Lawson Software-IPO and Several Acquisitions After Part Three: Market Impact
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Lean Asset Management--Is Preventive Maintenance Anti-Lean?
Lean manufacturing has been widely accepted as an approach to business improvement. The business benefits of lean have been extensively documented. Asset management should play a role in lean.
Lean manufacturing's focus is eliminating waste, for example:
* Inventory—Inventory must always be minimized.
* Defect correction—Resources spent on defect correction are waste.
* Unnecessary processing—All unnecessary activities, particularly non-value-adding ones, are to be avoided.
* Unnecessary motion—Materials and work in progress (WIP) should follow a minimal path through the factory.
* Transport—Transport of materials should simply be avoided. Time in transport does not add value.
* Waiting—WIP is to be minimized.
* Overproduction—Produce only if there is a customer demand
The Roll of Asset Reliability in Waste Reduction
Asset reliability can contribute to reducing waste in many of these areas. To reduce waste, assets must perform as expected and when expected. This means that failure must be redefined to mean an asset is unable to meet business objectives. The business objectives of the asset include running at the expected rate, producing product within the expected quality standards, and being ready when it is needed for production. If an asset does not meet these objectives, it has failed.
How can reliability eliminate waste? Machines that are reliable produce less scrap and product that is within specification eliminating the cause of defect correction. Equipment must be ready to run when demand is presented.
Preventive Maintenance Is Anti-Lean
Asset management systems have used the concept of preventive maintenance for years as a strategy to avoid unplanned downtime. Preventive maintenance uses time-based rules to determine when a specific maintenance task should be performed to avoid unplanned downtime. The unit of time is days, weeks, or months or a number of cycles of the asset (every 100,000 pieces, for example). Preventive maintenance has proven that it can lower unplanned downtime. But, applying the principles of lean tells us that unnecessary maintenance is waste. Just like inventory not needed at this time is waste, maintenance tasks done before they are required are also a waste.
When preventive maintenance tells us it is time to perform a maintenance routine, the question is, could we have waited or eliminated this routine without a negative impact on the asset's ability to meet the business objectives? We cannot know what would have happened after the preventive maintenance routine was performed, however, the chart below reviews the business aspects of preventive maintenance by showing a series of situations for a specific asset.
Since the preventive maintenance trigger points are set to minimize or eliminate unplanned downtime, they are conservative by nature. This means that the majority of preventive maintenance efforts are "too soon", creating an excess maintenance expense or a maintenance waste. Therefore, preventive maintenance is anti-lean. To provide lean maintenance, how can we plan maintenance to both avoid unplanned failures and minimize the its cost?
Failure analysis reveals how assets fail and why. Numerous studies tell us that the majority—80 percent—of failures are not time based. The reason for failure is most often not time, and for most assets, there are numerous ways that it can fail. The concept of reliability centered maintenance (RCM), which has been proven since the 1960s, is one methodology for understanding an asset's potential for failure. This concept is based upon determining how assets fail, why each failure type occurs, and the symptoms that indicate potential failure.
Understanding failures can also reveal the right work to be performed based upon the specific symptoms. By monitoring the asset with this view, we can detect the symptoms of failure and react to the symptoms with the right work. The result, as found in the airline industry, is assets that are less likely to fail and that require far lower maintenance expenditures.
It takes money to monitor the health of an asset. Monitoring means inspections, sensors, and enormous amounts of information that must be gathered and analyzed. The cost of monitoring the health of the asset, the cost of failure, and the cost of maintenance operations must be evaluated on an asset by asset basis. This analysis reveals that RCM is not the most appropriate for all assets. Other less rigorous methodologies exist.
Determining the Right Maintenance Strategy
How can we determine the right maintenance strategy for a specific asset? To meet the objectives of lean, we need to evaluate the cost of failure in terms of both not meeting business objectives and any extra cost due to the need for unplanned or even emergency repairs. We must also understand the cost of maintenance for the asset. Comparing these to dimensions gives us three alternatives maintenance strategies.
If both the cost of failure and the cost of maintenance are low, we can use the strategy of simply fixing the asset when it fails. If the cost of failure is low but the cost of maintenance is high, we need to minimize the amount of maintenance required and this may be best done by waiting for the asset to fail before we expend any maintenance cost. Where the cost of failure is high and the cost of maintenance is low, we need to be more proactive and accept more maintenance cost in order to insure that the asset will not fail. Here, a time-based preventive maintenance strategy works well. If both the cost of failure and the cost of maintenance are high, we need to use RCM concepts and manage the health of the asset to avoid failures while minimizing the maintenance cost.
Reliability software enables us to manage asset health effectively and efficiently (lean), monitoring the condition of assets using a combination of time based condition inspections and automated or on-line predictive and condition technologies. It is critical to be able to pull together all of the sources of condition data, analyze the data to determine the true health of an asset—and then recommend the right maintenance work to do based on the current condition. This is how the lean principle is applied to maintenance—focusing on asset reliability and using technology to enable us to achieve optimal levels of reliability at the lowest cost.
Summary
Lean is a proven approach to improving a business. Asset reliability can and must contribute to lean asset management by minimizing waste. Maintenance can help eliminate a number of different causes of waste by maintaining assets to do what is expected and when. Lean concepts and the elimination of waste can also be applied to maintenance. Lean concepts can help us delivery lowered maintenance cost and increased effectiveness. Asset reliability can drive lean maintenance concepts.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/lean-asset-management-is-preventive-maintenance-anti-lean-17677/
Lean manufacturing's focus is eliminating waste, for example:
* Inventory—Inventory must always be minimized.
* Defect correction—Resources spent on defect correction are waste.
* Unnecessary processing—All unnecessary activities, particularly non-value-adding ones, are to be avoided.
* Unnecessary motion—Materials and work in progress (WIP) should follow a minimal path through the factory.
* Transport—Transport of materials should simply be avoided. Time in transport does not add value.
* Waiting—WIP is to be minimized.
* Overproduction—Produce only if there is a customer demand
The Roll of Asset Reliability in Waste Reduction
Asset reliability can contribute to reducing waste in many of these areas. To reduce waste, assets must perform as expected and when expected. This means that failure must be redefined to mean an asset is unable to meet business objectives. The business objectives of the asset include running at the expected rate, producing product within the expected quality standards, and being ready when it is needed for production. If an asset does not meet these objectives, it has failed.
How can reliability eliminate waste? Machines that are reliable produce less scrap and product that is within specification eliminating the cause of defect correction. Equipment must be ready to run when demand is presented.
Preventive Maintenance Is Anti-Lean
Asset management systems have used the concept of preventive maintenance for years as a strategy to avoid unplanned downtime. Preventive maintenance uses time-based rules to determine when a specific maintenance task should be performed to avoid unplanned downtime. The unit of time is days, weeks, or months or a number of cycles of the asset (every 100,000 pieces, for example). Preventive maintenance has proven that it can lower unplanned downtime. But, applying the principles of lean tells us that unnecessary maintenance is waste. Just like inventory not needed at this time is waste, maintenance tasks done before they are required are also a waste.
When preventive maintenance tells us it is time to perform a maintenance routine, the question is, could we have waited or eliminated this routine without a negative impact on the asset's ability to meet the business objectives? We cannot know what would have happened after the preventive maintenance routine was performed, however, the chart below reviews the business aspects of preventive maintenance by showing a series of situations for a specific asset.
Since the preventive maintenance trigger points are set to minimize or eliminate unplanned downtime, they are conservative by nature. This means that the majority of preventive maintenance efforts are "too soon", creating an excess maintenance expense or a maintenance waste. Therefore, preventive maintenance is anti-lean. To provide lean maintenance, how can we plan maintenance to both avoid unplanned failures and minimize the its cost?
Failure analysis reveals how assets fail and why. Numerous studies tell us that the majority—80 percent—of failures are not time based. The reason for failure is most often not time, and for most assets, there are numerous ways that it can fail. The concept of reliability centered maintenance (RCM), which has been proven since the 1960s, is one methodology for understanding an asset's potential for failure. This concept is based upon determining how assets fail, why each failure type occurs, and the symptoms that indicate potential failure.
Understanding failures can also reveal the right work to be performed based upon the specific symptoms. By monitoring the asset with this view, we can detect the symptoms of failure and react to the symptoms with the right work. The result, as found in the airline industry, is assets that are less likely to fail and that require far lower maintenance expenditures.
It takes money to monitor the health of an asset. Monitoring means inspections, sensors, and enormous amounts of information that must be gathered and analyzed. The cost of monitoring the health of the asset, the cost of failure, and the cost of maintenance operations must be evaluated on an asset by asset basis. This analysis reveals that RCM is not the most appropriate for all assets. Other less rigorous methodologies exist.
Determining the Right Maintenance Strategy
How can we determine the right maintenance strategy for a specific asset? To meet the objectives of lean, we need to evaluate the cost of failure in terms of both not meeting business objectives and any extra cost due to the need for unplanned or even emergency repairs. We must also understand the cost of maintenance for the asset. Comparing these to dimensions gives us three alternatives maintenance strategies.
If both the cost of failure and the cost of maintenance are low, we can use the strategy of simply fixing the asset when it fails. If the cost of failure is low but the cost of maintenance is high, we need to minimize the amount of maintenance required and this may be best done by waiting for the asset to fail before we expend any maintenance cost. Where the cost of failure is high and the cost of maintenance is low, we need to be more proactive and accept more maintenance cost in order to insure that the asset will not fail. Here, a time-based preventive maintenance strategy works well. If both the cost of failure and the cost of maintenance are high, we need to use RCM concepts and manage the health of the asset to avoid failures while minimizing the maintenance cost.
Reliability software enables us to manage asset health effectively and efficiently (lean), monitoring the condition of assets using a combination of time based condition inspections and automated or on-line predictive and condition technologies. It is critical to be able to pull together all of the sources of condition data, analyze the data to determine the true health of an asset—and then recommend the right maintenance work to do based on the current condition. This is how the lean principle is applied to maintenance—focusing on asset reliability and using technology to enable us to achieve optimal levels of reliability at the lowest cost.
Summary
Lean is a proven approach to improving a business. Asset reliability can and must contribute to lean asset management by minimizing waste. Maintenance can help eliminate a number of different causes of waste by maintaining assets to do what is expected and when. Lean concepts and the elimination of waste can also be applied to maintenance. Lean concepts can help us delivery lowered maintenance cost and increased effectiveness. Asset reliability can drive lean maintenance concepts.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/lean-asset-management-is-preventive-maintenance-anti-lean-17677/
11:58 PM | | 0 Comments
How a Leading Vendor Embraces Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance
How a Leading Vendor Embraces Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance
Rather than complying with the growing number of legal and regulatory requirements in a reactive manner from the bottom up, more and more, enterprises are realizing the value of taking a holistic approach to regulatory compliance from top down. To that end, enterprises are beginning to harness the emerging strategic software category of governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC).
This new three letter acronym (TLA) has already earned a posting at Wikipedia. Some analysts have come up with meaningful definitions thereof, while leading vendors are on their way to delivering coherent GRC solution suites. For an extensive exploration of GRC, please see the following article series: Thou Shalt Comply (and More), or Else: Looking at Sarbanes-Oxley , Important Sarbanes-Oxley Act Mandates and What They Mean for Supply Chain Management, The Sarbanes-Oxley Act May Be Just the Tip of a Compliance Iceberg, Automotive Industry and Food, Safety, and Drug Regulations, "Evergreen"—Environmental Regulations for High-tech and Electronics, Chemical, and Oil and Gas Industries, Global Trade and the Role of Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance Software, The Challenges of Defining and Managing Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance, and Process-based Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance.
SAP AG is one leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendor that is seriously looking at providing enterprises with the necessary software to support GRC. While the vendor does not necessarily have a solution for each and every possible requirement (such as employee training, tracking and certification, or regulatory reporting in tune with every possible localized law), SAP nonetheless leads the market with its SAP Environment, Health & Safety (SAP EH&S) application suite.
This suite's central database makes it much easier to manage product safety specifications, hazardous substance inventories, and dangerous goods for safe handling, tracking, document management, and risk calculation (see SAP for Chemicals Functionality). Users can also create permits for hazardous waste and ensure that authorized waste quantities are not exceeded by selecting suitable disposal firms and by allocating disposal costs among internal departments. The product also supports the full range of industrial hygiene and safety processes, and centrally manages core tasks such as risk assessments, exposure logs, incident management, exposure profiles, and safety management of specific work areas.
* Emissions management—by leveraging tools for emissions monitoring, compliance tracking, and regulatory reporting including greenhouse gas monitoring, allowance management, and National Allocation Plan (NAP) reporting and trading. SAP xApp xEM tracks, analyzes, and records emission data. The solution's integration with plant and equipment maintenance systems supports equipment calibration and maintenance tasks, since sophisticated tools calculate emissions (such as greenhouse gases) that cannot be measured directly. When a reference value exceeds normal plant values for operations, automatic notifications are fired off to determine the impact and trigger changes necessary to correct operations. The reporting functionality in SAP xApp xEM helps toward fulfilling legal requirements for documentation and reporting to regulatory authorities.
* Compliance management—to operate facilities and manage processes according to relevant regulations, with capabilities for data monitoring, task monitoring, exception tracking, incident management, and reporting. Both compliance and emissions management have to support information flow across the user enterprise, enabling the enterprise to maintain compliance status; monitor and control plant facilities and permits, including emissions permits; track performance benchmarks; and communicate with key stakeholders.
* Permit management—the process of applying for and obtaining the appropriate licenses and permits, with capabilities for application management, change management, and reporting.
* Chemicals safety management—to provide information on product safety, dangerous goods, and labeling to international markets, allowing companies to control global business processes. This also enables companies to save resources in procurement; in exchanging substance and recipe information; in categorization; and in authoring the required documentation of customers or personnel, such as safety data sheets (SDS), transport emergency cards (or tremcards [TM]), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's right to know (OSHA RTK) information, and labels.
* Environmental health and safety (EH&S) surveillance—to enable enterprises to deal with increasing legislative pressure in the areas of industrial hygiene and safety, occupational health care, and hazardous substance management, thereby facilitating cross-company and interdepartmental cooperation.
* Environmental product compliance (EPC)—to provide capabilities for compliant product design and to help avoid risk in the supply chain. EPC supports collaboration with suppliers, partners, and customers. The software collects, organizes, analyzes, and evaluates data about various products, factories, suppliers, countries, and customers. Such information is needed to provide proof of compliance with environmental directives that regulate the development, manufacture, distribution, disposal, or recycling of products. The software documents product content and regulatory or sector-specific substances lists; integrates compliance checks and analyses with central business processes; and automates communications with customers and suppliers. For example, when a product is being checked for compliance with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, the solution verifies that all the necessary information (such as the lead content of a supplied part, for instance) is in place. If this data has not been provided, the solution automatically requests the supplier's manufacturing department to disclose the exact lead weight percentage of the product, and notifies the user when the supplier has provided the data.
SAP's Commitment to GRC
As indicated with the SAP Global Trade Services (SAP GTS) and SAP xApp xEM examples, SAP, the largest of enterprise application providers, has long committed to placing compliance at the core of its broad suite of products. This is because the vendor has recognized the growing role of enterprise systems in assisting user companies to meet the increasing challenges of corporate compliance and risk management. Customers are looking for potent compliance solutions that work across heterogeneous information technology (IT) environments to reduce risk and cost, as well as provide improved business control.
By embedding compliance into all pertinent business processes, SAP hopes to make compliance repeatable, sustainable, and less costly for companies of all sizes in all industry segments. To that end, it has long espoused a number of individual tools and modules, such as SAP Audit Information System (SAP AIS), SAP Strategic Enterprise Management (SAP SEM), SAP Records Management (SAP RM), and SAP Management of Internal Controls (SAP MIC).
As an example, SAP MIC's aim has been to support a best-practice system to document and test internal checks and auditing. As a core component of mySAP ERP, it contains functions for data analysis and reporting, as well as financial and risk management. The solution also ensures that all financial processes comply with the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) requirements.
Another component that has been serving some complex compliance requirements (such as EH&S) very well is master data management (MDM). This is especially true in light of globally dispersed supply chains, but the need for product quality, specifications consistency, and brand protection have also been parts of SAP's platform (see SAP Bolsters NetWeaver's MDM Capabilities).
This GRC offering, which until recently was largely fragmented, has been helped by a number of partner point solutions. Key software and technology partners integrate applications through the service-oriented architecture (SOA)- and business performance management (BPM)-enabled SAP NetWeaver platform to provide the much needed transparency over the extended GRC ecosystem (see Multipurpose SAP NetWeaver).
A few years back, SAP stated its strategy to use "fill-in" acquisitions to add to its broad solution offerings by gaining specific technologies and capabilities that meet the needs of its customers—within or across industries. To that end, in addition to the above mentioned SAP xApp xEM, VitalSprings Technologies also released the VSxApp risk management composite application. This solution is designed to work with back-office systems to integrate human resources (HR), payroll, and financial applications in order to address specific health care benefits and the financial impact that health care plans might have on businesses.
Also based on the NetWeaver technology, key performance indicators (KPIs) integrate both SAP and non-SAP data to enable the creation of what-if scenarios based on company information and parameters from payers. This allows employers to calculate health benefit expenses and to ultimately negotiate better health plan rates. Similar alliance examples include Approva, Security Weaver, Atrion International, ArisGlobal, and ACL, to name only some.
SAP has "opened up" the content portion of its EH&S offering, thereby allowing multiple vendors to provide key information that might lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the system. Atrion International was the first vendor to be certified under SAP EH&S Open Content Connector (OCC) certification program in mid-2005. The EH&S OCC is an open, extensible markup language (XML)-based interface to load external content into SAP EH&S specification databases. To that end, Atrion provides a full range of content (data, rules, phrases, forms, and pictograms) to SAP EH&S clients, allowing them to address global regulatory requirements.
Leapfrogging via Acquisition?
After initially dabbling with the development of native SOX compliance solutions, the real quantum leap in SAP's corporate compliance and risk management foray has been the acquisition of a long-term partner in mid-2006. Virsa Systems, Inc., a former privately held supplier (in part by SAP Ventures, as a matter of interest) of cross-enterprise compliance solutions, was founded in 1996 and headquartered in Fremont, California (US). At the time of the acquisition, Virsa had more than 300 enterprise customers and more than 2.5 million users (many of which were Global 1000 companies) across all major vertical market segments. The company also employed nearly 250 people and had offices throughout the US, as well as in the United Kingdom (UK), Germany, India, and Australia.
SAP has since continued operations in these offices, and Virsa employees have become part of SAP America, as well as the worldwide network of SAP Labs, thereby providing talent, domain expertise, intellectual capital, and experience for many SAP customers. Acquired Virsa applications included
* Virsa Compliance Calibrator—supports rule-based compliance with the idea to stop security and controls violations before they occur. To that end, with a comprehensive library of segregation of duties (SoD) rules available for enterprise applications from SAP, Oracle, and PeopleSoft, the application facilitates the deployment of rules applicable to the user organization for business-process owners, and eliminates risks from enterprise applications.
* Virsa Access Enforcer—supports compliant user provisioning across applications throughout the employee life cycle, whereby guided, multistep procedures automate approval processes and enforce mandatory, embedded risk assessments prior to provisioning users to enterprise applications. Leveraging the Web-based application's dynamic workflow functions, users can automate complex approval processes as well as prevent risks from entering production environments by performing real-time analysis on proposed user access.
* Virsa Role Expert—centralizes and standardizes enterprise-wide role management, thereby eliminating manual errors; provides an audit trail for changes; and enforces best practices. Business managers can define functional roles, and IT managers can define the associated technical permissions. Embedded within an ERP system, the product allows administrators to define which transactions and objects are necessary to create a role in the system.
* Virsa FireFighter—helps super-users perform emergency activities outside the parameters of their normal roles, but within a controlled (that is, in tandem with authorizations, data, and access restrictions), fully auditable environment. To that end, it creates a temporary ID that grants the eligible super-user broad yet regulated access, and tracks and logs every activity the super-user performs using that temporary ID.
Apparently, Virsa was once the provider of compliance solutions that monitor and enforce business controls in real time across enterprise systems and legacy applications. Virsa solutions have been helping customers maintain continuous compliance with SOX, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), and other regulations by enabling these users to embed automated control design, testing, and enforcement directly into their business processes. Even before the acquisition, SAP and Virsa enjoyed a successful relationship at three levels:
1. Technology—since Virsa solutions were designed and delivered on the SAP NetWeaver platform, making Virsa one of the more than 1,000 independent software vendors (ISVs) that have reportedly committed to building and marketing solutions on the renowned platform.
2. Go-to-market—since SAP and Virsa had been closely aligned in joint marketing, sales, and product development activities. Since March 2005, SAP had been reselling Virsa's flagship product, Compliance Calibrator, as an add-on to mySAP ERP, and in the one-year period since that agreement was announced, SAP and Virsa have reportedly partnered on more than 150 customer wins. Additionally, SAP Ventures was an investor in Virsa, as noted earlier on.
3. Customer and vendor—since SAP had one of the largest global deployments of Virsa's Compliance Calibrator and Access Enforcer, with more than 40,000 users around the world.
Thus, the acquisition of Virsa by SAP was expected to deliver value by providing compliance solutions that are workable in heterogeneous IT environments, possibly making SAP solutions even more attractive for prospective customers on a global basis. With the aim of helping companies to make GRC an integral part of their businesses and IT strategies, SAP has further realized the need to form a dedicated unit that will leverage its expertise and existing software for far wider-reaching compliance requirements beyond SOX in the US. The vendor also realizes this need because there are currently more than 1,000 companies worldwide that use SAP point solutions for GRC.
Other such notable applications are, for example, SAP GTS, which helps companies across diverse industries to manage international trade compliance challenges, as well as solutions for distinct industry demands. Such demands include emissions standards in the chemicals and utilities sectors; Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirements for pharmaceutical companies; and Basel II for the banking sector.
This is part one of the two-part article How a Leading Vendor Embraces Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance. In part two, SAP's GRC product suite will be discussed in more detail, and speculation will be made on the product suite's potential for success within the vendor's current and prospective customer base.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/how-a-leading-vendor-embraces-governance-risk-management-and-compliance-18976/
Rather than complying with the growing number of legal and regulatory requirements in a reactive manner from the bottom up, more and more, enterprises are realizing the value of taking a holistic approach to regulatory compliance from top down. To that end, enterprises are beginning to harness the emerging strategic software category of governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC).
This new three letter acronym (TLA) has already earned a posting at Wikipedia. Some analysts have come up with meaningful definitions thereof, while leading vendors are on their way to delivering coherent GRC solution suites. For an extensive exploration of GRC, please see the following article series: Thou Shalt Comply (and More), or Else: Looking at Sarbanes-Oxley , Important Sarbanes-Oxley Act Mandates and What They Mean for Supply Chain Management, The Sarbanes-Oxley Act May Be Just the Tip of a Compliance Iceberg, Automotive Industry and Food, Safety, and Drug Regulations, "Evergreen"—Environmental Regulations for High-tech and Electronics, Chemical, and Oil and Gas Industries, Global Trade and the Role of Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance Software, The Challenges of Defining and Managing Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance, and Process-based Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance.
SAP AG is one leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendor that is seriously looking at providing enterprises with the necessary software to support GRC. While the vendor does not necessarily have a solution for each and every possible requirement (such as employee training, tracking and certification, or regulatory reporting in tune with every possible localized law), SAP nonetheless leads the market with its SAP Environment, Health & Safety (SAP EH&S) application suite.
This suite's central database makes it much easier to manage product safety specifications, hazardous substance inventories, and dangerous goods for safe handling, tracking, document management, and risk calculation (see SAP for Chemicals Functionality). Users can also create permits for hazardous waste and ensure that authorized waste quantities are not exceeded by selecting suitable disposal firms and by allocating disposal costs among internal departments. The product also supports the full range of industrial hygiene and safety processes, and centrally manages core tasks such as risk assessments, exposure logs, incident management, exposure profiles, and safety management of specific work areas.
* Emissions management—by leveraging tools for emissions monitoring, compliance tracking, and regulatory reporting including greenhouse gas monitoring, allowance management, and National Allocation Plan (NAP) reporting and trading. SAP xApp xEM tracks, analyzes, and records emission data. The solution's integration with plant and equipment maintenance systems supports equipment calibration and maintenance tasks, since sophisticated tools calculate emissions (such as greenhouse gases) that cannot be measured directly. When a reference value exceeds normal plant values for operations, automatic notifications are fired off to determine the impact and trigger changes necessary to correct operations. The reporting functionality in SAP xApp xEM helps toward fulfilling legal requirements for documentation and reporting to regulatory authorities.
* Compliance management—to operate facilities and manage processes according to relevant regulations, with capabilities for data monitoring, task monitoring, exception tracking, incident management, and reporting. Both compliance and emissions management have to support information flow across the user enterprise, enabling the enterprise to maintain compliance status; monitor and control plant facilities and permits, including emissions permits; track performance benchmarks; and communicate with key stakeholders.
* Permit management—the process of applying for and obtaining the appropriate licenses and permits, with capabilities for application management, change management, and reporting.
* Chemicals safety management—to provide information on product safety, dangerous goods, and labeling to international markets, allowing companies to control global business processes. This also enables companies to save resources in procurement; in exchanging substance and recipe information; in categorization; and in authoring the required documentation of customers or personnel, such as safety data sheets (SDS), transport emergency cards (or tremcards [TM]), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's right to know (OSHA RTK) information, and labels.
* Environmental health and safety (EH&S) surveillance—to enable enterprises to deal with increasing legislative pressure in the areas of industrial hygiene and safety, occupational health care, and hazardous substance management, thereby facilitating cross-company and interdepartmental cooperation.
* Environmental product compliance (EPC)—to provide capabilities for compliant product design and to help avoid risk in the supply chain. EPC supports collaboration with suppliers, partners, and customers. The software collects, organizes, analyzes, and evaluates data about various products, factories, suppliers, countries, and customers. Such information is needed to provide proof of compliance with environmental directives that regulate the development, manufacture, distribution, disposal, or recycling of products. The software documents product content and regulatory or sector-specific substances lists; integrates compliance checks and analyses with central business processes; and automates communications with customers and suppliers. For example, when a product is being checked for compliance with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, the solution verifies that all the necessary information (such as the lead content of a supplied part, for instance) is in place. If this data has not been provided, the solution automatically requests the supplier's manufacturing department to disclose the exact lead weight percentage of the product, and notifies the user when the supplier has provided the data.
SAP's Commitment to GRC
As indicated with the SAP Global Trade Services (SAP GTS) and SAP xApp xEM examples, SAP, the largest of enterprise application providers, has long committed to placing compliance at the core of its broad suite of products. This is because the vendor has recognized the growing role of enterprise systems in assisting user companies to meet the increasing challenges of corporate compliance and risk management. Customers are looking for potent compliance solutions that work across heterogeneous information technology (IT) environments to reduce risk and cost, as well as provide improved business control.
By embedding compliance into all pertinent business processes, SAP hopes to make compliance repeatable, sustainable, and less costly for companies of all sizes in all industry segments. To that end, it has long espoused a number of individual tools and modules, such as SAP Audit Information System (SAP AIS), SAP Strategic Enterprise Management (SAP SEM), SAP Records Management (SAP RM), and SAP Management of Internal Controls (SAP MIC).
As an example, SAP MIC's aim has been to support a best-practice system to document and test internal checks and auditing. As a core component of mySAP ERP, it contains functions for data analysis and reporting, as well as financial and risk management. The solution also ensures that all financial processes comply with the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) requirements.
Another component that has been serving some complex compliance requirements (such as EH&S) very well is master data management (MDM). This is especially true in light of globally dispersed supply chains, but the need for product quality, specifications consistency, and brand protection have also been parts of SAP's platform (see SAP Bolsters NetWeaver's MDM Capabilities).
This GRC offering, which until recently was largely fragmented, has been helped by a number of partner point solutions. Key software and technology partners integrate applications through the service-oriented architecture (SOA)- and business performance management (BPM)-enabled SAP NetWeaver platform to provide the much needed transparency over the extended GRC ecosystem (see Multipurpose SAP NetWeaver).
A few years back, SAP stated its strategy to use "fill-in" acquisitions to add to its broad solution offerings by gaining specific technologies and capabilities that meet the needs of its customers—within or across industries. To that end, in addition to the above mentioned SAP xApp xEM, VitalSprings Technologies also released the VSxApp risk management composite application. This solution is designed to work with back-office systems to integrate human resources (HR), payroll, and financial applications in order to address specific health care benefits and the financial impact that health care plans might have on businesses.
Also based on the NetWeaver technology, key performance indicators (KPIs) integrate both SAP and non-SAP data to enable the creation of what-if scenarios based on company information and parameters from payers. This allows employers to calculate health benefit expenses and to ultimately negotiate better health plan rates. Similar alliance examples include Approva, Security Weaver, Atrion International, ArisGlobal, and ACL, to name only some.
SAP has "opened up" the content portion of its EH&S offering, thereby allowing multiple vendors to provide key information that might lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the system. Atrion International was the first vendor to be certified under SAP EH&S Open Content Connector (OCC) certification program in mid-2005. The EH&S OCC is an open, extensible markup language (XML)-based interface to load external content into SAP EH&S specification databases. To that end, Atrion provides a full range of content (data, rules, phrases, forms, and pictograms) to SAP EH&S clients, allowing them to address global regulatory requirements.
Leapfrogging via Acquisition?
After initially dabbling with the development of native SOX compliance solutions, the real quantum leap in SAP's corporate compliance and risk management foray has been the acquisition of a long-term partner in mid-2006. Virsa Systems, Inc., a former privately held supplier (in part by SAP Ventures, as a matter of interest) of cross-enterprise compliance solutions, was founded in 1996 and headquartered in Fremont, California (US). At the time of the acquisition, Virsa had more than 300 enterprise customers and more than 2.5 million users (many of which were Global 1000 companies) across all major vertical market segments. The company also employed nearly 250 people and had offices throughout the US, as well as in the United Kingdom (UK), Germany, India, and Australia.
SAP has since continued operations in these offices, and Virsa employees have become part of SAP America, as well as the worldwide network of SAP Labs, thereby providing talent, domain expertise, intellectual capital, and experience for many SAP customers. Acquired Virsa applications included
* Virsa Compliance Calibrator—supports rule-based compliance with the idea to stop security and controls violations before they occur. To that end, with a comprehensive library of segregation of duties (SoD) rules available for enterprise applications from SAP, Oracle, and PeopleSoft, the application facilitates the deployment of rules applicable to the user organization for business-process owners, and eliminates risks from enterprise applications.
* Virsa Access Enforcer—supports compliant user provisioning across applications throughout the employee life cycle, whereby guided, multistep procedures automate approval processes and enforce mandatory, embedded risk assessments prior to provisioning users to enterprise applications. Leveraging the Web-based application's dynamic workflow functions, users can automate complex approval processes as well as prevent risks from entering production environments by performing real-time analysis on proposed user access.
* Virsa Role Expert—centralizes and standardizes enterprise-wide role management, thereby eliminating manual errors; provides an audit trail for changes; and enforces best practices. Business managers can define functional roles, and IT managers can define the associated technical permissions. Embedded within an ERP system, the product allows administrators to define which transactions and objects are necessary to create a role in the system.
* Virsa FireFighter—helps super-users perform emergency activities outside the parameters of their normal roles, but within a controlled (that is, in tandem with authorizations, data, and access restrictions), fully auditable environment. To that end, it creates a temporary ID that grants the eligible super-user broad yet regulated access, and tracks and logs every activity the super-user performs using that temporary ID.
Apparently, Virsa was once the provider of compliance solutions that monitor and enforce business controls in real time across enterprise systems and legacy applications. Virsa solutions have been helping customers maintain continuous compliance with SOX, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), and other regulations by enabling these users to embed automated control design, testing, and enforcement directly into their business processes. Even before the acquisition, SAP and Virsa enjoyed a successful relationship at three levels:
1. Technology—since Virsa solutions were designed and delivered on the SAP NetWeaver platform, making Virsa one of the more than 1,000 independent software vendors (ISVs) that have reportedly committed to building and marketing solutions on the renowned platform.
2. Go-to-market—since SAP and Virsa had been closely aligned in joint marketing, sales, and product development activities. Since March 2005, SAP had been reselling Virsa's flagship product, Compliance Calibrator, as an add-on to mySAP ERP, and in the one-year period since that agreement was announced, SAP and Virsa have reportedly partnered on more than 150 customer wins. Additionally, SAP Ventures was an investor in Virsa, as noted earlier on.
3. Customer and vendor—since SAP had one of the largest global deployments of Virsa's Compliance Calibrator and Access Enforcer, with more than 40,000 users around the world.
Thus, the acquisition of Virsa by SAP was expected to deliver value by providing compliance solutions that are workable in heterogeneous IT environments, possibly making SAP solutions even more attractive for prospective customers on a global basis. With the aim of helping companies to make GRC an integral part of their businesses and IT strategies, SAP has further realized the need to form a dedicated unit that will leverage its expertise and existing software for far wider-reaching compliance requirements beyond SOX in the US. The vendor also realizes this need because there are currently more than 1,000 companies worldwide that use SAP point solutions for GRC.
Other such notable applications are, for example, SAP GTS, which helps companies across diverse industries to manage international trade compliance challenges, as well as solutions for distinct industry demands. Such demands include emissions standards in the chemicals and utilities sectors; Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirements for pharmaceutical companies; and Basel II for the banking sector.
This is part one of the two-part article How a Leading Vendor Embraces Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance. In part two, SAP's GRC product suite will be discussed in more detail, and speculation will be made on the product suite's potential for success within the vendor's current and prospective customer base.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/how-a-leading-vendor-embraces-governance-risk-management-and-compliance-18976/
11:56 PM | | 0 Comments
Do You Know Where Your Wheelchair Is?
GE Medical Systems recently announced an alliance with PinPoint Corporation, a developer of wireless locating solutions, to market an asset tracking service that locates and tracks equipment within health care facilities. The service, called IntelliMotion, will help health care providers boost productivity and provide quality patient care by facilitating access to all equipment, from biomedical equipment to wheelchairs.
As part of the distribution agreement, IntelliMotion is being offered as one of the SYNERGE services available from the Services Business of GE Medical Systems.
The service delivery technology uses special electronic tags and receivers, or antennas, throughout the facility to locate equipment and track its location. The information is linked to a network, where health care personnel can view the equipment locations on their computer desktop.
The IntelliMotion asset-tracking offering is part of GE Medical's SYNERGE services, a suite of asset services helping people, information, programs and products work together. Through a variety of offerings, including the CompreCare program, GE Medical provides equipment management and maintenance services to more than 2,000 hospitals worldwide. Under the terms of the alliance, GE Medical will market IntelliMotion to these hospitals and others globally.
Market Impact
Technology visionaries predict a world where our refrigerators will tell us when to buy milk and our spice rack orders cinnamon from the local store. The notion seems a little outlandish, but the technology and network is approaching a point where such visions will become reality.
Companies such as PinPoint and iVita (see iVita Mines Assets for Bottom Line Health) are exploring the technology involved with connecting the objects around us to the network we use everyday. The benefits are exponential. Providing companies a method for tracking, monitoring, and including product rich information will help improve efficiencies both during usage and at the end of a product's lifecycle.
User Recommendations
If your company is involved with medical equipment and can benefit from an asset management program, the GE Medical Systems solution may be worth exploring. It is important to understand the costs associated with the license, implementation, usage, and on-going administration.
While the technology is exciting (and smacks of "big brother") it is important to understand how the solution blends with existing behaviors. How easy is it to implement? Will it be difficult to affix tracking tags to each item? Will this require a new behavior for every item received? Will an "extra effort" affect your employee's acceptance of the new tool?
Again, the benefits are enormous, however the solution requires comprehensive acceptance. We suggest users explore the license and operations costs as well as the requirements to support the tracking tool.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/do-you-know-where-your-wheelchair-is-15871/
11:55 PM | | 0 Comments
The Perfect Order--Inside-Out or Outside-In?
Defining The Perfect Order
Key performance indicators (KPIs) give management a tool to judge the health of the business. While the concept has proven itself, a key question should be "what do we measure?" The Perfect Order measurement has proven to be a powerful measurement of the business. Should The Perfect Order be defined from an internal point of view or from a customer point of view inside-out or outside-in?
AMR Research (www.amrresearch.com) has done some quality work on KPIs, specifically a concept they call "The Perfect Order". AMR defines The Perfect Order as one with no errors: from order entry through shipping to collection. They treat the perfect order as a binary condition; an order is or is not perfect.
In addition to defining The Perfect Order, AMR Research has related changes in the perfect order measurement to the overall health of the business in terms of earnings per share (EPS). For example, Debra Hofman, research director of AMR Research reports that recent benchmark studies at AMR revealed that better perfect order performance is correlated with superior profit margins, return on assets, and earnings per share. At the same time, while superior perfect order performance is good, excelling at both profitability and responsiveness is even better. The companies in our study that maintain balanced excellence have 60 percent better profit margins, 65 percent better EPS, and two to three times the return on assets (ROA) of their industry peers. One of the key differentiators between leaders and laggards is the leaders' superior measurement abilities.
When we discussed The Perfect Order with several companies they indicated different views of the metric. For example, one company saw hitting the committed ship date as part of the metric, while another included the arrival of the product at the customer site on the date originally requested. While both of these definitions measure customer service, they give a good view of the difference between an inside-out definition and an outside-in definition.
The Key Question
The key question should be, what does the customer care about? We need to remember that the customer is the one who must be satisfied for the long-term health of the business. Customers want to receive product when they requested it. That means delivered to their site on the day and perhaps the time requested. Customers do not care when the product was shipped or that the supplier may have used premium transportation to get it to them on time. Yes, the customer does care that the supplier met the committed date to provide the product but if that committed date is not the requested date, some dissatisfaction may exist. The customer defines the outside-in view of KPIs
The internal view of KPIs is defined by the company's actions not the results of those actions. The action was shipping the product on schedule; the result is the arrival of the product to the customer. Shipping on time does not always result in the product arriving on time.
Other indications of customer satisfaction can be factored into KPIs. All returns and credits are indicators of customer dissatisfaction. Any invoice contested indicates customer dissatisfaction, even if the contested invoice is resolved in favor of the supplier. Late payment may or may not be a result of customer dissatisfaction (the customer may have internal issues that means not paying on time) but should be investigated for signs of dissatisfaction.
The Two Definition Approach
But will externally defined KPIs, even The Perfect Order metric, fully yield a picture of the health of the business? The answer is no. What are missing from an outside view of KPIs are internal measurements that the customer does not care about, but the business does. An inside-out Perfect Order metric looks at profitability of an order. Did the order create the need for a special effort to satisfy the customer, etc. For example, using premium shipping to get the product to the customer on time is okay with the customer but it signifies internal problems. Why was premium shipping required?
Perhaps two definitions of The Perfect Order need to exist. The first is an outside-in or customer-oriented definition that includes those elements that customers care about. The second definition should be inside-out. Included in the inside-out definition is the fact that the order was perfect from the customer's point of view, plus the impact of the order on the business; acceptable profitability, no special shipping, no special handling, no overtime, etc.
AMR Research has done some great work on defining The Perfect Order metric and linking its improvement to the bottom line. Companies should evaluate The Perfect Order and attempt to use it as their primary KPI. When designing their own Perfect Order metric, or any other metric, companies should first think of their customers. What is important to the customer is what is important to any company in both the short and long term.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/the-perfect-order-inside-out-or-outside-in-17935/
Key performance indicators (KPIs) give management a tool to judge the health of the business. While the concept has proven itself, a key question should be "what do we measure?" The Perfect Order measurement has proven to be a powerful measurement of the business. Should The Perfect Order be defined from an internal point of view or from a customer point of view inside-out or outside-in?
AMR Research (www.amrresearch.com) has done some quality work on KPIs, specifically a concept they call "The Perfect Order". AMR defines The Perfect Order as one with no errors: from order entry through shipping to collection. They treat the perfect order as a binary condition; an order is or is not perfect.
In addition to defining The Perfect Order, AMR Research has related changes in the perfect order measurement to the overall health of the business in terms of earnings per share (EPS). For example, Debra Hofman, research director of AMR Research reports that recent benchmark studies at AMR revealed that better perfect order performance is correlated with superior profit margins, return on assets, and earnings per share. At the same time, while superior perfect order performance is good, excelling at both profitability and responsiveness is even better. The companies in our study that maintain balanced excellence have 60 percent better profit margins, 65 percent better EPS, and two to three times the return on assets (ROA) of their industry peers. One of the key differentiators between leaders and laggards is the leaders' superior measurement abilities.
When we discussed The Perfect Order with several companies they indicated different views of the metric. For example, one company saw hitting the committed ship date as part of the metric, while another included the arrival of the product at the customer site on the date originally requested. While both of these definitions measure customer service, they give a good view of the difference between an inside-out definition and an outside-in definition.
The Key Question
The key question should be, what does the customer care about? We need to remember that the customer is the one who must be satisfied for the long-term health of the business. Customers want to receive product when they requested it. That means delivered to their site on the day and perhaps the time requested. Customers do not care when the product was shipped or that the supplier may have used premium transportation to get it to them on time. Yes, the customer does care that the supplier met the committed date to provide the product but if that committed date is not the requested date, some dissatisfaction may exist. The customer defines the outside-in view of KPIs
The internal view of KPIs is defined by the company's actions not the results of those actions. The action was shipping the product on schedule; the result is the arrival of the product to the customer. Shipping on time does not always result in the product arriving on time.
Other indications of customer satisfaction can be factored into KPIs. All returns and credits are indicators of customer dissatisfaction. Any invoice contested indicates customer dissatisfaction, even if the contested invoice is resolved in favor of the supplier. Late payment may or may not be a result of customer dissatisfaction (the customer may have internal issues that means not paying on time) but should be investigated for signs of dissatisfaction.
The Two Definition Approach
But will externally defined KPIs, even The Perfect Order metric, fully yield a picture of the health of the business? The answer is no. What are missing from an outside view of KPIs are internal measurements that the customer does not care about, but the business does. An inside-out Perfect Order metric looks at profitability of an order. Did the order create the need for a special effort to satisfy the customer, etc. For example, using premium shipping to get the product to the customer on time is okay with the customer but it signifies internal problems. Why was premium shipping required?
Perhaps two definitions of The Perfect Order need to exist. The first is an outside-in or customer-oriented definition that includes those elements that customers care about. The second definition should be inside-out. Included in the inside-out definition is the fact that the order was perfect from the customer's point of view, plus the impact of the order on the business; acceptable profitability, no special shipping, no special handling, no overtime, etc.
AMR Research has done some great work on defining The Perfect Order metric and linking its improvement to the bottom line. Companies should evaluate The Perfect Order and attempt to use it as their primary KPI. When designing their own Perfect Order metric, or any other metric, companies should first think of their customers. What is important to the customer is what is important to any company in both the short and long term.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/the-perfect-order-inside-out-or-outside-in-17935/
11:53 PM | | 0 Comments
Case Study: Small Retail Chain Gears Up for Rapid Growth
The Client: Elephant Pharm, a start-up chain in the natural health and wellness retail sector.
The Major Challenge: To find a retail solution that would grow with the company and help it develop into a multinational chain.
The Operational Issues: A lack of enterprise-wide inventory visibility, the need to run the business at both a centralized and decentralized level, and the need for a sales reporting function at a more granular level.
The Solution: A retail software package from Aldata Solution.
Download this podcast to find out how Elephant Pharm, a four-store start-up retail chain, found the retail software it needed to achieve sustainable growth while allowing it to immediately compete with the bigger players in the natural health and wellness retail market.
In this podcast, Christina Park, senior retail analyst at Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC), sits down with Tim Millen, vice president of information technology (IT) at Elephant Pharm. Tim brings over 20 years of retail IT experience to the conversation, and describes both the challenges facing Elephant Pharm and how the company found the right software solution for its needs.
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to TEC Radio. I'm Christina Park, senior research analyst for Technology Evaluation Centers, and I'll be your host for today's show. In this episode, we will be discussing a customer case study in the retail industry. We will be speaking with Elephant Pharm's Tim Millen. Tim is the vice president [VP] of IT for Elephant Pharm, a four-store start-up in the natural health and wellness market. Today we will be exploring some of the business issues and pain points Elephant Pharm was experiencing, and the process Elephant Pharm took to explore the retail technology solutions available to them to answer those problems, and ultimately how Elephant Pharm arrived at Aldata Solution to solve those issues for them. Tim Millen has 20 years of IT experience. Prior to joining Elephant Pharm as VP of IT, he was the vice president of information services and technology for five years at Bebe Stores, the worldwide fashion retailer. Other positions held over the last 18 years have been VP of information systems for BCBG, and the head of product development for Contempo Casuals.
Christina Park: Tim, thank you for taking the time today to speak to Technology Evaluation Centers. I'd like to start off by talking about what prompted your organization to make an assessment and subsequent investment in implementing retail software solutions. If you could just tell me some of the corporate challenges that you were seeking to resolve.
Tim Millen: Sure. We were in kind of a have-to-do mode. The software that we had installed at our first store was not going to carry us forward to a multi-store company. So what we did was we went and looked for a solution that would 1) be able to grow with us, but 2) also be able to grow with us for a long period of time into a multinational chain.
CP: What would you say were the specific business issues that posed the greatest challenge in finding the right solution for you in order to scale for that growth that you're anticipating?
TM: Absolutely it would fall within the visibility to our inventory and to our sales reporting. With Aldata, we're actually able to run our business from a centralized and decentralized environment. So in the centralized [environment], we have our merchants who are placing orders and managing inventory and ordering product into the store. Our stores actually order product themselves to be drop-shipped to their store, and then we also have products that go to our warehouse and are distributed to the store.
Aldata has been able to manage all of that for us, where previously we were not able to. The second point is sales reporting and the ability to look at our business at a smaller increment. Our older system would only track at a high-level, aggregate total, and it became very hard for us to manage on particular trends and certain activities that might be happening in each store as individuals. And with Aldata, we're actually able to see that at whatever level we want to dig into.
CP: Well, as you've mentioned, the perceived challenges of implementing a new solution must have seemed daunting to various levels within your organization, including what you've already talked about: the lack of enterprise-wide visibility, the system complexity, potential costly implementation and costly support, and even disparate integration requirements, because of the number of stores that you have, of multiple point solutions. So given those challenges, what factors were considered when evaluating the universe of vendors, and how did you ultimately arrive at the right solution?
TM: This actually was a very guided process. I had been following Aldata since they first arrived in the US—I think at their first trade show—and had a chance to actually see their system at that point. And then, even though at that time I was working for a different company, I was always impressed with the way they had structured their software and the database that was behind it. So as I started looking deeper into it, and through the years, I got to see how their product grew and how they were addressing the US market. So then when it came time for us, for a small company—we currently have four stores—for us to take on a system as large as Aldata was kind of a big worry of mine.
We were trying to compete with the big guys and have the higher level of system control that the big guys have, but still do it with our small store chain, as well as the small amount of staff we have to run the system. When evaluating Aldata, we were actually able to segment that out and understand exactly what would be needed to run our business on Aldata, and it actually ended up being a really good fit.
The second half of that was the implementation. Some of these implementations can take years and millions of dollars, and we were very concerned about not getting into that mode because of the fact that we just couldn't afford that. So with Aldata, they had come to us with a rapid implementation, where it scoped, start to finish, a six-month process. And that actually worked very, very well. And rarely does this happen—and rarely in my career has it happened—where you finish early. So we finished two weeks earlier than our scheduled implementation plan.
CP: So the implementation was not only on budget, but also on time—even, in fact, in advance of schedule.
TM: We had a situation where our fourth store got pushed out [at] the exact same time we were going to go live, and in order to manage that, we actually ended up speeding up the Aldata implementation sooner, so that the fourth store would actually go live with Aldata in it. And it worked, and we actually beat the schedule.
CP: Ultimately it sounds like the implementation was quite a success. In terms of the other issues that you were wanting to address—in terms of those challenges that we talked about earlier—would you say that Aldata was able to address all of those issues? And if so, was it really directly as a result of their retail software solution?
TM: Yes, absolutely. The discovery portion of their project implementation really went through our business and defined exactly how we were going to use their software, and what we would be getting from their software. So the expectations were set really early, and we are small enough now, then still flexible, that we were able to change some of our operational procedures to match their software. So it was kind of a good meeting in the middle, which then got us a better impact of the software because it was a better fit by the time we finished the project.
CP: Perfect. So it sounds like Elephant Pharm is a satisfied customer of Aldata, and it sounds like they were able to address all the issues that you were hoping to address in terms of when you wanted to implement a retail software solution. It sounds like it was a great customer success story.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/case-study-small-retail-chain-gears-up-for-rapid-growth-19128/
The Major Challenge: To find a retail solution that would grow with the company and help it develop into a multinational chain.
The Operational Issues: A lack of enterprise-wide inventory visibility, the need to run the business at both a centralized and decentralized level, and the need for a sales reporting function at a more granular level.
The Solution: A retail software package from Aldata Solution.
Download this podcast to find out how Elephant Pharm, a four-store start-up retail chain, found the retail software it needed to achieve sustainable growth while allowing it to immediately compete with the bigger players in the natural health and wellness retail market.
In this podcast, Christina Park, senior retail analyst at Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC), sits down with Tim Millen, vice president of information technology (IT) at Elephant Pharm. Tim brings over 20 years of retail IT experience to the conversation, and describes both the challenges facing Elephant Pharm and how the company found the right software solution for its needs.
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to TEC Radio. I'm Christina Park, senior research analyst for Technology Evaluation Centers, and I'll be your host for today's show. In this episode, we will be discussing a customer case study in the retail industry. We will be speaking with Elephant Pharm's Tim Millen. Tim is the vice president [VP] of IT for Elephant Pharm, a four-store start-up in the natural health and wellness market. Today we will be exploring some of the business issues and pain points Elephant Pharm was experiencing, and the process Elephant Pharm took to explore the retail technology solutions available to them to answer those problems, and ultimately how Elephant Pharm arrived at Aldata Solution to solve those issues for them. Tim Millen has 20 years of IT experience. Prior to joining Elephant Pharm as VP of IT, he was the vice president of information services and technology for five years at Bebe Stores, the worldwide fashion retailer. Other positions held over the last 18 years have been VP of information systems for BCBG, and the head of product development for Contempo Casuals.
Christina Park: Tim, thank you for taking the time today to speak to Technology Evaluation Centers. I'd like to start off by talking about what prompted your organization to make an assessment and subsequent investment in implementing retail software solutions. If you could just tell me some of the corporate challenges that you were seeking to resolve.
Tim Millen: Sure. We were in kind of a have-to-do mode. The software that we had installed at our first store was not going to carry us forward to a multi-store company. So what we did was we went and looked for a solution that would 1) be able to grow with us, but 2) also be able to grow with us for a long period of time into a multinational chain.
CP: What would you say were the specific business issues that posed the greatest challenge in finding the right solution for you in order to scale for that growth that you're anticipating?
TM: Absolutely it would fall within the visibility to our inventory and to our sales reporting. With Aldata, we're actually able to run our business from a centralized and decentralized environment. So in the centralized [environment], we have our merchants who are placing orders and managing inventory and ordering product into the store. Our stores actually order product themselves to be drop-shipped to their store, and then we also have products that go to our warehouse and are distributed to the store.
Aldata has been able to manage all of that for us, where previously we were not able to. The second point is sales reporting and the ability to look at our business at a smaller increment. Our older system would only track at a high-level, aggregate total, and it became very hard for us to manage on particular trends and certain activities that might be happening in each store as individuals. And with Aldata, we're actually able to see that at whatever level we want to dig into.
CP: Well, as you've mentioned, the perceived challenges of implementing a new solution must have seemed daunting to various levels within your organization, including what you've already talked about: the lack of enterprise-wide visibility, the system complexity, potential costly implementation and costly support, and even disparate integration requirements, because of the number of stores that you have, of multiple point solutions. So given those challenges, what factors were considered when evaluating the universe of vendors, and how did you ultimately arrive at the right solution?
TM: This actually was a very guided process. I had been following Aldata since they first arrived in the US—I think at their first trade show—and had a chance to actually see their system at that point. And then, even though at that time I was working for a different company, I was always impressed with the way they had structured their software and the database that was behind it. So as I started looking deeper into it, and through the years, I got to see how their product grew and how they were addressing the US market. So then when it came time for us, for a small company—we currently have four stores—for us to take on a system as large as Aldata was kind of a big worry of mine.
We were trying to compete with the big guys and have the higher level of system control that the big guys have, but still do it with our small store chain, as well as the small amount of staff we have to run the system. When evaluating Aldata, we were actually able to segment that out and understand exactly what would be needed to run our business on Aldata, and it actually ended up being a really good fit.
The second half of that was the implementation. Some of these implementations can take years and millions of dollars, and we were very concerned about not getting into that mode because of the fact that we just couldn't afford that. So with Aldata, they had come to us with a rapid implementation, where it scoped, start to finish, a six-month process. And that actually worked very, very well. And rarely does this happen—and rarely in my career has it happened—where you finish early. So we finished two weeks earlier than our scheduled implementation plan.
CP: So the implementation was not only on budget, but also on time—even, in fact, in advance of schedule.
TM: We had a situation where our fourth store got pushed out [at] the exact same time we were going to go live, and in order to manage that, we actually ended up speeding up the Aldata implementation sooner, so that the fourth store would actually go live with Aldata in it. And it worked, and we actually beat the schedule.
CP: Ultimately it sounds like the implementation was quite a success. In terms of the other issues that you were wanting to address—in terms of those challenges that we talked about earlier—would you say that Aldata was able to address all of those issues? And if so, was it really directly as a result of their retail software solution?
TM: Yes, absolutely. The discovery portion of their project implementation really went through our business and defined exactly how we were going to use their software, and what we would be getting from their software. So the expectations were set really early, and we are small enough now, then still flexible, that we were able to change some of our operational procedures to match their software. So it was kind of a good meeting in the middle, which then got us a better impact of the software because it was a better fit by the time we finished the project.
CP: Perfect. So it sounds like Elephant Pharm is a satisfied customer of Aldata, and it sounds like they were able to address all the issues that you were hoping to address in terms of when you wanted to implement a retail software solution. It sounds like it was a great customer success story.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/case-study-small-retail-chain-gears-up-for-rapid-growth-19128/
11:51 PM | | 0 Comments
HIPAA-Watch for Security Speeds Up Compliance Part One: Vendor and Product Information
Laura Taylor - August 27, 2004
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HIPAA-Watch for Security Speeds Up Compliance
Part One: Vendor and Product Information
Featured Author - Laura Taylor - August 27, 2004
Executive Summary
HIPAA-Watch for Security is a tool designed to guide organizations through the risk analysis required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance process (US). Relevant Technologies, a leading security research and advisory firm, evaluated HIPAA-Watch for Security to verify how well it performed in guiding organizations through the HIPAA security risk analysis process.
Vendor Background and Information
RiskWatch was founded in 1993 in Landover, Maryland (US) with the idea of automating risk assessment modeling for the Department of Defense. Founder, Caroline Hamilton, a statistical modeling expert, put together a prototype for a risk analysis tool and then managed its development into an innovative risk analysis product which was adopted initially by NASA and then the US Patent and Trademark Office.
The original product grew into a full featured product line, and today, HIPAA-Watch for Security (HIPAA-Watch) is just one of seven products in the suite of risk analysis tools offered by RiskWatch. In the last three years, and with the aftermath of 9/11, RiskWatch has seen unprecedented growth and has expanded into international markets. RiskWatch anticipates that its biggest growth in the near term will be in HIPAA and financial compliance (Sarbanes Oxley and Gramm-Leach-Bliley). RiskWatch is actively looking for qualified investors who share the vision of becoming a world leader in risk analysis. Without new investment capital, Relevant Technologies expects that RiskWatch could become a potential acquisition target by a larger information security monolith.
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11:50 PM | | 0 Comments
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Excerpt related to health: ... iVita Mines Assets for Bottom Line Health D. Geller - May 18, 2000 Event Summary. Hidden within the bowels of any large company are valuable assets. ...
Electronic Medical Records: An Introduction (Article)
Abstract: Electronic medical records (EMR) serves a niche market. This software caters specifically to health care professionals working in clinics, private practices, and hospitals. EMR software came about to increase overall patient care and communication between health care staff and departments.(...)
Excerpt related to health: ... Electronic medical records (EMR) are more effective at delivering high quality health care than traditional paper records. Paper ...
A Road Map to Electronic Medical Record System Implementation (Article)
Abstract: It’s crucial to define the scope of an electronic medical system implementation, as well as to outline each stage of the project and the resources that will be needed. A failed implementation will paralyze the operational capabilities of a health care organization, but the right methodology will help e(...)
Excerpt related to health: ... Today, health care organizations are looking to adopt time-saving technology. Electronic medical record (EMR) software uses online ...
Lawson Software-IPO and Several Acquisitions After (Article)
Abstract: Lawson Software, almost two years since a successful IPO amid adverse conditions at the time, has had its share of difficulties while rounding up its vertical offerings via a slew of focused appetizing acquisitions. While the last two quarters have seen license revenue revive and profits, certain ongoing(...)
Excerpt related to health: ... According to Lawson's officials, the witnessed return of year-over-year license revenue growth was driven by a strong quarter from the health care vertical. ...
HIPAA-Watch for Security Speeds Up Compliance Part Two: Phase III ... (Article)
Abstract: Once the user defines compliance case boundaries and establishes the data criteria in Phases I and II, the HIPPA-Watch for Security tool begins Phase III by launching the risk analysis engine, and concludes with Phase IV, which generates the report. Using the HIPPA-Watch for Security tool can help an org(...)
Excerpt related to health: ... Health care providers include hospitals, doctors, clinics, pharmacists, and mental health care specialists. Health care plans include ...
The Evolution of Enterprise Resource Planning Includes Service ... (Article)
Abstract: Enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors have extended their functionality to service vertical markets in the service industry. As a result, ERP for services has emerged as a viable software category competing with the best-of-breed vendors serving professional services sector industries.(...)
Excerpt related to health: ... had refocused efforts to market their integrated solutions in the greener pastures of service-oriented vertical markets, including health care, government ...
Enterprise Resource Planning for Services, and Professional ... (Article)
Abstract: Since the late nineties, enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors have developed functionality for vertical markets in the service industry. Simultaneously, professional services automation (PSA) became a viable software category. Consequently, deciphering the difference between ERP and PSA remains a c(...)
Excerpt related to health: ... Oracle, had refocused efforts to market their integrated solutions in the greener pastures of service-oriented vertical markets, such as the health care sector ...
"Evergreen"—Environmental Regulations for High-tech and ... (Article)
Abstract: High-tech and electronics, chemical, and oil and gas industries each have their fair share of regulatory requirements to meet, and an increasing number include environmental directives. Enterprise applications designed to meet their distinct needs should help pave the way to compliance.(...)
Excerpt related to health: ... The issues of environment, health and safety (EH&S) are what make the chemical industry one of the most liable of all industries. ...
SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/search/default.aspx?searchTerm=+health+&docType=TEC2009_Articles
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