An Interview with Eric Dang by Award-winning SFU Professor from the Beedie School of Business, Featured in Popular Textbook Case Study - 'Experiencing MIS' (2nd Canadian Edition, Pearson Canada)

Implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software can be one of the most challenging projects for an organization of any size to take on. “It takes a coordinated team effort”, notes Eric Dang, Systems Administrator for Digital Payment Technologies in Burnaby BC, “and requires time upfront to understand what you want to accomplish before anything gets installed.”  Digital Payment Technologies (DPT) is a leader in the design, manufacture, and distribution of parking management technologies for the North American parking industry (www.digitalpaytech.com).  DPT learned about implementing ERP the hard way, with an initial project that did not deliver expected results but eventually led to a second successful implementation. 

In 2005, DPT was a medium sized company that was growing quickly, averaging 29% annual growth with 95% of its sales in the United States.  With rapid growth came the challenge to rapidly adjust to new sales and manufacturing targets. DPT felt the need for enterprise resource planning software but the core team at the company had little time or resources to make it happen. The company was surviving on a combination of Excel spreadsheets and sales reports that were difficult, if not impossible, to integrate and share. So after some investigation of ERP solutions and site visits with industry partners, DPT licensed Navision, a Microsoft product. 

“Since our core people were busy just getting product out the door, we gave the task of installing the software to a marketing assistant who had only recently been hired. We thought we could just install the program and run with it” noted Mark Gemino VP of Manufacturing. “But it didn’t work the way we thought it would” Mark noted. “After a few months, nothing was working and we couldn’t balance our accounts or get simple BOM (Bills of Materials) working. We thought we had bought bad software. Later we learned that it wasn’t the software that was causing the problems. It was the way we had set the software up.  We weren’t aware that what seemed like small choices in the software setup, could have really big implications on how the system as a whole operated. We also had to spend more time in getting our initial data correct.  We hadn’t invested enough time in understanding how we were going to really use the system. ” Employees quickly lost faith in the information provided by Navision and the DPT was spending time trying to fix the errors the system was creating. The bad news for DPT was that Navision had not provided the expected benefits and had stalled their attempts to improve efficiency. The good news was that the challenge led the company to find someone who could get Navision working for DPT. “Everything changed quickly when we brought Eric on board” noted Gemino, “he was able to explain the system in a way we could understand.”

Eric Dang was hired in 2006 and spent the first six months getting back to basics with the Navision product. It took a lot of effort, not only from Eric but also a team of people from different departments at DPT, but eventually the Navision system was stabilized and started providing useful and accurate information. “People took this work seriously,” noted Eric, “because they understood what would happen if we didn’t get things right.” 

By 2007, the Navision ERP system was running smoothly. So smoothly in fact that people at DPT felt they were able to take on an additional task of implementing the “Warehouse” module. “A consulting firm told us that they had seen several companies try to implement the warehouse module, but none of them had been successful,” noted Eric. “but that didn’t stop us. We thought, yes we can.” DPT’s previous experience provided the team with the confidence to do things right. They started the project with detailed process mapping, created a prototype and involved important people in different departments in making the decisions about the new implementation before the systems was rolled out. “When we rolled it out six months later, it went ahead with very few issues.” DPT had learned an expensive and powerful lesson about teamwork, involving users and detailed pre-planning for project success.  When asked about the secret to their success Eric noted “It is summed up in a book my two year old daughter got out of the library called ‘Yes We Can’. It is a simple picture book story about a group of animals with different strengths who, when they work together as a team, get things done. As far as I am concerned, it should be required reading for anyone doing ERP implementation.”   

Challenges

CIOs/CFOs face the challenge to reduce cost of ownership or wish to see more value from ERP vendor support / maintenance service.

CIOs/CFOs face the challenge to integrate internal and external applications, due to rigidity of existing systems, workarounds, complex point-to-point integration, user exits, flex-field hell, and customization.

CIOs/CFOs face pressure to speed up innovation (including self-service BI, mobile access) and deliver business value. CIOs/CFOs face the challenge of extending the life of an aging system or dealing with an expensive re-implementation.

Solutions

A third-party vendor-neutral support alternative who understands “process evolution” and “industry best practices”, EBITA Systems can easily reduce support costs by 50% at the same level of service by premium vendor partner program.

EBITA Systems always helps clients vetting system features, functionality, challenges, and the impact on existing internal best practices.

EBITA Systems has thorough understanding of key system features so to automate business processes, empower customers to complete functions faster, and manage successful upgrades and enhancements. 

EBITA Systems helps customer to avoid owning “another very expensive version of Excel” by investing in training and change management before ERP go-live.

EBITA Systems understands data generated by systems and can evaluate/uplift the quality of data.

EBITA Systems knows how to focus on optimizing core value chain.

EBITA Systems knows how to decommission legacy applications.

EBITA Systems has unique maintenance strategy to prevent ERP systems from becoming obsolete from both technical perspective and business process perspective. Apps strategies including Third Party Maintenance for ERP, CRM, and SCM will free up funds for innovation projects and improve the “business and IT relationship”. Third Party Maintenance becomes a strategic investment in supporting the core system by embracing customization in strategic nature to provide unique or differentiated functionality.

BUSINESS CHALLENGES

Most CFOs and CIOs want to use the system out of the box without making any changes to the software code. During implementation, business identifies things that the software doesn’t handle quite right and ends up making requests for changes. Based on recent major research on hundreds of implementations around the world, only around 10% ERP Systems are NOT customized.

Customization could make upgrades more complex, more costly, and more risky. Balancing “standardization” and “personalization” is needed and doing it right requires in-depth mastery of business processes and software functionality.

 Some common ERP observations:

• “The most widely adopted operational processes” - Enterprises systems are developed based on “the most widely  adopted operational processes” of “various types of organizations” in “diverse business segments”, updated through new version releases.
• “Overwhelming” - Enterprises systems could be “overwhelming” due to the huge web of numerous features and tricks to make them work as desired.
• “Relevance” - Implementation should pickup “relevant components” of the system: relevant components should be set up to align functionality with business requirements.
• What’s involved in configuration? Configuration of an ERP system deals with handling of numerous “usage controls”, which can be switched off or on, so as to balance its functions to business needs. Specific modules and granules would be configured. Thousands of configuration tables would define how the system should be operating, how the “data entry screen” would look like, and how the “signals and massages” would appear.

solutionS

Design for the Novice, Configure for the Pro.

Configuration is software vendor’s favored approach for letting customers tweak application functionality.
Configuration is not just to download software and double-click on ‘setup.exe’.

You might have a couple of employees with NAV configuration knowledge on staff, but they quickly get outside their areas of expertise when unfamiliar modules are introduced. You need specialized and highly trained people to know which switches to switch, the rules required, and the implications for downstream processes - such skills are rare. 

Customization could be suitable for handling unique tasks and workflows when a business requirement doesn’t appear to fit with out-of-the-box capabilities.

Companies could have their own algorithms other than standard ones. Customization could be part of how companies differentiate themselves when there’s no viable workaround. Customization could be valid if companies couldn’t find anything off the shelf that fulfills their needs. Customization could save money on software maintenance of other legacy systems otherwise they would not be able to retire. Do cost-benefit analysis and document customizations.

The “Wake Up Call” for Upgrading

The manufacturer has been approached by sales teams from consulting companies who tried to sell the proposal to upgrade their Navision 4.0 SP2 application to NAV 2009 SP1.

The sales teams made “Wake Up Call” that support period for the manufacturer’s versions would end soon or had ended already. The application provider was advertising the benefits to upgrade on their web site. Some consulting firms were saying the manufacturer might have a cracked system as there were some issues they did not know the root causes.

Some people were saying that tech industry has mastered the art of “Up selling”. Some worried that software makers and the channel distributors combined to convince people to buy new software that they definitely don’t need.

Some other people were worried that it might hurt as the manufacturer’s version was falling behind by a gap of two versions.

Upgrading to NAV 2009 for the “Good Reasons”

EBITA Systems was retained to perform an analysis to see if the manufacturer needs to upgrade to the new version. EBITA Systems performed a thorough evaluation so the manufacturer could make informed decisions.

Why vendors release upgrades?

EBITA Systems explained that vendors need to ensure their products are competitive in term of features and performance. Also, vendors need to create demand.

What are in the upgrades? EBITA Systems explained that vendors often offer or try to offer extra incentive to upgrade, like a significant interesting new feature.

Why are you upgrading?

EBITA Systems explained that it is normally not for fashion and status symbols. It could be a matter of want than need. It could be being pushed by vendors and channel distributors. There could be real compelling reasons to upgrade.

What do people actually use the system for?

Despite the long list of great features for the system, many people only use their systems for a limited set of things. It is very likely that a lot of people are paying a premium to own a fancy ERP system that merely does bookkeeping. EBITA Systems further asked what challenges people encountered that the current system might or might not be able to help.

Identifying The “Compelling Reasons” For Upgrade

EBITA Systems presented some “compelling reasons” that would make sense for the manufacturer to go for upgrade.

New features

Upgrades often introduce new features that could help licensees do what they could not do or do things in better ways. However, most of the manufacturer’s business requirements could be handled by the existing version already, if it were configured, designed, and used properly.

Performance improvements

Upgrades often bring in performance improvements that could help boost applications’ stability and responsiveness. The manufacturer’s production facility did have slow connection to Navision and experienced crashes sometimes since the Navision hosting server moved to a new building a couple of blocks away. However, the problem is identified partially due to poor bandwidth and aging hardware.

Bug fixes and issue resolutions

The latest version often fixes bugs encountered in prior versions. Because of application’s broad customer base and the multiple environments in which they operate, software vendors are made aware of bugs quickly. There were many “hotfixes” applicable to the manufacturer’s version. More importantly, many of the “Material Resource Planning” features were re-written in the new version to make the module work “more correctly”. The most common, most recent issues faced by the majority of customers in older versions often have been resolved in more recent versions.

Backwards compatibility issues

The company planned to upgrade all its desktops to Windows 7. NAV 4.0 (SP1/SP2/SP3) is not supported on Windows 7. Only Navision 4.0 SP3 with certain build could run on Windows 7 without running the Virtual Machine.

Maintenance automation

The company was on Navision Database, not on SQL Server. SQL Server offers the opportunity to automate backup procedures and NAV Database Mirroring with Hot/Warm Standby Servers with Maintenance Plans for High Availability and Disaster Recovery.
 

Upgrading With Confidence

The manufacturer saw the need to overcome compatibility issues due to the plan to move up to Windows 7 operating system. The manufacturer decided to upgrade to take advantages of new version of NAV after evaluating the cons and pros between “upgrade” and “deploying Citrix to facilitate old versions”. EBITA Systems was appointed as project manager to champion the upgrade.

Superior Expertise in System Conversion
With limited resource from the manufacturer’s existing partner, EBITA Systems successfully led the upgrade project which delivered highly visible gain on performance and fresh user experience.

The upgrade project not only moved the manufacturer’s database to SQL Server, it also converted the system to offer dual clients - Classic Client and Role Tailored Client. The upgrade retained value-added customization. Outdated integration with Bar-code application was redesigned using new technology. The new system has been stable since the upgrade and gained enterprise-wide approval for performance and value.

Business Challenges

Typical manufacturing companies often face challenges from siloed systems, disjointed process, policy conflict, redundant activities, and data quality problems. In some cases, offline Excel books and Access databases alike could be used for Item Masters. A million-dollar Opportunity and Quote in Salesforce.com could be in the form of general "product description" without using Item Masters. Procurement staff could spent hours to manually translate "Product Description" into "Material to Buy". What is missing is the key Business Value of Integration: 

•    Eliminates duplicated data entry in 2 systems by automating Item/BOM transfer from PLM to ERP; avoid costly and frustrating human data entry errors and improve user happiness

•    Synchronizes Item revisions and BOM version changes

•    Brings "three worlds" (Engineering, Logistics, Services) closer

•    Increased transparency and accountability with data ownership

•    Better collaboration among informed stakeholders

•    Process Integration instead of pure Data Exchange enables consistent, cross-system processes

Analysis

Arena is system of record for product; engineering content / processes; BOM states.

NAV is system of record for logistics / operations / financials; operational aspects of the physical product.

Salesforce.com is system of record for customers.

Arena-NAV Integration is for the goal of realizing integrity and efficiency in downstream business processes in ERP, SCM and CRM applications; linking together the critical upstream and downstream processes and data between classically disparate user groups working in different enterprise systems.

NAV-SFDC Integration is to streamline the process of Opportunity Management, Pricing, Quoting, and Order Fulfillment.

SolutionS

How does PLM-ERP-CRM Integration address challenges and opportunities?

Where Solution Meets Requirements:
•    Integration facilitates “Price Book” (Item) and “Account / Contact” (Customer) data synchronization and hosts strategic cross-platform processes for Order Management. No more manual translation needed to tell what is being sold.
 
•    Integration would push SFDC Opportunities to ERP Sales Orders and utilize ERP's built-in Materials Requirements Planning features to handle Procurement and Inventory Management. No more manual explosion for assembly bundle.
 
•    Integration would provide a complete picture of a customer to sales in a single interface for historical order data and invoicing history. No more disconnect between SFDC Opportunity and ERP Invoicing.
 
•    Integration would reduce siloed systems, disjointed process, policy conflict, redundant activities, and data quality problems. No more offline Excel books and Access databases alike for Item Masters. 

A Stalled NAV 2009 Go-Live Project - With Complex Consolidation

A travel agency’s normal function is to act as an agent, selling travel products and services on behalf of a supplier. Consequently, unlike other retail business, they do not keep a stock in hand. The massmarket package holiday and some agency chains have developed a ‘holiday supermarket’ concept, in which customers choose their holiday from brochures on racks and then book it from a counter. With the help of internet, customers also choose their holiday from online brochures and then book it online.

For this wholesale vacation program firm offering a diverse property portfolio throughout the U.S., most of the properties are owned or managed by the firm itself. As the firm had to manage all the owned properties as “subsidiaries” and to manage other product/service providers as “affiliates”, the firm naturally had to set up NAV’s “Inter-company Posting” module.

Go-Live with Unhappy Customers

The company installed NAV 2009 with the help of a Microsoft Dynamics Partner. The basic modules and features worked. However, the company discovered that there had been some gaps in their preparation. The business process didn’t quite fit with the system. The Inter-company Posting and Consolidation did not work properly. The CFO had to use Excel to manually prepare “Elimination Entries” and “Consolidated Financial Statements”. The are too many compromises. The company realized that change is required. The scope creep moved in. The stalled project needs to continue. When asked about what is good about the new system, the CFO said: “The only thing we liked is that we could export data to Excel and import data back to NAV”.

Exploring the Options

The company looked at consulting firms that could work with the existing Microsoft Dynamics Partner to finish what’s left to be done, but “pinpointing the glitches and gaps as well as coming up with solutions at project closing stage was fairly challenging; in our case, it requires deep expertise in financial accounting and NAV”, says the CFO. The company and the Microsoft Dynamics Partner looked up north: EBITA Systems with deep root in finance and operations.

Identifying Gaps and Formulating Solutions

The implementation review focused on four key areas: Core Functionality Setup, Operational Workflow, Reporting and Analysis, and End User Adoption.

Superior Expertise in both System Setup and Business Processes

With deep experience in both NAV ERP system and Operational/Financial Management, EBITA Systems quickly identified the issues. System setup would heavily involve intercompany transactions and consolidation. The company has been set up as the consolidating company, with 28 “Companies” in one database, representing associated companies or subsidiaries for the group.

However, there was no business case study to ensure set-up would capture core business activities in all associated companies; entity relationship and process mapping is incomplete. Consolidation was done manually in Excel, not getting any easier. The setup did not meet workflow requirements.

EBITA Systems built an “Entity Matrix” to re-examine the business relationship between any pair of them. The “Entity Matrix” would not only facilitate verification of the integrity of setup but also ensure the framework could facilitate streamlined workflow, reporting, and analysis. Based on the “Entity Matrix”, EBITA Systems re-configured setup and bridged the gaps.

Superior Expertise in Reporting and Analysis

With experience from the business operation and financial management world, knowing what stakeholders are looking for, EBITA Systems quickly figured out why the company is concerned about reporting.

The company would require financial reporting and operational reporting/analysis from a consolidated point of view as well as from business unit point of view. Analysis Views and Account Schedules have been set up with limited scope. There are no full-scale business intelligence capabilities. Mostly out-of-box standard reports are used and they are not completely meet business requirements. Desired reporting structure had not been fully depicted yet, not to mention it was not implemented in NAV.

Instead of jumping on new and expensive report-writing tools, EBITA Systems recommended the company to focus on NAV built-in report-writing tool - C/SIDE Report Designer, and Visual Studio Report Designer. EBITA Systems showed tremendous opportunities for configuring more robust Account Schedules using Global Dimensions or Analysis Views. EBITA Systems also drafted a template for reporting package in “desired” format.

Superior Expertise in Driving User Adoption

Coming from real business world End User background, EBITA Systems understand how to do the jobs in the capacity of Accounting and Service Department and how a proven system could enhance organizational productivity. For this company, users reported that they found the system not very user-friendly. This pointed to the fact that neither workflow was very well designed in system nor documented. “Role-based” training is needed but it would only be possible with well-defined processes and workflow. EBITA Systems helped to reshape “Role-based Workflow” and empower “End Users” following redefined workflow. EBITA Systems also built automation tools and utilities to simplify routines.

“EBITA Systems has deep proven expertise with NAV ERP, has thorough understanding of business processes, and knows how to apply ERP to operations and financial processes - including less known features like Inter-company Posting and Consolidation.”
CFO, Wholesale Vacation Program

Business Challenges

Physical inventory shows quantity on hand without exact zones and bins. Inventory movement and status are not visible in system. Production job progress is not visible in system. Purchase Order is only showing as being received or not received, not showing status of work-in-progress. Sales Order is only showing as being shipped or not shipped, not showing status of work-in-progress. Many needed insights for warehouse activities and inventory status are missing.

NAV Users started to ask whether they can use Warehouse Management System module to effectively manage their warehouse.

When a company's warehouse is disorganized, inefficient, and not accurate, any warehouse management software will make it worse. Mistakes can be amplified even faster. "Garbage in, garbage out". Software cannot make a messy warehouse streamlined.

Some companies try to implement everything without any consideration for their current operation, the operational efficiency would actually decrease, because of the increased overhead and maintenance that are required.

This particular discrete manufacturing company has the manpower and the infrastructure to absorb the overhead and maintenance required so the increase in efficiency and accuracy can be realized.

solutions

The company analyzed the desired processes and was convinced Advanced Warehouse Management module (WMS) would be a good fit.

Using Warehouse Management companies can tighten distribution processes and improve inventory management, for single or multi-site warehouses, in addition to handling order processing and demand planning. 

Inventory Management in NAV provides comprehensive functionality to increase operational efficiency across your business, improve customer service, and reduce inventory and distribution costs. NAV Inventory Management is fully integrated with the Sales, Purchase and General Ledger with all transactions stored in the inventory ledger for inventory valuation and other costing calculations. 

Warehouse Management in NAV allows companies to effectively control control warehouse and stock. A properly implemented Warehouse Management solution would help ensure the most effective use of space, streamline warehouse operations and accelerate order fulfillment. 

With Warehouse Management, users can access real-time data saving time spent locating stock items and performing physical inventories, knowing where each item is located and what processes are required. In addition, receipt to shipment timing can improve significantly by automating receipt, put-away, pick and shipment processes. 

To support the warehouse management function further, the NAV Role Tailored Client can be used to give clear and concise views of the warehouse activities and aid resource management and planning accordingly. 

NAV Warehouse Management Benefits

• Optimize warehouse space and processes. Establish and automate the most resourceful picking routines, bin quantities and put-away locations with NAV Warehouse Management. Pick items per order, per customer, pick up times or delivery routes. With available information, cross-docking options can easily be taken advantage of. 
• Improve order fulfillment. With Dynamics NAV Warehouse Management, status updates can be easily given due to the real-time data available. Having the ability to view the stage of each order in the delivery process from pick and, pack to delivery, you can give your customers an accurate status. 
• Streamline operations and increase productivity. With the NAV Warehouse Management system, receipts, put-aways and picks can all be processed using mobile devices reducing data input and significantly speeding up warehouse processes. 
• Flexibility for growth. NAV Warehouse Management gives the option to select your level of simplicity or complexity. This means warehouse management solution will flex to meet particular business needs, both now and in the future. 

Configuration as Verified Solution

The company configured the warehouse module with full-blown setup for two main warehouse locations and simplified policy for other secondary warehouse locations.

The main warehouse locations have major features turned on:

• Directed Pick and Put-away
• Require Receive
• Require Put-away
• Require Pick
• Require Shipment
• Bin Mandatory
• Use Put-away Worksheet
• Use ADCS
• Use Cross-Docking
• Base Calendar
• Put-away Template

Combined with "Item Tracking" for easy handling of serial and lot numbers, Supply Chain becomes more sophisticated to have ability to keep track of an item’s transaction flow, either to meet legal requirement, or to monitor products with warranties or expiration dates for customer service reasons.

Business Challenges

A manufacturing company makes and sells modern parking meters. The company hosts credit card payment transactions for customers. The company also provides warranty on equipment sold and provide repair services.

The company used NAV "Blanket Sales Orders" to record warranty contracts and hosting contracts for serialized equipment in the field. Billing cycle could be prepaid annually, quarterly, or monthly. Sales Invoices were manually created from the Blanket Sales Orders. At month-end, Accounting would have to manually reconcile and post General Journals for "Revenue Recognition".

The company used Excel "Warranty Database" to record warranty repair and billing activities. Parts consumption, tasks performed, skills and workloads of service technicians were manually recorded on the Excel spreadsheet.

solutions

A thorough Diagnostic Analysis shows that the company's service challenges could be resolved using NAV Service Module.

Business Cases

Business cases for all departments were presented, validated, and consolidated:

• (Sales) Make “Warranty Quotes”. Need to know ‘warranty status’ – SN, expiry, type of warranty.
•  (Sales) Fill order for “configuration change”. Fill order for “more Equipment” similar to past/recent configuration. Need to know current configuration. 
• (Sales) Match Key Code with recurring orders or secure Equipment Transfer. Need to know what key code is attached to Equipment.
• (Sales/Finance/Support) Deal with customer reported “Lost Units” or deactivate units. Needs to know SN, stop warranty Billing, stop Hosting support.
• (Product) Manage End-of-Life. Need to know statistics on Equipment out there and their current configurations.
• (Sales/Support) Manage “Transfer of Equipment” better than currently ‘Notes’ column in Excel. Notified by emails or phone calls. Need to know SN, key code, owners, installation locations.
•  (All departments) Run queries or tracing to find out end-to-end information. Need to easily point to status, including “service location”, of any one of the 100 pieces of Equipment shipped on one line on Sales Order.

Go-Live

Business Scenarios were identified and mapped to NAV functions. Service Management Processes, Workflows, and Data Flows were visualized and tested. Service Module were set up and the go-live was a success. 

Business Challenge

A big customer using Oracle ERP requested their suppliers (especially who might have the technical resources) to go e-invoicing for AP automation. For this particular equipment supplier, Accounting would manually print 100 plus Service Invoices to PDF each month and send them to the customer by email. On the customer side, AP and Procurement departments would review the paper invoices and manually enter into their Oracle system. Combined, both sides have manual, high volume work on invoice handling.

Solutions

A team is assembled to include stakeholders from supplier's IS, Sales, and Accounting departments, to work with stakeholders from customer's IS, Purchasing, and Accounting departments to explore the solutions.

Oracle Supplier Network

The Oracle Supplier Network (Oracle SN) in an online service managed by Oracle that provides electronic messaging services. It is open to all EBS , Fusion , Peoplesoft customers and their trading partners. The Oracle Supplier Network enables trading partners to track the delivery of all business documents with a Transaction Monitor for both test and production transactions. The Oracle Supplier Network provides private, secure transaction management with trading partners of every size and level of sophistication.

Benefits of OSN include:

• Simplify Integration - On-ramp trading partners quickly with features such as quick, web-based registration, company profile setup, and account maintenance capabilities.
• Minimize Integration Costs - Avoid cost of supporting individual connections, multiple protocols, and multiple standards.
• Track Performance - Track successful delivery of all message traffic. Deploy auto-retry capabilities for exceptions.
• Support Key Transactions - Support key procurement and payment transactions, including purchase orders, change orders, advance ship notices, and invoices.

The Supplier Network provides a set of services for the routing, translation and delivery of extensible markup language (XML)-based electronic commerce transactions, such as purchase orders, ship notices and invoices. Customers connect once to the Oracle Supplier Network, and the network automatically routes the procurement transactions to the supplier.

NAV XMLport, XML DOM Automation, and OSN

Using NAV XMLport function and XML DOM Automation, a cXML file could be instantly produced for all the invoices posted for the month in NAV for a group of accounts with the designated bill-to invoicing partner. The supplier could simply send a message on Oracle Supplier Network (OSN) with cXML file uploaded. The customer's Oracle system could regenerate customized internal invoices and post financial transactions. Both side are happy with the e-invoicing and AP automation solution.  

BUSINESS CHALLENGES

Sales and Manufacturing Operations constantly face challenge to present “one story”, both in “Daily Sales and Operations Meeting” and in “Weekly Senior Leadership Team Reporting”. Each department would use their own hand-made Excel spreadsheets in native format or published on SharePoint when talking about past period achievement, current status, and future prospect. Lack of consistency leads to confusion and question about information integrity and business direction.

After a careful analysis, several issues have been identified:
•    Some critical information has not been tracked in the main system NAV; instead, it is often kept offline.
 
•    There is lack of solid process for coordination to achieve smooth order fulfillment. Stakeholders are either not aware of or not actually accountable for actions required, like “Shipment Date” and various hold-ups. This leads to lack of integrity with business-critical data.
 
•    There is lack of common standard about how data in system is retrieved and interpreted – leading to inconsistency.
 
•    Staff spent hours daily just to compile requested information chart using data from multiple sources, including system data exports and manually maintained spreadsheets – leading to loss of productivity and human errors.

POWER BI

Power BI is an “analysis tool”, meant for "Business Intelligence" and "Data Visualization", with quick turnaround. It offers more than 24 visualization widgets. Power BI enable organizations to query data to gain valuable insights, creating an opportunity for decisions to be made in a timely and effective manner.

Power BI is self-service business intelligence. For most purposes non-technical users will be able to crunch the numbers. Switching to different graphics and displays is easy.

Power BI is integrated with collaboration tools like SharePoint and benefits from the connectivity of the cloud. “Content Pack” can be created and automatically refreshed and accessible by specific groups, and “mobile-friendly”. Power BI uses standard SQL tool and syntax. Power BI can work together with Cubes and SSRS. Power BI can manage table Relationship.

SOLUTIONS

Once the fundamental issues are identified, Sales & Operations team worked with Information System services on the architecture and tools to help implement the improved “business processes” and “workflows”, as well as “Dashboard Views” for quick and easy insight into business activities.

While NAV Reporting Objects would remain the main report-writing tools for clear reasons and JetReports could be the complimentary report-writing tool for structured custom financial reporting package, Power BI steps up for "Business Intelligence" and "Data Visualization", clearly a good fit for the team’s challenge to present “one story” in dashboard style.

The team has implemented a data model that integrated all the “facets” of aspects of interest. Several queries have been created to facilitate dynamic views for presentation. Reports have been designed in Power BI Designer and published to PowerBI.com so users could access Dashboard on the Web. Schedule has been set up to automatically refresh data from live database. Mobile clients have been set up on iPhones and Android phones for users to access the mobile version of the Dashboard.

The result has created a "WOW" among the line managers and test users. Without worrying about 20 hours per week wasted on manual report preparation from many angles of views and struggling with different versions of the same underlying story, it is clear that finally it is time to take a break and get back to the normal value-added core business activities.