Hi Everyone,

I am pleased to announce the next release in our extensive Oracle related White Paper Library of :

Critical Sucess Factors for Product Information Management (PIM) System Implementation

Authored by Mahender Bist

Here’s a snipit of Mahender Executive Summary;

‘Product Information Management (PIM) interchangeably called Product Master Data Management (MDM) is an enterprise data management solution that enables centralization of all product data (Product, Bill of Materials, Documents etc.) and streamlines processes such as New Product Introduction and Change Management. PIM can be leveraged across various functional areas both within the company as well as outside the boundaries of the organization to drive innovation and achieve operational excellence’

Please feel free to drop by the White Paper library to request your copy of the White Paper today.

Mahender, Thanks for an informative paper.

I thought I would kick off this blog with a confession.  I often stay to watch the credits at the end of a film.  Sometimes it’s to see the outtakes (often quite amusing…), other times to see the effort that went into the production. Some of those job titles are very creative (e.g., regarding the role titled ‘Best Boy,’ well, what about Best Girl??).  After recently watching the credits role in Avatar, I was curious about steps they took to manage project dependencies, in particular given the multitude of production teams.

Thinking about your current project, consider the project dependencies that might cause delays in meeting key milestones.  You probably have seen some of these dependencies in your travels.  Some are predictable, some take up the time of your limited resources, some lead to scope creep on your project, and others surface during your project out of the blue.

Returning to the Avatar film for a moment, there’s an interesting scene when the main character faces a ‘right of passage’ task.  Let’s refer to this mission as his project (and no, I will not give anything away).  His task?  To ‘bond’ with a flying bird.  His ‘sponsor’ informs him just before boarding the bird that he will know he has found the right bird to fly, as this is the one that will first try to kill him.  His facial expression says it all.  Who could have anticipated this?  And not to mention this all took place a top a mountain floating in mid-air?  One wrong move, and ……you get the idea.  I suspect your project dependencies may be more predictable.  Maybe.

When was the last time you evaluated your project’s dependencies and assessed their risk to your project?  Consider the following questions -

·         How will delays on other projects/initiatives impact your project plan and workload of your resources?

·         Has your project board weighed in on the impact of these dependencies?

·         Have you introduced sufficient contingency within the project plan?

·         Have you considered new dependencies that have surfaced since your project launch, and factored them into the project plan?

Project methodologies introduce tools to track issues and risks, but how frequently do you monitor project dependencies and assess their impact?  These risks may not be as choppy as those found when boarding a flying bird for a ride to prove your worth (maybe…), but consider best practices to minimize the turbulence.   Define concrete steps to bring them to conclusion, move them forward at each opportunity and monitor throughout the project.

I have been asked this question time and time again – “Why do you need a dedicated MDM solution now when all this time IT has been able to help businesses with product attributes as descriptive Flexfields, custom designed tables or other stitched up solutions?”

Well, most of us who have been working with Item Master in the past have been forced to utilize the application’s unintended features creatively to store product attributes in Categories, Cross References, DFFs etc. Finally, when it becomes unmanageable, custom tables provided refuge of the last resort. Think of it, PIM Data Hub is the natural progression step for the organizations at the higher end of the product MDM maturity spectrum.

I beg to differ with the opinion that MDM is just another application to store additional data.  There is no disputing that the products are both the bread and butter and the key ingredient to success for any organization. Now that most companies in the marketplace are past the struggle of implementing Enterprise Resource Management systems, they are paying attention to software that provides them deeper insight into the products, improve supply chain efficiencies and help them connect to the customers better. Internet based purchasing has added fuel to the fire where online retailers do need to provide more than just the name and description of the product and the customer across the globe are rightfully demanding more information to make better buying decision. UCCNet and other standardization concepts that have been around for a while are finally shaping up and the retailers in turn are collecting hundreds of product attributes from the manufacturers about the product that define:

-        Product Dimensions

-        Key properties

-        Composition

-        Quality Information

-        Packaging

-        Regulatory and Compliance Information

To easily sum up, the following matrix provides the key reasons for implementing PIM Data Hub as opposed to simple Item Master:

Next: In my next post, I will be covering the ‘R12 PIM Data Hub Valuable Functionalities’.

Hi Everyone,

I am pleased to announce the next release in our extensive Oracle related White Paper Library of:

Oracle Application Express The Fast Way to Extend to Oracle E-Business Suite

Authored by Rod West

The Purpose of Rod’s Paper:

This article describes how an APEX application can be integrated with the E-Business Suite 11i and R12. There are many tools that Applications developers can use to extend E-Business Suite but often developers are unaware that APEX can be closely integrated with the E-Business Suite. APEX forms and reports can be added to E-Business Suite menus and spreadsheet data can be uploaded into the E-Business Suite application.

Please feel free to drop by the White Paper library to request your copy of the White Paper today.

Thanks Rod for putting together this article.

No matter how wonderfully efficient and user-friendly an Oracle application might be its reputation and reliability can be needlessly dented by a single prolonged network outage, separating users from the information they need to do their jobs.

One of these outages occurred this morning in the organisation where I am currently contracting, damaging user confidence in the local Oracle application. Persuading users that the problem is not the fault of the application doesn’t placate them much because the main issue is that all their key information is now on computers – because we told them to put it there, thus placing them at the mercy of network and electrical outages.

Throughout various paperless office initiatives over the years I have continued to encourage users to print off limited key information – subject to confidentiality and data protection rules - if they consider it essential to their job, so they have a paper copy in case of computer unavailability. It must be stressed that data should always be electronically stored and updated on the computer application to maintain accuracy and to comply with integrated working practices but in most cases there is nothing wrong in downloading an occasional paper copy for convenience, portability and contingency purposes. Typical examples are phone lists, presentation notes and other documents needed for meetings or conferences which cannot be cancelled just because of a computer or network glitch. Obviously, any amendments and updates subsequently deemed necessary must be made on the computer application as this must always be the ‘master’ copy.

It seems a shame that the well-intentioned idea of a paperless office is marred by the misconception that computer applications are installed merely to eliminate paper rather than to manage data more efficiently, with significant reduction in paper being an added bonus. It isn’t a coincidence that most application screens have a ‘Print’ button or link so that the user has the option to print if they consider it necessary.