fred Sandsmark
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PROFIT JD EDWARDS SPECIAL EDITION
Enabling Voice Recognition in Your Warehouse RFgen’s Vocollect voice-enabled data collection solutions increase productivity and accuracy in the warehouse.
E
stablished in 1983, RFgen Software, a Vocollect certified partner, has long been a leader in mobile and wireless automated data collection and mobile supply chain solutions for Oracle’s JD Edwards applications. Rainer Brueggemann, senior ERP consultant at RFgen, discusses how RFgen’s new voice recognition data collection solutions increase accuracy, productivity, and safety in the warehouse, while decreasing costs. What is inventory inaccuracy, and how does advanced data collection help correct it? Inventory inaccuracy occurs when you have numbers in your system that you can’t trust. You promise the customer a certain delivery date on an item that the system showed was available, and then can’t keep your promise. Your customer is not happy, and you’re creating additional cost with a second shipment. Advanced data collection uses a barcode to ensure that the right box is being packed at the right location for the right customer. It involves validation, which means checking each detail of a transaction against the JD Edwards enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to ensure that the order is accurate. With validation, inventory accuracy can be increased up to 99 percent. Accurate inventory means a satisfied customer, because you can fulfill your order on time and for the expected cost. What sets RFgen’s solution apart? One of the primary things that sets our solutions apart is flexibility. With several configuration options for wireless, roaming, and mobile, and now our new voice capability, you can configure RFgen solutions to work the way you do today, and easily reconfigure them as your business needs change. What are the benefits of RFgen’s new voice data collection solution? Most people can talk faster than they can type or scan. By voiceenabling your distribution center, you can significantly improve productivity. The RFgen Vocollect Integration Solution allows you to develop powerful voice-directed applications, such as Voice Picking and Order Selection, Put-away/Stocking, Direct Pick/Pack/Ship,
Learn more at rfgen.com/profit
and Manufacturing Inspection. This translates into 30 percent more productivity, 99 percent more accuracy, a 50 percent reduction in training, and increased safety in the warehouse. How do voice data collection solutions increase efficiency in the warehouse? Voice data collection removes the need for manual entry, carrying handheld equipment such as scanners, labels, or papers. Because RFgen’s mobile computing devices enable hands-free, eyes-free operation, associates can move through their assignments faster, more safely, and more efficiently, which results in increased accuracy and productivity. As an associate moves through the warehouse, they are able to focus on what they are doing, walking to a new pick location, using a forklift to get a pallet, or counting inventory slots. They have no need to take their eyes off the box cutter or off the racking as they place a pallet in a tight spot. As a result, there are fewer injuries, dropped products, and punctured pallets, providing a direct reduction in labor costs.
“We’ve made implementing a voice solution simple, fast, and cost-effective by cutting the implementation time by 75 percent.” –Rainer Brueggemann, Senior ERP Consultant, RFgen
How do voice data collection solutions cut down training time? Because the entire process is driven by voice, there is no need to train associates on reading printouts, knowing when and where to apply labels, or confirming information through a keyboard. Once associates attend training and create their voice templates—which on average, takes about 15 minutes—the entire work process is driven step-by-step through voice commands. Plus, there are several language packages available so nonEnglish speakers can be up and running quickly and easily. Voice has been around for a while now— what makes the RFgen voice solution different? One of the reasons companies hesitate to implement voice is the complexity and long implementation timeline, which increases cost. With the RFgen Vocollect Integration Solution, you not only get the flexibility of RFgen and the power of Vocollect Voice, but we’ve made implementing a voice solution simple, fast, and cost-effective by cutting the implementation time by 75 percent.
14
Strategic Roadmap
High Visibility
Major release of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne offers new look—and sharper insight into enterprise resource planning. by Aaron Lazenby
|
Photography By Ray Ng
Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is an integrated applications suite of comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. In April 2012, Oracle released JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.1 applications, a significant release built on the December 2011 release of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools 9.1 and designed to improve usability while driving productivity and innovation. “Release 9.1 takes ERP to the next level,” says Lyle Ekdahl, group vice president and general manager for Oracle’s JD Edwards product family. Here, Profit talks to Ekdahl about the newest release, the impact of Oracle Fusion Applications, and Oracle’s commitment to helping JD Edwards EnterpriseOne customers upgrade. Technology Powered. Business Driven.
Profit: What’s special about the latest JD
Edwards release? Ekdahl: The current release has more than 20 patents pending on the work that we’ve done. We provided a whole new user interaction paradigm for our customers by leveraging Oracle technologies with rich user experiences, and applying them to our JD Edwards products. This gave users a very robust, engaging environment. We also added features to improve productivity, such as carouselbased navigation and type-ahead search. Then, we offered users the ability to personalize the look and feel for their own applications. We also added functionality to very specific areas of the product. For example, we added country of origin for specific lot- or serial-controlled products, which gives our customers granular visibility into where everything in the manufacturing process comes from, right down to the nuts and bolts. That way if your customers specify where
Lyle Ekdahl, Group Vice President and General Manager, Oracle
15
“
At the end of the day, we’re solving business problems here, so really understanding those business problems is important to us.”
they want their parts to be sourced from, you can know if they came from China or somewhere in Latin America. Profit: How much impact did customers have on Release 9.1? Ekdahl: At Oracle, with JD Edwards we strongly believe that the best products are built through customer interactions, whether we’re interacting with users at conferences or going out to talk to customers in a specific market. At the end of the day, we’re solving business problems here, so really understanding those business problems is important to us. For example, after a series of discussions with partners and customers in Japan, we developed a new project manufacturing functionality. We’re providing unique production number identifiers linking all the related supply chain transactions—from sales order demand, to acquiring supply, through the manufacturing process and delivery. These unique identifiers give our users visibility into their profitability—as well as any supply disruptions or bottlenecks. The identifiers also allow users to reserve inventory for specific projects or customers, which can affect their customers’ satisfaction. At Oracle OpenWorld Tokyo, our JD Edwards users were very excited when we described this new functionality. They said, “You obviously listened to us.” Profit: How did you shape the mobile strategy for this JD Edwards EnterpriseOne release? Ekdahl: This was another area where we started with customers. We asked, “What are the areas of your business where you want to bring information from ERP to the point of process?” We asked them where they needed functionality to become more efficient, so they didn’t have to write things down on paper or e-mail them to the home office. When it comes to smartphones, we are providing point-specific functionality. Our customers were looking for ways their people could approve purchase orders from the road to avoid bottlenecks. They were looking for ways to remotely access order history or order status and—even more importantly—inventory status. “Do I have this good available to sell? What’s the price?” So we started out enabling the procurement and order to cash processes. Our user community was also concerned with expenses. Our customers wanted to be able to enter expenses from the road—and review, approve, or reject them from their smartphones so that people get paid on time. We took another approach for the iPad, and released full support for the entire suite. That’s
because we saw the use cases being very, very broad for that device. It’s actually the first complete ERP solution to offer full support on the iPad. With our new, enhanced UI, we’ve given our customers the ability to really navigate on that device without having to do a whole lot of typing. We developed a set of gestures that allow them to perform tasks like navigating and closing out work orders, which minimizes the need for a keyboard. Profit: What impact is Oracle Fusion Applications having on the product line? Ekdahl: First off, Oracle Fusion Applications started as a huge investment in architecture and in the middleware layer. We’ve leveraged products such as Oracle Application Development Framework Mobile Client to strengthen our JD Edwards EnterpriseOne release. Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher powers one of the release’s breakthrough solutions—JD Edwards EnterpriseOne One View Reporting, which allows business users to create interactive reports without IT support. Oracle’s R&D spend is the envy of the industry and gives us so much that we can pull from. When it comes to the Oracle Fusion Applications suite itself, one of the areas we’re most excited about is HR. Talent management is obviously a huge issue. I was just having a conversation with a customer in the public sector space about the difficulty of retaining top talent. He was extremely excited about the ability to have JD Edwards EnterpriseOne as an ERP solution to handle financials—but then have that integrated with talent management through an Oracle cloud offering. Compensation management is another product we are looking to bring together with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. And CRM [customer relationship management] is an obvious extension for us, too, as we look down the road. Finally, Oracle Fusion Applications will affect how we help our customers manage their supply chains. How do you handle order orchestration when you are dealing with a multitude of distributed in-house systems—as well as with remote purchasing, supply, and end customer systems? How do you bring all those disparate systems together? Well, you can do that through some of the Oracle Fusion Applications offerings. Profit: How are you moving customers to Release 9.1? Ekdahl: We want our customers to get as much value out of Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne as possible. And the way to do that is to keep them current. So we are working very hard to drive down the cost of moving from release to release, making this more of an evolution to the next genProfit JD EDWARDS SPECIAL EDITION August 2012
16 Strategic Roadmap
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we are working very hard to drive down the cost of moving from release to release . . . which has huge cost implications.”
eration of software as opposed to a discontinuous change, which has huge cost implications. Of course, we are also putting in place compelling capabilities that allow customers to meet their ROI requirement. We do that through new user paradigms and software that is easier to use. This makes end users more productive so that they can be more efficient in their day-to-day operations. We also provide rich capability in terms of industry functionality. The reality is, by bringing newer technologies to the table and marrying that with business, we’re giving our customers tools to innovate so that they can be competitive in the global market space. Finally, we’re engineering the product to be able to move data much more quickly. That can reduce costs of ETL [extract, transfer, and load] processes. Profit: How is Oracle committed to continuous improvement of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications? Ekdahl: People want to work with a vendor they can trust and count on, so they can invest and plan their business with a level of confidence. That’s why we created a six-year roadmap, which is pretty unheard of in the industry. We’re going to have major releases over a six-year period for both of our full ERP suites, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World, including three major releases, point releases, and infrastructure releases. We’ve also worked with some of our larger customers and midsize customers to pull together a set of best upgrade practices. We’ve synthesized Technology Powered. Business Driven.
this into a workshop called “Upgrade JD Edwards in 100 Days.” The title gets a lot of attention, but really what we’re tackling is how you stay current over a period of time, instead of a big bang once every 10 years. We provide approaches that can help customers move to new releases in a quicker fashion—quicker than they ever thought possible, such as figuring out the proper way to do customizations, so that it preserves their ability to upgrade. Our customers are seeing all that we’re doing and they’re saying, “Yes, Oracle is committed to JD Edwards.” They’re seeing an ROI calculation that makes sense for them, and the opportunity for them to do some innovation in their own environments. And they are upgrading. The proof is in the pudding. Even in the face of some strong economic headwinds in the last couple of years, we continue to grow our license revenues at a very successful rate. That revenue comes from a couple sources, including a very strong install base that we’ve energized through investment in the product. It’s a pretty exciting time. Aaron Lazenby is editor in chief of Profit
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Enhancing the Point of Sale Praxair achieves cost savings and an improved customer experience with KPIT | SYSTIME’s integrated point-of-sale solution, built on the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne platform. raxair is a Fortune 250 company that supplies atmospheric, process, and specialty gases; high-performance coatings; and related services and technologies. Operating in 50 countries, it supplies oxygen, nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide, helium, hydrogen, and other gases.
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With retail stores in many of those countries, the ability to transact directly with a customer at the point of sale is very important for Praxair. The company’s existing point-of-sale system was a decade old and highly customized. Praxair needed a real-time retail pointof-sale solution that would be integrated with Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Such a system would enable employees to perform tasks such as instantly looking up a customer or product, checking inventory, and completing a sales process—all within one application. The company also needed a solution that would meet its complex business requirements. In addition to selling gases, the company rents cylinders to store the gases and resells third-party products such as welding and safety equipment. “In addition to just the regular point-of-sale cash drawer and the credit card processing facility, the application had to be able to access information such as customer holdings, cylinder balances, credit limits, and aging of cylinders from JD Edwards EnterpriseOne,” says Praxair’s chief information ofÀcer (CIO), Marc Franciosa. A Proven Record of Delivery Franciosa conducted an in-depth search for a global consulting and IT services provider that could install a cost-effective point-of-sale solution. He chose KPIT | SYSTIME because of its proven expertise, and because it had a native JD Edwards EnterpriseOne application. KPIT | SYSTIME is the largest JD Edwards practice globally and an Oracle Platinum Partner. In the past Àve years, the company has been recognized by Oracle as Oracle’s partner of the year for North America, partner of the year for JD Edwards Excellence, and partner for Growth Applications Business for India, among other awards. KPIT has achieved Oracle advanced specialization in three domains of JD Edwards, including JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financial Management, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Distribution, and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ConÀgurable Network Computing. KPIT brings specialized expertise in manufacturing and supply chain across verticals including consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, medical device manufacturing, and automotive.
Comprehensive business and technology expertise and highly experienced personnel allow KPIT | SYSTIME to deliver innovative business solutions in the areas of JD Edwards ERP, customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence, business integration, infrastructure management, process and quality, testing and validation, custom application development, maintenance, and retail/point of sale. KPIT | SYSTIME was experienced with developing Marc Franciosa, Chief Information a point-of-sale module in JD Officer, Praxair Edwards EnterpriseOne for a leading pipeline company, which also had complex sales processes. Praxair selected KPIT | SYSTIME to develop a similar point-of-sale system. “KPIT | SYSTIME has a good
“Traditionally, point of sale has been treated as a separate entity from the ERP. For our business, it was very important to have real-time ERP data at the point of sale to help drive decisions around the customer and to provide other helpful data.” –Marc Franciosa, CIO, Praxair
track record of delivering high-impact solutions to their customer base,” says Franciosa. “We felt that this was the best solution for the direction in which we are heading, and for our business model.” Native, Real-Time ERP Integration Praxair’s new point-of-sale system is completely and natively integrated with the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Ànancial module. Built inside of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, it handles Praxair’s entire end-to-end process in front of the customer on a single screen. It is also integrated
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with Praxair’s point-of-sale devices, eliminating the need for additional elements such as a separate credit-card-reader system. Processing and reconciliation is done within the ERP system—creating savings of approximately 30 percent of the transaction processing time. “Decreasing the processing time improved a number of financial metrics, including our working capital and our days sales outstanding numbers,” says Franciosa. One of the most important benefits the point-of-sale application provides is real-time integration with payment gateways with the JD Edwards framework. For instance, if a customer uses a credit card for payment, the company needs to validate the card instantly. If the application wasn’t integrated, employees would have to batch the process, or do it offline. Employees can also automatically place a recurring transaction for a frequent customer, instead of entering it manually. This improves employee productivity, and enhances the customer experience. “The employees performing the transaction can focus on the customer, not on the technology. It will allow them to drive greater decision-making ability at the counter,” says Franciosa. “In addition, this is a consistent platform, so we don’t have to worry about training differently based on location. We can train everyone on one consistent application and process.” The user-friendly interface enables employees to upsell and crosssell to customers at the time of purchase, and drill down into the product information right in front of the customer. “We can now suggest other products to customers based on their buying history, or offer substitutions when a product has been discontinued from inventory or is on back-order,” says Franciosa. “That prevents customers from delaying a purchase, or going somewhere else for the product.” Finally, the point-of-sale solution will enable Praxair to implement an integrated customer loyalty rewards program, which will be linked into both Oracle CRM applications and JD Edwards without complex customization. The application also handles multiple currencies and languages—an important capability, since Praxair plans to roll it out to 10 stores in Costa Rica, 140 stores in Mexico, and 450 stores in the United States and Canada. If Praxair’s CIO had invested in an external point-of-sale system, he would have needed to procure licenses for over 600 stores across multiple geographic regions. With a customized JD Edwards sales order processing application with the included point-of-sale features, he can utilize the company’s existing unlimited JD Edwards EnterpriseOne user licenses for Praxair’s stores, resulting in cost savings of millions of U.S. dollars.
“KPIT | SYSTIME was very responsive to us. They had the same level of energy, drive, and focus, from the proof-of-concept phase throughout the deployment. They were fast to address our needs in the project.” –Marc Franciosa, CIO, Praxair
“We’ve been using the solution for about a year, and we’ve already realized the benefits that we were expecting,” says Franciosa. A Driven, Responsive Partner KPIT | SYSTIME was able to implement and integrate the point-ofsale solution on time and within budget. Building the solution in-house would have been a challenge, says Franciosa. It would have taken Praxair more than two years to build, rather than KPIT | SYSTIME ’s six-month time frame. “KPIT | SYSTIME was very responsive to us,” says Franciosa. “They had the same level of energy, drive, and focus, from the proof-ofconcept phase throughout the deployment. They were fast to address our needs in the project. KPIT | SYSTIME has also been a valuable partner for implementing other integrations within our enterprise. They have handled not just integration on point-of-sale, but also other enterprise application integration using Oracle Fusion Middleware.” The point-of-sale solution that has been developed is now available to JD Edwards customers, eliminating manual integration and facilitating smooth data integration. KPIT | SYSTIME is implementing the same solution for a major food manufacturer, based on its success at Praxair. Franciosa says the company has realized the value of a fully integrated point-of-sale solution. “Traditionally, point of sale has been treated as a separate entity from the ERP. For our business, it was very important to have real-time ERP data at the point of sale to help drive decisions around the customer and to provide other helpful data,” says Franciosa. “We didn’t have to create interfaces to present that data in a different environment, or take a third-party point-of-sale solution and then completely change it to meet our needs.”
KPIT | SYSTIME is the largest JD Edwards practice globally, and an Oracle Platinum Partner. For more information on the company and its Oracle services, contact oracle@kpitcummins.com, or visit kpitcummins.com/Oracle or systime.net
A KPIT Cummins Company
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A True Enterprise IT Solution Oracle Diamond Partner Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) brings decades of experience to bear in providing value to JD Edwards customers.
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or over two decades, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has worked with Oracle to provide stellar products and services to customers. Chacko Thomas, director of TCS’ JD Edwards North America practice, discusses how TCS’ platform, industry expertise, and Oracle implementation mastery can add depth and value to Oracle’s JD Edwards solutions.
across all operations. GNDM leverages our diverse technical, language, and domain-specific capabilities to deliver custom, quality solutions faster and in compliance with local regulatory requirements and cultural preferences. We are able to provide onsite, near-shore, and offshore capabilities on a scale that very few companies can provide.
What is TCS’ unique value proposition for Oracle customers? TCS is an Oracle Diamond Partner, which is Oracle PartnerNetwork’s highest membership level. We are also a Global Systems Integration Partner, which means we have the ability to implement end-to-end Oracle products and technology solutions globally. We have done large transformation, build, assessment, and upgrade projects, and we have provided end-to-end application development and managed services. We bring unique diversity and experience to the table through our Full Services Portfolio, Customer-Centric Engagement Model, and Global Network Delivery Model™ (GNDM). With TCS, customers get a depth of experience, which includes JD Edwards specialists, customer relationship managers, program management specialists, and industry experts.
What are TCS Chacko Thomas, Director of Enterprise Solutions? JD Edwards North America We define an “enterprise solution” Practice, TCS as any business tool that reliably empowers you to access, share, and apply resources with any of your peers and customers, anywhere, at any time. Some common problems that enterprise IT faces include legacy systems that are resistant to interoperability; data and content that fail to integrate as they converge from different partners, locations, and storage
What benefits can JD Edwards customers gain with TCS? Enterprise IT has a unique set of challenges. Failure to properly implement an enterprise solution leads to a rise in the total cost of ownership, inability to adhere to budget and timeline schedules, low system performance, and low synergy with other enterprise systems. TCS provides end-to-end consulting services for JD Edwards systems, from strategy formulation, development, and deployment of the chosen solutions to value realization. Organized around the advisory, implementation, and outsourcing model, our offerings span the complete lifecycle of JD Edwards solutions. What is TCS’ Global Network Delivery Model? TCS is a pioneer of the offshoring model, with our GNDM and our global delivery centers all over the world. We take a follow-the-sun approach, meaning that no matter where your business is located, we help you keep it running 24/7, while providing a seamless experience
“Our long-standing strategic relationship with Oracle, deep industry expertise, and continued investments in our JD Edwards Center of Excellence enable our customers to experience certainty in their Oracle investments.” –Mohammad Tauseef, Global Head of TCS’ JD Edwards Practice TCS Company Mark - Stacked - 3 lines
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systems; persistent obstacles to accessing data; and business that has spread beyond what IT can support. TCS’ Enterprise Solutions improve operational efficiency and help transform the business, empowering customers to take advantage of emerging opportunities and market changes more quickly. Under the Enterprise Solutions umbrella, we are able to quickly bring learning that comes from one implementation into others—and we do that all the time, by talking to each other and helping each other out.
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In a fast-evolving marketplace which demands leadership that brings results, there exists a way of certainty: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). With TCS as your strategic advisor and partner, the ever-changing new landscapes of business become new vistas of opportunity, from digitally connected consumers to big data to emerging markets to end-to-end solutions for transforming your organization. TCS offers you market-proven, world-class experience, expertise and guidance to show the way for your business to evolve. We partner with customers to optimize processes and resources, and garner business benefits through a robust deployment of JD Edwards solutions through results-oriented relationships. Visit http://info.tcs.com/JDE and you're certain to learn more.
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Delivering Safer and More Efficient Upgrades ARCTOOLS helps United Biscuits achieve a quick, stable, and cost-effective data conversion during JD Edwards upgrade.
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ounded in 1848 following the merger of two Scottish family businesses, United Biscuits has been producing well-known sweet and savory treats for over 100 years, including McVitie’s Digestive Biscuits, Carr’s Crackers, and KP Nuts. A leader in its field in Northern Europe, United Biscuits has been experiencing strong international growth from North America to the Middle East, Africa, and Australia. IT has always had a strategic role at United Biscuits, and the company continually invests in deploying the best and most efficient tools to maintain its competitive advantage. With over 450 end users, Oracle’s JD Edwards applications are at the core of United Biscuits’ IT strategy in Northern Europe, where United Biscuits uses the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to manage finance, manufacturing, and distribution. A JD Edwards customer for more than 15 years, United Biscuits started out on JD Edwards World, upgraded to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.9 in 2005, and in 2011, made the move to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0.
The Data Conversion Challenge In preparation for the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 upgrade project, the technical team assessed the quantity of United Biscuits’ JD Edwards application data. Since the previous upgrade, the business had grown substantially, and estimates suggested that converting the 560 gigabytes of data could take as long as three days. The upgrade team members quickly realized that they needed a secure, efficient, and cost-effective way to convert all the data. The team wanted a tool that would deliver results quickly, would not demand too much of an IT time investment, and would purge and archive the ERP data with integrity. They began to search for a data purging and archiving tool that would both solve the immediate problem and add value over the long term. The ARCTOOLS Solution After evaluating various solutions, the IT team decided to use ARCTOOLS, a leading purge and archive solution for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World, because it is a proven, easy-to-use solution that has been used by more than 350 JD Edwards customers worldwide.
For more information, visit arctools.com
Getting business buy-in from the start was essential to the project’s success. The project team communicated the business benefits and implementation methodology to business users, who were reassured that they would not lose any of their important data. As a result, project delays due to resistance from end users were avoided. A Quicker and Safer Upgrade ARCTOOLS reduced JD Edwards application data by more than 50 percent—from 560 to 230 gigabytes. Tens of millions of records were purged and archived, and considerable savings were made in terms of data conversion. Prior to the upgrade, it was estimated that data conversion would take as long as three days. After the ARCTOOLS project, data conversion was successfully completed in just one day. “ARCTOOLS is a powerful and easy-to-use tool—but perhaps most importantly, it is a proven solution,” says United Biscuits Business Analyst Paul Hoogenbosch. “Knowing that our data was safe and that so many other JD Edwards customers had already tested the tool made project sign-off and business user buy-in much easier.” Developed in collaboration with Oracle and extensively tested at several JD Edwards sites, ARCTOOLS provides a proven and efficient purging engine. An intelligent front end allows ARCTOOLS to be set up without the user needing in-depth JD Edwards technical knowledge. The software allows the user to choose how the purges are managed— either by carrying them out in one run while users are on the system, or by running multiple smaller purges. This effectively reduces the resource impact of the purge on the system. “ARCTOOLS not only helped us deliver a safer and more efficient upgrade—it also helps us to keep our database at an optimal size, ensuring that ERP performance is maintained and database tuning and backups are completed quickly and easily,” says Hoogenbosch.
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Optimizing data from Oracle’s JD Edwards applications is not just about reducing storage costs, it also delivers bottom-line benefits by helping your end-users and IT team to work more efficiently.
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To learn how ARCTOOLS can help you optimize your JD Edwards data, visit www.arctools.com or call us + 1 508 435 8243
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Technology Powered. Business Driven.
Power USERS Energy Alloys refines upgrade process and business operations to ride oil industry boom. By Alison Weiss
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photography by paul S. howell
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t’s a good time to be in the oil business— particularly in the U.S. New extraction technology, high crude oil prices, and improved access to new fields are fueling U.S. petroleum production. In fact, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that domestic oil production in 2012 will reach an eight-year high, averaging 5.74 million barrels per day, an increase of 170,000 barrels per day compared to 2011. And EIA forecasts 20 percent growth in production over the next 10 years.
Profit JD EDWARDS SPECIAL EDITION August 2012
26 However, it’s not just petroleum companies that benefit from this oil boom. Executives at Houston, Texas–based Energy Alloys have also seen a dramatic surge in demand for their company’s oil field metals, services, and solutions for global oil and gas companies. The private company, founded in 1995 with five employees, now has 550 employees in eight countries to deliver oil field–specific inventories of tube, bar, stainless steel, and engineered steel products. Energy Alloys’ services organization also offers made-to-order manufacturing for semifinished components and offers consulting for clients who need assistance choosing materials. But taking advantage of the oil surge requires executives at Energy Alloys to properly manage inventory and supplier relationships. That means staying in sync with partners in Japan, North and South America, and Europe to ensure the continuity and competitiveness of supply. Keeping pace with such a fastmoving industry means keeping enterprise IT systems operating at optimal levels—and making sure those systems are truly supporting the business. But that’s a tall order for an IT department that runs lean with a staff of eight full-time and two contract employees. So when it came time for the company to upgrade Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Energy Alloys’ IT staff did a complete review of business operations and worked with an Oracle partner to keep the systems pumping. The results: a complete ERP upgrade in 60 business days with a budget of less than US$15,000.
James Watson, Chief Process Officer, Energy Alloys
Pay Now or Pay Later James Watson, chief process officer at Energy Alloys, attributes the success of the project to a key decision to manage the ERP upgrade in an innovative way. Rather than approach it as a self-contained, lengthy, and high-cost project, Watson and his team used a strategy to “operationalize” the upgrade. “When you purchase software, it’s not a one-time event. You’re making an investment buying all future upgrades, enhancements, and features,” he says. “You build a regular upgrade cycle into your cost structure—it’s a small increment to your normal operating budget. So, we’re not going to the business and saying, ‘We need a million dollars to do this upgrade.’” Watson believes that scheduling an ERP upgrade every three years as part of regular systems management makes more than just prudent financial sense—it minimizes the time needed to complete an upgrade because fewer changes are required each time. In addition, a regular upgrade schedule ensures that the system is as full-featured and agile as possible to help Energy Alloys keep pace in a booming industry. “Companies that keep pushing off upgrades are faced with humongous challenges implementing a new ERP system or reimplementing their current ERP system,” observes Watson. “Or they spend a ton of time getting the system current. It’s a misnomer about upgrade costs. You either pay now or you pay later.” According to D. Eric Maikranz, director of the JD Edwards Upgrade Programs and Technology Office at Oracle, the older, traditional paradigms around upgrading ERP systems have dictated hefty investments of time and money—averaging between Technology Powered. Business Driven.
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ENERGY ALLOYS ealloys.com
Location:
Houston, Texas Industry:
Energy/oil field products and services Employees:
550
Revenue:
US$410 million in 2011 Oracle products:
JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications, Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher
JAMES WATSON Chief Process Officer Length of tenure:
Four years
Education:
CPA; BS in accounting and MBA, , University of Houston–Clear Lake Personal quote/mantra:
“ Character is doing what’s right when no one is looking.” —J.C. Watts
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“It’s no longer IT and the business. . . .
IT is part of the business and is accountable for the same goals.” —James Watson, Chief Process Officer, Energy Alloys
12 and 36 months long and costing anywhere from seven to nine figures. It’s no wonder when surveyed by industry experts that respondents often cite concerns about costs and disruptions to business as the main reasons they avoid upgrades. But the experience at Energy Alloys clearly illustrates the real possibility of managing an upgrade project economically and in a workable time frame. The JD Edwards applications team at Oracle has adopted the lessons learned by Energy Alloys and other customers who have completed their upgrades quickly and economically into an accelerated upgrade methodology. This methodology enables JD Edwards EnterpriseOne customers to upgrade their systems in 100 days or less (details at upgradejde.com).
Not Repeating History To be sure, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing at Energy Alloys. Jimmy Livingston, inventory integrity manager at Energy Alloys, began working at the company more than a decade ago and clearly remembers the challenges the IT department faced managing previous upgrade projects. Several years ago, he was part of the team that provided extensive training to help brandnew users migrate from a DOS-based system to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.11. “It was like going from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century for them,” he says. Watson joined Energy Alloys during the 8.11 migration project. It was costly and time consuming because the IT team had to reimplement the application due to the way the development, customizations, and upgrades had been managed. “From Day One, when I got on board, besides wrapping up the current project, I focused on building a new structure so that we never had to deal with the same issues again,” he says. In 2011, Watson knew it was time to test his operationalize upgrade strategy. Management was eager to upgrade to the latest release, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0, to take advantage of new functionality, better ease of use, and middleware enhancements. However, time was of the essence to complete the
upgrade in less than three months to accommodate several huge projects that needed to make use of the expected new features. Such strict time constraints could have derailed the project from the start, but Watson and his team also had to contend with another potential project curveball. Because upgrade costs are managed as a small increment to the regular operating budget, there would be almost no additional funds available for upgrading. The team would need to find a way to operationalize at zero cost to the company. For some, these obstacles would have been insurmountable, but Kaushik Ray, director of business process management (BPM) applications at Energy Alloys, was up for the challenge. “I’d done JD Edwards upgrades in the past, and so had some of my team members, but this time we needed to be innovative. We laid out a high-level diagram and realized that everything boiled down to reducing the scope,” he says.
Upgrade with a Twist Ray and the team agreed that the upgrade would need to be a technical upgrade—but with a twist. They decided to use an agile project management method where requirements gathering, analysis, development, and testing would occur simultaneously to meet the tight project deadline. Then, the focus morphed from a purely technical to a functional discussion. The team decided to look at every business process in the organization—procurement, order management, accounts payable, and more—and review every customization developers had created over the previous five years to see which ones still made sense. If there was no longer a business purpose for a modification, it would be eliminated. This review is absolutely consistent with enterprise IT best practices. According to Larry Bonfante, author of the 2011 book Lessons in IT Transformation, because enterprise technology plays such a prominent role in modern business it is critical for IT personnel to understand business processes and to align with real business operations. “Businesses, no matter the size or the Profit JD EDWARDS SPECIAL EDITION August 2012
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Energy Alloys’ tube, bar, and engineered steel products for the oil industry (above) have led to significant growth for the business— especially in the wake a historic surge in the oil market. James Watson’s team worked closely with line of business managers (right) to map business processes to IT function.
industry, depend on technology to engage with stakeholders. IT staff need to understand the processes in a business and the customers that a business services,” Bonfante says. “By leveraging technology, you can totally transform the way you do business and the way you engage with people.” Indeed, Livingston was impressed that Ray and his team were so hands-on during the due diligence process. The IT team actually came down to the shop floor to learn firsthand about JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and specific work processes. “They talked to the people who are doing their jobs day in and day out and are the real experts, and it opened up the lines of communication,” observes Livingston. “It started the conversation about ways to do something quicker by using JD Edwards instead of doing things outside the system.” For Watson, the team’s approach to validating processes helped cement a new BPM focus he wanted to implement across the IT organization (see sidebar, next page). He was encouraged that his staff went beyond simply gathering user requirements and instead worked to gain knowledge so they could support and improve processes in the future. “We realized that we didn’t know the company that well, and the JD Edwards system had all these developments and modifications that had been done by others over the years,” says Ray. “But it was an opportunity for my team to take ownership of the implementation.”
Smart Support In just three weeks, Ray and his team accomplished the task of identifying and reviewing 600 customized objects—reducing the number to 150 that needed to be brought over as part Technology Powered. Business Driven.
of the upgrade. But the team knew it would need help if it hoped to stay on track to finish the upgrade in 60 business days. Fortunately, Energy Alloys could rely on support from Oracle partner Smartbridge. Based in Houston, Texas, Smartbridge specializes in offering solutions and lifecycle management services spanning the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne product suite. In February 2011, Smartbridge began providing configurable network computing (CNC) managed services for Energy Alloys’ JD Edwards EnterpriseOne implementation under a multiyear support contract. What makes the contract unique is that the monthly fee covers the cost of upgrading—at no additional charge at the time of the upgrade. It’s a very cost-effective arrangement for Energy Alloys, but more importantly, it enabled Watson and his team to tap into Smartbridge’s deep expertise with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne upgrades to ensure the project would finish on time and on budget. When Energy Alloys management notified Smartbridge that they wanted to begin the upgrade process, Smartbridge assigned them a project manager for client coordination work, as well as an offshore project team based in India—whose members, as official Smartbridge employees, were already familiar with all the Energy Alloys staff, processes, and technology. “Leveraging our offshore team was one of the key drivers of how we kept costs down,” says Jeremy Shearer, director of enterprise technologies at Smartbridge. “It actually accelerated the timeline of the project because we’d coordinate during the day, and our very competent offshore technical development and CNC team would get the work done overnight.” To keep the project development work on the 150 customized objects on track, Energy Alloys leadership decided to
29
“Companies that keep pushing off upgrades are faced with humongous challenges
implementing a new ERP system or reimplementing their current ERP system—or they spend a ton of time getting the system current. It’s a misnomer about upgrade costs. You either pay now or you pay later.” —James Watson, Chief Process Officer, Energy Alloys
spend approximately US$15,000 to delegate to the offshore Smartbridge team the work needed to make high-volume cosmetic changes to objects, while Ray and his team worked on the more-complex changes. So the Energy Alloys team tackled modifications to a sales order entry object and an invoice print object that required custom retrofitting for steel industry–specific calculations. At the same time, the Smartbridge team focused on objects targeting packing lists and purchase orders. Overall, it was a very collaborative effort. And to Shearer’s mind, other companies upgrading JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications can achieve similar costeffective results. Over the past nine years, Smartbridge has effectively leveraged global teams to deliver value with successful JD Edwards EnterpriseOne projects for several clients. “One of the things unique to Energy Alloys is the limited customization they did,” he says. “It made the upgrade easier to swallow because they didn’t have to go through extended retrofitting and the associated testing.”
Business Process Upgrade Energy Alloys’ successful upgrade of Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne enterprise resource planning (ERP) system in 2011 helped spark a new business process management (BPM) initiative to extend IT into Energy Alloys’ business to help the company stay on top in the volatile energy industry. All value-added IT activities, including business intelligence, ERP application development, project management, and process improvement, are now part of a new group, the BPM department. James Watson, whose new title is chief process officer, heads the department. “It’s no longer IT and the business. It’s not an and/or conversation,” says Watson. “IT is part of the business and is accountable for the same goals.” Now, BPM principles are a big part of every IT project at Energy Alloys. It’s no longer enough to sit down with users, gather requirements, and then
build and deliver a system. Business analysts focus on re-examining processes and mapping them. “We’re still honestly in the infancy of BPM,” Watson says. “We haven’t even built up the continuous improvement side of the organization.” Still, management is very pleased with the results the BPM group has achieved so far. Watson says, “Our focus is on processes and understanding the business—and not just delivering IT solutions.”
Upgrade? What Upgrade? Ray and his team worked diligently to keep a tight rein on the scope of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne upgrade. So when it came time to go live over the Fourth of July weekend in 2011, things went smoothly—to the point of being anticlimactic. Users were pleased to find that while few changes were actually visible to them (which was by design), they experienced benefits such as faster system response time and a simplification of purchase order creation. The team received a similar reception at the executive level. “It didn’t even register,” says Watson. “One of our executives said, ‘Oh, you had an upgrade this weekend?’” But Ray and his team have not been idle since the completion of the upgrade. They’ve added a variety of new modules to the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne system, including JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Manufacturing Management and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Project Costing, and they are in the process of implementing JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Configurator, in conjunction with the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Sales Order Management module. Management is definitely seeing a payoff in terms of keeping the company streamlined and agile in the fast-paced petroleum services industry. “We believe that the technology we have invested in, along with our talent, will enable us to achieve efficiencies,” says Fran Bobb, senior vice president and COO at Energy Alloys. “We were able to dedicate the resources to truly support JD Edwards internally, limit our consulting fees, and operationalize upgrades to ensure our return on investment.” And while Watson knows that not every IT staff will be able to upgrade their JD Edwards EnterpriseOne systems so economically—particularly if an organization is on an older release—he has strong words of advice: stop thinking of upgrades as projects. “Start building the upgrades into your support and maintenance of the operation,” he says. “And begin to recognize that upgrades are part of the value of the purchase.” Alison Weiss is a freelance writer in the San Francisco Bay Area and a frequent contributor to Profit.
For More Information Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Oracle Solutions for Oil and Gas
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Accelerating the Midsize Business Capscient enables fast, predictable implementations of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne with Oracle Business Accelerators.
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apscient derived its name from its business principle of “collaborating applications, science, and technology” to bring maximum value to customers. The technology solutions provider, based in Dallas, specializes in implementing Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne for midsize companies. Capscient Cofounder and President Kalanithi Venkatesan discusses how Oracle Business Accelerators can help midsize companies get the full value of Oracle solutions while saving valuable resources. What are the IT pain points for midsize companies? Midsize companies are conscious and cautious about the time and money they want to spend on an IT project. They don’t have a large IT staff, and they are focused on spending their resources on growing the business. At the same time, they find themselves at a point where their growth has led to a surge in data and multiple complex business processes, which they can’t manage through siloed software systems and spreadsheets. They need all that data to flow seamlessly between the financials, inventory, sales, and procurement. In other words, they need an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system such as JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. Why do you recommend Oracle Business Accelerators for midsize ERP customers? ERP systems can be costly to implement and manage. Enterprises with significant IT resources can hire staff just to handle the ERP software. Midsize companies need the capabilities of ERP, but at the same time, they want to have it within their budget. That’s where Oracle Business Accelerators for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne come in. Oracle Business Accelerators are predefined methodologies that enable a quick jumpstart of implementations or upgrades for Oracle solutions, lowering the total cost of ownership. Instead of having to spend resources tailoring the implementation specifically for the customer, they enable out-ofthe-box implementations customized by industry. This is what resonates with the CIOs and CFOs of midsize companies— “I can get to where I need to be, I know what I’m going to have at the end, and it’s fairly easy
to implement. I can upload it, I can use these automated screens, I have all sorts of options in order to do this correctly, and it gives me a guided path to implement JD Edwards.” What benefits can companies expect to see with Oracle Business Accelerators? Midsize companies can reap rewards on both the business and IT side. By implementing Oracle Business Accelerators for JD Edwards, the CFOs will Kalanithi Venkatesan, Cofounder and immediately start to gain President, Capscient visibility into the business. They will be more efficient, and they will be able to make better business decisions. On the IT side, the CIO won’t need to hire and manage an internal team to customize and maintain the ERP system. The savings provided through using Oracle Business Accelerators can be used to grow the business, instead of on operational expenditures. What value does Capscient bring to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne customers? Our team has numerous years of experience working with JD Edwards. Our consultants have an average of 15 years of industry experience, so we bring depth and knowledge to the customers. We are thought leaders in the field, with published books on JD Edwards. We use the Oracle Business Accelerators methodology for JD Edwards implementations, so we know best practices. We are committed to our partnership with Oracle, and to ensuring that our customer base has predictable, fast implementations of JD Edwards software. We also offer CAPFLEX, an offering which includes both Configurable Network Computing (CNC) and application development. Based on your needs, the CNC, technical, and application resources can be onsite, remote, or offshore. We are a consulting company to start with, but we become a trusted adviser to our customers.
For more information, visit our Website at capscient.com or e-mail us at info@capscient.com
Technology Is Constantly Moving and Capscient Will Help You Keep Up When it comes to JD Edwards consulting and implementations Capscient delivers a leaner, more streamlined model using consultants with an average of 15 years of experience. The benefits? Increased personal attention, better value and faster results. JD Edwards offerings include: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and World Implementations ■ JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Business Service Integrations ■ Upgrade Assessments ■ Upgrade Implementations ■ CAPFLEX ■ CNC ■ Oracle Fusion Middleware ■ Report Development ■ Training & User Adoption ■
Our vision is to be the premier value added JD Edwards consultancy of the nation. Our approach is customized providing a legacy of return for our clients.
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Simplifying ERP Integration Datacolor improves efficiencies and customer satisfaction with Forza Consulting’s implementation of Magic Software’s xpi Integration Platform
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ince its inception in 1970, Datacolor has been a global leader in color management solutions and technology for the world’s leading brands, manufacturers, creative professionals, and consumers. Datacolor’s innovative solutions help customers in more than 65 countries consistently achieve the right color.
The economic crisis caused Datacolor to examine its processes in an attempt to increase efficiencies and decrease costs. Datacolor utilized Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne as its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and a third-party solution as its customer relationship management (CRM) system. Once a salesperson entered an order into the CRM tool, he had to submit an order form to the back-office employees, who would then manually enter the account, order, and contact information into JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. “The real challenge was, how do we integrate these two systems and avoid the cost of the resources that would be required if we elected not to integrate them,” says Mark Callahan, director of IT at Datacolor. A Tool to Foster Communication Datacolor needed a connector between the two systems. After receiving positive recommendations from customers, Callahan selected Oracle partner Forza Consulting, which would implement Magic Software’s Magic xpi Integration Platform (formally known as iBOLT). Magic xpi is a server that enables communication between JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and third-party vendor software. Datacolor IT and Forza spent a week mapping the data between the systems, so that information would flow to the proper location. Now, when a salesperson generates an order in the CRM tool, the information is automatically sent to the Magic xpi engine. Using the mapping rules, Magic xpi feeds the information into JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. From there, back-office employees can access the information to send order and shipping confirmations to the customer. The system also sends the order out for production. Conversely, when an order status is updated in the JD Edwards ERP tool, Magic xpi feeds it into the CRM tool, so a salesperson can track order status in real time. Both the back office and the sales team have the complete information about customers and orders at all times.
Learn more about Magic xpi at magicsoftware.com
“The whole goal was to touch the data just once and then send it where it needs to go. So far, we’ve been able to achieve that,” says Callahan. The Benefits of Shared Data By marrying the two systems together using Magic xpi, the company has cut costs in data entry. “One measurable benefit right out of the gate is that we’ve cut our data entry in half,” says Callahan. “We’re able to put the data in once and have it update in several areas automatically, which is going to result in a huge amount of resource and cost savings down the road.” Datacolor’s systems have more accurate data, which will reduce redundancies and improve customer satisfaction. “The fewer times data is entered, the less chance there is of creating duplicates and data entry errors,” says Callahan. “That will make our future correspondence with customers much more reliable.” Customers will also benefit from customer service’s ability to see order information and updates in real time. “If I ship your order out today and you call customer service tomorrow, they would be able to tell you the order ship date, the invoice number, and the serial numbers at your site,” says Callahan. “So improved customer service is a huge benefit.” Callahan says he would recommend Forza Consulting’s implementation of Magic xpi for JD Edwards customers who need a reliable integration solution. “From the very start, Forza’s knowledge of and experience with JD Edwards and Magic xpi made the whole process much easier,” says Callahan, “and every specification that we needed, the software was able to do. It’s relatively easy to configure, and it appears to be very reliable. I’m excited about going forward with it.”
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We believe that being flexible means having choices. After all, your company must be adapted to your customers needs. We are specialized on the most important Oracle Solutions. in order to minimize risks, streamline business processes, reduce costs and complexity of your IT environment. We have performed services for more than 120 customers of Oracle´s JD Edwards applications in diverse industries and geographies working for local and multinational companies with different challenges including best owned practices and local rules and taxes. Our people´s JD Edwards experience guarantees the results we provide to our customers in implementations, migrations, training, support and tuning of different areas like CNC, tools and functional requirements.
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40 SNAPSHOT Local Government Information Systems (LOGIS) logis.org Headquarters:
Golden Valley, Minnesota
Industry:
Local government/information technology Employees:
52
Revenue:
US$8.2 million in 2011 Oracle products: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financials, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Capital Asset Management, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne human capital management and supply chain applications Mike Garris Executive Director Length of tenure:
23 years
Education:
BS in computer science, Colorado State University Personal quote/mantra:
“ I believe in the reverse organizational pyramid; I’m at the low point, providing resources to make all others successful.”
Technology Powered. Business Driven.
Mike Garris (right), Executive Director, LOGIS
41
Public Service In an era of deficit control, LOGIS delivers enterprise-caliber technology to public agencies. By David Baum
|
Photography By Mark Luinenburg
B
ack in 1972, seven city finance managers gathered in a small suburb of Minneapolis to discuss their need for a new accounting system. None of them could afford to purchase the latest enterprisecaliber technology, so they decided to pool their resources. The group created Local Government Information Systems (LOGIS), an intergovernmental service bureau, to provide Profit JD EDWARDS SPECIAL EDITION August 2012
42 software applications, data processing facilities, and management information systems via a shared services environment. During the intervening four decades, LOGIS has evolved into a cooperative partnership that serves 45 governmental entities and more than 2.1 million residents— about 40 percent of the state’s population. It includes 37 cities ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 residents, 4 counties, and several intergovernmental agencies such as the Metropolitan Airports Commission, the Northwest Community Television group, and the Minnesota Valley Transit Authority. “Local government entities generally can’t afford world-class ERP [enterprise resource planning] solutions,” suggests Mike Garris, executive director at LOGIS. “A shared IT environment provides superior software functionality and creates a backbone for many types of back-office solutions.” To deliver on the promise of shared services IT, LOGIS management standardized the computing platform on Oracle’s JD Edwards applications for accounting, capital asset management, human resources, and payroll. The backbone of the JD Edwards infrastructure is a private cloud that allows LOGIS to leverage economies of scale while maintaining autonomy in overall governance (see sidebar, “A Private Cloud for the Public Sector”). Each member can subscribe to software functionality from Oracle and other vendors. By utilizing highly efficient cloudbased applications and services, members are free to focus on their core missions. “Pooling resources enables better purchasing power, leading to lower costs for hardware, software, implementation, maintenance, support, backup, and disaster recovery services,” Garris says. “At a time when most local governments are starved for resources, city governments and municipal agencies in Minnesota have largely avoided these problems by teaming up to create a shared services model.”
Private Sector Lessons LOGIS operates like a private company, with a board of directors drawn from the various member organizations. Its modern IT infrastructure includes a fully functioning “hot site” located 13 miles from the main data center that includes duplicate servers, network communications, and databases for all critical applications. The application load is balanced between these two fully functioning operating environments, with automatic failover in the event of a mishap. To maximize performance and security, LOGIS created a fiber-optic network that spans hundreds of miles around the Twin Cities. Shared service environments are becoming progressively more Technology Powered. Business Driven.
David Schleicher (right) and Mike Garris (left) deliver world-class ERP functionality to local governments.
popular among state and local governments, many of which are struggling to do more with less and to maximize their investments in information technology. As government services move online, having nimble information systems becomes increasingly important. Upgrading is expensive, and many municipalities don’t have the budget for capital improvement projects. “With most governments squeezed down to the last penny, it’s not like agencies can go out and shop for new software whenever they want to, let alone set up this type of network and disaster recovery operation,” says Daryl Sulander, finance manager at LOGIS. “It’s hard enough just to update your systems to stay current with all the changes in payroll regulations, taxation, and so forth.” Previously Sulander served as finance director for New Hope, a city on the outskirts of Minneapolis with 21,000 residents that has been a LOGIS customer for 20 years. Having experienced LOGIS as both a supplier and a customer, he believes it represents a model that provides its members with the best of both worlds: local autonomy and shared costs. All members share the JD Edwards applications, yet each member has its own database
43 and robustness to handle a disparate mix of users.”
Technical Progress Digital government is not just about buying and installing computers. Rather, it involves redesigning the way a government works and efficiently executing projects while actively managing change. For example, prior to deploying JD Edwards, LOGIS ran disparate systems for finance, payroll, and HR. There was little cohesion among its enterprise applications. As Garris tactfully puts it, “Working with multiple vendors created an interesting set of issues.” Garris’ organization wanted to find a modern ERP solution with tight integrations among these major applications. “We looked at all the major players,” he recalls. “The JD Edwards applicaDavid Schleicher (left) says LOGIS users can get a good tions clearly represented best understanding of business processes within a few days. practices we thought would be helpful to our users.” Since then, Oracle has continued to improve its industry-leading ERP system to add new functionality, thereby creating a robust and flexible Webbased solution. with the user had no reason over the last dozen years to go looking interface. Oracle continues for “We’ve something else,” Garris adds. “Despite our growth, the effito release functionality ciency we obtain from our cloud-based applications means that we have not had to hire additional full-time employees. Oracle’s that makes the software decision to standardize on Web browsers and other IP-based easier to use.” technologies has enabled us to support more users with the same —David Schleicher, JD Edwards Applications Supervisor and set of staff.” Business Systems Analyst, LOGIS LOGIS’s progression from a mainframe to a cloud environment is most visible in the user interface, which has evolved from a character-mode “green screen” to hosted Citrix applications to a pure Web client. instance, physically segregated from the others. Costs are allo“Oracle has a good roadmap for the JD Edwards applicacated based on the number of modules and the amount of disk tions and has continued to add new functionality,” explains space they use, along with a variety of metrics such as full-time David Schleicher, JD Edwards applications supervisor and employee count, number of W-2s generated, and the number of business systems analyst at LOGIS. “We’ve seen impressive gains financial transactions that hit the general ledger. with the user interface. Oracle continues to release functionality Sulander currently manages a staff of five people that supthat makes the software easier to use.” ports the JD Edwards environment. As finance manager, he is In addition to sharing this industry-leading technical also responsible for internal accounting, using a cost-allocation infrastructure, all LOGIS members benefit from an ongomodel to equitably bill for LOGIS services. “Our JD Edwards system can accommodate very small orga- ing exchange of ideas and best practices. Each member can choose how much or little involvement they want to have in nizations with simple needs as well as larger organizations that the technical and business decisions that affect the consortium. require much more complexity,” he says. “It has the flexibility
“We’ve seen impressive gains
Profit JD EDWARDS SPECIAL EDITION August 2012
44 Thanks to the work of Mike Garris (right), David Schleicher (left), and LOGIS shared services, cities in Minnesota have saved as much as US$6 million.
“WE looked at all the
major players. The JD Edwards applications clearly represented best practices we thought would be helpful to our users”
—Mike Garris, Executive Director, LOGIS
Technology Powered. Business Driven.
They can be involved in technology selection and testing, in troubleshooting, and in recommending enhancements and customizations—or they can simply sit back and take advantage of all the new functionality.
Rapid Ramp-Up Onboarding a new LOGIS member within the domain of finance, HR, or payroll is typically a three- to six-month cycle. Once implemented, learning the software is relatively easy. “Within a couple of days, you can acquire a very good understanding of the processes within the various financial modules,” Schleicher says. “The core functionality is the same throughout the system. That reduces the learning curve, since your skills readily translate from one module to another.” Currently there are approximately 300 business users and 2,000 self-service users. Most of them see an immediate gain from a user interface and usability standpoint, according to
45 Schleicher—such as being able to export data to Microsoft Excel with a couple of clicks and to customize inquiry and data entry forms. Productivity improvements are equally marked, thanks to the tight level of integration among the JD Edwards modules. “All of the accounting information and the chart of accounts are set up in the general ledger and validated in payroll when time cards are entered, so there is no way you can inadvertently apply an employee’s time to business units or accounts that don’t exist,” explains Schleicher, citing one example. “Once the payroll is processed, you can easily make a pro forma journal entry to revalidate that the time cards are applied to stillvalid accounts, along with the associated deductions and benefits. It’s simply a matter of posting it to the general ledger, and that component of it is completed.” Additional integration from the payroll system to the accounts payable system makes it easy to review and post deductions and benefits for payments to vendors. “JD Edwards automates the workflow and ensures that the data is accurate from one module to the next, while minimizing rework and manual data entry,” Schleicher adds. Procurement and inventory systems are also integrated with each other and with the general ledger. For example, once a purchase order is approved, a commitment is set up in encumbrance accounting. Later, when a receipt is entered against that purchase order, the transactional data automatically flows to the general ledger and updates the inventory balances. Thanks to its basis in open standards, JD Edwards’ integration extends to third-party applications as well, such as to the utility billing system that many LOGIS municipalities use to charge for gas, water, sewer, and electricity. Previously members had to post monthly journal entries to record data from this billing system into the general ledger, so LOGIS created an interface that posts daily transactions to the proper fund and revenue account. LOGIS created similar interfaces for key systems used by parks and recreation departments and building departments. Members can decide how much detail they want to see in their reports. “It’s all nicely automated, which permits accounting departments to easily review, approve, and post entries so they always have a current snapshot of their accounts,” says Sulander. “There is no longer the need to double-enter transactions, once in the departmental system and again in the accounting section. They are automatically brought in as journal entries.”
A Private Cloud for the Public Sector Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. It is easy to make adjustments to the overall computing capacity, thanks to the cloud’s shared and elastically scalable architecture. There are two basic cloud models: public and private. While a public cloud includes applications, storage, and other resources that are available to the general public, a private cloud provides those same capabilities but is operated solely for a single organization, such as Local Government Information Systems (LOGIS) and its members. It can be managed internally or by a third party, and can be accessed via the internet or a virtual private network. According to Mike Garris, executive director at LOGIS, private cloud technology has become progressively more viable as wide-area networks get faster, bandwidth becomes more plentiful, and elastic scaling technologies support business growth. Cloud users simply need a client device such as a laptop, desktop, tablet, or smartphone to access a cloud system via the Web.
The cloud provides server-based functionality and data services to the user, with output displayed on each client device. Oracle enables many types of cloud models using proven technologies that have been evolving for years, including clustering, virtualization, service-oriented architecture, and management automation. These technologies allow LOGIS to scale its cloud incrementally and adjust resources to meet dynamic business priorities, bolstered by advanced methods for cloud maintenance, access, and authentication. “Utilizing a private cloud is a good middle ground between placing assets in a public cloud, where you don’t have much security or control, versus doing everything on your own,” Garris says. “Our shift to a cloud model, SaaS [software as a service], and managed services are the newest services available to our members.”
All these little bits of automation add up to big savings. Garris estimates that small cities that joined the LOGIS consortium have saved nearly US$2 million each, and large cities have saved in excess of US$6 million, allowing them to deliver more value to their citizens in the form of lower taxes and increased service levels. “We retained an independent financial consultant to compare [the cost of] LOGIS operations versus an independent city’s operations to run similar types of applications,” he says. “He determined that LOGIS can deliver solutions at 30 to 50 percent lower [cost] than if each city acquires them on their own. On average, a city that leverages our ERP functions can save from US$80,000 to US$250,000 in annual IT costs. “Once you consider the other stuff that we’ve added over the last 10 or 15 years, such as police systems and permitting applications, we estimate that we have saved our cities more than $100 million to date,” Garris adds. David Baum is a freelance business, technology, and lifestyle writer in
Santa Barbara, California. For More Information Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Oracle Solutions for Public Sector
bit.ly/KKJcaH bit.ly/KQ7IHs
Profit JD EDWARDS SPECIAL EDITION August 2012
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$375
per user per month
OFF MAINTENANCE? A BETTER REASON TO COME BACK! Existing, qualified JD Edwards EnterpriseOne clients can come back to Oracle! A perfect solution to protect your ongoing investment, lower your TCO, and reduce your risk of using a third party maintenance provider. Our single-source SaaS solution is the preferred solution to bring your system back to compliance, provide current updates, and run on a state-of-the-art Oracle hosted platform.
“A Leading JD Edwards Data Integrity Expert”
Proven results time and time again: That’s AGONA! Our clients benefit from exceptional:
Software Implementations & Upgrades Consulting & Managed Service Solutions IT Project Management Solutions JD Edwards Help Desk Support Services Menus & Security Solutions Strategic IT Systems Audits Customized Training Development Documentation of Business Processes
Affordable JD Edwards Consulting, Managed Services Solution, and Help Desk Support Services
10465 Park Meadows Drive Suite 101 Lone Tree, Colorado 80124 Phone: 303‐799‐6955 Toll Free: 888‐204‐1027 Email: info@agonainc.com Website: http://www.agonainc.com
Headquartered in Lone Tree, Colorado, AGONA offers the best competitive rates for senior level resources in the E.R.P. services industry. Our top experts with years of experience and extensive product and industry knowledge meet unique business requirements. Strong work ethics, a passion and ability to overcome challenges and professional experience all come together for you with AGONA, Inc. Learn more online at http:\\www.agonainc.com.
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JD EDWARDS PA R T N ER S H O W C A S E
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he universe of Oracle’s JD Edwards partners is vast and knowledgeable— from independent software vendors that can develop and go to market with products based on Oracle technology, to system integrators that can develop a horizontal or industry practice based on JD Edwards EnterpriseOne functionality. Whether you’re part of a midsize company seeking help in implementing JD Edwards applications within a specific budget and timeframe, or a large enterprise looking for an extended capability, there is an Oracle PartnerNetwork member with the skills and expertise to help you get the most out of your JD Edwards environment. Use this special section to find solutions and services that can enhance and extend your JD Edwards investment.
Applications Group of North America (AGONA), Inc. ■
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Capscient Corporation
Region: North America
Region: North America
As an Oracle Gold Partner, the Applications Group of North America (AGONA), Incorporated provides management consulting and affordable staff augmentation support services to our customers for the entire JD Edwards package suite. Our customers have access to dedicated professionals with exceptional industry and product design knowledge. We are committed to providing hands-on solutions to help you to achieve your business objectives and goals. AGONA provides incomparable JD Edwards system implementations, upgrades, data conversions, and training. Using a proven methodology for managing our clients’ IT projects, we have earned a reputation for the highest level of client satisfaction and innovative work. Our commitment to high excellence, integrity, and discipline make us a preferred JD Edwards solutions provider.
Capscient, a Gold Level JD Edwards consulting practice, brings sound insights and solid results to help our clients adapt to the ever-changing market. Our goal is to provide our customers with a streamlined, responsive solution that delivers sound results and meets your business requirements today and in the future. Our consultants have an average of 15 years of industry experience. This experience allows us to efficiently use Oracle Business Accelerators to reduce implementation time and cost. Oracle has recently rolled out a 100-day upgrade methodology for JD Edwards. Capscient is proud to be a partner with Oracle using this methodology to ensure fast, costeffective, and predictable upgrades. We also offer an ERP Roadmap that helps customers to chart their IT portfolio.
Learn more at: www.agonainc.com/ Services/Webcast.aspx
Learn more at: www.capscient.com
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Shanghai Elitesland Software System Company Ltd. ■
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Circular Edge
Region: APAC
Region: North America, LAD, EMEA, APAC
Shanghai Elitesland is an Oracle Platinum Partner. Elitesland is one of the biggest JD Edwards consulting firms located in Shanghai with branch offices in Beijing, Qingdao, and Chicago. Elitesland’s services for JD Edwards customers include new implementation, global rollout to China and Asia, China localization, offshore JD Edwards development, and offshore JD Edwards system support. Elitesland also has developed many JD Edwards add-on solutions, including a store management system (including POS), membership service chain store management system (such as fitness and SPA business), a China finance and tax localization package, an HR China localization package, and barcode. Elitesland is focused mostly on industrial manufacturing, chain store retail, trading, and real estate and can also provide services for BI, Oracle’s Siebel Customer Relationship Management, and Kronos implementation.
Circular Edge, started in 2003, is a full-service JD Edwards service provider. We work with a single point focus, which is to help our clients enhance their operational efficiency, customer relations, and profits. We are a resolutely customer-focused company, where the interest of the customer dictates every strategic decision. With our best-of-breed resources, hands-on experience, solution portfolio, and unmatched expertise in complete application lifecycle management, we remain a “top-of-mind” JD Edwards service provider. As an Oracle Gold Partner, we consistently strive to empower our clients through solutions that help them to be more responsive to their customers’ needs and changing market dynamics.
Learn more at: www.circularedge.com
Learn more at: www.elitesland.com
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RFgen Software
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Syntax
Region: North America
Region: North America
RFgen Software provides flexible and reliable mobile supply chain solutions that solve real-world business challenges. RFgen’s wireless and mobile technology platform extends the enterprise and brings real-time access to the workforce. Supporting certified connections to JD Edwards World and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, RFgen has proven itself to be more than just a data collection toolset. RFgen is a single-platform solution with the flexibility to accommodate the automation and mobility needs of any user. RFgen is installed and used daily at over 2,500 locations worldwide and supports wireless barcoding, Vocollect voice integration, device integration (scales, PLC’s, carousels, etc.), and also roaming, batch, or mobile applications requiring on-demand cellular enterprise access.
Since 1972, Syntax has been providing comprehensive technology solutions to businesses of all sizes throughout North America. At Syntax we partner with Oracle and other world-class technology leaders in order to deliver the best combination of hardware, software, and services to our customers. Syntax is a proud participant in the JD Edwards 100 Day Upgrade Initiative. With the SyntaxExpress™ upgrade methodology we accelerate your progress, placing your goals within reach. With over 250 JD Edwards customers and more than 50 JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World upgrades successfully implemented, Syntax’s staff are experts in providing the best possible services, education, and experience to ensure that your upgrade or new fullscale implementation is a success.
Learn more at: www.rfgen.com/profit
Learn more at: www.syntax.com
ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT
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Terillium
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DWS
Region: North America
Region: North America, LAD, EMEA, APAC
Terillium is an Oracle Platinum Partner, specialized in JD Edwards for more than 15 years. With more than 120 consultants and hundreds of JD Edwards projects, our consulting team is unsurpassed in product knowledge, industry best practices, and experience. Our typical clients are manufacturing, distribution, and asset-intensive companies with complex requirements that need rapid, low-cost implementations and upgrades. Terillium’s years of experience, proven success, and focus on client satisfaction ensure a streamlined process and costeffective solution. Our focus on customer success has resulted in our achievement of the prestigious Oracle North America Titan award for outstanding ERP implementations four years in a row and the award for Outstanding JD Edwards Customer Success Story for each of the past two years.
Since 1998, DWS has provided software development expertise and technical support to companies that want to customize and extend JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. Recently, our award winning Dimension Analyze™ and Dimension Professional™ services have assisted customers in Europe, Australasia, and North America with their JD Edwards EnterpriseOne upgrades. DWS is an Oracle Gold Partner and a JD Edwards Certified Specialist. We’ve built an enviable reputation as a true consulting expert in JD Edwards development. We’re proud to offer a complete range of fixed-price upgrade services in the JD Edwards market and to offer expertise in the build, customization, design, and integration of your JD Edwards EnterpriseOne system. We find imaginative ways to solve difficult problems—we believe every customer is different and personalize our solutions accordingly.
Learn more at: www.Terillium.com
Learn more at: www.dwsdimension.com
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ALL Out Security
Region: North America, LAD, EMEA, APAC
ALL Out for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World is a global security solution designed specifically to meet corporate governance requirements. It provides a simple, easy-to-implement and cost-effective solution for your security project. ALL Out is a family of products that enable you to set up your security, go from “open to closed” and produce compliance reports and segregation-ofduties rules and reports. It provides a simple, easyto-implement and cost-effective solution for your security and compliance projects. ALL Out is sold in modules, so you only need buy what you need—making it a cost-effective solution for our customers. Automate your Audit with ALL Out!
E-nnovative Solutions
Region: Mexico
E-nnovative Solutions is a consulting firm and Certified Gold Partner of Oracle. Our mission is to add value to the operations of our clients by collaborating in developing sustainable competitive advantages, with our experience in best practices of world-class IT solutions and focus on providing better efficiency and operating controls. Our main goal is to reduce cycle time and process costs and help our clients through the changing process that the new technology integration means in our client’s operation. • We have been in business since 2002, helping companies in Oracle business solutions. • We accomplish on time and on budget the engagements with our clients and do not create false expectations. Monterrey Office: 52.81.8345.1050 México City Office: 52.55.5598.3635
Learn more at: sales@alloutsecurity.com or www.alloutsecurity.com
Learn more at: www.ennovative.com.mx
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RapidReconciler by Andrews Consulting Group ■
Forza Consulting
Region: EMEA
Region: North America, LAD, EMEA, APAC
Forza Consulting is a consultancy firm providing all services related to JD Edwards. Our company is located in the Netherlands and focuses its services on customers in Europe, primarily in the Benelux, UK, and Scandinavia. Forza is an Oracle Specialized partner in the areas of finance, distribution, manufacturing, and technical consultancy. With more than a decade of experience, Forza Consulting is leading in providing both functional and technical support for JD Edwards applications. We have extensive knowledge of integrating JD Edwards with other systems, often making use of Magic iBOLT/XPI middleware. Forza is a preferred trainer for Oracle PartnerNetwork. Furthermore, we provide high-quality managed services with 24/7 support, performance management, and a cloud offering.
As a certified Oracle Gold Partner and a recognized industry leader, The Andrews Group LLC specializes in providing software solutions and a broad spectrum of business, functional, and technical consulting services centered on JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World applications. With over 28 years of experience and a staff of over 80 industry professionals, Andrews has been providing solutions to numerous businesses of all sizes and across a variety of industries. Implementations have ranged from small consulting engagements to global deployments for over 200 customers. Using Andrews’ RapidReconciler® solution, companies can dramatically streamline the JD Edwards inventory to general ledger reconciliation process. Investing minutes a day is all it takes to drastically reduce the time spent closing the period!
Learn more at: www.forzaconsulting.eu
ANDREWS
Learn more at: www.rapidreconciler.com
CONSULTING GROUP
Data Systems International, Inc. ■
Region: North America, LAD, EMEA, APAC
DSI® is a worldwide Oracle Platinum Partner with industry specializations in Oil and Gas, Consumer Packaged Goods, and Natural Resources. Through its portfolio of Enterprise Mobility Solutions®, DSI helps businesses increase productivity and profitability by mobilizing critical on- and off-premises business processes—making them accessible on a variety of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Enterprisewide mobilization is made possible with dcLINK®, DSI’s mobile application development platform that features Oracle Validated Integrations to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, JD Edwards World, and Oracle E-Business Suite. dcLINK offers a robust integrated development environment, write-once, deploy-anywhere capabilities, and disconnected application usage. To deliver a complete mobility solution, DSI also provides prebuilt mobile application packages for rapid time-to-value, mobile data collection solutions, labeling software, and mobile hardware devices. Learn more at: www.DSIonline.com
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JDEasy
Region: North America, LAD, EMEA, APAC
JDEasy is a provider of application extensions for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. JDEasy builds on the expertise of manufacturing, distribution, finance, and software development specialists from both JD Edwards and non-JD Edwards ERP backgrounds. This synergy delivers new and exciting functionality that improves customer service and employee productivity while solving conventionally difficult issues in flexible and imaginative ways. Issues addressed by JDEasy products include: Provision of up-to-date promised delivery dates to customers on their back orders through our automated back order scheduling solution – EASY.BOSS. and flexible assignment of external and internal delivery addresses (e-mail, print, and fax) on all formal business forms using EASY.INFORM. Achieve improved data accuracy and secure demarcation of maintenance responsibilities on critical master files using our configurable grid maintenance EASY.GRID. Learn more at: www.jdeasysoftware.com
ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT
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L&T Infotech
Region: North America, EMEA, APAC
Oracle E-Business Suite • Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne • Oracle’s PeopleSoft • Oracle’s Siebel CRM • Oracle Fusion Middleware • EPM/BI L&T Infotech is a worldwide Oracle Platinum Partner and one of the largest JD Edwards service providers. We are a trusted IT service partner assisting clients in their IT-enabled transformation journey, helping them leverage their current JD Edwards investments, increase ROI, reduce costs, and improve operational excellence. We also advise clients on emerging technologies adoption i.e. cloud, mobility, analytics and Oracle Fusion Applications. We provide end-to-end services in targeted industry segments including: Manufacturing • Oil and Gas • Engineering and Construction • Banking and Financial Services • Healthcare • Media • Education Key Services include: Consulting • Upgrades • Implementations • Data Migration • Testing • Application Management and Support • Hosting
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Centric IT Solutions
Region: EMEA
Centric IT Solutions is a leading JD Edwards partner in Europe, with direct response to requests for a one-stop choice for international JD Edwards projects. Drawing from our unique and specialized knowledge of JD Edwards for more than 25 years and from over 500 projects that we have successfully completed in Europe, Centric provides an unparalleled JD Edwards knowledge base. The key values for our customers are the delivery of high-quality solutions incorporating leading-edge functionality from JD Edwards software. Centric’s partnership approach is backed by unrivalled implementation and consultancy experience. Centric is focused on providing solutions and services to provide competitive advantage, enabling our customers to conduct and adapt their businesses to remain agile and effective, while staying compliant.
Learn more about us at: www.lntinfotech.com/services/ oracle_services/overview.aspx
Learn more at: www.centric.eu
Region: North America, EMEA, APAC
Everest Software International®
When companies look to implement, upgrade, customize, support or obtain authorized training of Oracle Applications like Oracle E-Business Suite and JD Edwards, Cyret Technologies is considered a leading services provider. Globally, Cyret customers benefit from 750+ man-years of experience and our focus on activities starting from strategy and roadmap, and continuing through fit-gap analysis, implementation, upgrade, migration, post-implementation maintenance, training, and support services. Cyret services customers globally and covers industries like manufacturing, high tech, oil and gas, construction, breweries, food and beverages, banking, insurance, and many others. Cyret has an extensive services portfolio spanning Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, product information management, SCM and value chain planning, Oracle Fusion Middleware, business intelligence, CRM, and edge products. Additionally, cost-effective solutions like Cyret Enterprise Application Appliance and CyConnect Contact Center bring an additional value proposition to our customers.
Improve efficiency and cut costs and risks with the industry-best tools Everest Software International® provides real solutions to thousands of JD Edwards customers in over 40 countries. Creative use of modern technologies, power, elegant design, and seamless integration with JD Edwards, combined with industry-highest ROI and passionate support, guarantees you rapid returns and tangible results. Your organization will see big benefits with our 30+ commercial and free products, enhancing many aspects of JD Edwards security, documentation, development, and maintenance. Every one of these truly revolutionary tools is consistently reducing risks and costs of common and advanced tasks for thousands of JD Edwards users on a daily basis. When upgrading your JD Edwards system, with Everest Software International® tools, you can expect to halve the length and cost of any project.
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Cyret Technologies
A Capitol Hill Systems Company
Learn more at: www.cyret.com
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Region: North America, LAD, EMEA, APAC
Learn more at: www.everestsoftint.com
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Region: North America, LAD, EMEA, APAC
Magic Software Enterprises
In today’s evolving business landscape, enterprises are focused on effectively aligning people, processes, data, and technology in a way that enables them to keep pace with the existing demands, while preparing for the future. As an Oracle global systems integration and Oracle Diamond-level partner, TCS enables companies to align their operations by designing and implementing complete solutions on JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World application suites. Our ERP solutions harmonize the management of finance, assets (including inventory, fixed assets, and real estate), people, projects, suppliers, and the fulfillment and manufacturing processes. We plan, advise, implement, upgrade, and maintain some of the world’s most complex and transformative ERP systems, leveraging our in-house accelerators, tools, and methodologies to enable rapid implementation.
Magic Software Enterprises (NASDAQ: MGIC) empowers customers and partners around the globe with smarter technology that provides a multichannel user experience of enterprise logic and data. We draw on 30 years of experience, millions of installations, and a presence in more than 50 countries, including 14 regional offices to enable our customers to maximize business opportunities. Building on Magic’s status as an Oracle Gold Partner, Magic xpi Integration Platform for JD Edwards delivers enterprise-grade solutions that extend the capabilities of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World, integrating them with our customers’ entire range of business processes. Magic’s Integrate My JD Edwards blog by Glenn Johnson, Oracle senior vice president of Magic Software Enterprises Americas, is the #1 search result on Google for the term “JD Edwards integration.”
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Tata Consultancy Services
TCS Company Mark - Stacked - 3 lines For use in 2D applications
Artwork provided. Please do not recreate.
Tata Consultancy Services Identity Guidelines I Jan 2007
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Region: North America, LAD, EMEA, APAC
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Learn more at: www.magicsoftware.com or it.toolbox.com/blogs/integrate-my-jde/
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Learn more at: info.tcs.com/JDE
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KPIT Cummins I SYSTIME
Region: North America, LAD, EMEA, APAC Date : 31 I 01 I 2007 Title : TCS Company Mark - Stacked - 3 lines Design Magger : Gargi Sharma Project Co- ordinator : Vishal Jhunjhunwala Colour : Pantone 2427 C Software Formats : CorelDraw 11, Adobe Illustrator CS2
KPIT Cummins I SYSTIME is an Oracle Platinum Partner and a global technology partner to manufacturing, automotive, transportation, and energy industries. Through more than 2,000 Oracle professionals we deliver industry-focused expertise in ERP, supply chain, Oracle’s Agile PLM applications, BI, and Oracle Fusion Middleware. As one of the world’s largest JD Edwards partners, KPIT Cummins I SYSTIME has earned over 20 Oracle specializations and 5 advanced specializations including advanced specializations in JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financial Management, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Configurable Network Computing, and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Distribution.
Guide-sheet developed by Design Services, Corporate Marketing Copyright © 2007 Tata Consultancy Services Limited
IMPORTANT : COLOURS USED TO CREATE THIS MECHANICAL ARE FOR VISUAL SUGGESTION ONLY. USE PANTONE COLOUR SWATCHES TO MATCH FOR CORRECT COLOURS. EVEN THOUGH THIS MECHANICAL HAS BEEN CHECKED FOR ACCURACY, PLEASE DOUBLE CHECK PRIOR TO RELEASE TO THE VENDOR. IF INSTRUCTIONS ARE FOUND DEFICIENT, PLEASE CONTACT corporate.office@tcs.com
Learn more at: www.kpitcummins.com/oracle A KPIT Cummins Company
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Redfaire
Region: North America, LAD, EMEA, APAC
Redfaire is a new kind of Oracle partner for a new kind of JD Edwards. An Oracle Platinum Partner, Redfaire was specifically created to ensure businesses are ready for the future evolution of Oracle’s JD Edwards. Redfaire has heavily invested in the latest technology, research and development, and certification to provide the highest level of JD Edwards consultancy and support. Redfaire provides a full suite of software implementation and support services and has extensive experience of international deployments. Redfaire have also achieved expertise in JD Edwards mobility. Oracle’s JD Edwards is evolving. Ensure your business is prepared for the road ahead. Choose Redfaire.
Learn more at: www.redfaire.com
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iXtend, Inc.
Region: North America
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iXtend is a leading provider of SaaS, managed services, and enterprise cloud for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World software products. Our focus as a pure play provider for JD Edwards enables iXtend to deliver the most cost-effective solutions through iXtend Unlimited for Oracle’s JD Edwards without sacrificing the expertise and experience needed to adequately support or manage the JD Edwards ERP system. As the only MSP Alliance-accredited managed service provider for JD Edwards, iXtend has a proven model of success our customers can count on. Copycat competitors mask fixed-bid consulting by calling it MSP. Our endto-end solutions provide more flexibility and scalability based upon the needs of our clients than any other competitor. Through our unique delivery model, iXtend is able to provide a cost-effective and pure customer-centric solution. This enables customers to scale with ease and precision to meet their business needs.
Fastest, Most Reliable Enterprise Cloud
Region: North America
JDEtips is a closely-knit team of educators, editors, consultants, and business professionals. The company began in 1998 and has grown to become a highly respected North American JD Edwards training and consulting practice. JDEtips provides live, instructor-led public and on-site configuration-level training, using their own training materials, delivered by highly experienced industry consultants. Training is available in classroom or in virtual environments. JDEtips is the publisher of JDEtips Journal, a subscription-based library of articles written by seasoned experts in the functional and technical aspects of JD Edwards products. JD Edwards Knowledge. Transferred. Sustained.
Learn more at: www.jdetips.com
Learn more at: www.ixtendinc.com
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JDEtips
CSS International, Inc.
Region: North America
CSS International is an award-winning Oracle Platinum Partner exclusively specializing in system integration, business process improvement, and implementation and managed services for the Oracle community. CSS has over 300 successful JD Edwards implementations and serves midsize and large organizations across industries. We have been solely focused on Oracle solutions since our inception in 1997 and have attracted and retained the best talent available. CSS obtained Oracle specializations across seven areas and is certified in the Oracle Business Accelerator program. We are a three-time Oracle Partner of the Year and two-time runner-up in the six years the awards have been distributed.
Learn more at: www.cssus.com
ERP Soluciones
Region: LAD
ERP Soluciones, founded in 1999, is an Oracle Platimum Partner in Oracle’s JD Edwards, Oracle E-Business Suite, and Oracle’s PeopleSoft applications and Oracle technology with offices located in México (México City, Monterrey, Guadalajara) and Central America (San José, Costa Rica and Guatemala). We have performed JD Edwards services for more than 120 customers in diverse industries and geographies, working for local or multinational companies with different challenges including best best practices and local rules and taxes. Our people’s JD Edwards experience guarantees the results we provide to our customers in implementations, migrations, training, support, and tuning of different areas including CNC, tools, and functional aspects.
Learn more at: www.erpsol.com.mx
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