ERPNEWS.net – SAP has unveiled a prototype software feature that integrates Google Docs with its cloud-based ByDesign enterprise resource planning suite.

The prototype, shown in a video on YouTube, is one of the first fruits of its alliance with Google that was formed late last year.

It allows ByDesign users to open existing Google documents or create new documents from within SAP’s hosted software, and to link them to the SAP record.

If a new document is created, Google Docs automatically launches in a new browser window.

SAP’s on-demand ecosystem senior director of business development, Brian McPhail, told iTnews that SAP was “very confident” that Google Apps’ penetration warranted its integration into the company’s on-demand suite.

“Of the target market for ByDesign, we think that approximately 25 percent of that target market will be using Google Apps currently,” McPhail said.

The Google Docs prototype is subject to a pilot project running at customer sites across three geographies – the United States, Britain and France.

Customers in other locations will be considered from the middle of this year.

Building for Android

Google Docs integration is part of a broader partnership that appears to be building Android as an end-to-end enterprise platform to mobilise SAP deployments.

SAP will shortly release a ByDesign app for Android (SAP calls mobile apps “players”), which will perform similarly to existing players for iOS, Windows phones and BlackBerry.

The company is also expected to announce a tie-up with Samsung Electronics – a major Android smartphone and tablet maker – at Mobile World Congress this week.

According to a report by Bloomberg, the Samsung-SAP partnership is about hardening Android devices to run in the enterprise.

Prior to the Bloomberg report, McPhail told iTnews that SAP would not confirm or otherwise announce fruits of the Google partnership unless they were ready for consumption.

“We’ve got a pretty broad plan here spanning apps, devices, platforms and go-to-market,” McPhail said.

“[But] we’re trying to maintain some discipline and talk about only the elements that are available.”

ISV apps integration

SAP is not stopping at native Google Apps integration. It is also seeking third-party apps created on the Google App engine, which can also be integrated with ByDesign.

The first to gain approval was SnapEngage, a live chat application that can now feed conversation data in and out of an SAP ByDesign backend.

McPhail said SAP is not limiting itself to ISV applications by geography. In other words, it will look at any application worldwide that could be integrated with ByDesign.

Likewise, it is not limiting itself to Google or Android. McPhail is quick to point out that SAP also supports other mobile platforms and the enterprise apps developed for them.

Project goals

SAP unveiled its partnership with Google at an influencer summit in December 2011.

The SnapEngage and Google Docs integration, together with the Android app, are intended to highlight the work that the partnership is capable of producing in a short period of a time.

McPhail said SAP management placed greater signficance on the partnership with Google than revenue concerns.

“We certainly have goals internally in terms of revenue goals and we have some product in-market goals between the two companies [but] the conversation between our two companies has focused on what incremental value can we create and deliver for our customers,” he said.

“This has been one of more gratifying aspects of working on this partnership.

“SAP’s management believes it’s so significant in terms of working with Google but also demonstrating our desire to provide leadership in the cloud that we have placed a premium on the value at the beginning of this partnership more so than revenue numbers.”

McPhail said SAP had “rigorously, rigorously” evaluated the benefit of tighter Google integration “right up the line”.

“Everything [is being] agreed months before we announce [it],” he said.

“I’ve spent my whole career with Silicon Valley companies and I can tell you this is not the general approach in Silicon Valley. Frankly, I like this approach better.”

“Global Enterprise Resource Planning Software Market 2011-2014”

One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the ability of ERP to integrate all organizational activities. The Global ERP Software market has also been witnessing steady demand from small and medium-sized businesses. However, slow implementation processes and revenue turnaround times could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.

TechNavio’s report, Global Enterprise Resource Planning Software Market 2011-2014, has been prepared based on an in-depth analysis of the market with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the Americas, and the EMEA and APAC regions; it also covers the Global ERP Software market landscape and its growth prospects in the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.

Key vendors dominating this market space include SAP AG, Oracle Corp., The Sage Group and Infor Global Solutions.

Commenting on the report, an analyst from TechNavio’s Enterprise Computing team said, In a small business, it is relatively simple to track data, control business processes, and enter information in storage without too many issues. However, with organizational development this approach becomes less practical. ERP is a good way for a business to grow without necessarily increasing the number of employees. Bigger companies need a much more sophisticated system such as ERP software to manage various aspects of the day-to-day operations more effectively.

According to the report, many organizations have begun examining the potential of ERP solutions to improve their business processes. They are also trying to incorporate ERP software solutions in other segments such as web-based ordering, customer relationship management and product configuration. Due to the ever-growing supply chains, collaborate planning is gaining importance.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/c538c1/global_enterprise

But why is SaaS so attractive to smaller organizations? Most of the reasons cited concern costs and speed and ease of implementation. SaaS a service is attractive to organizations with limited IT resources that must rely on the IT support of their ERP vendor. A major benefit of ERP is in its ability to help the organization uncover efficiencies. Growing organizations often have the need to make the most out of available resources, before more resources can be attained. SaaS ERP implementations average 6.7 month from installation to first “go live” milestone, compared to 11 months for on premise. SaaS ERP, offered on a subscription basis, allows organizations to recieve the benefits of ERP without making a large up-front capital expenditure. The reasons that organizations are willing to consider SaaS ERP are as follows:

75% lower total cost of ownership
52% because it lowers the cost and effort of upgrades
49% lower up front costs
44% perceived ease of implementation

Of course there are reasons that organizations are not yet willing to consider SaaS as a deployment model for ERP. These include security concerns, downtime concerns, and a desire to control the upgrade process. For these reasons, SAP will still be offering Business On on-premise. This is just another option to help small businesses recieve the benefits of ERP in a form that is digestible for their needs.

As I expand my research on what ERP can do for small businesses this year, I am excited to track the increasing prevalence of SaaS solutions such as SAP Business One OnDemand. For an expanded take on this topic, please read SaaS and Cloud ERP Trend, Observations, and Performance 2011. To help inform my research on the ERP implementation process for small businesses (whether SaaS or on-premise), and receive free data in the process, please take my ERP Selection, Implementation, and Training survey.

Panorama Consulting Solutions surveyed 246 enterprises from 64 countries during 2011 and found that companies do not take time to identify costs and potential cost savings, and therefore find it difficult to measure the overall financial impact.This equates to benefits not being realised.

The report highlighted that 27 percent of respondents realised only 31-50 per cent of projected benefits; 17 percent realised 0-30 percent of projected benefits; 4 percent stated that they had not experienced any measurable benefits; and 2 percent said that they had not put a business case together.

The availability of information was the main benefit noticed by organisations (75 percent), followed by increased interaction (60 percent) and improved lead times (38 percent).

Enterprises were least impressed with improved supplier interaction, with only 23 percent citing it as a benefit.

Panorama states that to improve on these unfavourable results, orgnisations need to put together solid business cases that better identify the overall return on investment.

“A business case captures potential cost savings and establishes a baseline that can be measured against to determine improvement,” reads the report.

“While organisations want to know when they will realise the total cost of a project, a good organisation will capitalise on the ERP system. Not only should a company calculate their breakeven point, but also its overall return on investment,” it continues.

“It is important to understand how the project has made the company more profitable over time”.

The new Business One OnDemand solution will be rolled out in 18 countries at first and has been designed with small businesses in mind.

Ray Boggs, vice-president of IDC, noted more than half of these companies are currently looking at deploying ERP software in their operations, while many are considering using cloud-based applications as well.

“Not everyone will move to the cloud, of course, but interest is clearly growing even among the smallest firms,” he commented.

Mr Boggs added that small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) “continue to be a relatively untapped market for SaaS/ hosted solutions”.

SAP believes its Business One OnDemand product will be easy to use, comprehensive and offer relatively low upfront costs to SMEs.

The move comes shortly after SAP revealed that it enjoyed its best ever year in 2011.

The MS Dynamics list targets the Decision Makers that use the MS Dynamics ERP application. B2BTechList provides information on thousands of companies using MS Dynamics as well as Fortune 500 MS Dynamics Users and Fortune 1000 MS Dynamics Users with key management contacts. This MS Dynamics Users data is great for Consulting Services, New MS Dynamics Applications and upgrades to existing MS Dynamics Users. This Microsoft Dynamics Customer List can be used for MS Dynamics Direct Mail Campaigns, MS Dynamics Telemarketing Campaigns and MS Dynamics Email Campaigns.

The NetSuite list targets the Decision Makers that use the NetSuite ERP application with information on thousands of companies using NetSuite as well as Fortune 500 NetSuite Users and Fortune 1000 NetSuite Users that include key management contacts, business contacts and enterprise level contacts.

The Oracle list targets the Top Decision Makers that use the Oracle ERP application that include C-Level Executives, V-Level Executives, IT Executives, Managers, Directors and Financial Executives around the globe. The Oracle List can be used for Oracle Direct Mail Campaigns, Oracle Telemarketing Campaigns and Oracle Email Campaigns for Consulting Services, New Oracle Applications and upgrades to existing Oracle applications.

The MS Dynamics list, NetSuite list and Oracle list include the following information on every record: Full Name, Title, Company Name, Complete Mail Address, Zip, Phone, Email Address, SIC/Industry codes, Size, Revenue & URL (where available).

MS Dynamics counts are 31,000+ US contacts, 13,000+ UK contacts and 18,000+ contacts in Europe. NetSuite counts are 12,454 Us contacts, 5,604 UK contacts and 7,700 contacts in Europe. Oracle counts are 87,000+ US contacts, 39,000+ UK contacts and 54,000+ contacts in Europe.

MS Dynamics list, NetSuite list and Oracle list deliverability guarantee is 95% for Direct Mail, 90% for Telemarketing and 90% for Email campaigns.

MS Dynamics list, NetSuite list and Oracle list delivery format include CSV, EXCEL or TXT. Delivery to clients is 5-7 days upon receipt of payment due to pre-testing of the data before its sent to the client and comes with unlimited usage and free updates for 1 year.

“More than half (55%) of mid-market companies said they cannot make data and business process changes to their ERP software without the help of external consultants, which costs both time and money, according to a study undertaken by Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) and provided by UNIT4.”

What about the rest 45%? How do they make changes to their ERP software?

The answer is simple! They employed highly skilled IT staff as a part of their organizational structure because they believed in ERP and they knew that the skilled personnel would reduce their outsource consultancy costs and also save time.

Consultancy firms usually dawdle over their jobs to make more money. If a company does not employ the personnel who have the knowledge and competency in IT business and ERP systems, then the existing problems and the solutions that are offered by the consultancy firms cannot be brought under control. Worse still, the company cannot control the budget intended for IT developments.

The rest 45% understood that both time and money are important and they made their moves. They hired highly skilled IT professionals or trained their existing team members to save money and time in the long run. Hereby, they have placed themselves among the rest 45%…

The 55% have got the excuse: saving Time and Money! But the real reason would be the lack of perspective and vision.

Failure stories are majority in number compared to success stories in ERP Implementations. We all accept this as “The Nature of ERP”, but the reality is that “Human Nature” and the mentality of the 55% are responsible for these failures, not the ERP itself…

Harun DOYURAN
ERP Systems Consultant
Follow on Twitter @harundoyuran

ERPNEWS.net — IT consultancy Bluefin Solutions has claimed that SAP’s in-memory database, HANA, could cause the biggest paradigm shift since the introduction of IBM’s original PC in the 1980s.

Speaking at the SAP User Group conference in Birmingham, Bluefin’s information architecture and strategy capability lead Ian Brown made the strong claims.

Brown said that HANA has made it possible for a finance director to sit in his office with a box in a cupboard next to him running two billion rows of data.

“HANA is effectively the ability to take an enterprise scale database and put it in a single box,” said Brown, “and it only costs £50,000 (€58,195). That may sound like a lot, but in the 80s businesses used to have to spend £10,000 (€11,639) to get things working on a PC, and that transformed the small business. You’ve now got a box which is not a million miles away from that. For big companies, they can put their numbers on it and run it live.”

Brown expands on this idea in a blog post on the Bluefin website, in which he identifies several similarities between the development and marketing of both the SAP HANA technology and the earlier IBM PC. These include open, well-defined standards, flexible and scalable architecture, ‘off-the-shelf’ hardware and a focus on business value and engineering excellence.

“I believe SAP HANA will take off because it’s going fundamentally to hit the same sweet-spot of huge corporate demand that drove the PC’s takeover of most of the world,” said Brown.

Launched in December 2010, HANA employs an in-memory computing engine, wherein data to be processed is held in RAM instead of being read from disks or flash storage, providing a performance boost. SAP intends HANA boxes to be attached to its own ERP systems, sucking in and analysing transactional data in real time. However, HANA’s ‘agnostic’ data access functionality means any information source can be used.

Bluefin works with clients such as BSI, Camelot, Travelodge and Royal Mail to help them achieve greater business performance by optimising SAP technology. Brown said that HANA could potentially be of use to all its customers, but that the company is currently targeting those running SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse on SQL server.

“HANA will swallow anyone who’s running BW on SQL server, as they’re likely to have a database that’s small enough to run on HANA today,” he said. “For the bigger enterprises currently running Oracle or DB2, the technology isn’t there yet. Oracle databases tend to go up to around 30 Terabytes, whereas HANA can swallow around 2 Terabytes.”

However, Brown said Oracle is getting very nervous, as Moore’s law will mean that ultimately the hardware will get bigger and cheaper, until it becomes a direct competitor with Oracle Exalytics.

Constellation Research analyst Ray Wang agrees that a SAP’s strong play targeting the database market will hurt Oracle, but said that it should not get worried just yet.

“If you’re really serious about undercutting Oracle, you make a database. You cut into Oracle’s market on database so that you actually stop funding there,” Wang said.

“But Oracle’s got so big because of all the acquisitions, you can’t just cut them off on database, although that’s one big piece. They were vulnerable at one point in time. Teradata pretty much was in that same boat. So this is just natural competition between the tech vendors.”

Sorry, let me rephrase that. Hearing about an SAP implementation that finished ahead of schedule is like hearing that someone captured the Loch Ness Monster and turned it into a kiddie ride. It’s as likely as Bigfoot singing “La Traviata” at Lincoln Center. It’s as if you called a software company’s tech support line and the voice on the other end didn’t insist you reboot your PC.

SAP implementations don’t finish ahead of schedule. Failed to finish is much more likely.

The company that made the pronouncement? Daiwa House Industry. Not only did Daiwa House complete its SAP implementation ahead of schedule, it did so despite being interrupted by the Tohuku earthquake — the one that measured 9.0 on the Richter scale and took several nuclear power plants offline.

Intrigued, I set up a meeting with Daiwa House’s SAP implementation team at the Realization Project Flow conference, and through two excellent interpreters, spoke with Kyoji Kato, executive officer and general manager of Daiwa House’s information systems division, Project Leader Ryuzo Matsuyama, and Isao Nakae, SAP solution division director at Fujitsu Kansai Systems, Daiwa House’s implementation partner on the project.

What follows are six valuable lessons they learned transforming a seriously challenged effort into a roaring success. Consider this a practical supplement to my recent “13 tips for turbocharging projects” post.

Lesson No. 1: Having staff wait for work is better than having work wait for staff
All three interviewees were emphatic that moving from traditional project management techniques to critical-chain project management had a huge impact, resulting in 25 percent cycle time reductions for every phase of the effort.

This isn’t the place for a tutorial on the subject (among other reasons, I’m not qualified to provide it), but one of critical chain’s most important principles is that projects should never be delayed because staff are not available to work on the next task. Why? Because one such delay sets off a — no pun intended — chain reaction of late task starts.

In other words, chaos ensues, and each late start makes the expected time lines in every dependent chain of tasks increasingly unpredictable.

Lesson No. 2: Multitasking is more prevalent and more harmful than anyone thinks
Companies that don’t understand the importance of Lesson No. 1 inevitably attempt to maximize staff utilization. It would seem to make sense. After all, any time you pay an employee for doing nothing sure sounds like waste — and it is waste. The problem is that most attempts to maximize staff utilization do more harm than good.

We’ve already mentioned one problem: cascading project chaos. Beyond that, keeping employees busy means insisting that they multitask.

Employees never multitask, of course. What the word actually means is having to switch from one task to another, unpredictably and often. Ask anyone whose work requires concentrated effort what impact this has and they’ll give you the same answer: It’s all bad. Every switch means getting one’s head out of one task, reorienting, and getting it back into the other task.

This process is neither effortless nor instantaneous. The lesson is clear: Let employees finish what they start, even if that means they occasionally find themselves with nothing to do. All in all, they’ll be far more effective and productive.

Lesson No. 3: Eliminate “apple polishing”
Last week’s column mentioned the importance of making sure everyone knows when they’ve “reached the exalted state of ‘good enough.’”

Daiwa House’s project leadership team recognized this issue — they call it “apple polishing” — and hit it head on. They provided clear exit criteria for every task. They communicated the importance of avoiding apple polishing often. Then they communicated it more, because if there is anything to be said about the shared culture of engineers, it’s that they constantly strive to find ways to make whatever they’re working on even better.

It should come as little surprise that Mr. Matsuyama chuckled when I asked how readily his team members accepted the need to stop polishing their apples. The answer: While it’s vital to project success, it takes constant, active management.

Lesson No. 4: Don’t overdefine the tasks
“Defining details,” the team explained, “doesn’t help understanding. It causes misunderstanding.”

By “details” they weren’t referring to specifications. They were referring to task definition. They were emphatic that there comes a point of diminishing returns, below which the project manager is micromanaging instead of allowing team members to use their experience and good judgment to get the job done.

In this vein, they also mentioned extensive use of prototyping as a way to determine implementation details. “Prototyping” isn’t a word commonly used in conjunction with “SAP implementation” — it’s about as common as the phrase “ahead of schedule.”

With the right team, though, it turns out to be entirely feasible and well worth the effort. (For more on this subject, check out “A surefire bet for IT job security.”)

Lesson No. 5: Be aggressive about business improvement
Regular Advice Line readers understand a core principle of next-generation IT: There are no IT projects. It’s a principle so important that my consulting company advises clients to never name a project after the technology. As Daiwa House’s project title was “SAP Implementation,” I was curious as to whether that was, in fact, the actual focus.

Interestingly enough, as initially chartered, this was very much a classic IT project. Its primary goal was to support management, particularly in accounting, human resources, and compliance by providing a more coherent view of the company’s information. The main expected business benefits were to close the books faster, improve HR management, and support international compliance requirements.

Over time, though, the project team became more aggressive in defining business improvements. Designing different and better processes and practices enabled by the new software became a formal part of the effort. It shifted, that is, from implementing SAP and figuring out how to take advantage of the additional capabilities it provided to implementing better business processes and practices as a central implementation deliverable.

One example the Daiwa team was willing to share was that prior to the SAP implementation, pricing mistakes alone totaled 0.5 percent of overall billing. As the company’s revenue hits $20 billion per year, that’s a number worth paying attention to.

There’s little doubt that fixing errors of this magnitude resulted in an enormous reduction in wasted effort. There’s even less doubt that the impact on customer relationships was immense.

Short version: Daiwa House’s experience validates the principle. In spite of the name, this project wasn’t an SAP implementation. It was a business improvement initiative that relied, in part, on implementing SAP.

Lesson No. 6: Provide a holistic view for all team members
On any project, it’s easy for participants to develop tunnel vision, focusing narrowly on their own task responsibilities. This can result in a collection of parts — each excellent when considered solely on its own merits — that don’t fit together into a coherent whole. The folks at Daiwa House were clear on the importance of making sure everyone on the team maintained a sense of the big picture while addressing their individual responsibilities.

ERP implementations have gained a bad reputation, in which merely late is considered very good, and spiraling out of control is considered common. There are always more ways of doing something wrong than doing something right. Beyond that, the act of defining an effort as an ERP implementation contributes to the likelihood of disappointing results.

Daiwa House’s experience demonstrates that while problem implementations are common, they’re far from inevitable. Even better, it demonstrates that success isn’t a statistical accident. It’s the result of good leadership, management, and technique.

By Bob Lewis    -  Follow Bob Lewis on Twitter @ITCatalysts
This story, “Six lessons from a lightning ERP rollout,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com

NetSuite OneWorld SRP replaced Empired’s six software systems, including Salesforce.com, QuickBooks, Replicon Timesheets and Scheduling, as well as in-house built systems for financial forecasting and project management. The manual integration of these solutions failed to provide Empired with real-time visibility of its resource capacity, business performance and profitability, hindering the company’s ability to react to changes within the business and scale rapidly.

Empired selected NetSuite OneWorld SRP over Oracle, SAP and Microsoft solutions, after a year long investigation of CRM, ERP and financial software solutions specifically tailored to professional services organisations. As a cloud solution, NetSuite OneWorld SRP’s ease of use, simpler and shorter installation process, and significantly reduced market-entry and maintenance costs, made it the clear winner for Empired.

Empired’s timely transition to NetSuite OneWorld SRP is now supporting the 200-strong IT services firm’s continued growth, with current plans for national expansion into the Sydney and Brisbane markets over the next two years, beyond its Perth headquarters and Melbourne office.

NetSuite’s SuiteCloud development platform provides flexible and powerful customisation capabilities, allowing Empired to easily adapt NetSuite to meet its business needs. “NetSuite OneWorld SRP offered one solution that is extremely well tailored to professional services organisations like ours. What little customisation was required, we could do in-house with a small amount of training, as opposed to hiring a software engineer or developer to do it,” said Mark Waller, chief financial officer for Empired Ltd.

Discussing the complexity of Empired’s previous processes, Mr. Waller said: “We were limited by how many projects our consultants and project managers could work on because of the considerable time it took to consolidate and check data housed in separate software systems.  Resources too were often underutilised as we lacked the visibility to quickly see when and where resources might be available.”

“NetSuite OneWorld SRP gives Empired a fully integrated solution that takes us from customer opportunity management through project management to invoice payment, with the appropriate reporting and dashboards throughout the lengthy process,” added Mr. Waller. “And the business lifecycle management tool and resource planning capability can help us take advantage of emerging market growth opportunities.”

“As Empired prepares to continue its national expansion, we’re thrilled it chose NetSuite OneWorld SRP to help power that growth,” said Mark Troselj, managing director of APAC for NetSuite. “By switching to one centralised, modern cloud-based system, Empired now has a tool to see in real-time how every aspect of its business is performing and where opportunities lie. This knowledge clears up the blind spots multiple software systems create and is critical in enabling Empired to maximise its growth opportunities in today’s competitive market.”

Follow NetSuite’s Cloud blog, NetSuite’s Facebook page and @NetSuiteAPAC Twitter handle for real-time updates.

For more information about NetSuite, please visit www.netsuite.com.