the tower of babel...the tower of babel removing the silos helene abrams ceo, eprentise...

THE TOWER OF BABEL R E M O V I N G T H E S I L O S

Helene Abrams CEO, eprentise [email protected]

AGENDA q  Introduction q Silos in Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) §  Root Causes and Negative Impacts §  Examples

q Eliminating Silos in EBS §  Starting a Data Quality Initiative §  Defining and Managing Common Enterprise Goals §  Plan, Scope, Execution, and Measurement

© 2012 eprentise. All rights reserved. 4 |

LEARNING OBJECTIVES q After this session you will be able to: §  Objective 1: Identify root causes and impacts of silos in Oracle E-

Business Suite implementations.

§  Objective 2: Learn how to eliminate silos in an Oracle E-Business Suite environment.

§  Objective 3: Learn techniques to enable different parts of the organization to work towards common goals.

§  Objective 4: Learn how to get started with an enterprise data quality initiative .


INTRODUCTION q  eprentise

§  Established in 2006 §  Transformation software for E-Business Suite §  Helene Abrams, CEO

q  Who we serve §  Large and middle-market US-based and international customers from both

private and public sectors

q  What we do §  Provide software that assists companies looking to upgrade to R12, particularly

companies that need to re-structure their business to change configurations, consolidate instances, separate data, or address other significant organizational changes they have experienced since originally implementing EBS.


SILOS IN ORACLE E-BUSINESS Root causes, impacts, and examples

INFORMATION SILOS q Silos are stores of data in an information system

that are locked up and inaccessible by both other parts of the system and the people that should have access to them

q Silos disrupt the relationship between business processes and their underlying IT systems.


Business Processes IT Systems

ERP / CRM / BI §  Finance/Accounting §  Inventory §  Vendor Management §  Customer Management

§  Purchasing §  Manufacturing §  Advertising §  Marketing §  Sales

INFORMATION IN THE ENTERPRISE q What are silos made of?

A. Disparate information systems §  Applications—ERP, CRM, BI, etc. §  Hardware—Databases, interfaces, middleware, etc.

B. Disparate business processes and bad data quality §  Example: Accurate reference data not available across systems

q  Isn’t technology supposed to help? §  Good data quality starts with people and processes §  Technology is a data quality enabler, not an automator


INFORMATION IN THE ENTERPRISE q Why do silos exist? §  Data becomes disparate if it is not managed correctly and becomes

disconnected from the business processes it is meant to support.

§  For large corporations, this means lots of data in lots of places.


ROOT CAUSES OF SILOS IN EBS q Existing silos in EBS originated in several ways.

Most of these were due to a lack of: §  Available technology at the time of implementation §  An understanding of how a global business should operate §  Knowledge of EBS configurations, hierarchies, ownership, and

security §  A solution for quick integration of acquired systems (M&A activity) §  Interdepartmental communication and collaboration §  Standardization

§  Process level: corporate standards, governance, and controls §  Data level: data formats, naming conventions


SILOS IMPACT PERFORMANCE AND AGILITY q There is no single

source of truth for enterprise information

q Leads to a lack of trust in the data, resulting in:


EXAMPLE OF SILOS IN THE ENTERPRISE Instance A B C D Distinct

Release 11.5.10.2 11.5.10 11.5.10.2 11.5.9 -

Size (GB) 1,425 548 61 96 -

Languages 4 2 1 1 4

Sets of Books 104 48 1 30 183

Calendars 10 7 1 1 19

Charts of Accounts 40 43 1 18 102

Legal Entities 120 48 0 47 215

Operating Units 121 49 0 47 217

Inv Orgs 137 50 1 48 236

Modules Installed 9 17 4 5 21

Security Rules on Value Set 13,012 300 15 153 13,480

Security Rules X Responsibilities 17,350 445 6 75 17,876

Cross Validation Rules 86,845 39,925 25 165 126,960

Currencies 56 28 1 28 64

EBS Users 43,986 30,494 247 3,023 N/A © 2012 eprentise. All rights reserved. 13 |

Sets of Books, Legal Entities, OUs, and Inventory Orgs Redundant and configured differently Charts of Accounts and Calendars

Disparate and misaligned

Sets of Books – Difficult to comply with local and statutory regulatory requirements

Legal Entities – Easy to over- or under-pay taxes and misstate financial information

Operating Units – Difficult to leverage supplier relationships (terms, discounts, etc.)

Inventory Orgs – Impossible to know if a product is actually in stock (or where it is on the shelf)

Charts of Accounts – Reports and data extracts must be done 40 times

Calendars – With 10 calendars, the company is depreciating assets in 10 different ways and closing periods at different times Redundant Objects

Redundant Objects

REDUNDANCY WITHIN AN EBS INSTANCE q  Multiple charts of accounts (COAs) and calendars

§  Generating accurate and transparent financial results is virtually impossible q  Multiple sets of books

§  Accounting for intercompany transfers becomes cumbersome §  Transactions are accounted for discretely and without reference §  Timing and accounting errors are common

§  Incorrectly reporting on taxes and other regulatory requirements can lead to over- or under-payment

§  Misstating revenue can go unnoticed due to manual, error-prone reconciliations

q  Multiple operating units §  Supplier relationships and analytics become difficult to leverage §  Inventory valuation problems are very difficult to spot and resolve


CONSOLIDATION OF REDUNDANT OBJECTS q  Disparate objects in each

instance should be consolidated into other objects §  Eliminates redundancy §  Enables the company to

conduct operations consistently

§  Facilitates streamlined compliance with local statutory and regulatory requirements


Instance COAs Calendars SOBs LEs OUs Inv Orgs

A 40 9 46 65 66 83

B 43 6 12 13 14 15

C 1 0 0 0 0 0

D 18 0 6 24 24 25

Total 102 15 64 102 104 123

RECOGNIZING THE COSTS OF SILOS q Soft / Time §  Duplication of efforts §  Less accessibility to business information

q Hard / $$$ §  Multiple license fees and support contracts §  Experts hired to create, implement, maintain, update, integrate, and

secure the different applications §  Interface adjustments and middleware §  Specialized hardware and applications for multiple backup, restore,

and replication © 2012 eprentise. All rights reserved. 16 |

ELIMINATING SILOS IN E-BUSINESS SUITE

Starting a Data Quality Initiative: Collaborating, Planning, Communicating, Executing, Implementing, Managing, and Measuring

STARTING A DATA QUALITY INITIATIVE q  Historic definition of Master Data Management (MDM): §  Information critical to the business’ competitive position §  It is this data,

as an information asset, that distinguishes one company from another in a like industry

BUT…having consistent master data alone does not ensure that a business will be able to operate in a complete, consistent, correct, and transparent way.


Employees

Suppliers

Products

Customers

STARTING A DATA QUALITY INITIATIVE q  Data quality is not just about

Master Data Management

q  Need to include all aspects of enterprise data: §  Metadata §  Reference data §  Configuration data and

data structures §  Even consistency among

different E-Business Suite instances


1 •  Charts of accounts

2 •  Calendars

3 •  Functional currencies

4 •  Sets of books / ledgers

5 •  Legal entities

6 •  Business groups

7 •  Organization units

8 •  Inventory organizations

9 •  Subinventories

1 •  Database tables

2 •  Columns

3 •  Primary keys

4 •  Unique keys

5 •  Foreign keys

6 •  Rows

7 •  Objects

8 •  Other constraints

9 •  Triggers

1 •  Abbreviations

2 •  Units of measure

3 •  Customer type

4 •  Gender

5 •  Product line

6 •  Country

7 •  Department

8 •  Vendor Type

9 •  Purchase type

STAGES OF A DATA QUALITY EFFORT Planning

Scope

Expectations

Execution

Implementation

Measuring the Results


STAGE 1: PLANNING q Determine the information components that will

need to work together §  Data §  Applications §  Business Processes


STAGE 2: SCOPE q Focus on the information that is most critical to the

enterprise’s business strategy §  Which information assets are in scope? Out of

scope?


STAGE 3: EXPECTATIONS q Create the business case and the metrics in order to

communicate the value to the business and determine whether the efforts are successful §  Engage the business to develop an effective

governance framework and to develop consensus


STAGE 4: EXECUTION q Define clear governance processes that engage

stakeholders and still provide the ability to share a cross-enterprise view of both processes and information §  Owner and source of each data type §  Metadata attributes


STAGE 5: IMPLEMENTATION q Consolidate systems and structures that provide

data for similar business processes §  Identify and resolve duplicates and incomplete data

(of all types) §  Even consolidate entire instances that have become

redundant


STAGE 6: MEASURING THE RESULTS q  Define a baseline for the organization against which you can measure

the success of eliminating the process and information silos §  Concrete metrics for all operating costs

§  Days sales outstanding §  Days to close §  Number of manual adjusting entries §  Average number of invoices entered per month §  Number of payments made §  Number of discounts taken (and dollar volume)

§  Resource changes §  Reduction in license fees, HR, and consulting fees (maintenance)


§  Number of allocations §  Intercompany entries §  Cross validation rules §  Security rules before

the restructuring §  Etc.

SENSE MAKING WITH SURVEYS q Consider surveys that evaluate less easily

measured and often overlooked benefits of eliminating the silos §  Finance team won’t be as frustrated with the monthly

grind §  Spend time analyzing data rather than looking for and fixing errors

§  Customers will receive better and timelier service


COMMUNICATION IS KEY q Employees will be aware that processes are being

improved q The team will work together consistently q More people will take personal responsibility for

their part of the close process, or for achieving results


CONCLUSION Eliminating silos within Oracle E-Business Suite enables companies to: q Save money

q  Improve processes

q Add value

q Create an environment of complete, consistent, and correct information


Thank You!

THE TOWER OF BABEL R E M O V I N G T H E S I L O S

Helene Abrams CEO, eprentise [email protected]

Visit eprentise in booth # 1531

the tower of babel...the tower of babel removing the silos helene abrams ceo, eprentise...

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