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Five Killer Trends that Would Redefine Business Apps

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

The world of business applications is undergoing some radical changes. No,

the core business applications like ERP, CRM, SCM, etc are not going away

anywhere. In fact, the Open Source world has been very active in churning out

lots of business apps. The latest count on sourceforge.net revealed 374

different Open Source ERP projects.

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So apart from Open Source ERP, the world of business apps will continue to

thrive and gain more importance amongst enterprises, and there are many

interesting trends taking shape to suggest that.

The impact of these trends will be felt by everyone in the organization,

right from end-users to the IT department, from the top management to even

external stake holders like customers, suppliers, and partners. But before we

can understand and fully appreciate these trends, it's important to know the

challenges they'll overcome for the various stake holders.

Let's start with users. One of the biggest challenges when introducing a new

business application to users is to have them accept it and eventually train

them to use it. The reasons for this are obvious. Users are quite used to

working with their existing set of applications and don't want to be moved out

of their comfort zones.

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Most of them use common productivity tools like office suites, email clients,

and web browsers to manage their data. The moment something new comes along,

resistance to accept it is only natural. Plus of course, there are the hassles

of switching between so many different applications.

“Something is needed to minimize the learning curve of new applications for

users.”

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For the CIO and his team, part of the challenge stems from users' resistance

to change. They first have to convince users about using a new application and

its benefits, and then train them on it. After this come the challenges of

managing and maintaining the application, ensuring that it's always updated with

the latest security patches, and keeping it tuned to give optimal performance.

Every time a new application is introduced, the cycle starts all over again.

As more applications get added, multiple islands of data start forming, and the

management says the dreaded 'I' word to the CIO and his team-Integrate. The hunt

then begins to find the best and least disruptive way to integrate so many

enterprise applications.

“Something is needed to reduce the management headaches and make enterprise

application integration smoother.”

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The top management is busy driving the business forward. With rising

competition and ever more demanding customers, they need something that will

give them a 360 degree view of their organization. It should be able to show

them their company's performance data so that they can take timely and accurate

decisions.

“Something is needed to help management gain insights into its company's

performance.”

Finally, the organization faces many challenges while dealing with external

stake holders as well. Ensuring timely delivery of raw material and dispatch of

finished goods to the customers is a challenge as there are many manual

processes involved. These processes can be automated if an organization can

integrate some of its business applications with those of its customers and

partners.

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“Something is needed to speed up communication between an organization and

its external stake holders.“

In this story, we'll take you through the key trends that would help meet the

challenges described above. So in the pages to follow, we've explained these

trends in detail along with hands-on examples and illustrations wherever

possible. We sure hope that these new trends will help your organization make

the best of your business apps in the new year. Wish you a great one!

Office Suites as Front-ends to Business Apps

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Office suites are the most widely used applications across all enterprises.

What makes them popular is their ease of use. You don't need any prior expertise

or a formal training to get started on them. Compare this to an enterprise

business application, like ERP or CRM, or even a banking application for that

matter. They are complex and require plenty of training to be used.

You can enter the path for

Reports Library in the File name box. The Excel Services option can be used

to set the sheets to be displayed on Dashboard

What if these two worlds could meet and be integrated? What if the backend

business applications joined hands with the front end office applications? This

is one trend that's really catching up. Applications of an office suite such as

MS Office have an easy to use interface, making it an apt front end for complex

business applications.

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Key benefits



This trend actually makes sense due to many reasons. For one, it reduces the

learning curve required for training users on new applications. Since they're

working on a familiar front-end, they would require lesser time to learn how to

use it as a front-end to a business application.

It would also increase employee productivity. Instead of wasting time in

toggling between an ERP, CRM application, they would continue to use Word,

Excel, or some other similar application to access the back-end business apps.

There are already some ready examples available of this. Excel for instance,

can be used as an interface for analyzing reports generated by an ERP or CRM

application. Microsoft's Outlook calendar can be used to report time in a SAP

application.

Some examples



Many things are happening to make the integration of office suites with

back-end business applications a reality. Microsoft for instance has joined

hands with SAP to provide one such solution. It's a solution called DUET, which

is aimed at making MS Office as the front end for SAP's ERP and CRM offerings.

Likewise, Microsoft's SharePoint Server is another application that can be

integrated with many others. Let's first look at SharePoint, and how to

integrate other applications into its dashboard.Subsequently, we'll explain DUET

in more detail.

Integrating Excel worksheet to Dashboard with SharePoint Server



Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides integrated enterprise-class

capabilities like portal, BI, collaboration, etc that can help improve

organizational effectiveness by connecting people, processes, and information

across the boundaries, be it geographical or an organization's functional

boundaries.

SharePoint Server 2007 provides several ways for collaboration among an

enterprises' employees.

One of them is through content management and distribution.

Under this the employees can publish and share their documents. Using the

SharePoint's dashboard on a webpage, an author can also integrate an Excel

worksheet on the dashboard of a webpage.

Through this feature the author of the webpage would be able to serve his

report from a central location to a team, department, or the whole organization

whereby it can be viewed and tracked for progress or other performance metrics.

This worksheet could be used to display just a snapshot of the report or as a

whole. Other users with appropriate permissions can not only view but also

modify the worksheet.

In the following article we will see how a Microsoft Excel 2007 worksheet can

be added to the dashboard of a webpage on Office SharePoint Server 2007. The

condition of adding a worksheet to a dashboard is that it can only be done with

Microsoft Office Excel 2007 as only it has the support for publishing using

Excel Services.

Saving an Excel workbook to SharePoint



A workbook can be uploaded directly from the Upload button on the SharePoint

site, but it's advisable that you publish your Excel workbook by using Excel

Services. To publish your workbook using Excel Services, select Publish option

from the main Office Menu and then opt for Excel Services under Distribute the

document.

On the File name box, give the path to the server along with the file name.

In our case it's the path to the Reports Library in the Reports Center site.

Also in this dialog box select the button Excel Services Option, and in the

following Window select the portion of the workbook that has to be displayed

within the dashboard area.

After saving this setting, select the Document Type as Report from Choose

Document Type dialog box. Finally select OK to publish the workbook and save

that in the SharePoint document library.

Creating a Dashboard



Once you have installedSharePoint Server, you can create Web pages for your

site and also put up documents for sharing. To add a dashboard to a webpage, you

can use the Dashboard Page Template that is provided in the Report Center. A

dashboard can be created by anyone having appropriate permissions. Once you have

logged into the server, you can have access to the Report Center from the

top-panel navigation bar.

The Reports page shows the

attached Excel spreadsheet in the Demo Dashboard page of the main users

website

Here click on the Reports tab that opens up the



Reports Center page. To add a dashboard that will be having an Excel

snapshot for displaying you have to click on the drop-down menu of Site Actions

button and from the list select the Create Dashboard option. On the New

Dashboard page fill up the form by providing the file name. This file name will

be used as a pointing address to the webpage.

Select the suitable dashboard layout depending on how many worksheets you

intend to display on that particular webpage. The webpage containing the

dashboard gets created. The place where Excel worksheet has to be displayed, we

get an option of importing the worksheet and this pane is named as Excel Web

Access. By clicking on the hyperlink 'Click to open the tool pane', the webpage

is converted into the edit interface where you can redesign the layout and also

select the worksheet that you intend to display on the dashboard.

From the properties pane of Excel Web Access pane, you can select the Excel

workbook from the Reports Library and also set the rows and columns that would

be displayed on the dashboard. Once done with the process, you can Check-In the

document to save the changes and also use the Publish button to see the

dashboard of the webpage.

Onto a dashboard, along with Excel workbook an author can also display the

KPIs for measuring the organization's goal progress.

DUET: A Collaborative Effort between

Microsoft and SAP
One live example of integration

of on office suite with business applications is DUET. The solution was

launched this year and since then, it has been deployed in many enterprises.

A few scenarios that are possible with DUET

include:

1. Time Management: Use MS Office Outlook

calendar to report time in SAP Software.

2. Budget Monitoring: Helps managers receive

SAP reports in their Outlook inbox and gives them the flexibility to work on

them offline.

3. Organizational Management and leave

management:
Several possibilities are there in these two features, like

report distribution, alerts and notification, Form-based process, offline

capabilities, Real time contextual Intelligence, etc.

A few months ago, DUET also included support

for a CRM package and was also integrated with Microsoft Communication

Server 2007. The integration with the latter will allow integration of SAP

business processes with Communication Server's 'click-to-communicate'

features for instant messaging, VOIP-enabled phone calls, video conferencing

etc.

DUET promises to bring plenty of key

organization benefits like reduced complexities of everyday tasks,

information can be acted upon in realtime without the need of toggling

between two different applications or tools. Users can work with familiar

application so they don't need to be trained on how to use SAP applications.

This in turn helps improve collaboration and decision making as all updated

information is available in realtime to decision makers.

With Duet, an employee's

HR records can be directly accessed from MS Outlook, like joining

details, leaves taken, assignments, etc

Implementation of DUET is probably the only

critical part, as it is complex and needs expertise. But once implemented it

surely will bring the much-needed relief for the users. Ideally a DUET

server can support up to 1000 users. Once certain prerequisite for the

configuration have been taken care of, it should be ready to roll. There are

lots of developments happening to add more functionality into DUET and in

the coming years more applications will be added.

Business Apps Follow the SaaS Model

Traditionally, enterprises have been purchasing or developing their own

software applications, running them on their infrastructure and performing the

necessary tasks of maintaining the application and doing necessary upgrades for

it. But now this traditional approach has been changed. Enterprises are

accepting business models such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), whereby they

need not buy and install expensive application packages. They rather access and

use the remotely hosted applications.

SaaS isn't a new concept. It's just an improved version of application

hosting, previously known as Application Service Providers (ASP) which came with

a bang a few years ago, but left without a sound. The SaaS business model, like

its predecessor ASP, is based on software distribution model where a software

vendor or service provider hosts the business application software and makes it

available to its customers over a network. The network in case of SaaS is

Internet. One of the major obstacles that had been removed from the path for

SaaS is the availability of bandwidth to the masses and that too at a lower

price.

The availability of bandwidth has favored the SaaS movement. Today, one can

avail everything from online Office suites to Web OSes, and enterprise business

applications such as ERP and CRM using the SaaS model.

How SaaS apps benefit enterprises



SaaS allows enterprises to access functionalities of software applications at a
lower cost with no investments, in either software or hardware. The enterprises

can adopt the SaaS-based business applications to cut down on capital investment

that would have been incurred while setting up those applications to run from

their own premises.

With SaaS, the enterprises need not bother about costs of licensing and

purchasing application packages. Since the SaaS application vendor takes up the

task of setting up the necessary infrastructure that will be needed to host the

application the enterprises save this capital investment which can be diverted

toward operations.

With SaaS-based applications, the complexities involved with the installation

and implementation of the application and corresponding hardware requirements,

IT manpower for maintaining such applications, maintenance hassles, and

down-time, are worries of past for an enterprise. This way an enterprise can

save cost that would have otherwise been incurred toward application's

licensing, implementation, and its training. The only thing that an enterprise

user now requires is to access these SaaS-based business apps in an Internet

connection and a Web browser.

For an enterprise, the benefits of adopting SaaS-based business applications

is not just cost savings, SaaS apps also leverage mobility to their employees.

The pervasive Internet connectivity and the penetration of notebooks and mobile

devices have made it possible for an employee to work from home or even while

traveling.

A SaaS-based business app allows employees to access their business

applications from a Web browser anywhere and anytime. Also as the business apps

are already installed, they just need to be configured as per the client's

requirement. This results in faster deployment of the application which has also

termed the SaaS applications as 'Instant-On' applications. Thus an enterprise

which has opened up a new branch office in another city can extend the user

subscription from the SaaS vendor and get the business applications up and

running for the new office in no time.

Collaboration and resource sharing have been two aspects that Web 2.0 has

emphasized upon. These days SaaS vendors are following the roadmap of Web 2.0

whereby their applications would be interactive and user-friendly along with the

facility for collaboration and resource sharing among the users of the

application. Keeping this in perspective the new-age SaaS applications are not

merely a standalone business functionality solution, but a solution that

provides full e-business functionality by integrating business applications like

CRM, workflow, SCM along with services like web-mail, chat/IM, and online

support.

With such an application an online business environment can be achieved

whereby users can interact among themselves and also share information while

being able to access business applications (like CRM, SCM) that they use for

their work. These SaaS applications facilitate all these services from within a

Web browser. The enterprises just have to subscribe to the service; they can

even customize the services offered by SaaS vendor to fit their requirements.

Many enterprise business app providers have also jumped upon the SaaS

bandwagon by looking at the growth prospective. The likes of Microsoft and

Oracle have already started their SaaS initiative products and services.

Microsoft this year announced their own SaaS initiative plans by providing

hosted services of Microsoft Exchange server and SharePoint software. Doing this

will allow organizations to use the SharePoint's collaborative applications and

Exchange Server's mail functionalities while saving on the cost of

infrastructure needed to deploy these applications and also on their licensing

and maintenance costs.

Thanks to one of the leading SaaS-based CRM vendor 'SalesForce.com;' now an

enterprise can implement CRM application for its offices with just a few clicks

and employees can access it over the Internet using a Web browser. Similarly,

WorkACE is a Web 2.0 based SaaS solution that offers a whole online business

environment.



Benefits of SaaS Model v/s

Traditional Model
  Traditional

Software Model
SaaS

SoftwareModel
Investment Costs l Application

licensing costs



l Hardware & Installation Costs


l Maintenance Charges
l

Subscription-based service



l Initial cost up to 50% less than licensed App
Implementation Time 6—18 months

duration`
Within Days
Upgrade Frequency` Once per 12—18

months
Frequently,

3—4 times a year
Maintenance Fees Up to 20% of

the license cost
None
IT Manpower and Infrastructure Increases TCO

depending on manpower expertise required
Handled by

vendor

WorkACE

WorkACE is a SaaS based Business Process

Management (BPM) system with collaboration from QXA systems. The company

calls it an e-working facility. The system has features such as Groupware,

KMS, Business Process Management, Business Ecosystem management, Supply

chain management, eSupport and Collaboration, which includes Webmail, Chat,

WorkFlow Management, etc. And with all these BPM features, the system can

easily work even as a small scale ERP solution for SMBs. The company sells

the system in two forms. One is the SaaS model where one doesn't even need

to bother about the deployment and management of the system. The other model

is where applications are actually deployed in ones premises as an Intranet.

This option is suitable for those who are paranoid



about their security and don't want their company data to sit on someone
else's network or over the Internet.



Prerequisites and deployment



The prerequisites for the WorkACE SaaS model are very less. Basically,

you require an Internet connection. Even a dial up will work (we tried it

out on dial up and it performed pretty responsibly). You will then require

an OS (could be either of Windows, Linux or MAC) that supports Mozilla

Firefox browser. Firefox is a must for the system to work because first, the

officially supported browser for WorkACE is Firefox and second, when we

tried it out with IE 6, it didn't even let us login. This means you would

require Firefox to be installed on all machines to run WorkACE.


When you create a new

Division (Business Unit) in WorkACE, eleven most common departments are

auto created

This can actually be a drawback for the

system in some cases. Being a browser based SaaS model application, it has

great usability on thin clients. An organization can save on deployment

costs by replacing all workstations where WorkACE is going to be used, with

thin clients. However, most thin clients don't support app installation and

come with either IE or some other browser instead of FireFox. In such a case

the system might not even work.



If you choose the SaaS model (which we have reviewed this time), then
deployment is just a matter of minutes. All you have to do is purchase

WorkACE for users whom you want to give access to the system. Once deployed,

you have to create Divisions (essentially a business unit) and Departments

in the system, according to your business needs.



The system makes this process simpler by creating the common departments

automatically, the moment you create a new Division. Around eleven

departments such as HR, R&D, IT Systems, Sales, Marketing, Purchase, etc are

auto created. As soon as customization as per your business needs is over,

start using the software.

Pricing

and purchase




The SaaS model of WorkACE can be purchased from http://workace.com and costs
you around USD9.95 per user per month, which comes to around Rs 400. Along

with this you can get licenses for 5 to unlimited number of users, unlimited

eFacility, 150MB storage space per user and 1GB data transfer per user per

month. The system uses Google to checkout online transactions and takes

around 15 minutes to register.



However, the price of the Enterprise Edition, which is essentially a
premises installation, is not disclosed. You can write to ghq@qxsystems.com

for more information.

Seamless Business Processing through SOA

Today enterprises demand data immediacy, accuracy and security from one end

of the business process to another. But since most have monolithic applications

running on disparate, unconnected systems, this demand seems very difficult to

meet. Monolithic applications such as ERP, CRM or SCM had efficiently resolved

productivity and control issues over their functional domains.

But when it comes to collaboration and resource sharing amongst different

departments, there was a wide chasm as business processes of one application

couldn't communicate with some other app's processes. This was because these

discrete applications did not follow or implement open standards like SOAP or

XML, which facilitate inter-platform communication.

Therefore, there was a need for a seamless system for enterprises, where they

would be able to shift their focus and resources from maintaining separate

applications to adopting an end-to-end business process based on customer

service.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has come out as an answer to the demands

of today's fast-moving, business-critical environments.

SOA has made it possible for an organization to streamline communication

across disparate business applications such as ERP, CRM or SCM.

It's a conceptual framework that enables enterprises to weave business

processes with IT infrastructure, by integrating data and business logic of

their disparate applications. And as the enterprises race toward SOA

implementation for optimizing business processes and streamlining communications

across various department-based applications, the software application vendors

have started their own initiatives for SOA.

On the one hand, they are providing platform for SOA based business

architecture and on the other, they are making business applications that are

SOA compliant.

Benefits of SOA

The benefits of an SOA based business environment are multifarious. The SOA

approach is generally focused on business processes. This means by integrating

business processes, an enterprise can achieve cost-reduction, service re-use and

faster response to business needs.

By integrating loosely-coupled business processes, that allows one discrete

application to communicate with the other, a bridge can be achieved that

eliminates the time lag for information flow amongst applications.

Using SOA, an enterprise would be able to keep its investments in existing

legacy systems. This way an enterprise would be able to adopt and integrate

their legacy apps with newer applications, without having to make their old

legacy systems and data redundant. So they can build a flexible and

standards-based software foundation for the future.

SOA enabling apps



SOA based business models are available from almost all major software solutions
providers. The likes of Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, IBM and BEA, all have their own

initiatives for SOA as a business integration solution. Similarly, business

application vendors have started providing solution packages that are compliant

with SOA standards.

With an SOA compliant business application, an organization can integrate

their legacy systems with these apps over an SOA enabling platform. IBM's Lotus

Notes and Domino 8 is a suite of software that can play a key role in an

organization's plan for SOA implementation. They provide seamless integration

among different desktop utility applications and also enhance collaboration.

On the other hand to integrate business applications with ERP, SAP has

provided NetWeaver as an integrating platform.

Microsoft, with their Visual Studio 2008 has provided developers an SOA

standards based development environment on which applications meant for seamless

business activity can be developed.

The adoption of such platforms and development environment for SOA

implementation, gives an organization the flexibility of business services

development by reducing the need to solve the complexity of underlying

infrastructure technologies of applications and their frameworks.

As one can see, SOA is a different way of building and deploying enterprise

applications. It's a complete architecture, which would require some time to

settle in. However once it's done, it would make enterprise application

integration a breeze.

SOA solutions from major

vendors
All major IT solution

providers have their own range of SOA products. Here are some of those:

1. Sun Microsystems: The company has released

Java Composite Application Platform Suite (Java CAPS) as part of their SOA

initiative. Java CAPS contains all that is required for an enterprise to

develop, deploy, manage and monitor an SOA implementation. It includes

runtimes and tools that are required for building and deployment of SOA

applications for application-to-application integration and B2B integration.

Its Sun SeeBeyond eView Studio enables record fetching across disparate

systems such as ERP and CRM for seamless sharing of information across

systems.

2. Microsoft: The product line of SOA

enabling platforms from Microsoft is impressive. Its BizTalk Server,

launched in 2000, started a revolution in service integration industry with

its ease of use and functionalities. With SharePoint Server, they offer an

enterprise wide collaboration, content management, and workflow along with

social networking, on the same lines as Web 2.0 standards. BI is also

offered with the package. Recently Microsoft announced their new SOA

platform -- 'Oslo', which will be a next generation SOA platform having

process centric approach.

3. IBM: The company's SOA Foundation is an

open standards software suite that offers interoperability of applications

along with business process based modular development for communication of

applications. Their WebSphere Server provides a strong middle tier support

for SOA implementation.

4. BEA: Their SOA product family includes

AquaLogic and WebLogic. Both these product lines include applications for

collaboration and communication along with base middleware support with

servers-- AquaLogic and WebLogic. They also have Enterprise 360°, which

combines the benefits from convergence of SOA, enterprise social computing

and BPM for an enterprise.

5. Oracle: The company's SOA suite comprises

of software that enables organizations to develop and manage services based

applications. The components include JDeveloper 10g, BPEL Process Manager,

etc.

6. SAP: Its NetWeaver is a web-based, open

integration and application platform for an enterprise, for integrating

other application services with the SAP ERP solution. With NetWeaver, legacy

applications can easily be integrated with an enterprise's ERP software.

BI Tools Become Easy to Use

For any organization, the value of getting reports about its various

performance metrics is extremely critical, as it helps make the right decisions

at the right time. This reporting reflects the status of assets that can include

customer databases, supply chain information, personnel data, manufacturing,

sales and marketing activities, as well as any other source of information

critical for the organization's business operations.

But all these business functionalities have their own data sources, due to

which extracting a report based on over two or more functional areas becomes

complex and a tedious job for the IT department.

Business Intelligence (BI) software steps in here. It allows you to integrate

disparate data sources like supply-chain and customer databases into a coherent

framework for real-time reporting and detailed analysis. Equipped with BI an

organization can have the facility to gain insights into their business or

operations by understanding their company's information assets.

Company watch
  • SAP acquires Business Objects.
  • IBM acquires Cognos.
  • Oracle acquires Hyperion.
  • HP acquires Knightsbridge Solutions.

Every organization, small or large can benefit from BI. Because of this BI

applications can be found deployed in every other organization. Today BI is no

longer a tool meant for top executives alone. Its usage has trickled to others

in the organization as well, ie the salesforce can also use BI to get data about

their prospective customer leads. This is mainly because BI reporting and

querying has become easier to use. For instance, today BI applications use user

interfaces that represent a familiar spreadsheet like environment, but are

packed with more advanced features.

Decision-makers of an organization have always expected BI applications to

present them the most current information from the data warehouse or from the

operational data in order to evaluate their business plans, product's

performance or consumer behavior and also how to lead business processes.

Business Analytics helps in evaluating such reports generated mainly by the

enterprise's BI system from the data repository.

BA is a tool with which scenario based and predictive analysis could be done

on the information to describe a business opportunity better. Organizations need

such analytics tools that could help to optimize business processes like

identifying best customer, selecting the ideal price, and calculating

demand—supply requirement etc.

A BI application does an

overall organizational information retrieval through a central data

warehouse which tracks all departmental data stores

Taking cue from this, now many BI applications have integrated the analytics

facility also along with the reporting.

BI Apps integrating BA tools



The past year saw many significant acquisitions in this space. Many vendors

in the BI domain acquired companies with Business Analytics expertise. The major

news-makers were SAP for its acquisition of Business Objects, and IBM's

acquisition of Cognos. As a result, these BI firms can now offer a complete

solution to the customer, right from reporting to data analysis.The advantage of

integrating BA tools with BI applications is obvious.

BA tools provide dashboard

functionalities whereby the KPIs can be tweaked to see their projected

outcome

BI applications are based on pre-determined key-performance metrics and

planning assumptions on which automated reports are generated. Whereas BA tools

are not meant for simple report generation,but rather work and interact on data

from generated reports of BI to do calculative analysis to help in

decision-making processes.

For instance, Business Objects has a BA tool called Xcelsius. With it users

can evaluate BI-generated reports with graphical data representation, which is

easier to interpret, and also conduct on-report business analysis in a

spreadsheet like interface. This helps in execution of business decisions

instantly from the report itself.

This is in stark contrast to the earlier days, where the report generated

from the BI application had to be pulled out onto a spreadsheet and handed to

data analysts for generating business model or for analysis summary.

With such easy to use reporting and analysis tools a business decision maker

can not only query a BI app for a report, but also do predictive analysis on it

to make a business decision out of it. With that he can not only save time but

also make better decision in the competitive business arena.

In addition to distributing the right data for reporting, BI solutions

present that data in visualized format like a graph for ease of understanding.

These tools have options that allow you to create dashboard reports to present

data in various formats like charts or diagrams.

Viewing graphically presented data results in easier and quicker evaluation

of reports. Also this visualized data can be used for doing analytics and

reviewing purposes whereby the scenarios of a change to a particular metric and

its impact can be judged easily. Such dashboard functionality results in ease of

use for the end-user of the BI application.

With the BA tools being integrated into an enterprise's BI solution it has

empowered the organization's employees to make faster and better decisions by

having an accurate view of the organization and the actionable items based on

defined key performance metrics.

Cognos 8 BI
An enterprise can put a BI

solution to greater use by putting it in the hands of a broad range of users

and bringing them into the familiar working environment that they use each

day. Also the users should be able to query for data easily, be it from

their dashboards or even remotely through mobile devices. The new age BI

apps are facilitating all this now. Cognos 8 BI is a strategic BI software

that lets its users access, view, and interact with reports within Microsoft

Excel which users are familiar with. A user can find strategic BI

information of the enterprise using Cognos 8 BI application mobile service

that caters to an enterprise's mobile workforce on devices like Blackberry.

Open Source Business Applications

So far we have discussed trends that are and will transform the way business

applications will be used in an enterprise. While these are all exciting, they

come at a cost. So if you're on a tight budget, then here's some good news for

you. The Open Source community has started churning out lots of different

business applications, be it ERP, CRM, SCM, web based collaboration, unified

communication, document or content management. You name the application and

you'll find something in the Open Source world.

The demand for Open Source business applications can easily be noticed if one

visits sourceforge.net, where 400+ Open Source ERP solutions are listed.

Obviously not all of them would be useful, but you can figure that out by

looking at which ones have been downloaded the most. For instance, one of them,

Compiere ERP+CRM software has been downloaded millions of times, which clearly

indicates its popularity.

We have also carried around 20 Open Source ERP solutions on this month's DVD

for you to check out. Most Open Source ERP solutions are based on Java, provide

a web-based interface, and require PHP. They do require a RDBMS to work, and

will normally work with PostgreSQL or MySQL. Some will even work with commercial

databases like Oracle.

In the pages to follow, we've explained how to implement one of the ERP

solutions, OpenBravo that we've provided on this month's DVD.

 

Compiere the Compuntu way

Compiere is one of the most popular Open Source

ERP + CRM solutions, having most of the features that a production class ERP
solution should have. But its installation and configuration are not

everyone's cup of tea. We found a German Ubuntu based Virtual Appliance for

VMWare which has Compiere preconfigured. This appliance is called Compuntu.

Installation: To run it download the

appliance image from the http://vmware.com/appliances/directory/160 and

unzip and run it through VMWare Player. Now first change the language to

English by clicking on the Link which says “Sprache,” ie Language in German.

Now log on to the desktop by providing username “iku” and password “iku”.

Once the desktop appears, you will see only one icon on the desktop called

“Kompiere” Click on it and it will open a java based wizard screen. Here all

the values are preconfigured, so all you have to do is to click on the Green

Tick button. Another screen will appear, click on the Tick Button again and

your Compiere frontend will open up.



Some Open Source ERP Solutions


Solution`
Features
Openbravo ERP Web-based,

modules for finance, supply chain, project mgmt, manufacturing & BI
JFire Java based

ERP, totally customizable, provides ERP + CRM
jAllinOne Web

application based on Java Swing, OS independent, it facilitates management

of warehouse, selling, purchasing, accounting, activity and scheduling.
Compiere ERP Browser

based, easy installation on Linux or Windows, complete ERP and CRM solution
Plazma Java based

ERP + CRM solution, OS independent, DB can based on Oracle, PostgreSQL,

MySQL, Firebird, HSQL
WebERP PHP based

web ERP for automating accounting system, reports can be emailed as PDFs

Deploy an ERP in ten minutes

ERP solutions are notorious in being extremely time consuming when deploying.

A standard ERP implementation could take around many months to a year depending

on the complexity of the business processes plans to automate. There are

generally two areas to be taken care of while deploying an ERP solution: the

actual installation of the application; and the business process migration to

the system. Both parts require a good amount of planning and time, making the

deployment of the whole system a very tedious and lengthy process.

While nothing much can be done about the second part, you can reduce the time

taken during the installation and configuration of an ERP app. This will not

only save your total deployment time but also give you more time to plan the

actual task, business process migration. The software is freely downloadable and

follows the Openbravo Public License, which is a derivative of the Mozilla

Public License. You're free to try it out in your organization on your own, or

contact an Openbravo implementation partner to help you. If you have the

necessary inhouse expertise , then you can try it inhouse, else get external

support for it. One such vendor is YourIT-Service. You can reach them at

http://yourit-service.com”. Let's now see how to deploy it.

Deploying OpenBravo 2.35



The software is available for both Linux and Windows. You can download its

installer directly from the website (www.openbravo.com), or you could even

download its virtual appliance that's would then run from either VMware or XEN.

To create a new workflow in

OpenBravo, just go to the Application --> Workflow option and fill in the

workflow path from the wizard

As we want to deploy an ERP solution in less than ten minutes, we'll go the

virtual appliance way. We have also provided the OpenBravo virtual appliance for

VMware with this month's PCQXtreme DVD. The system which you will require to run

the virtual appliance should have at least 1 GB RAM, 20 GB free hard-disk space

and a Pentium D or better processor.

Any OS--Windows XP, 2003 or Linux will work for OpenBravo, as long as you

have VMWare Player or Workstation installed on top of that OS. And of course the

machine should have a network card (preferably a 1000 Mbps card) connected to

the network. For our test, we used a 3.0 GHz dual Xeon processor server with 16

GB RAM and Windows Server 2008 RC0 installed on top of it.

Key Features of OpenBravo

You shall see the following

list of options on the front page of OpenBravo admin interface:
  1. Procurement Management: This option is

    used for managing purchases and receipts/invoices. This can also be used

    for analyzing the reports generated from the purchase data.
  2. Warehouse Management: You can manage and

    create warehouses and their inventories from this module.
  3. Production Management: This module is used

    for creating and managing production processes and production control.

  4. Material Requirement Planning: You can

    manage your production planning and inventory control.
  5. Sales Management: This module is used for

    creating and managing sales orders, commissions and shipment details.

  6. Project & Service Management: This module

    is used for managing and tracking your employee expenses, project

    expenses, etc.
  7. Financial Management: This module is used

    for managing financial details such as accounting, receivables and

    payables, etc.

Now, depending on the OS installed on the server, you have to download VMWare

player and install it on your machine. We are using VMWare Player and not

Workstation as we are using only free and Open Source applications for this ERP

deployment. You can download VMware player from www.vmware.com/download/

player/.

Once you have downloaded and installed it, extract the Zip file containing

OpenBravo virtual hard disk image. Now run VMware player and select the

extracted .vmhd file and start the virtual machine. It will boot on a Linux

machine in two to five minutes and you should see a banner, “Welcome to

OpenBravo ERP Community Appliance”. Your ERP solution is now fully deployed and

ready to use.

Basic usage



The complete usage and customization of an ERP solution is a vast topic and

we can't cover it in just two pages.

OpenBravo has seven different modules that let you manage everything from

finances to sales, to projects, production, procurement, and your warehouse.

Customizing them as per your organization's requirements would not be feasible

here, as it would require an ERP consultant, we'll not delve into that. Instead,

we'll just tell you how to get started with it, and provide some basic setup and

usage tips.

Login to the terminal



Once you have booted your virtual machine with OpenBravo appliance, you

might need to log in to the appliance for some basic setups. For this, you have

to provide username as 'root' while the password should be blank. Once you login

you should change the root password to something stronger, for security reasons.

To do so run the 'passwd' command and give a new password for the user 'root.'

Accessing the interface



OpenBravo has a web based interface which you can access from across the
network. When you boot the virtual machine with OpenBravo, just below the

welcome line it tells you the IP address on which OpenBravo is running and

accessible. By default it takes the IP from the DHCP server running in your

network.

Once you boot the appliance

with VMWare player, you can access the OpenBravo page from any browser over

the network

Now, note down the IP address and go to any machine on the same network and

open up your favorite browser. Here, provide the IP address and a login page

will appear.

Here, provide the username as “OpenBravo” and password as “openbravo”. While

providing the username and the password, mind the case as the system is case

sensitive. Once you've been authenticated, the main configuration page of

OpenBravo will open up.

That's it. Your ERP solution is up. Call an ERP cons- ultant or try

customizing it yourself.

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