ERP Systems

Since its inception Big data has touched almost every business process , hence even ERP couldn’t escape from its magic.Few ways in which it has impacted ERP :

1) Faster information delivery : Technologies like Hadoop are enabling node level operational transparencies that touch every ERP module in real time.This allows enterprise managers to quickly leverage big data capabilities to enhance the information and expedite decision making.
2)Scheduling improvements : PM module is driven by series of schedule based metrics. All data points are available readily available in real time.This advancement enables efficient ERP scheduling and hence productive PM methodologies.
3)BI:Accurate forecasting: Integration with big data resolves need of “more data” and ultimately leads to overall forecast accuracy.
4)Manufacturing:Increased QA:  Manufacturing is where quality assurance comes into play.Big data allows manufacturers to store and monitor real time data sets of production line, to create better results while work is in progress rather than having to deal with problems after the product hits quality assurance phase.
5) Profiling customers: Big data enables CRM operators to track customer trends in real time and then use data to create further direct sales.

This provides an overview of how Big Data is evolving and altering management thinking in ERP.

 

 

Last Thursday, I attended the SAP HAUS party event at Palo Alto.

I wanted to share the experience with you because it was very friendly and informative.

Here is the key observations about the event:

1. It was an non-formal event by SAP to communicate about the career opportunities for students.
2. Students came from SCU, Stanford university, Carnegie Mellon university, Berkeley and SJSU.
3. The SAP stuff was very friendly and the ambiance was very cool (music, food, drinks)
4. Students can chat with developers, designers, recruiters and project managers.
5. A lot of activities were set to ease communication between all groups.

 

Here is also the key findings about the event:

1. SAP is a big corporation with opportunities across all segments of the IT enterprise industry.
2. They are working on different disruptive technology to shape the enterprise IT process: IoT was the the most important field that SAP wants to develop since they are able to drive change for their legacy customers.
3. They are really cool people to talk to. In fact, they even spend time detailing what they do and giving advises to future graduates.
4. For those graduating this spring, definitely apply through their career website.

Finally, we also enjoyed our time there and learned a lot about different positions within the company. The event totally worth the time allocated because of the added value that we got from SAP employees.

 

The fulfillment process includes the following processes: responding to a customer inquiry, creating a quote, processing a sales order, shipping the goods, and billing the customer and receiving payment.

On a side note, I attended the SAP Haus Party this past Thursday, where I met and talked with SAP employees, and learned about products and projects they were working on, like their CRM and 3D printing products.

A friend of mine started using this Food delivery service called Blue Apron, a startup that delivers food ingredients to you on a weekly basis. Once the food ingredients are delivered to you, you can cook meals from recipes that they provide. The fulfillment process for a startup like this is pretty important, as it is important that the ingredients reach the customer in a timely manner, and effective fulfillment processes can help ensure quality of the food once it reaches the customer.

It is interesting to see how Blue Apron will continue to grow and expand its customer base. Currently, Blue Apron has “4,000 employees distributing 8 million meals a month”. As the startup continues to expand, I’m interested to see how to make its fulfillment and distribution process more efficiently, while continuing to make more money.

Source:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-07/meal-delivery-startups-show-tech-disrupted

In the early September, Samsung issued a safety recall for Galaxy Note 7 in response to the reported incidences of exploding phones. Consumers can chose either to exchange for another Samsung model with 100 dollar credits as a gift, or switch to other brand with 25 dollar credits. Samsung also decided to stop manufacturing this model. This decision, without doubt, has triggered a series of countermeasures within Samsung’s global organizations.

The first functional department that has direct impact is the fulfillment department. They now have to estimate the number of returns and exchanges, report customer credits to accounting department, order and distribute other models to make sure that consumers can get their new phones as soon as possible. They might not need to check the condition of each returned phones because the policy is to end this product. Accounting department also takes a good hit. They need to keep track of the gifted credits, record sales returns, update allowance accounts, etc.

On the other hand, project systems, production and procurement process might have suffered less. However, since Galaxy Note 7 is discontinued, the project team will also be closed or reassigned. Production and procurement start to alter/improve/adjust original plans. Production might want to improve quality assurance in the manufacturing process of the next flagship model. Procurement department will need to review battery vendors and their quotation for better materials procurement.

This recall costs Samsung at least $5.3 billion, according to USA TODAY. Besides the fact that Samsung employees now have lots of extra work, I’d say this is a good call. It takes time and money to build a brand with a good name. (Just think about all the advertisement time in football/baseball seasons, that is not a small amount.) What’s more terrifying is that, they finally finish the integration of  mobile phone supply chain. If their phones stop selling, all will be gone and Samsung will be pushed back to manufacturing. That is the last thing we, Samsung and the market, want to see.

SAP Haus party was a chance for us to get connected with SAP’s future technologies and their team leaders. It showcased its newest technologies like 3d-printing, oculus, cloud technologies and IoT. I was particularly interested in its Innovation team that designs compelling set of innovative business products. Currently the hottest topics trending in SAP are Blockchain Technology- decentralized computing beyond bitcoin that’s offering blockchain-as-a-Service. Today, although technical aspects still exceed the business aspects, I take this opportunity to talk about some of the interesting use cases of it.

• It provides decentralized markets that can kill e-commerce because it will be possible for any two people in the planet to trade with one another without depending on any institution.

• As blockchains and sidechains proliferate, there are several important implications for the Internet of Things and the development of Smart Systems. For one, blockchain technology could provide a way to track the unique history of individual devices, by recording a ledger of data exchanges between it and other devices, web services, and human users.

• Existing electronic voting systems all suffer from a serious design flaw: They are proprietary, that is, centralized by design, meaning there is a single supplier that controls the code base ^[4], the database, and the system outputs and supplies the monitoring tools at the same time. The blockchain works as a secure transaction database, to log votes and audit vote results in a trustworthy way.

• Multiple issues such as high transfer cost, limited money distribution methods, limited brand options, limited ways to deal with money, etc. hold enormous potential for innovation in financial services.

• Smart transportation is about maximising already-existing infrastructure and resources rather than adding new ones.  Real-time ridesharing is the key, enabling people with private cars to share their journey with others traveling in the same direction. What blockchain adds on top of this is the possibility to put together users without any middlemen thanks to decentralized platforms.

The Currency exchange and remittance use case is perhaps the most advanced of the list since it has been implemented worldwide.

This week we learned about the fulfillment process. A typical order fulfillment process consists of the following steps.

• Order is received and the customer is notified about the order.
• Order is sent to the warehouse.
• Order is picked up from the warehouse.
• Order is packed and prepared for shipping.
• Order is shipped.
• Customer is notified about the shipping status.
• Customer receives the order.

Some of the challenges faced during a fulfillment process are :
1) Demand Planning: Planning in advance for the demand of a product.

2) Inventory Management: Having real time inventory levels is essential and can fasten the fulfillment process by having adequate stock.

3)  Supply Chain Execution: When items are out of stock or low on stock it is necessary to order new items as quickly as possible so as to reduce the fulfillment time.

4) Logistics Planning: Determining how long it will take to deliver the item to the customer once it is ready to ship is Logistics Planning.

The perfect order metric (POM) is one of the most critical metrics in fulfillment.

The Warehouse Education and Research Council’s (WERC) definition of the perfect order metric is that a perfect order is delivered:

• Complete;
• On time;
• Damage free;
• Correct documentation and invoicing.

Source: https://logisticsviewpoints.com/2014/11/10/a-critical-fulfillment-metric-the-perfect-order/

Case study on the perfect order which mentions about the measuring index for a perfect order and also the benefits of a perfect order.

http://www.werc.org/assets/1/workflow_staging/Publications/647.PDF

The Fulfilment process is triggered by a purchase order received by the sales department who then verifies and creates a sales order but The sales order can be simply defined as a document that relates the customer with their order and conditions. This tells us that the process involves three Master Data- Customer, Material and Conditions.

The Master Data used only reflects an overview, the whole fulfilment process leads to a number of Transactional Data that has impact on succeeding steps of fulfilment processes. The key transactional data is the Order by customer (which generates Sales Order) without which the fulfilment process doesn’t hold any value. After receiving the Order, the process follows by Shipping of goods with Delivery Document. One more document is created and issued to customer after shipment, i.e. Invoice. Here we understand key differences and need for these two separate documents. Invoice gives details of a sale transaction i.e. description of goods, rate, expenses, amount payable and so on issued by accounts department. Delivery document informs customer about details and quantity of goods supplied and is issued by dispatch department.  Once the customer receives his order, the process is completed by customer payment(hopefully).

STDecaux is a sub company of JCDecuax, the worldwide No.1 outdoor adversing company. It owns 90% of media in 16 lines of Shanghai Metro in year 2013. One big change was: Sales department was divided into three groups: One group sales Line 1 and other minor lines, second group sales Line 2 and other minor lines, the third one sales digital media in all lines. If customer needs all resources, the customer has to sign triple media lease contracts, production contracts and on-board contracts, and may negotiate with three sales in our company. In another situation, if a customer is controlled by one sales, he intends to sale more of his own media resource gutless of other groups’ media, then he personally “Sale” the customer to his trusted sales in other groups, let them to sign the contract and exchange with “future promise” of media contracts from those sales. However dividing sales into three groups may also bring goods things: the silo – effect would force each group to sale more their own resources. Media coverage was unbalanced before group dividing since Line 1 and Line 2 occupies 80% of the total revenues.
In part 2, I will talk about what is the whole process of a sales in STDecaux and what can be improved.

This Thursday I went to the SAP HAUS Party and it was amazing. It was more like a party or social event rather than an information section. The vibe is awesome. They provide food, beer, ice-cream, most importantly, interesting people. I talked with different people from variety groups. The ones interest me was the BUILD, Internet of Things: Smart Connected Business and the Global Design. BUILD is a comprehensive set of cloud-based design tools used to create compelling enterprise apps. Design has emerged as a hot topic in the world of technology. With BBILD, users can create our prototype. The SAP Connected Good is a cloud-based Internet of Things solution. It is designed to maximize the value of revenue generating customer facing devices such as cooler, chillers, and vending machines. And the most interesting team is the global design app team. It creates a better user experience for different line of businesses. We talked about the “Millennials” project. It has been started for 10 months. The original user experience for SAP is not very user-friendly, and the company also realized that. I have used SAP as accountant, and I was looking forward to have a more user-friendly experience.