Oracle announces Future BI strategy

On 22nd March, Oracle announced their BI strategy, which has left more people confused about their BI strategy.

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite will now consists of the following key products:

1) Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (EE), and
2) Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition (SE)

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (EE) consists of Siebel Analytics, Oracle Intelligent Dashboards, and some future products like Oracle Mobile Analytics and Briefing Books.

More details can be got from the following Oracle site:
http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/enterprise-edition.html

Now, Oracle was already developing the next generation Analytic tool called Enterprise Planning and Budgeting which was supposed to be a replacement of Oracle Financial Analyzer and Sales Analyzer. But, with the aquisition of Siebel, I feel Oracle did not want to waste Siebel Analytics which is a gem of a product. Although it has left many wondering which is going to be the product which Oracle will ultimately push for. For the time being it seems Siebel Analytics is a better prospect than EPB. Another product which looks promising is Oracle Intelligent Dashboards, this product as of now looks superior to Oracle Portal, as one can manipulate reports and perform analysis within the dashboard itself.

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition (SE) consists of Oracle BI Discoverer, Oracle BI Spreadsheet Add-in, Oracle BI Warehouse Builder, Oracle BI Beans and Oracle Reports. The Standard Edition Suite seems to consist of Oracle's existing Business Intelligence 10g products. For customers wishing to go in for a BI solution on their existing Oracle database, Standard Edition (SE) suite seems to be a better bet as of now. However, Siebel Analytic of Enterprise Edition (EE) suite can also be used, as it can handle relational, Oracle Olap, MDX data source and Siebel Analytic server data. I feel the catch will be in the pricing strategy that Oracle will adopt for both the product suites.

The webcasts can be heard from the following site:

oracle.com/solutions/business_intelligence/bi_webcast.html

1)Oracle Vision and Strategy (26 min.) by Charles Phillips, President, Oracle

2)The Business Intelligence Landscape (11 min.) by Henry D. Morris, Group Vice President and General Manager, Integration, Development and Application Strategies, IDC

3)Oracle BI Platform and Analytics Tools Oracle BI Platform and Analytics Tools (63 min.) by Thomas Kurian, Senior Vice President, Oracle

4)BI Across the Enterprise (48 min.) by Steve Miranda, Senior Vice President, Oracle

I feel businesses are by and large conservative in nature when it comes to IT spending, so Oracle has to put in a lot of effort in marketing the new Enterprise Edition (EE) suite, while they already have a good customer base of customers using Discoverer, OWB, BI Beans and Oracle Reports. So, oracle will continue to support and develop their existing BI products along with the new products it has acquired from Siebel. Though, this will create a bit of confusion and self-cannibalization among Oracle's own product lines, but i think there is no way out as Oracle cannot kill any of their existing BI products or stop developing and supporting the recently acquired ones either. So in all interesting times for Oracle BI consultants and for customers who now have a wide variety of Oracle BI produts at their disposal to select and work upon.

Medieval policies of Indian Bodyshopping companies

Barring money and fear, I feel there is no motivation for a consultant to work for a software bodyshopping company. One finds a lot of companies in India who lack the ability to bag independent projects getting into bodyshopping. This trend is definitely disturbing as this tends to bring down the quality of work of consultants who lack the motivation of doing actual good work. My advice to companies hiring consultants from bodyshopping companies is: ‘one cannot win a war by hiring mercenaries’.

Most top Indian software companies continue with this sad practice of bodyshopping, which though earns them a fair amount of revenue, is however detrimental to the growth of the company in the long run. Most of these bodyshopping companies typically apply the old trick of carrot and stick policy. On one hand the consultant would be promised the moon, and on the other hand they would force the consultant to sign on all sorts of illegal 'legal' documents, so as to ensure that the consultant does not leave the organization. A couple of weeks back a friend of mine working for a shady bodyshopping company wished to leave the organization. From the moment he put in his papers, his life became a living hell. The company threatened him of legal action and refused to relieve him. Only when this poor chap paid the employer an astronomical sum (his last 6 months salary) did the company release him. This sad situation is nothing very unique to small companies. Many medium and big scale Indian software companies adopt this policy. Sadly most software consultants do not have the time or the money to fight legal battles with organizations.

The problem stems from the fact that in India almost all companies insist on the relieving letter of previous employer as a necessary document, without which the person will not be eligible for employment. If this document is not made mandatory then consultants will not be at the mercy of such cheating organizations. However as most of the recruiting organizations themselves indulge in bodyshopping, one cannot expect any dramatic changes in recruitment policies. I feel NASSCOM and Govt. of India should come down heavily on organizations who ask employees to sign bonds (usually these bonds are like, if a consultant leaves the organization before a said period of 18 months, sometime 3 years then he/she has to pay a very high bond amount in order to get relieved from the organization). Also sometimes these organizations would ask the consultant to attend a training and post that would force the consultant to sign such bonds, in which case if a consultant leaves the organization, he/she has to shell out a huge sum as training expenses in order to get relieved. And the worst kinds of bonds that consultants’ sign, are those when they go out of India on a work permit to some other country. The bodyshopping companies ask consultants going to work in other countries, to sign bonds which restrict them from seeking employment elsewhere, and per chance if they plan to leave then they need to pay astronomical sums to get relieved from the organization.

Hopefully Indian organizations will arise from their medieval mindsets and become more employee-friendly and gather their own self respect and the respect of future and existing employees.

US Army website on ERP implementation considerations

I came across reference of this site in www.oracleappsblog.com which has wealth of information on ERP implemntation considerations. It also gives good comparison between different ERP, CRM, BI products and also Key Implementaion considerations like, Transformation Management, Governance, etc.
http://www.army.mil/aeioo/erp/index.htm

Oracle Projects – Part 2

What is Burdening?

You burden a type of cost with burden costs to obtain a more accurate representation of your company’s operating costs. For example, each hour of employee time costed directly to a project may be supported by burden costs for benefits and office space. A burden cost code represents the type of burden costs you want to apply to raw costs. For each burden cost code in the burden structure, you specify what cost base it is applied to, the expenditure type or types it is linked to, and the order in which it is applied to raw costs within the cost base.
You use the multiplier to derive the total amount of the burden cost. For example, you may burden the raw cost of labor using a multiplier of thirty percent to derive the fringe component, and in turn, the total burdened cost of labor is computed as follows:

Labor (raw cost) 1,000
+ Fringe @ 20% (burden cost) 200
Total Burdened Cost 1,200

On a project for which costs are burdened, you can create some transactions that are burdened and others that are not burdened. You define which projects should be burdened by setting the Burden Cost indicator for each project type in the Project Types window. When you specify that a project type is burdened, you must then specify the burden schedule to be used. The burden schedule stores the rates and indicates which transactions are burdened, based on cost bases defined in the burden structure.

(Info taken from Oracle Projects User Guide)

Are Oracle Apps departments over staffed in Indian IT companies?

Going by my first-hand experience in some of the top Indian IT companies, and information from friends in other Indian IT companies, I can safely conclude that the number of resources in Apps department in most of these companies is too huge. The ratio of number of consultant to the number of projects that these companies have is typically very high. One can argue that it is important for companies to have sufficient bench strength so that whenever a new requirement comes, they can ramp up. I definitely agree to this logic, but I feel the bench sizes are way too large, which is absolute unnecessary. I have seen enough people in bench wasting their careers for month’s altogether doing nothing.

Another fact is people on bench cannot expect to have a good appraisal, as they are not billed by the company. As a result they become frustrated and either start creating HR problems or actively start looking for other avenues. In either case, it’s a loss to the organization.

So, the question arises, who is responsible for this messy situation? Typically, each IT department has a Resource Manager, who by sheer hard-work has reached this enviable position. Now, this person requests HR to recruit a certain number of professionals based of projections, forecasts, diameter of project pipe (as most projects are in pipeline) and many other extraneous reasons. Once the consultants are taken on-board, then, starts the quest for fitting in the person into a project. The Sales and Marketing person, the Key Account Manager, the Relationship Manager, the Business Development manager are then given the impossible task of creating “non-existent” work for the client, for which there would be a requirement of additional resources. After long and interesting sessions of PowerPoint presentations and sessions of “IT and Business Gyan”, does the client relent and agree to take on board additional resources. By this time the consultant would have happily spent half a year on bench adding no value to the organization.

Oracle Projects – Part 1

Last few days I have been involved with the Oracle Projects module. I’ll try and put forth some basic learning of this module.

Oracle Projects is meant primarily for organizations that are project-oriented. Using this module, it becomes easy to track costs, budget and track the project status.

Oracle Projects consists of the following products:

• Oracle Project Costing

• Oracle Project Billing

• Oracle Project Connect for Microsoft Project

• Oracle Activity Management Gateway

• Oracle Project Analysis Collection Pack

Prior to Oracle Projects Setup, one has to setup the Set of Books in GL, setup Organization and Organization hierarchy in Oracle HRMS, define employees and job in HRMS and create customer in Oracle Receivables. However if Oracle Projects is being installed as a standalone package then one needs to define all above in Oracle Projects itself. Some other mandatory setups include defining locations, defining implementation options, defining Project Accounting periods, defining expenditure types and categories, define revenue categories, etc. Also one has to create a burdening hierarchy in Oracle HRMS which may vary from the Project or Task Organization hierarchy.

Invariably a Project is broken into a hierarchy of tasks as per Work Breakdown Structure (WBS, a hierarchy of tasks that rollup into a project) to manage project and task related information. One can define as many levels of tasks in a hierarchy in Oracle Projects. However, proper naming conventions need to be followed while naming projects, tasks and sub-tasks. An organization has to be associated with a project and a Task, which may be same or different.

One can have three different Project Types for managing the cost of a project: Indirect, Capital and Contract. An Indirect Project Type is used to track the overhead costs and labor hours for overhead activities like Admin, Legal, etc. Capital Project Type is selected to track costs and labor hours related to asset development activities which ultimately results in an asset for the organization. A Contract Project Type is selected in case the costs are reimbursed by a client.

Oracle Costing is the used for processing of expenditures for finding out costs which can be attributed to projects and tasks which can then be posted to GL corresponding to different account lines. There are two cost amounts associated to each transaction: Raw and Burdened. The raw cost is the actual cost of the work performed, and the burden cost is the indirect cost or overhead of work performed, like administrative cost. The Burden cost is calculated by multiplying Raw Cost with the Burden Multiplier. The burdened cost is the total cost that is incurred, i.e., the sum of raw cost and burden cost.

Burden Cost = Raw Cost x Burden Multiplier

Burdened Cost = Raw Cost + Burden Cost

More on Oracle Projects, primarily I'll try and provide inputs on Burdening Cost and Oracle Project Billing in subsequent days.