Food and Drug Safety: Prevention Better Than Cure (For Sure) – Part 1

Food production and distribution is a serious and strategic business, and I am not aware of anyone in my surroundings that takes it lightly; food can not only delight us, but can also make us quite sick and indisposed. While my inner circles (pets included) have luckily not been casualties of recent salmonella, E.coli, and whatnot outbreaks from tainted chilly peppers, tomatoes, spinach, pet food, or most recently peanut butter, the 2008 year-end holidays were not much fun for my family.

Namely, the “G.I. bug” that our 18-month-old likely got in her playgroup spread so quickly and violently to anyone who was in contact with her (including the broader family members that stopped by to just traditionally exchange holiday gifts). Sure, viral gastroenteritis might likely have had nothing to do with what we ate at the time, but the feeling of being listless and other unpleasant (and unspeakable) G.I. bug symptoms were quite similar to those that food poisoning outbreaks can “treat” us to.

Food processing and distribution are not be the only market with burning product safety issues, since similar issues can also apply to the drug and pharmaceuticals sector or consumer packaged goods (CPGs); remember lead-tainted toys or antifreeze-laced toothpaste coming from China? Still, we all seem to be the most sensitive about food-related breaking news, possibly due to the likelihood of those hitting home (perhaps even in a willful way by bio-terrorists).

Thus, some food processing market experts have lately been frustrated by companies’ focus on location and lot control, serial number tracking, and traceability as the panaceas to solve product safety issues.

While important, these critical capabilities still help mostly with minimizing the damage (i.e., during product recalls), but the damage to customers and company’s brand has unfortunately already taken place, leaving many folks seriously ill (if not even fatally affected).

Track-and-trace After the Fact: Good But Insufficient

On the other hand, while I agree that detecting the problem before “the horse leaves the barn” would be a great use of IT tools, my IT experience still only involves location and lot tracking (while the product is in the hands of the manufacturer) and traceability (once the goods go to the customer). The goal has typically been the immediacy of problem identification and minimizing the extent of a product recall.

Sure, random sampling of ingredients is usually performed by labs and quality control (QC) departments, but they can only report an “accept” or “reject” status. To also be fair, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) is a systematic preventive approach to food safety and pharmaceutical safety that addresses physical, chemical, and biological hazards as a means of prevention rather than finished product inspection. Still, like lot control and traceability, HACCP is only a piece of a much broader product safety issue.

Proactive Product Safety

Some of the market experts within leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors have thus started to develop a broader strategy to proactively protect food safety. The higher the risk (e.g., from non-processed “bag & ship” leafy green vegetables, seafood, meats, fruit and vegetables, dairy products, etc.), the greater the need for a proactive strategy.

Ultimately, this proactive approach could become part of an overarching governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) strategy (and message). Namely, companies can either choose to be reactive and support regulations and tracking as an imposed requirement or take a more proactive stance as part of a more comprehensive corporate social responsibility (CSR) message.

In other words, providing nutrition labeling and track-and-trace capability is one thing, whereas adding food education and balanced eating with more “green” or “organic” products is a whole different level that goes beyond simply compliance reporting. Implementing a comprehensive food safety management program both on the internal production side and overall supply chain side is one thing, whereas educating consumers is a CSR message.

Certainly, phrases like “organic or real food” and “farm-to-table” may sound like elitist jargon tossed around at upscale restaurants, and completely out of touch with the folks than cannot afford even a $0.99 burger (or such junk food) these days. But the country’s top chefs, several of whom traveled to Washington, DC for President Obama’s recent inauguration, hope that Obama’s apparent flair for good and healthy food will encourage people to expand their horizons when it comes to what they eat.

These chefs tout locally grown, environmentally friendly and - most importantly - nutritious food. They urge diners, even those who may never be able to afford to eat at their extravagant restaurants, to grow their own vegetables, shop at farmers’ markets, and pay attention to where their food comes from.

But before this “organic pie in the sky” becomes a reality, let’s see what some pundits within ERP providers have in mind when it comes to being proactive about food safety. Whenever there is a serious discussion about the food industry, one cannot avoid Olin Thompson, VP of Industry Strategy at Lawson Software and former contributor to TEC’s newsletter (e.g., see TEC’s previous article entitled “Food Safety, Government Regulations, and Brand Protection”). Lately, Olin has been talking about his (and Lawson’s) holistic approach as the “Four Ps” (”4Ps”) of Food Safety (along the lines of well-known 4Ps of the Marketing Theory).

“Four Ps” of Food Safety

The first “P” is “Prevent” or take steps to avoid a problem, since the best defense is good offense. Olin considers this as the most important of the four Ps, whereby sanitation, QC, and HACCP are some utilized practices. The idea is to build a quality fence around your business, with top management’s genuine commitment to food safety. To that end, your business system should provide the following capabilities:

* Product specifications during procurement processes;
* Supplier/vendor ratings;
* Inbound QC testing;
* Quality specifications as part of inventory management modules;
* Product quarantine management;
* Product aging tracking;
* Date-sensitive picking; and
* Lot tracking.

The second “P” stands for “Prepare” or build the ability to react to a problem if and when it happens. Good preparation presumes that you will have an incident and prepares you to respond via integration of food safety data with operations and automated data collection (ADC), storage, and analysis of food safety data. To that end, your business system should provide lot track-and-trace and location management capabilities.

Next comes “Prove,” to both yourselves and other concerned parties, that you are preventing problems and you are prepared to react if you have one. In other words, you have to be able to prove to all concerned parties that your product recall system will respond when it is needed (whether due to problems of an internal nature or coming from customers and regulators). This can be achieved by frequently testing the system, whereby the business system should be able to conduct mock recalls.

Finally, the last P is “Proactively respond” (OK, Olin acknowledges that it requires a little stretch here to get another “P”). Namely, if a problem is uncovered, one must be aggressive in addressing the recall and other needs, since holding back usually makes it worse. All incidents must be taken seriously and the company must respond quickly and completely. Over-response is often less expensive in terms of dollars and negative PR than under-response.

While management commitment to a proactive response is critical, the company’s business system should also provide rapid recall support. In other words, to meet the four-hour response requirement set forth in the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, the system must provide the actionable information in minutes rather than hours.

Which Enterprise Applications Can Cater to the 4Ps of Product Safety?

The critical part in the 4Ps-enabling applications landscape would be a Process Manufacturing ERP system like Lawson M3 [evaluate this product]. These systems are typically the most important for tracing and establishing the quality fence. Namely, ERP systems process inventory transactions that can come from the entire value chain. Process manufacturing ERP systems often have the laboratory software applications as well, while the procurement module can handle specifications, vendor certifications, and vendor rating.

Interestingly, Olin doesn’t consider product lifecycle management (PLM) systems to be critical with regards to product safety. Still, he at least acknowledges PLM systems’ help with creating quality specifications and matching approved ingredients to geographic markets (e.g., can this ingredient be in a product that is going to be sold in Japan?).

Supply chain event management (SCEM) tools are certainly critical for visibility and action reasons, albeit they can overlap with the inventory management modules of ERP systems. These visibility and workflow-based tools help only if they have lot tracking capabilities, perhaps bolstered with radio frequency identification (RFID) sensors and accompanying applications.

To that end, recently launched Lawson M3 Trace Engine is a standalone solution that combines repository, SCEM, data cleansing and integration, and workflow capabilities for food safety in extended supply chains. The product was described in great detail in my previous two-part blog series.

Manufacturing execution systems (MES) are important since HACCP capabilities are often found within them, but typically a MES is lot-blind and thus has to be interfaced to an ERP counterpart. Likewise, a laboratory information management system (LIMS) or quality management system (QMS) is a critical part of the quality fence for handling testing rules, analysis of results, vendor ratings, lab instructions, etc.

But as a standalone solution LIMS/QMS is usually not linked to a recall system. Most recall systems are part of ERP, which again demands some involved integration or interfacing.

Part II of this blog series will introduce another process industries expert and his proactive product compliance strategy. Your views, comments, opinions, experiences, etc. about the abovementioned food safety issues are welcome in the meantime.

One Year Later at Deltek: More of the Same (And Then Some More) – Part III

Part I of this blog series explained Deltek’s ebullience despite a hostile and depressed environment, and also analyzed the recent developments (and anticipated future developments) at Deltek’s Professional Service line of business, which is largely represented by Deltek Vision [evaluate this product]. Part II then analyzed the recent developments (and anticipated future developments) at Deltek’s Government Contractors (GovCon) line of business, which is represented by Deltek Costpoint [evaluate this product] and Deltek GCS Premier [evaluate this product].

This final part will focus on Deltek’s Enterprise Project Management (EPM) line of business, which helps companies deal with the ever-growing reporting regulations being imposed by government agencies.

The Deltek EPM product portfolio [evaluate these products] offers the following three primary disciplines of program controls for government contractors:

1. Planning & Scheduling via Deltek Open Plan;
2. Cost and earned value management (EVM) via Deltek Cobra and Deltek MPM (to be explained soon); and
3. Risk Management via Deltek WelcomRisk.

To be fair, estimating is another key program management disciplne, which Deltek does via third-party solutions. Regarding estimating partners for EPM, Deltek works with several vendors, including Galorath, ProPricer, and PRICE Systems. Users can basically import comma-separated values (CSV) files from those estimating systems into Deltek Cobra. While Deltek works with all of the above-mentioned estimating vendors, it doesn’t yet have formalized partnerships with any of them, and doesn’t turn to one more than any other.

The “See Problems Before They Do,” “Share Program Information,” and “Trust the Data” Themes

As Deltek has built its EPM business and listened to its customers’ top priorities, it has focused its attention on building a technology roadmap that delivers features such as early warning indicators, automated reporting, “anywhere, anytime” access via the Web, and process controls to build consistency within the organization. The vendor continues to invest in EPM, and one recent highlight would be Deltek wInsight 6.4, the tool for EVM reporting and collaboration, which was released in late May, 2008.

The release included enhancements such as early warning indicators that provide a proactive view of project performance to avoid costly budget and schedule overruns. In addition, wInsight 6.4 added two new “trip wire” metrics for the United States (US) Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD): the Baseline Execution Index (BEI) and the Critical Path Length Index (CPLI). These indices are used to measure and forecast programs’ progress and are utilized by the US Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) for compliance audits.

The product also included faster US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Part 300 reporting capabilities and simplified data integration. The latter was enabled via a United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) Extensible Markup Language (XML) data interchange to communicate EVM data to clients more easily.

Acquisition Further Bolsters EVM Leadership

As the second major move in the EPM space, in September 2008 Deltek announced the acquisition of MPM, Planview’s former EVM solution. Deltek received both software and key employees with this acquisition.

Prior to this acquisition, the two dominant EVM applications in the market were Planview MPM and Deltek Cobra. Now, Deltek becomes the industry-standard solution in the marketplace for EVM, since acquiring MPM effectively allowed the vendor to corner this market niche. This acquisition indeed extends Deltek’s leadership position as the largest and most comprehensive EVM provider.

Deltek MPM is an EVM application widely used by government contractors and agencies, including 8 of the top 10 aerospace and defense (A&D) contractors, to meet the complex compliance requirements of the US Federal Government. The solution competes directly with Artemis CostView and Dekker, and is used primarily by government contractors to comply with the ANSI 748-98A standards for earned value reporting.

Accordingly, MPM takes initial program budgets to an integrated baseline review (IBR) and then allows users to monitor and report on program performance. MPM produces 48 standard (”canned”) reports required by the government such as contract performance format (CPR): Format 1-4 and NASA Form 533: Monthly Contractor Financial Management Report. On a high level, the product’s key capabilities are the following: program overview and initial setup, work breakdown structure (WBS), estimating, what-if analysis, planning & status reviewing, graphic drill-down, Microsoft Project integration, and reporting capabilities in terms of sample reports.

Why This Acquisition?

I think Deltek made the MPM acquisition for two reasons. For one, as mentioned earlier on, the purchase solidifies Deltek’s standing as the leading EVM vendor in the world. These numbers are only estimates, but it is my belief that MPM and Cobra’s combined install base gives Deltek about 70 percent of the market share for EVM applications.

MPM’s former parent Planview is focused on the information information technology (IT) governance side of the project portfolio management (PPM) market and felt that selling its EVM solution to Deltek would re-focus the company on what it is good at, and gives it additional resources to focus on the strategy. For Deltek, the vendor gets a solution that fits into its EVM product set, which was the second reason it made this move.

Namely, MPM gives Deltek an EVM solution that complements the overall EPM portfolio. MPM is a great fit for organizations that have decentralized EVM processes where EVM is managed on individual programs.

It is a desktop application that is relatively easy to use, intuitive, quick to implement, and requires few IT resources. In that sense, while it will be sold to and used by the largest companies in the world (Northrop Grumman Corporation and Raytheon Company are MPM customers), it is an ideal fit for small to midsize government contractors that want to get up and running on EVM quickly.

The application is capable of handling only one project at a time (although it can store multiple projects). For instance, WBS can only be done on a project-by-project basis, since there is no concept for centralized enterprise project structure (EPS). There is a summary level WBS with roll-up assignments of WBS to owners (or contract account managers [CAMs]). The product also does not offer some critical reports such as the Functional Cost Hour Report (DD Form 1921-1 Part 1) and OMB 300.

Thus, MPM is not focused on enterprise-level deals due to lack of enterprise functionality, and this is where Cobra plays. Deltek Cobra, though it is also used by small companies, is a great solution for organizations that manage EVM on a centralized enterprise-basis, and these tend to be larger firms. For companies like Lockheed Martin that have centralized EVM functions, the scalability and “roll-up” capabilities of Cobra make it a better solution than MPM for centralized EVM management.

Since MPM has been used by hundreds of customers, and it is a tight fit for small to medium sized government contractors that need to implement EVM on a program-by-program basis, Deltek will not be sun-setting the product and will continue to support/sell MPM to customers. As the vendor assesses the EVM needs of its customers and prospects, it will sell Cobra or MPM depending on how EVM is managed inside relevant customer organizations.

Due to MPM’s architecture, it is not difficult to push/pull data to and from the application. In that sense, EVM data can be transferred between MPM and GCS Premier, Costpoint, and Vision. However, Deltek is exploring deeper integration plans and will reveal those to the market as they are developed.

What Might the Future Bring?

For the future, Deltek’s ambitious goal within the EPM suite is to unify all the various applications it owns on one common technology. Since a few years ago, when it first acquired a number of functional point solutions from multiple sources on various technologies (and with little to no integration at all), Deltek has made great strides in this area. But the vendor wants to eventually offer an Integrated Program Management framework from a single vendor, on a single technology, and with a strong application integration framework to interact with any outside systems, not just to Deltek’s (where it is already integrated today).

Deltek is well down this path already, although serious work remains. For example, Deltek Cobra’s upcoming release, as an EVM solution targeted to large government contractors (that need to standardize on EVM practices across multiple programs within their complex organizations), will likely feature Microsoft .NET Framework-based more scalable architecture.

The upcoming CAM dashboard would be another exciting innovation, since on major programs, CAMs act as specialists for specific components of that program. But at this stage, I am only at liberty to hint that this functionality should greatly enhance (dare I say revolutionize?) the way A&D firms manage program performance. In the meantime, we will have to stay tuned for more product’s details and the official availability announcement by Deltek.

“Act Vertical” vs. “Go Extinct” Retailers – Part 3

Part 1 of this blog series set the historical background for supply chain management (SCM) evolution and presented the advantages and shortcomings of vertical vs. horizontal integration. The analysis then moved onto the generally embattled retail sector, where a select group of innovative retailers has found a “happy medium” approach to stay well above the fray.

Kurt Salmon Associated (KSA), the leading global management consulting firm specializing in the retail and consumer goods industries, dubbed this strategy “Act Vertical” in its seminal research study. The firm presented the highlights of the study at the National Retail Federation (NRF) Annual Convention & EXPO 2009 (also known as the Retail Big Show) in January in New York City. The accompanying slide deck can be downloaded here.

Part 2 of this blog series then outlined the five drivers for retailers to act vertical, and the three key tenets of the approach. The post explained in depth the following first two requirements for acting vertical:

1. Effectively bring unique and compelling products and services to consumers; and
2. Offer differentiating customer experiences through multiple, integrated channels.

This final part will focus on the need for retailers to collaborate and synchronize internally and externally with customers and suppliers, often via customized agile supply chains, as necessary.

This supply network agility and flexibility is critical to creating products based on the attributes of smaller consumer segments and “fast tracking” greater numbers of products to respond to ever-shorter selling time windows. Different products have different supply chain requirements, given that many products’ variables may combine in different ways, each variable suggesting its own type of supply chain strategy.

Different (Supply Chain) Strokes for Different Folks

In his Harvard Business Review 1997 article entitled “What Is the Right Supply Chain for Your Product?” Marshall L. Fisher distinguished two types of products that call for different supply chain strategies: functional and innovative. They differ as follows:

* Functional products, like canned soup and blue jeans, have longer life cycles (perhaps more than two years), relatively low contribution margins, and little variety. Because demand for them is stable, they are fairly easy to forecast, with a margin of error in the 10 percent range, very few out-of-stock situations, and no end-of-season markdowns.
* Innovative products differ from functional products in every aspect. They have unpredictable demand, relatively short life cycles (e.g., three months for seasonal clothing), and high contribution margins of 20 to 60 percent. They may have millions of variants in each category, an average stock-out rate from 10 to 40 percent, and end-of-season markdowns in the range of 10 to 25 percent of the regular price. The margin of error on forecasts for innovative products is as high as 40 to 100 percent, but the lead time to make them to order may be as low as one day and is generally no more than two weeks.

The idea that the same type of product can be either functional or innovative implies that one company might have more than one supply chain. And that’s the contention of Jonathan Byrnes, a professor at MIT. Writing in the Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge 2005 article entitled “You Only Have One Supply Chain?”, Byrnes also asserts that one supply chain is not enough: two, three, or more would be preferable.

“One size fits all” supply chains may have been sufficient in the past, he believes, when that was the competitive norm, but modern IT makes it possible to have multiple, dynamic chains that can accommodate different product and information flows. Byrnes breaks apparel products into the following three categories: staples, seasonal products, and fashion. These products have very distinct design and replenishment characteristics.

Much like Fisher’s functional products, staples (e.g., white underwear) have steady, year-round demand and low margins. He advises stocking them only in retail outlets in small quantities and transporting them in truckload quantities (a full truck is more cost-effective for the shipper than a partially loaded vehicle, i.e. less-than-truckload [LTL] shipping.) Fashion products are like Fisher’s innovative items with unpredictable demand.

Consequently, Zara, the famous Spanish clothing manufacturer, has two supply chains, one for staples and the other for fashion clothing. To get the fastest response time, Zara uses pricey Western European suppliers for the fashion items. But for the more predictable demand items, it uses Eastern European suppliers, which have poorer response time (not a major concern here) but at much lower cost.

In addition to varying the supply chain by product type, Fisher recommends several other variables to consider, such as store type and time in the season or product cycle. Demand varies considerably over the life cycle of many products, whereby the same item might have infrequent demand at first, more stable demand in its maturity phase, and falling demand at the end of its life cycle.

With more than one supply chain, a master retailer can move its products from one chain to the other in response to changing variables, such as type of channel or life-cycle stage. Yet most retailers still move all three types of items to their stores through the same supply chain. Conversely, leading vertical retailers have multiple supply chains, based on a combination of factors such as service levels required, type of demand (e.g., basic products should never be out of stock), and display.

By having a variety of tailored supply chains, retailers that Act Vertical can actually reduce supply chain costs by streamlining the flow of goods. KSA points out one unnamed multibillion-dollar retailer that expects to boost earnings by US$40 million annually and generate more than US$100 million in cash next year by replacing one inefficient supply chain with three streamlined ones.

You Can Control Only What You Measure

Moreover, to Act Vertical, retailers must also change the way they measure supply chain performance, which should be in a holistic, balanced scorecard manner. Namely, many retailers today manage with the goal of achieving the lowest transportation and logistics costs. However, that can increase inventory levels at the store, in the truck, at the distribution center (DC), on the boat, or in the factory.

Excess inventory often then needs to be marked down, and lower margins from markdown sale items can greatly reduce profits and wipe out the cost reductions achieved in transportation. Instead, retailers that Act Vertical track their supply chain performance according to “net-realized-margin,” which takes into account the total profitability and total landed costs of getting products from the factory to the store, including their selling price.

These retailers also use different measures to track the performance of products in the stores, based on different in-stock goals and service strategies by product category. According to Module One of the APICS CSCP Learning System, the appropriate supply chain for functional products should emphasize predictability and low cost with key performance indicators (KPIs) such as the following:

* High average utilization rate in manufacturing;
* Minimal necessary inventory with high inventory turns;
* Short lead times (consistent with low cost);
* Suppliers chosen for cost and quality; and
* Product design that strives for maximum performance and minimal cost.

Conversely, the supply chain for innovative products should emphasize market responsiveness rather than physical efficiency, with KPIs such as the following:

* excess buffer capacity and significant safety stock (buffer stock) of parts or finished items;
* aggressive reduction of lead times;
* suppliers chosen for speed, flexibility, and quality (rather than cost); and
* modular design that postpones the customer order decoupling point (CODP) decision (and differentiation) as long as possible.

The KPIs for each supply chain differ because the products’ characteristics differ too. Aggressively reducing lead times, for example, is appropriate for innovative products but would be irrelevant for functional products that can be manufactured and delivered on predictable schedules in high volumes.

On the other hand, inventory reduction makes good sense as a KPI for supply chains if the product is functional but not if it’s innovative. Because profit margins are low on functional products (those markets tend to be very competitive), cost reduction in the functional supply chain is essential.

Innovative products, however, with their high margins and unpredictable demand, justify extra expense for holding costs. In addition, manufacturers of innovative products can look for other solutions to the problem of unpredictable demand, such as to aggressively reduce lead times and build products to order rather than in a made-to-stock (MTS) manner.

The same class of product, the author argues, can be either innovative or functional. For instance, coffee can be functional (e.g., for business meetings, at gas stations, or on airplanes), in which case it should be available quickly at a low price with perhaps cream and sugar as options. At an upscale coffee shop, on the other hand, patrons are willing to endure longer lead times and pay more money for their coffee, but they want variety in return. As a Starbucks addict, I can vouch for the latter case.

All of the above practices increase the likelihood of delivering the right product to the right place at the right time, and at the right cost (and price). Basically every retailer will have to act vertical over the next few years to react quickly to more-demanding consumers whose tastes are changing faster than ever.

The Seven Magic Core Competencies

So how were the abovementioned act-vertical retailers able to create and execute distinctive and compelling offerings and customer experiences, and what exactly did they do to achieve superior financial performance? First, KSA points out that they have a clear retail-brand strategy: a sharp articulation of their target customers and the kind of offering and experience they would deliver to them.

Second, these retailers have developed the following seven core capabilities that enabled them to deliver unique and compelling offerings and customer experiences:

1. Market research that identifies emerging customer needs and product opportunities. Research that PetSmart Inc. conducted in the late 1990s opened its eyes about how critical pet services were to pet owners. Aeropostale Inc., the mall-based specialty retailer of casual apparel for young people, empowers its employees to travel extensively to see what its core young teen segment is wearing.
2. Product design and development that balances creativity and commercial appeal. Both Coach Inc., a leading American designer and maker of luxury lifestyle handbags and accessories, and Aeropostale, make sure that the quantitative analyses don’t dominate the design creativity.
3. Extensive consumer testing that shapes the offerings and customer experiences and reduces the risk of product innovation. For example, Coach spends US$5 million annually on such consumer research, including 70,000 in-depth interviews.
4. Tight relationships with sourcing vendors, which enables manufacturing capacity to scale up quickly and quality to be maintained. This accelerated manufacturing cycle also allows the delay of key product decisions to accommodate consumer and fashion changes in the nick of time. In addition to Zara’s abovementioned example of two supply chains, Coach works directly with leather suppliers to ensure its handbags meet its exacting standards.
5. Inventory management (assortment, allocation and replenishment) capabilities that can rapidly move products to places of greatest demand and maximized pricing.
6. Design and execution of an engaging and consistent brand experience across all shopping channels stores, catalogs, and the Web. Apple organized its stores (which have the highest per square foot sales in retailing) not by technology categories but rather by how customers use them. Its about 250 stores group hardware, software, and accessories in sections such as music, movies, photos, and children.
7. Marketing that communicates the brand promise across all channels and showcases how the retailer’s offering and experiences enhance their customers’ lifestyle.

More details and examples can be found on KSA’s website.

The Act Vertical Imperative as the Conclusion

Part 2 outlined the reasons that are driving retailers to Act Vertical, i.e., control over most decisions about the products that flow through their stores. These drivers are not abating; if anything, they are increasing.

Indeed, consumers have a fast-expanding variety of shopping choices, and Internet-based retailing continues to take a bigger slice of the pie. And in a global world, the number of product brands consumers can choose from continues to grow in categories from high-tech gadgets to apparel.

Therefore, all retailers must radically change their business models to keep once-loyal consumers from defecting. Retailers that can adopt and embrace an Act Vertical business model will increase their influence on the design, development, manufacture, and distribution of the goods they bring to market. They will be then able to put a differentiating and recognizable stamp on those products, as well as on how consumers experience them, thereby distinguishing their stores (and online storefronts) from the pack.

It is interesting to note, thought, that most retailers have put just a few Act Vertical elements in place. Only a few have created the three-part foundation (outlined in Part 2) that is essential to creating a successful act vertical business model.

But despite their rapid and profitable growth, none of the retailers that KSA has studied had mastered all seven components of acting vertical. This might present considerable opportunities both for laggard retailers that have yet to pursue an act vertical model and for retailers that are already operating this way.

Future blog posts will analyze how leading retail supply chain management (SCM) providers can help retailers with their Act Vertical forays. Till then, what are your thoughts and comments in this regard? What are your experiences in dealing with the abovementioned retailers? What particular software applications do you think can help these companies in their Act Vertical efforts?

6 Ways Vendors Are Talking At You Instead of To You

15 years ago, you could forgive a company for thinking that a Web site was something they needed to have because everyone else had one. But by the end of the dot-com boom, pretty well everyone had realized that a corporate Web site was much more than just an online business card or brochure. Today, a company’s Web site is one of its most important assets, simply because it’s the first point of contact with potential customers.

Unfortunately, when it comes to talking to those potential customers, many companies are still missing the mark, and enterprise software vendors are among the worst offenders.Instead of talking to you, they’re talking at you. Here are 6 ways they’re doing it.
Making Meaningless Claims

If you’re developing a tagline, a good rule of thumb is to analyze the claim you’re making and think about whether any of your competitors would ever claim the opposite. If the answer is no, you need a better tagline. For example, a software vendor might use the classic three-word tagline structure and come up with something like “Flexible. Powerful. Efficient.” Since no vendor would claim to be rigid, weak, and wasteful, it’s neither memorable nor effective.

Shouldn’t the same rule apply to other communications?

Apparently not, it would seem. Vendor Web sites are chock full of unsupported claims that sound good, but don’t mean much. For example, almost every vendor’s site claims that the vendor is an “industry leader.” But what does that mean? How is it measured? Who decides? And more to the point, if every vendor is an industry leader, is that claim really going to help you decide?

What you want to know is what sets the vendor apart, and how that affects you. For example, if you run a financial services company and you’re looking for accounting software, are you going to pay more attention to a generic “industry leader” or to the “leading provider of accounting software for financial services firms?”

Probably the latter, right? And if that vendor backs up the claim with some hard information about their expertise and ties it into your business, so much the better.

But most vendors, content to wow you with their leadership, don’t do that. Why not?
Talking About “Businesses” Instead of Talking About You

Vendor Web sites are full of descriptions of businesses. Businesses facing challenges. Regular businesses becoming best-run businesses. Businesses applying best practices to achieve explosive growth. Businesses in turmoil. Businesses suffering in a weak economy. Businesses burdened by regulation.

But the only business you care about is your own.

This may sound picky, but to me, these generic descriptions sound a little too prescriptive. They sound like the vendor, without even asking what your business is actually doing, knows what it should be doing. Like without understanding where you want your business to go, they know where it should go.

If you would only implement their solutions.

And in their defense, many vendors deal with hundreds or thousands of companies—certainly enough to see what successful businesses (and unsuccessful ones) have in common.

But having things in common doesn’t make businesses the same. Your business has its fair share of unique characteristics, and you’re more keenly aware of them than a vendor will ever be.

So isn’t it easier on the ears when a vendor asks what you need? When they acknowledge that your business has its own problems and its own requirements? When they ask you what you want instead of telling you what “businesses” need?
Making It All About Themselves

If vendors aren’t telling you what you need, they’re probably telling you how good they are. Industry-leading this, best-of-breed that, and redefined the other. They’re almost daring you to speak ill of the software they’re so proud of. And pride in your work is great, but the problem with this approach is that it implies that the software is perfect, and it’s your business that has the problems.

But facts are facts. No solution is going to do 100% of what you need it to do. You’re going to have to make some compromises, and so is the vendor. In other words, the “best fit” solution is the one that comes closest to doing what you need with the least amount of headache. And vendors know that. The chest-beating tone is just that—a tone. But it does create an impression of how you’ll be treated as one of their customers.

So why not change the tone? Wouldn’t you prefer to hear that a vendor has a great piece of software and that they’ll work with you to integrate it into your business as smoothly as possible? Wouldn’t you rather feel like you’re working with your vendor and not for them?

I thought so.
Not Providing Concrete Examples

I see this one all the time. Vendors start by extolling the virtues of their solutions, then they make a bunch of claims about what those solutions will do for your business, and finally they throw a laundry list of features at you in the hopes that you’ll recognize what you need. But they rarely connect the dots.

The problem is that many vendors approach things backwards. They developed all kinds of neat features to (presumably) solve common business problems. So when they tell you that a feature exists, they think you’ll a) connect it to the problem it was designed to solve, b) immediately see its value, and c) recognize the benefit they claim it brings.

A more effective approach is to just spell it out. Rather than claiming that a solution “manages customer interactions, from contact data and history to calendaring and tasks,” (for example) a vendor might explain that when a customer calls the support department, your rep can see what products they have, what problems they’ve had in the past, and what other reps have told the customer. The call goes smoothly (and quickly), the customer feels valued, you save money, etc., etc.

It takes just a few extra words (or a short video) to explicitly connect a feature to a real world problem, connect the problem to a solution, and connect the solution to a benefit. And as a potential customer, you now know a lot more about what you’re buying.

Again, wouldn’t you rather deal with a vendor that goes out of its way to give you all the facts?
Making Information Difficult to Find

The problems I’ve listed so far all assume that you’ve actually found something like the information you’re looking for. But a number of vendor Web sites commit the cardinal sin of making information hard to find in the first place. You can find examples of this easily enough, so rather than listing some, let me just say this:

You should never have to work to find the information you want on a vendor’s Web site. That’s the vendor’s job.

Every vendor should be doing everything in its power to make sure that all the information you could possibly want is available, easy to find, and easy to act on. From information about solutions, to feature lists, demos, trial versions, references, testimonials, contact information, and especially purchasing information, it’s up to the vendor to make sure you find it. Not the other way ’round.
Assuming You Care

That issue of responsibility brings me to the common thread in all of these problems: vendors assume you care. About them. And they’re not wrong. They’re just going about things the wrong way.

What they’re doing is assuming you’re willing to slog through reams of marketing material to get at the information you want, convince yourself that their solutions are right for you, and buy.

You, on the other hand, care about whether vendors’ solutions can address your specific problems. You care whether the vendors can deliver what they promise—on time and within your budget. You care whether they’re going to support you before, during, and after your implementation.

So why aren’t they telling you those things? In concrete terms, and in language that’s targeted at you?
What Do You Think?

Do you feel that vendors aren’t addressing your needs on their websites? Are you frustrated by sites that don’t speak to you? If you’re a vendor and you feel like your company does a good job of communicating with customers, how are you doing it?

The Wizardry of Business Process Management – Part 2

Part 1 of this blog series provided a lengthy discussion about business process management’s (BPM’s) necessary parts-and-parcels, and the software category’s value proposition. At the end of that post, I mentioned my recent attendance of a witty presentation that attempted to explain the essence of BPM via a bit of humor and the metaphor of the classic “Wizard of Oz” movie.

Namely, on March 23, 2009, Alan Trefler, Pegasystems’ founder and chief executive officer (CEO), gave his luncheon keynote presentation at the Gartner BPM Summit in San Diego. His theme was “Don’t just Survive…Capitalize.” Trefler began by reminding the audience that in today’s turbulent economy we are all “not in Kansas anymore,” and may just need some ruby slippers to find our way back home to profitability. If you have 14 minutes to spare, you can recapture the spirit of the event here.

But before I start to paraphrase the spirited presentation, some introduction to Pegasystems and Trefler is in order. Pegasystems provides BPM software to drive revenue growth, productivity, and business agility to over 760 of the world’s most sophisticated organizations in financial services, insurance, health care, government, life sciences, communications, manufacturing, and other industries. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts (US), the company employs over 900 people in its offices in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Pegasystems’ Genesis

Much has evolved at Pegasystems (a.k.a. Pega) from its very first customer Citibank in 1983, which used Pega’s first-generation product written in what now is the seemingly ancient assembler language. The product was rewritten in the mid-80s in the less ancient PL/1 imperative programming language, and in the mid-90s in C++. For the next 10 years, the vendor sold a number of packaged (but still separate and disjointed) customer relationship management (CRM) applications for financial services and health care, and was doing sort of OK.

While those applications dealt with process issues, they were not BPM solutions per se. But the latest inflection point took place in 2004 when Pega rewrote its product suite yet again, this time with the idea of empowering both business users and IT staff to “Build for Change (BFC).” The idea behind this now trademarked slogan is that companies can deliver value more quickly and nimbly, and thus outperform their competitors.

The current SmartBPM Suite makes business processes easy to build and change by directly capturing business objectives and eliminating manual programming. The suite also unifies business rules and processes into composite applications that leverage existing systems (IT assets).

Moreover, a library of best-practice frameworks complements the unified BPM suite. These solution kits are tailored as jump-start enablers in target industries. The solution frameworks reportedly drive 60 percent of Pega’s overall business and contribute significantly to both its revenue and to customers’ more rapid return on investment (ROI).

Last but not least, the suite is built on a quite open and standards-based architecture to meet the challenges of the world’s most sophisticated and distributed enterprises. Consequently, Pega has enjoyed success in terms of unprecedented growth since 2005.

In 2008, Pega had revenues of US$212 million, up 31 percent from US$167 in 2007 (more than twice than the BPM industry’s compound annual growth rate [CAGR] of 13 percent that was mentioned in Part 1). There was a 50 percent license revenue growth with only a 16 percent growth in professional services revenue. Half of Pega’s revenue last year came from increased adoption at existing accounts. The early 2009 numbers in this regard seem to be even more impressive.

Expansion’s Opportunities and Challenges

Pega’s growth rate, total revenues, focus, and financial stability argue for the vendor’s bullish posture and a goal of becoming a US$1 billion software company, although I will believe it when I see it. There is certainly much room for expansion for Pega, in terms of new international presence, penetrating new industries, and relying more on partner delivery (rather than via its direct force).

Pega markets its software and services primarily through its direct sales force. Strategic partnerships with consultants and systems integrators (SIs) are important to the vendor’s sales efforts because these firms influence buying decisions, help identify engagements, and complement Pega’s BPM software with their technology and domain expertise.

Sure, the vendor could increase its reach via original equipment manufacturer (OEM) alliances (i.e., to have parts of SmartBPM embedded in other vendors’ offering) or a value added reseller (VAR) channel. Nonetheless, at least Pega can substantiate its increasing reliance and success via strategic SI relationships.

Namely, there are nearly 3,700 total consultants in Pega’s partner ecosystem (a 1,740 percent increase from 2004), while partners delivered over 168 projects in 2008 (up 50 percent from 2007). In 2008, Pega also saw a 75 percent increase in software license deals sold together with partners as compared to 2007, to around US$30 million (which earned over US $250 million in 2008 partners’ professional services billings).

These partners may deliver strategic business planning, consulting, project management, and implementation services to Pega BPM customers. Currently, Pega SI partners include Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, Capgemini, Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation, IBM Global Business Services (GBS), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Satyam Computer Services, Steria, Virtusa, and Wipro Technologies. Three large global SIs–Accenture, Capgemini and IBM GBS–made significant investments in their Pega practice in 2008 and together they reportedly contributed the lion’s share of the new software license bookings in 2008.

The Chess-BPM Connection?

Coming back to Pega’s CEO Alan Trefler, it would be an understatement that he is an interesting and colorful person. Back in 1975, as a 19 year old “dark horse” player Trefler became the major upset case in international chess tournament history.

Namely, in the open section of the World Open chess tournament, Trefler, with the official rating of 2075, 125 points below the lowest master rating), and ranked 115th in the tournament, scored 8-1 to tie for first place with International Grandmaster Pal Benko, rated 2504, and ahead of Grandmasters Nicholas Rossolimo and Walter Browne. OK, being a chess aficionado, I can nitpick and say how the heavyweights of the time such as Bobby Fisher, Anatoly Karpov, Boris Spaski, etc., were not at that tournament, but his success still speaks volumes.

In our one-on-one informal conversation at Gartner’s Summit, Trefler told me he abandoned chess because of poor pay (the winner’s prize was a measly US$ 2,000 at the time) and a dearth of ladies in geeky chess circles. Therefore, he switched to teaching computers to play chess at first, then to teaching computers to improve business processes. Well, it is comforting to know that the IT field appears less geeky and more attractive to the fairer sex than chess.

One thing that struck me about Trefler, in addition to being gregarious and quite approachable for a founder of a large and successful company, was his humility. He even admitted that at least once in the company’s history, he almost seriously screwed up, but apparently that has not been the case in the recent past.

In order for some of you to be able to follow the parables and metaphors in Pega CEO’s presentation, bellow is a description of the company’s current offering. Pega provides a comprehensive rules-based BPM suite intended to help its customers plan, build, and manage BPM solutions. Pegasystems’ abovementioned BFC mantra is delivered through a SmartBPM suite of patented rule-driven BPM capabilities.

Pega Products

PegaRULES Process Commander (PRPC) is at the core of the SmartBPM Suite and provides capabilities designed to model, execute, monitor, and analyze results of processes. The product includes an application profiler that allows a business process to be defined based on business goals and objectives, with simplified “fill in the blank” forms. PRPC also simplifies business process modeling, allowing business users to graphically describe and test an intended business process within the system itself.

The software uses the results of the application profiler and process modeling to create a new business solution, including user interface (UI) and executable business models. PegaRULES Process Commander also provides a Web browser-based graphical development environment, execution engine, and management dashboard for rapid business application and solution development.

The SmartBPM Suite offers additional capabilities, including business process analysis, process simulation, enterprise application integration (EAI), portal-based integration, enterprise content management (ECM), and case management to the PegaRULES Process Commander capabilities.

As mentioned earlier, Pega additionally offers dozens of purpose- or industry-specific Solution Frameworks built into the SmartBPM Suite. These frameworks allow organizations to more quickly implement new customer-facing practices and processes, bring new offerings to market, and provide customized or specialized processing to meet the needs of different customers, departments, geographies, or regulatory requirements.

The Wizard of (BPM) Oz

For those who might not have seen “Wizard of Oz,” a quick synopsis follows. Dorothy (played by Judy Garland) and her dog Toto have been swept away by a tornado from her lush farm in Kansas to a wonderland of munchkins, flying monkeys, and different-colored horses. The Good Witch of the North, Glinda (Billie Burke), advises Dorothy to follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City and the all-knowing Wizard of Oz to find her way home.

Along the way, she meets the Scarecrow (played by Ray Bolger), the Tin Man (played by Jack Haley) and the Cowardly Lion (played by Bert Lahr), who help her fend off the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton), while hoping to receive what they lack themselves (a brain, a heart, and courage, respectively). The Wicked Witch of the West is attempting to get her sister’s (the Wicked Witch of the East) Ruby Slippers from Dorothy. If memory serves me well, the Wicked Witch of the East was killed when Dorothy’s house landed on her due to the tornado.

In his luncheon presentation at Gartner’s BPM Summit, Trefler started with acknowledging that these are indeed interesting times to be in business, to say the least. Namely, all of us are facing unprecedented challenges of not only how to survive, but also how to possibly capitalize on opportunities.

When we think of metaphors to describe the times we are in (some might refer to the Great Depression, others to the New Deal, etc.), Pega came to the Wizard of Oz metaphor after reviewing the past year. Namely, if we go back 12 to 18 months, like Dorothy in the movie, we were all in a beautiful green and verdant place, where businesses could easily enter new markets, people could buy houses without putting any money down, etc. Everything looked up at that time, and we recently sadly learned that these practices were unjustifiably (and irresponsibly) overutilized.

Consequently, during the last 6 to 12 months, the economic maelstrom, the tornado of change, has ripped off our traditional foundation and roots, and taken us from profitability (way up there), so that we all are “not in Kansas any more.” And, while we all get back to our senses about where we are, who is really suffering? IT departments and staff are certainly under pressure to keep the engines running, but wide-eyed and innocent business users (like Dorothy) are at the greatest point of inflexion trying to figure out how to go forward and bring their businesses back to profitability and their comfort zone (a beautiful Kansas farm).

But in these times with hardly any profit margins, when IT folks are overworked and when business management has become defensive and insular, what can rank-and-file business users do? Business users need some useful advice, and to that end, Trefler said that good news is that there is a good source: the BPM Summit host, Gartner (the Good Witch), with all its insights, visions, affable speakers, magic wand, etc. One piece of advice that analysts like Gartner preach to companies is that they need to espouse and achieve their viable business goals before they can get back to the mystical land of profitability.

Many companies realize that the “Ruby Slippers” that will take them back to the comfort zone are a magic combination of processes and rules, and if one can figure out how to put them together and “click their heels,” one can have tremendous results even in the darkest and the most dour times like nowadays. As the best proof of concept, it is interesting to note that in the midst of all this economic disaster, Pega’s stock is at a nine-year-high.

As was said earlier on, the vendor grew 31 percent in 2008, with a whopping 70 percent software license growth in Q4 2008, despite the fact that it sells significantly to the currently embattled sector of insurance and banks. Indeed, insurance providers and banks do not seem like they’re on the Yellow Brick Road to Oz (a road back to profitability), but these are (somewhat surprisingly) conservative environments (except for top executives’ pays) that only go for solutions that have been proven to work.

All joking apart, these service organizations buy only what they can put together easily, so they can get to work and benefit quickly. To that end, this blog series will explain shortly how Pega allows these organizations to avoid the time and expense required to create lengthy policy manuals and system specifications by automating the rules-based creation of system documentation.

The “BPM of Oz” Main Protagonists

The conclusion thus far is that with the right team, IT tools, and a bit of analyst magic (know-how) to improve processes, things are possible for business users even during these dour days. So, who should be the faces and main protagonists of this journey to profitability?

For one, every project needs a business sponsor who is senior enough to set the direction, get courage, and keep on path despite the quagmire. In his funny presentation, Trefler assigned the following task to the Cowardly Lion: to be the chief operating officer (COO) that has to acquire courage and sense an opportunity to go forward.

Although Pega is a staunch proponent of BPM being aimed at business users, companies also need a sound technical infrastructure to make sure that technology is brought to bear. To that end, the Tin Man is appointed as a service-oriented architecture (SOA) IT architect with a SOA heart to handle all the master data and processes (blood and nutrients moving throughout the corporation’s body and feeding it).

But the sponsor with courage and the SOA technical and data infrastructure heart (and a cardiovascular system) are not enough. What is that other crucial piece that is necessary? Well, companies need the brain or the place to capture the business objectives and intent. BPM suites with all necessary metadata, rules, and processes (i.e., the institutional knowledge) are the brain, and of course, the Scarecrow would be in charge of that.

Humans are visual creatures, and engineers and technologists especially like to draw pictures and diagrams, and the brain needs to understand how the business should use those intertwined data. The brain needs to easily espouse the business intent and know how to use the data to that end, especially when times are tough and users are under pressure.

Businesses need to do this team exercise quickly and on the fly. In reality, the competition has never been darker, and those ominous flying monkeys in the movie represent today’s competitors that will sweep everyone away… everyone is hungry these days.

The Yellow Brick Road of BPM

In the main part of his presentation, Trefler maintained that the Yellow Brick Road, which will lead any business to Oz (and back to profitability), consists of three capabilities, starting with the ability to directly capture business objectives into the BPM system by the business users. The BPM system is actually an integrated database of rules and processes that is able to expand to the extent of the business.

At this stage, I have to depart from Trefler’s short and focused presentation to explain how directly executable business requirements put business changes in the hands of the business users. To capture new objectives, enterprises need an environment that is adaptable and “change-aware” so that processes are dynamically impacted by ever-evolving corporate business objectives.

Accordingly, SmartBPM processes use an open, relational database of rules to organize enterprises’ business thinking with visibility and control. Processes and rules become assets of the enterprise that are organized by roles, with an audit trail, versioning, and security built in. This includes the ability to capture and document new changes without “wiping out” previous definitions, thus allowing organizations to find and re-execute historical definitions as required.

Their business processes are built out of small, granular definitions, each structured to address a specific policy or procedure. These elements are linked together by logical names that reflect the intent of every process step or sub-step. This allows the processes to be change-aware, i.e., to have the repository of rules (RuleBase in Pega’s lingo) to figure out for itself how to insert a change into the right places.

Each new business rule adds a specific refinement to specialize previously defined objectives. New rules are automatically “slotted” into other procedures and decisions that they impact.

This automatic positioning is more efficient and error-free than the typical alternative of laboriously locating and coding changes across dozens of separate software modules or updating manual procedures in three-ring binders scattered all over the place. Change-aware processes capture the new objectives of management in an active database that gives processes and rules the same visibility and reusability that organizations get when they centralize key master data such as the enterprise’s customer or accounting master information.

Moreover, easy and safe Web browser-based forms are designed with familiar metaphors to match the processes with decisions that are being changed, thus helping guide business user-driven changes. The forms define the “Concepts” that drop into the RuleBase in bite-sized chunks. To edit the rule that defines a process, users use the familiar Microsoft Visio flowchart tool, which dynamically interacts with the SmartBPM execution engine to gather all the needed information.

The flowchart tool captures the diagram and its details in the RuleBase as operational instructions. The built-in stencil on the left of the flowchart form (see figure below) includes augmented workflow shapes and facilities that interactively prompt for the information needed to make the diagram executable. In other words, the act of specifying this process actually automates the process.

Even a Business User Can Do IT

Another option is to create special rules within a Decision Table form (see figure below) with rows and columns. In this matrix form too, business users maintain business rules, just like in a spreadsheet. Business users can invoke the decision table form (or a decision tree) by clicking on the particular Decision shape in the flowchart form. These intuitive “Fit for Purpose” forms make accessing the authoritative RuleBase easy and safe.

Specialized forms ensure accuracy and allow interactive testing with sample data to ensure they do exactly what users intend. Business users quickly learn to understand what a rule definition like the following one does: “IF the Balance Amount is under $1,000 AND the State equals Massachusetts, then the Rate is 2.5. But, if the State equals New York with the Balance Amount between 1,000 and 5,000 THEN call a special additional rule for New York.”

This ability of forms to guide the user for safe and easy delegation to the IT staff is of critical importance. One big problem with conventional programming is how little support in terms of specifications a programmer gets when creating and editing a new module. The forms make the job easier in SmartBPM, allowing the system to guide the definition and prevent errors.

There are dozens of available specialized rule structures to facilitate an easy and safe way to record business objectives. Pega also allows customers or partners to add their own structures into the very core of the BPM engine, should a special need require another specialized rule type.

Last but not least, working models hereby replace traditional voluminous paper specifications and requirements. Coming back to Trefler’s words, there is no longer a need for large and thick Microsoft Word documents and sign-offs between business and IT users. This is the case even when we are talking about documenting rich objectives and workflows, such as multichannel customer service.

Part 3 of this blog series will conclude Trefler’s presentation and provide even more details on Pegasystems’ value proposition. In the meantime, your comments, thoughts, suggestions, or individual experiences with BPM solutions are more than welcome.

Agresso + CODA, VITA + Link (+ CODA 2go): What’s the Sum? – Part 2

Part 1 of this blog series described Unit 4 Agresso’s (or Agresso in further text) dual product strategy following its acquisition of CODA in 2008. The post then went on to analyzing (and reinforcing if you will, given a number of previous blog entries on the same topic) the post-implementation agility capabilities of Agresso Business World (ABW) [evaluate this product].

The blog post attempted to explain how the product’s underlying VITA architecture differs from contemporary service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based architectures. Part 2 of this blog series analyzes the CODA Financials product and its underlying Link architecture. Contrary to Agresso VITA, CODA Link (a.k.a. CODA 2link) architecture is indeed SOA-based and supports superior connectivity.

Enter CODA Link Architecture

For its part, CODA’s value proposition is in being a best-in-class financial management solution with possibly unmatched connectivity (i.e., it plays nicely with others, if not almost everyone in the yard). By the very nature of its narrow functional scope, CODA’s financial management software provides a stand-alone solution that simply must fit into customers’ existing IT infrastructure to work with other business systems without negatively impacting them.

CODA focuses on solutions targeted at chief financial officers (CFOs) and controllers. The “best-in-class” financial management designation comes from the single Web browser-based general ledger design that accommodates the “multi-everything” mantra (i.e., multi-currency, multi-country, multi-dimension, multi-subledger, etc.). This way CODA is able to meet both local and global requirements, and the system is compliant with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), and International Financial Reporting System (IFRS).

CODA’s customers have been raving about the vendor meeting their needs for consistent and accurate data, and an up-to-date “single version of the truth.” In addition, they often talk about improved financial processes (e.g., purchase-to-pay, invoice-to-collection, record-to-report, etc.), more streamlined and effective financial period closing practices, complete audit trails, and flexible enterprise reporting and analysis capabilities.

CODA-Financials is targeted at midsize and large companies across all public and commercial sectors, while CODA Dream targets small and medium enterprises (SMEs) , primarily in the UK. Both products have a long heritage, and CODA certainly has a remarkable reputation in the UK’s CFO/controller community.

CODA-Financials has a similar number of customers as Agresso, and has customers in all geographies (about 2,800 customers in over 100 countries). CODA has local sales and service & support hubs in the US, Europe, and Singapore.

The current Release 11 of CODA Financials (code-named Neon) has seen significant research and development (R&D) investment (the vendor estimates around 300 person years) to meet its customers’ changing needs. These are along the lines of helping organizations to achieve superior finance processes and improve business visibility (e.g., performance by company, location, product, line of business, etc.), regulatory compliance, and corporate governance.

In recent years, CODA has expanded its offerings beyond accounting transactions into other areas relevant to CFOs, such as financial analysis, financial consolidation, cash management (through the acquisition of OCRA), and financial governance solutions/business process control. This has enabled CODA to cross-sell these solutions to existing customers and even to organizations that do not necessarily use CODA’s financial management applications. However, the effort has not realized significant increases in revenue. For more on these events, see TEC’s 2005 series entitled “Best-of-breed Approach to Finance and Accounting.”

Superior Connectivity

The underlying Link architecture provides the backbone for CODA’s sophisticated and interoperable enterprise financials solution. Link’s capabilities give financial executives’ applications’ change management capabilities in terms of fast implementation, “low-impact” integration, and pain-free upgrading.

CODA’s standalone specialist financial management software has been designed to work with other surrounding IT systems, thanks to its notable system compatibility and easy integration. For one, the vendor’s stand-alone components fit into existing infrastructures due to their support for the following platforms (per each architectural layer):

* Hardware – Windows/Intel (Wintel) ; HP-UX servers; SUN SPARC; IBM pSeries (formerly RS/6000); and IBM System i (formerly iSeries and AS/400)
* Operating systems (OS) – Microsoft Windows; UNIX; Linux; and OS/400
* Databases – Microsoft SQL Server; Oracle; Sybase; and IBM DB2
* Web servers – Internet Information Services (IIS) and Apache HTTP Server
* Web browsers – Windows Internet Explorer (IE) and Mozilla Firefox
* Integrated development environments (IDEs) – Microsoft .NET Framework and Java Platform Enterprise Edition (formerly J2EE).

Moreover, integration with other key business systems can take place via either CODA 2link, a user-friendly integration tool (with more structure to it), or simply Web Services that capitalize on SOA principles. CODA 2Link offers a choice of appropriate toolsets for integration, starting with table-based batch loading integration. Integration can also be done via online remote procedure calls (RPCs), via extensible markup language (XML) in a distributed manner, or via a combination of XML interfaces and Web Services.

That is to say that this architecture blueprint provides both simple integration (via Microsoft Excel uploads) and advanced integration options. The latter options include Structured Query Language (SQL) batch uploads, Visual basic .NET and/or C language application programming interfaces (APIs) for legacy systems. Last but not least, and as said before, integration can also be programmatic via XML and Web Services.

User access is via a pure Web client or embedded within Microsoft Office (CODA also has its own implementation of AJAX called APE). Moreover, personal digital assistant (PDA) devices and mobile delivery of personalized reports are also supported.

The Web-based deployment and infrastructure for effective data management provides secure and personalized access to an up-to-date “single version of the truth.” The system ensures that everyone is “on the same page” by keeping functional updates “in sync” for all users, and by gathering, unifying, and analyzing data from systems across the entire organization, in a timely manner.

The system offers wide-ranging automation capabilities for data entry and processing, reconciliation, reporting, and financial processes. Personalization capabilities are also at the core of the architecture, with users driving configuration and tailoring of forms, inquiries, reports, and so on. There is a single graphical user interface (GUI) and look-and-feel for all CODA products, and users can redesign CODA’s processes and screens that come “out of the box.”

But the “Future Proofing” feature is the ability to decouple users’ personalized interfaces from the underlying CODA version on the server side, which provides for minimal impact on interfaces when moving to the latest CODA release. In other words, all user-driven customization and integration is preserved and protected through the upgrade process.

So, How is CODA’s SOA Better Than Other SOAs?

In addition to the aforementioned support for multiple platforms and personalization capabilities, I was wondering whether the CODA 2link SOA-based architecture is any different and better than other SOA counterparts, and how. In other words, SOA is known for plugging pieces together, and most SOA platforms are fairly evenly matched in that regard.

If there is something that differentiates the Coda 2link’s performance from, say, SAP NetWeaver, IBM WebSphere, or Oracle Fusion Middleware (OFM) connection capabilities, then users need to know that, and why it is better. CODA believes that its unique selling proposition (USP) with CODA Link is the extent of its coverage. Namely, all of the granular functions within CODA are available as Web Services, which means that anything that users can do within CODA’s finance system can be easily integrated to and accessed via another application – a front-end business system, or another back-end system, for example.

This feature also means that users can achieve a greater level of integration than with other systems, and avoid the normal pitfalls of enterprise application integration (EAI) and middleware products such as having to duplicate customer records or other data, for example. We should also note that OFM, WebSphere and NetWeaver are really middleware offerings that require extensive certification processes for best results. What CODA is providing is standards-based (the WS-I or Web Services Interoperability organization) service entry points into its business applications.

The vendor is not supplying a middleware solution per se, but rather a finance engine that can sit at the heart of an enterprise-wide, integrated, best-of-breed applications suite that meets the unique requirements of the customer in a way that no broad homogenous application suite could. The organic use of Web Services provides

* the ability to upgrade CODA but not have to change users’ screens;
* the ability to use the same development methods irrespective of the underlying hardware and software platform;
* integration with other systems independent of location (i.e., intranet or outside the firewall, at subsidiaries, affiliates, business partners, etc.);
* a single point of maintenance (repository) for financial business rules and security.

Furthermore, the entire Link infrastructure has full version support, so that CODA can guarantee that any integrations made using any of the technologies it offers within its architecture will continue to work through future upgrades of CODA. This versioning support, which enables consumers to maximize their investment in R&D around solutions they build even over multiple upgrades from CODA, is possibly a unique proposition that should resonate with some prospective customers.

Back to Agresso + CODA

The merger with Agresso has certainly given CODA a safer harbor from less friendly acquirers, while Agresso now has a two-prong product strategy along the “change” theme. On a somewhat negative note, despite Agresso’s ongoing success, its revenue is still centered on Europe, with only 9 percent of 2008 revenue coming from outside the region.

However, North America is the fastest growing part of Agresso—in just four years, revenues for Agresso North America have moved from 1 percent or less, to 5 percent of the company. This is not unsubstantial for a now half-billion-dollar company.

Prospective customers should consider Agresso or CODA products based on business requirements (post-implementation agility in a homogeneous environment vs. interoperability in a heterogeneous environment), industry segment, and geography. Dear readers, how do you find Agresso’s positioning of its products? What are your comments and opinions about post-implementation agility vs. interoperability and Agresso’s dual product strategy?

09 Keep Your IT Projects Focused with TEC’s Evaluation Centers

Here at TEC, we spend a lot of time talking about how easily software selection projects can go wrong. One mistake we see over and over is that companies fail to properly define their functional and technical requirements—the things that their new software must do and support.

That’s a big problem—because accurate, well-defined requirements are a critical part of any selection project. Get them right and you’re on the road to success. Get them wrong, or take shortcuts, and you risk making a bad choice. Worse still, you may not even know how bad a choice it is until after the implementation—when it’s too late.

But putting your requirements first isn’t always easy. Software selection is a juggling act, and your requirements aren’t the only ball you need to keep in the air. You’ve also got to analyze reams of data from vendors (some of it fact, some of it marketing hype) to find out if their products actually meet your requirements. And you need to make sure that you’re analyzing those data the right way—using the right tools and a proven methodology.

That’s where TEC’s Evaluation Centers come in—helping you stay focused on your requirements without dropping anything else.

So What Is an Evaluation Center?

Our Evaluation Centers are dedicated, online environments for software selection. Each Center contains everything you need to compare a particular type of enterprise software solution, and include:

A structured method for defining and prioritizing your requirements: The Evaluation Center interface lets you work from a model of industry standard features and functions where you can identify the features and functions you need and set priorities to define their relative importance. Structuring your requirements this way makes it easy to see how well vendors support them. But more on that in a moment.

Detailed vendor information: We ask vendors in dozens of industries to respond to detailed requests for information (RFIs) so we know how well their solutions support thousands of industry-standard features and functions. Once it is vetted by our analysts, this information ends up in our knowledge bases (KBs), along with articles, white papers, and other relevant data.

Every Evaluation Center gives you access to one or more KBs, so you have up-to-date information about hundreds of vendor solutions at your disposal—information that would be, at best, difficult and time-consuming to gather on your own.

A built-in decision support engine: Powering TEC’s Evaluation Centers is ebestmatch™, our online decision support engine. ebestmatch compares your requirements to the capabilities of vendor solutions in order to first identify a short list of solutions and, later, to identify the “best-fit” solution.

ebestmatch has a number of unique characteristics that make it ideal for software selection. For example, ebestmatch can supplement traditional weighted-average-based analysis with the BestMatch Factor—a patented computation that analyzes not only how well a solution matches your requirements, but also how closely it hews to your priorities.

With ebestmatch, it is also possible to do a “value analysis” that tells you which solution offers the closest match to your requirements for the price, and shows you how other vendors would have to adjust their pricing to stay competitive.
How Does This Help Keep Your Selection Projects Focused?

I said at the beginning that properly defining your functional and technical requirements is a critical part of your software selection project. After all, the goal is to find the best software for your business, and your needs have to come first.

Using a TEC Evaluation Center removes much of the overhead of a traditional selection project, leaving you with more time to pay attention to what you need—and whether the vendors can deliver it.

For one thing, in an Evaluation Center, you model and prioritize your requirements using the exact structure found in TEC’s RFIs—the same RFIs that vendors respond to. So you can see exactly where a vendor does and doesn’t support your requirements, and make apples-to-apples comparisons of competing vendors. That makes the comparison process a whole lot faster.

For another thing, because the Evaluation Centers already contain vendor RFI responses, you don’t need to spend time collecting and validating RFIs to develop your initial short list of vendors. And while you will eventually need to send RFIs to the vendors who make the short list, you can load their responses into the Evaluation Center and do the same kind of quick, unbiased evaluation and comparison you did to arrive at a short list in the first place.

And for yet another thing, TEC’s Evaluation Centers have analysis tools built right in, so you don’t need to spend time building and troubleshooting complicated spreadsheets (if you’ve been through a selection project before, you’ll immediately recognize what a time-saver this is). ebestmatch handles the underlying computations and displays the results in the Evaluation Center interface, using clear, easy-to-understand graphs, charts, and reports. You can see how the vendors perform at any level—from broad functional areas to individual features and functions.

Oh, and just so you know: every Evaluation Center is set up to guide you through the selection process according to TEC’s proven selection methodology, so you can be sure you’re going about things the right way.
In the End, It’s All about You

Your requirements aren’t the only component of your selection project, but they’re arguably the most important one. Getting them wrong or defining them poorly can have a disastrous effect. Put another way: garbage in, garbage out.

The idea behind our Evaluation Centers is to make the long and difficult parts of the selection process shorter and easier, leaving you free to focus on what your business needs. And that can pay off big, come implementation time.

Note: If you’re interested in seeing exactly how TEC’s Evaluation Centers work, you can sign up for a free trial, which you can use to perform a basic comparison of a long list of vendors. Simply follow the link to the Evaluation Center selection wizard, and answer a few questions to determine which Evaluation Center is right for you.

Six Reasons You Should Think About Getting a New Accounting System

Accountants and business people overall are generally aware that whatever happens in the company must be reflected in the corresponding accounting books or ledgers as accurately and as quickly as possible.

This means that accounting as a business process should be able to obtain, process, and store a significant volume of data that comes from a battery of different sources. I do not believe we need to convince anybody to use a computer-based accounting system to perform those business functions—this has been obvious for quite some time.

That being said, the next questions to ask are these: How adequately does your existing accounting software measure up to reality? And how can you improve it?

There are a few compelling reasons for moving to new accounting software—each of which is sufficient to convince the chief financial officer (CFO) or accounting department that your current system does not satisfy all company requirements.

Of course, the list of reasons below is not necessarily comprehensive or absolute—any given company will have its own motives for initiating a new system selection process, and I would appreciate your feedback to add real examples of your experiences to this list.

Six Reasons for Change

1. Your software vendor has discontinued development and support of the accounting system.

There are many reasons why a software development company may leave the market and stop supporting existing customers. A product strategy change can result from a business merger or acquisition, or (in a worst-case scenario) even a bankruptcy. This is a very sad result, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. In this type of situation, you should take a very close look to estimate the potential risks and effects. Implementation of another financial package could be the best alternative.

2. Integration with new source system functionality is so painful that it becomes almost impossible.

Let’s say that new packages are installed at your company to improve processes and make business more efficient. And let’s say they really do well—with the exception of feeding transactions to the accounting system. Because of the different ages of the technologies involved (or for any other reasons), integration could require escalating efforts and financial resources, and will eventually make no economic sense. In such case it is usually easier and wiser to replace the entire financial package. By the way, such situations should be foreseen and eliminated during the planning stage of new software implementation, but they are unfortunately neither.

3. Your software is not flexible enough to accommodate business changes.

Both the speed and frequency of change in today’s business environment are incredibly high, and many companies perform constant modifications in the way they handle materials, manufacture goods, store and distribute finished products, and so on. Also, one company may be acquired by another business, or merged with another company. Of course, accounting system must be able to accommodate rapidly altering practices in the bookkeeping and financial reporting systems, but not all of them are technically capable of performing similar changes.

4. Your system does not allow users to import and export data to or from Excel spreadsheets. This tells its own tale and does not require additional comments, except to say that this is a derivative effect of the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). Import/export functionality is extremely important for accountants, but you would be surprised by how many software packages do not support this. From my numerous conversations with practicing accountants, I know that the problem still exists, and that they waste plenty of effort in reinventing the wheel to work around this obstacle. Modern applications surely have the problem resolved; however, many companies are still using older packages.

5. Your accounting procedures lie outside the accounting system.

If your accounting department is maintaining increasing (and incrementing) numbers of manual processes or multiple data entries, or regularly requests that your IT department create custom-made add-ons or even autonomous programs, you should re-examine your accounting software. Time-consuming operations should be automated, and manual work should be eliminated wherever and whenever possible. A new accounting software package can resolve those issues.

6. You have growing data quality and access problems.

As a company grows, the amount of transactional accounting data grows incrementally as well. And one day your accountants will realize that the systems have become unacceptably slow, with data content errors and all manner of other errors. In other words, the system is not able to handle large amounts of data. This means that your company has simply outgrown the physical capabilities of your existing accounting system, and that you need to replace it.

Thoughts? I welcome your ideas and comments—let me know what you think in the comment field below.

20 Epicor 9: Delivering What Oracle and Others Are Yet to Achieve? – Part 3

Part 1 of this blog series outlined Epicor 9 (a.k.a., Epicor ERP [evaluate this product]), Epicor Software’s next-generation converged product suite. A similar feat is yet to be accomplished even by mighty Oracle within Oracle Fusion Applications.

The article also discussed Epicor’s accompanying “protect, extend, and converge” strategy for providing customers with a migration path choice at their own timetable and convenience. The article then went on to dig deeper and explain a number of enabling technologies and concepts within Epicor 9, starting with Epicor BPM (Business Process Management).

Part 2 then analyzed the major enabling concepts and technologies within the product, such as Epicor ICE (Internet Component Environment) 2.0 Business Architecture, which is based on Epicor TrueSOA™ and includes the Epicor Everywhere Framework™. The article also dug deeper into the suite’s built-in business intelligence (BI) and enterprise performance management (EPM) capabilities.

Part 3 of this blog series analyzes further unconventional and nifty tools and technologies within Epicor 9, and concludes the series with some insights into the product’s future enhancements.

But Wait—There’s More…

This group of extra functionality starts with Epicor Enterprise Search, which is a ”Google”-like mechanism for searching for information. This search appliance of a sort delivers secure, role-based results and permits further actions to be taken upon those search results.

As explained in TEC’s previous article “Why Enterprise Application Search Is Crucial to Your ERP System,” since search engines are a de facto means for finding what users need on the Web, why should enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems be any different? Enterprise search should get users quickly to the information they need, in the context of what they are doing, without needing to know how an ERP system works.

Epicor Enterprise Search uses Microsoft’s technology to combine both structured data (i.e., fields from Epicor’s database) and unstructured data (e.g., Microsoft Word documents, Adobe Acrobat PDF documents, Web pages, etc.) in searches. The tool can be invoked from anywhere to find information. Users do not consume a license unless they elect to link to an Epicor application (a particular session).

Related to search is the integral Epicor ECM (enterprise content management) capability that provides the ability to store and manage all Epicor application attachments as documents in Microsoft SharePoint. The module adds a level of document management system capabilities to storing attached data elements, such as version control and check-in/check-out. Epicor ECM is not a mere Microsoft SharePoint repository, since it also ensures effective management of all content and easy access to it using Epicor Enterprise Search.

Additionally, Epicor RSS Support is a nice-to-have feature that allows subscriptions to syndicated information in a Real Simple Syndication (RSS) manner. The tool allows users to subscribe to any data and have the system pro-actively push information to the user about changes. We are all used to this syndication outside ERP systems for getting timely updates, and now Epicor users can use the same easy mechanism within the application suite.

“Cloudy” Future

While the enterprise search capability is already fully available with Epicor 9, the cloud computing-based version is not yet ready, as the Azure Services Platform is not yet officially commercially available from Microsoft. Epicor 9’s business architecture (Epicor ICE, explained in Part 2) was designed to support any deployment scenario, so the product can be installed as on-premises software, hosted in a single-tenant manner, or even delivered on-demand via multi-tenant installs.

As far as cloud computing goes, the entire Epicor 9 footprint is not yet Microsoft Azure-based, but might be over time. Epicor likes Azure as the platform as a service (PaaS) of choice, since it is based on the Microsoft .NET Framework. In other words, it should be reasonably easy to move the current Epicor 9 code to the cloud.

As of today, Epicor feels that more customers will want a hybrid combination (software plus services) approach and look for suitable cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to add value to their vast premise-based ERP investments. The applications the vendor is currently enabling for Azure include the aforementioned Epicor Enterprise Search (to make use of the utility capacity of infrastructure as a service [IaaS]) and the Epicor Everywhere Framework that was explained in Part 2 (essentially with system performance benefits from hosting the Web server in the cloud). In my view, other likely candidates for the cloud could include Epicor’s supplier relationship management (SRM) applications as alluded to in my previous blog post on Epicor SRM.

Enabling and Running “Business Without Barriers”

Another major trait that Epicor 9 brings is the product’s global and multinational capabilities, which is in contrast to most of its brethren products’ regional focus. To that end, the Epicor Global Business Management module provides a means for creating a single virtual enterprise, as well as the essential tools needed to create and maintain a “single version of the truth.” Regardless of how the customer’s business is distributed or where the business goes in the world, Epicor 9 was designed to keep it all in synch for seamless operation and total visibility of the enterprise.

Thus, the Multicompany and Global Multisite Management capabilities provide support for centralized and distributed functions and processes across distributed operations, and transactions between them. The modules support intercompany trading, centralized purchasing, global credit checking, company-wide forecasting, local pricing, and more capabilities, all in real time. The idea here is to ensure that all business entities and operations can be handled appropriately and securely, and consolidated with ease, as required.

For its part, the Epicor MDM (Master Data Management) module establishes which data will be passed between the distributed enterprise and to external systems and businesses. The module ensures that master data meets regulatory requirements, and is secure and up-to-date, all of which leads to greater customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and overall business performance. While the MDM capability is typically found within tier-one offerings at extra cost, Epicor 9 features the stewardship of master data as standard, keeping everything in synch automatically.

Furthermore, Epicor Distributed Deployment provides a complete logical and physical business distribution across hardware and networks. Customers have the choice of deploying either centrally on a single server/single database or on multiple databases/multiple servers around the world. The distributed deployment enables the system management capability of a highly distributed enterprise to act as a single logical entity regardless of its IT deployment choices.

Last but not least, the Epicor Multilingual Data Management feature enables simultaneous support within the application for users speaking different languages. The capability facilitates companies’ growth into new regions by supporting country-specific language needs. Languages are maintained in a separate layer, making them easy to migrate between versions.

It is worth noting that Epicor 9 is already available in 28 countries and in 16 languages, and those figures are expected to increase to 40 countries and 23 languages by end of 2009. That scale of adaptability (i.e., “virtualized, always on, run anywhere” regardless of country, industry, or access device) has reportedly been achieved by Epicor “drinking its own champagne” – i.e., the combination of service oriented architecture (SOA) components, abstraction layers, Web 2.0, and other Epicor ICE 2.0 features.

It is indeed unfortunate that this colossal investment and product delivery have coincided with the current economic downturn. Epicor 9 has thus far likely resulted in somewhat less revenue to Epicor’s top line than the vendor had initially hoped.

On the other hand, Epicor staffers keep telling me that they would much rather be facing this down market with Epicor 9 than without it. The vendor started that investment about five years ago. Although it’s no fun to launch a great product in a recession, it has really helped Epicor differentiate itself compared to other vendors that do not have much new and exciting to offer.

Back to Epicor SRM

In light of my recent blog series on the standalone Epicor SRM product and given Epicor 9’s best-of-everything functional footprint approach, I was a bit surprised that the Epicor Procurement module was not included (rewritten) in Epicor 9. Epicor believes that Epicor 9 has basic requisitioning features that suffice for many of its customers.

Namely, expense and general spend management is as important today as it has ever been and is a real focus area for Epicor customers. To that end, Epicor 9 has comprehensive request for quotation (RFQ), requisitioning, and buyer workbench capabilities built-in as standard. For many of Epicor’s customers, these capabilities help them manage their supply chain operations effectively.

What these features perhaps do not do so well is overtly support customers’ corporate social responsibility (CSR)/governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) initiatives or advanced strategic sourcing plans. Epicor Advanced Quality Management (AQM), which is an add-on module coming from Epicor Vantage, is effective at supplier conformance/compliance management and is a key element of Epicor’s overall production management and GRC capabilities. Epicor Sourcing is already available as an add-on capability to Epicor 9, which can help buyers with CSR/GRC (i.e. requiring bidding suppliers to meet certain non-price related requirements such as quality certifications, use of recycled materials, efficient transportation routes, etc.)

However, many existing Epicor customers and prospects might still want something more from the add-on Epicor Procurement product. In one of the future planned major releases for Epicor 9, Epicor anticipates it will rewrite Procurement on the ICE 2.x platform. In the meantime, I expect that Epicor’s prospective or existing customers will have to perform a standard Epicor Service Connect integration between Epicor Procurement and Epicor 9. Both the Procurement and Epicor 9 products already use Epicor Service Connect for other integrations.

Epicor Service Connect is an application (part of the Epicor Productivity Pyramid mentioned in Part 1) that orchestrates processes (workflows) at a more macro level, usually between applications (instead of within applications, where Epicor BPM plays a role, as mentioned in Part 1). For example, Service Connect would be used to bring transactions from another system into Epicor 9 (or vice versa).

The integration solution supports input and output channels of extensible markup language (XML) and Web services as well as flat-file databases and e-mail messages. Epicor Service Connect has a comprehensive data transformation capability where users can map the fields in one data entity to another and transform it (i.e., truncate, append, calculate, lookup, etc.) as needed. On the Service Connect design canvas, users can drag and drop elements and tie them together in a workflow, including application parts, decision points, and human intervention, if desired.

Dear readers, what are your views, comments, and opinions about Epicor’s lofty strategy? If you are an existing user, I would appreciate you sharing your experiences with any Epicor solution mentioned above or the company in general.