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ERP Special technology report


integrated with modern


Andy Latham, managing director


Business Technology Group


technologies, so the effort in deploying and maintaining systems increases,” he said. Bull added that the cost of ownership of a system is not just a measure of the cost of the software, it is also the cost of maintaining it. “To


this end, ERP systems must become more focused on the ease of deployment in complex connected topographies,” he insisted. “It must be easy to define and maintain security profiles, it must be easy to connect to reporting and business intelligence tools, and it must be easy to maintain workflow and alerting tools.” But perhaps most importantly of all, in Bull’s view, is that, given that the most visionary ERP vendors invest huge sums of money in development of new versions of their systems, the system must be easy to upgrade and keep up to date.


Richard Turner, ERP solutions director at CSC, considers that one of the recent key talking points has been Oracle’s move to the new R12 E-Business Suite. “This has been due to the announcement that from November 2011 there will be an increase of 20 per cent in support costs for prior releases, and final legislative patches will be released March 2013,” explained Turner. He added that the Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Release 12 is a major new addition to the market, with significant changes in data model and functionality, especially in the Financials product area. “It introduces centralised functionality to handle accounting, taxation, access to data across organisations and offers more flexible implementation options than were available in Release 11i,” he said, pointing out that this is in order to meet today’s wider variety of business needs.


This Oracle development has focused on improving the ability of EBS to better manage complex global businesses, said Turner;


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especially where organisations are centralising their applications into a shared service environment. Indeed, the roll-call of additional benefits looks impressive – 18 new products, 400 new features and almost 2500 enhancements. Typically, states Turner, CSC has found that its customers have explained to the company that they want to upgrade in order to:


• Gain access to new functionality and software applications that can help keep their organisations well positioned to meet key business objectives.


• Leverage new and advanced functionality ‘out-of-the-box’ solutions with lower maintenance.


• Facilitate regulatory compliance at a lower cost through retiring customisations.


• Be able to implement new modules to manage additional business processes.


• Leverage the latest usability enhancements.


• Reduce Total Cost of Ownership – rationalise licence/hardware.


• Enable shared service centre capability. “


while reducing complexity across the enterprise without hindering future growth opportunities,” he said.


‘Green’ incentives According to James Norwood, senior vice president of product marketing at Epicor, one key area is carbon accounting. “The environment and reduction of carbon consumption has been talked about for generations,” he said, “but in the last ten years huge strides have been made by governments in the way they legislate on this area, and provide incentives for businesses to demonstrate their own reductions.” In the UK, Norwood points to programmes such as the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, which have accelerated the need for organisations to report accurately on their use of carbon throughout the business. “This is extremely complicated to do,” said Norwood, “but making it an integral part of enterprise-wide systems, such as Epicor, can remove a lot of the headache, improving governance and reducing risk.”


With the increasing use and availability of mobile phones, iPads and


iPhones, users are expecting to have company information at their fingertips when out and about with customers and suppliers alike.” – Andy Latham, K3 Business Technology Group.


From Turner’s perspective, there are a number of key drivers for these changes. For example, there are finance organisations slowly moving towards becoming a strategic partner to the business over the past decade. There is also the reality of globalisation, which is pushing organisations towards centralisation and standardisation. This, says Turner, is resulting in simplification in order to compete and react swiftly to changes in business, markets and regulatory and security needs, or to locate goods and services in lower cost markets. Additionally, Turner’s view is that the recession has driven business executives to look for ways to cut costs and IT budgets. “This has created an opportunity to challenge mind sets about managing operations, finance operations and practices in a bid to drive efficiency and productivity


Jonathan Orme, sales operations manager at Exel Computer Systems, observes that more and more companies now demand browser-based ERP solutions from their system providers. “These businesses,” he said, “are looking to continually increase productivity by allowing users remote connectivity to their operations, and this requires data to be available at all times to all users, anywhere.” Orme added that the ability to access business systems worldwide, without the need to load client software, is now a necessity for any business.


Orme also considers that developments in mobile communication infrastructure have seen an increased demand for mobile computing. “No longer is it sufficient to receive emails on PDA, mobile phones or tablets,” he said. “Companies now demand


March 2011


MANUFACTURING &LOGISTICS


IT 11


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