The modern business is perfromed with highly optimizes processes with the help of information technology. The processes are generally managed by automated integrated information systems called Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP).
This course provides the essential knowledge of business processes and leads the students through simulated demonstrations of SAP ERP system to gain comprehensive understanding of how Business Processes are managed in modern business world.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
ERP is Fun
ERP is not just boring business of Systems, Applications and Programs (SAP)! You can have some fun if you have a mind for taking things in that lighter way.
Today, Jayant Joshi of RESPA, sent me this link for a comedy produced by an ERP vendor. Watch the first episode of this comedy at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAkzwoicu3E.
First of all, the episode is very interesting to watch. SAP recently arbitrarily raised the maintenance fee to 24% per annum. All customers were really unhappy with this price rise. Oracle Pepolesoft JDEdward merger also is not very easy to swallow for the customers. The first episode has done it's job. I am sure most people will watch the following episodes.
What a brilliant way of marketing using Social Web. I had never heard of Kinaxix, a Supply Chain solution provider. Kinaxis has invested in this production and being promoted through it's user's community. I am sure they will get noticed by many more potential customers with these comedy episodes.
Enjoy ERP!
Sunday, March 28, 2010
How do I get this intelligence called "BI"?
When somebody says, "Well, you know ERP but you need to know Business Intelligence", doesn't this sound being told "you are still a dumb person"? Whatever it means!
Let's start with, who is making us more intelligent? The best place I found was the report published by Gartener. I have following Gartner since 1995, when we took the decision to buy SAP software for CyberTech. One of the best business decisions of my career. Gartner had predicted the success of ERP packaged solutions and specially SAP's leadership position. Everything predicted has turned out to be very accurate.
Now Gartner has given their predictions of which vendors will succeed, which technologies will rise and fall. I am giving below, my observations. If you would like to read the full report, then send me a message. I don't know if I am allowed to share it with you, but probably we will be able to figure out a way.
1) Rise and Fall of SAP BW: SAP Business Warehouse was never very easy to use (like every other SAP product!) I had my share of pain at THQ BW project. Generally you start a BW project with a pilot and then initial implementation and then again modify and re-implement and again and again until after 3/4 years you get your users to give up asking any more changes. The you propose SEM will solve all your problems. When SEM does not solve all problems you keep hoping SAP will do something. And SAP gave new hopes in the form of Business Objects. SAP Customers are already disgusted by SAP's demand for increase in annual maintenance fee from 16% to 23% every year. On top of that increase, now SAP is asking all customers to dump their investment in SAP BW and buy Business Objects licenses and consulting. If you are one of these customers, then please let me know, how you are dealing with this.
2) Mergers and Acquisitions: We are now realizing that for our careers we need to add BI to our ERP but the ERP vendors had realized that BI is a way to go forward to survive in this market 2 years ago. Small independent BI vendors were gobbled by big ERP vendors. The leaders Business Objects was acquired by SAP, Hyperion by Oracle, Cognos by IBM. There are other BI vendors waiting to get bought out. QlikView is one of them, but we will talk more a little later.
3) In-Memory Analytics: This is a new technology for BI solutions. (whitepapers.technologyevaluation.com/.../In-memory-Analytics-Leveraging-Emerging-Technologies-for-Business-Intelligence.pdf) The main driver for this new technology is the introduction of 64 bit PCs and Operating Systems (Windows 7 and Vista) in the market. Now you can have RAM in excess of 4GB and practically, bring the entire R/3 or ECC6 database into RAM for generating reports. We had to spend all our energy to convert those normalized RDBMS databases from ERP to datawarehouse tables just to make it fast to extract reports. Now if we can bring the entire database in memory the report extraction even from the same ERP tables will not be too time consuming. All BI vendors recognize potential of this new technology. Microsoft came out with PowerPivot an add on to the world's most popular BI tool, the Excel! It also integrates with Sharepoint, making it a corporate level 'in-memory' BI tool. Business Object has Xcelsious. Even, SAP's BW on it's death bed is providing an in-memory add-on specially for large planning scenarios!
4) BI comes to SME: BI used to be an expensive complex project and usually considered necessary only for very large enterprises. But now, it appears that BI will be popular with SMEs as well.
Finally, like me there are many others who blog and offer advice for free. Check out this blog about status of BI technology and Gartner's report. http://www.dbms2.com/2009/01/22/gartners-2009-magic-quadrant-for-business-intelligence/
Ok. So today, I started blogging about this Gartener report and could never get to the main topic, "How do I get this intelligence called BI ?"
Let's do it next time.
Let's start with, who is making us more intelligent? The best place I found was the report published by Gartener. I have following Gartner since 1995, when we took the decision to buy SAP software for CyberTech. One of the best business decisions of my career. Gartner had predicted the success of ERP packaged solutions and specially SAP's leadership position. Everything predicted has turned out to be very accurate.
Now Gartner has given their predictions of which vendors will succeed, which technologies will rise and fall. I am giving below, my observations. If you would like to read the full report, then send me a message. I don't know if I am allowed to share it with you, but probably we will be able to figure out a way.
1) Rise and Fall of SAP BW: SAP Business Warehouse was never very easy to use (like every other SAP product!) I had my share of pain at THQ BW project. Generally you start a BW project with a pilot and then initial implementation and then again modify and re-implement and again and again until after 3/4 years you get your users to give up asking any more changes. The you propose SEM will solve all your problems. When SEM does not solve all problems you keep hoping SAP will do something. And SAP gave new hopes in the form of Business Objects. SAP Customers are already disgusted by SAP's demand for increase in annual maintenance fee from 16% to 23% every year. On top of that increase, now SAP is asking all customers to dump their investment in SAP BW and buy Business Objects licenses and consulting. If you are one of these customers, then please let me know, how you are dealing with this.
2) Mergers and Acquisitions: We are now realizing that for our careers we need to add BI to our ERP but the ERP vendors had realized that BI is a way to go forward to survive in this market 2 years ago. Small independent BI vendors were gobbled by big ERP vendors. The leaders Business Objects was acquired by SAP, Hyperion by Oracle, Cognos by IBM. There are other BI vendors waiting to get bought out. QlikView is one of them, but we will talk more a little later.
3) In-Memory Analytics: This is a new technology for BI solutions. (whitepapers.technologyevaluation.com/.../In-memory-Analytics-Leveraging-Emerging-Technologies-for-Business-Intelligence.pdf) The main driver for this new technology is the introduction of 64 bit PCs and Operating Systems (Windows 7 and Vista) in the market. Now you can have RAM in excess of 4GB and practically, bring the entire R/3 or ECC6 database into RAM for generating reports. We had to spend all our energy to convert those normalized RDBMS databases from ERP to datawarehouse tables just to make it fast to extract reports. Now if we can bring the entire database in memory the report extraction even from the same ERP tables will not be too time consuming. All BI vendors recognize potential of this new technology. Microsoft came out with PowerPivot an add on to the world's most popular BI tool, the Excel! It also integrates with Sharepoint, making it a corporate level 'in-memory' BI tool. Business Object has Xcelsious. Even, SAP's BW on it's death bed is providing an in-memory add-on specially for large planning scenarios!
4) BI comes to SME: BI used to be an expensive complex project and usually considered necessary only for very large enterprises. But now, it appears that BI will be popular with SMEs as well.
Finally, like me there are many others who blog and offer advice for free. Check out this blog about status of BI technology and Gartner's report. http://www.dbms2.com/2009/01/22/gartners-2009-magic-quadrant-for-business-intelligence/
Ok. So today, I started blogging about this Gartener report and could never get to the main topic, "How do I get this intelligence called BI ?"
Let's do it next time.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Getting Started
Just when I was trying to register the blog name, I find the name "LearningERP" is already taken. No wonder! So now my blog is LearningERP-erplabs.blogspot.com. It becomes a long name but just save the link in favorites.
Today, let me start with our final goal of learning ERP - find a job! Agreed? About this job situation, I came across this article on SAP Developer Network (SDN) by Jon Reed - a self proclaimed SAP careers Guru and has a lot of clout in the SAP world. Check his article out at http://www.sdn.sap.com//irj/scn/index?rid=/library/uuid/c0332281-dff2-2c10-b8ac-f18ad3a598f1. You may need to log in. If you are still not a member of SDN then please register. It's free and there is so much free, in-depth knowledge from real experts. If you want to be in the SAP world then you have to be a part of this elite community of SAP experts. If you just want me to send you the .pdf files of this 2 part document, just shoot me an email message.
Jon Reed's assessment is not very encouraging. He talks about the need for mastery over an area. When we are looking for our students the entry level jobs, how can we think of mastery from the very first job. Of course, there is nothing new that we did not know. Employers are looking for people with deep specializations. Just MM, FI or SD certification is not enough. They want someone with IS Retail, IS Utilities, just the pricing engine within SD, Performance Management with BI space and this type deep specialization in narrow area.
In 1996 when I came to US, if you had some where some time some type of exposure to SAP, it was enough to get a job. Within 2 years, recruiters were demanding minimum one end-to-end project experience, but knowledge of any one module was adequate. By 2001, you had to know more than one module and more than one end-to-end projects. Even until last year, Canada HRD would provide funding for EI recipients for 3 modules training, assuming that 3 modules training is enough to find a job. But I guess, not enough anymore. In addition to 3 modules, you also need deep knowledge of a narrow specialization area.
Jon Reed talks about Business Objects career strategy. Many if you got your BW certification in addition to a core module (MM,SD,FI). But now just BW certification is not enough. Now you got to know Business Objects in BI space. Just last week, I was talking to Praveen of IIBS. He tells me that BOBJ certifications are quite in-expensive - just 100 dollars (compare that with SAP's about $700 per attempt) and you can take the test anyday at IIBS office in Missisuaga.
At WSC, we are planning another strategy - "QlikView training in BI to complement any of your present SAP modules knowledge".
Christina has already blessed the plan for QV training and project at WSC. We are starting QV training for core team of staff today and will start QV project for clients by beginning May. Everyone at WSC is excited about this project. Let's see, how far we can help in converting it into real jobs.
QlikView is called "in-memory" Business Intelligence product. This is the most latest technology in BI space. I will blog about it in future, but for now in case you are interested in knowing more about it check out Qlikview website at http://www.qlikview.com/us/explore
I plan to blog all about my ERP training activities at WSC, BRASI, BIMTECH, QlikView, IEC and all those places in the world where something interesting is happening.
I look forward to meeting you frequently here.
with all the best wishes for your careers!
Ashok
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