White Papers

"The synergies between the two companies, together with Infosys' strong business process knowledge and Oracle's product innovation, will result in lower operating costs and improved focus to address the business needs of our Asia Pacific and global customers."
- Derek Williams, Executive Vice President, Oracle Asia Pacific

Key Drivers and Design Principles for COA

A well structured Chart of Account (COA) is a pre-requisite to extract maximum value from Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Our experts propose a structured methodology in a four stage project-oriented approach to design and... implement a new COA. It helps identify the key drivers and design principles to finalize the COA structure and values. Several companies have effectively used our framework. In addition, our methodology has helped manage common causes of failure in major transformational initiatives.

Business Process Platform: How fast can you change?

To compete in the Flat World, an organization's business strategies must be aligned with its IT systems. To increase revenue, achieve growth and open new markets, the IT systems and strategies need to address new business... opportunities and challenges. An agile business process must be supported by an agile IT system. In this white paper, our experts present a Business Process Platform that helps enterprises gain a competitive advantage.

Earned Value Management for ERP Implementations

ERP implementation is characterized by aggressive timelines, high budgets and the involvement of diverse teams. Earned Value Analysis is a reliable financial tool to measure the performance of ERP implementations throughout... the execution process. This white paper highlights how Earned Value Analysis can be used for ERP implementations with a focus on implementation. It reinforces the concepts of Earned Value Analysis, analyzes each phase of ERP implementation and describes Earned Value Management activities, phase-wise.

Going Lean the ERP Way

Enterprises need to adopt lean concepts to eliminate process waste. The eight categories of waste include over production, waiting, stocks and inventory, transportation, motion, processing, defects and information. In this white paper,... Infosys' expert discusses three types of lean initiatives - process focused, package focused and hybrid lean initiatives. According to him, the application of appropriate lean tools and techniques can extract maximum ROI from an ERP system implementation.

Fusion Administrator: The Governor of SOA Implementation?

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)-based systems integrate heterogeneous systems in a cost-effective manner. In addition, they enable an enterprise to rapidly deploy and manage critical business solutions... As enterprises use SOA-based systems, they have to address complexities to achieve maximum ROI and business flexibility. This white paper introduces Fusion Administrator to ensure the smooth functioning of an SOA-based system.

Estimating the Size of Software Package Implementations using Package Points

In Enterprise Solutions projects, where ERP package implementations and rollouts are carried out, inaccurate effort estimate results in huge time and cost overruns. An accurate estimate can be derived by empirical models... if the correct project size is available. While there is no published industry standard to estimate project size, this paper examines the Package Points-based sizing model for Package Implementations developed by Infosys and the Sizing Tool developed for Oracle eBusiness Suite implementations.

Dovetailing Business Process Re-engineering to ERP Transformations - A Systematic Approach

Companies that implement ERP must dovetail Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) activities to extract maximum benefits from ERP investments. The initial phases of ERP implementation can be suitably adjusted... to introduce process re-engineering goals so that the end-result is a streamlined business process. In addition, the organizational governance structure has to support BPR and ERP transformation. This white paper provides a systematic approach to integrate BPR and ERP implementations from the perspective of process, technology and the organization.

SOA Offers Best of Both Worlds

To compete in a dynamic landscape, organizations must modernize their legacy IT applications to reduce the cost of operations and maintenance. At the same time, some complex business processes may have to reside... in legacy applications due to the inherent risks of porting them. Organizations can use Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) to develop new enterprise solutions on new technologies. SOA enables organizations to continue using legacy applications, without integration and interoperability issues.

Weaving Oracle Economy Products around Utility Industry Processes

Utility companies are adopting ERP products to monitor finances and keep a tight tab on processes. These ERP systems run in parallel to applications, and cater to specialized business areas. Since applications maintain their own sets... of information, integration issues are bound to arise. To avoid such issues, Oracle has introduced products to make integration simpler. This white paper discusses how Oracle's e-business suite along with utility products caters to the requirements of a typical electrical utility.

Supplier Collaboration - the New Mantra in the World of ERP

Online Supplier Collaboration is one of the mandatory steps to realize benefits in the Procure-to-Pay process. This white paper discusses the approach and the business benefits accrued from supplier collaboration. It focuses on the right mix... of ingredients for a successful implementation, and presents a business case for online supplier collaboration, implementation considerations and approach, product functionalities that result in business benefits.

Oracle Utilities (Lodestar) Suite - Strengths and Weaknesses

Oracle acquired Lodestar - a product for Meter Data Management (MDM) and complex billing for utilities. What are the various applications of Lodestar and how can these applications help utilities in billing and MDM? This white paper explores... whether Lodestar can be used universally for billing, based on meter data across utilities. It also analyzes how Lodestar can support other industries such as telecom where billing is based on meter data.

The Process Improvement Journey in the ERP World

Process improvement is critical to the success of any organization. Enterprises must identify the processes which require improvement. The process improvement journey involves identification of Key Performance Indicators (KPI), aligning... ERP systems with KPI measurement parameters, identifying performance targets, development of performance plans and benchmarking. This white paper identifies the processes to be enhanced, and describes the steps for process improvement.

Information Technology Index (IT Index)

Enterprises must have a mechanism to know how well they utilize IT. An IT Index can quantify and gauge the effectiveness of IT in an organization. Industry-wide information on infrastructure, business process framework... and system architecture are used to arrive at an organization's IT Index. IT Index, an intellectual property of Infosys, provides a range of opportunities in consulting, designing solutions, architecting, enhancements, Oracle package implementations, Oracle SOA, etc.

Analytical Corporate Expense Reporting and SOX compliance using Oracle Applications

Meaningful corporate expense analysis and reporting has been a major challenge to organizations. In today's dynamic business environment it is important to take business decisions based on real-time data, but operational challenges... hinder access to the latest data. Laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the 8th Directive in Europe have thrust additional responsibilities on officers signing financial statements to ensure the accuracy of the data they are certifying. This paper discusses a solution that can be implemented as part of any Oracle GL Implementation; the solution provides an efficient and robust means of corporate expense analysis and reporting up the management chain, simultaneously conforming to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2002.

Upgrading Package Applications: What's your Strategy? (Featured)

Organizations have traditionally viewed the enterprise application upgrade initiatives as transactional events of little strategic importance. They often do not have an upgrade strategy or if there is one, it is hardly... aligned with their Business/ Financial/ IT/ Operational strategies.
Infosys believes that an assessment-based structured approach can help organizations to change this perspective and establish enterprise application upgrade strategy as a critical component of their organizational strategy.

Realizing the Business Value of EAI

Well-planned, well-executed EAI initiatives have the potential to deliver considerable business benefits to an organization. Why, then, do most EAI implementations meet with limited ... success?
Infosys believes that to derive maximum return from EAI, organizations need to develop a macro-strategy that will map integration efforts to business demands. The focus should be on exploiting the potential of EAI rather than using EAI to tie in existing systems and processes.

Global Shared Support Service: a Viable Model?

As most large organizations have moved over to customized packaged products such as SAP, Oracle, Siebel, i2, etc., the experience gained in supporting them can be leveraged by the shared ... service concept. Shared service, when applied to the production support and maintenance of packaged products like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) suites, can help achieve much-needed cost reduction and efficiency gains. Shared support service can bring in additional cost savings to organizations beyond the benefits of outsourcing and offshoring.

Program Management Office: The Core Engine to Drive a Successful Global Program

Mergers and acquisitions, adoption of a global value chain, and expansion to new markets are competitive business growth strategies deployed by most businesses for going global. Program ... Management Office (PMO) is critical to the success of any global program, catering both to the current needs of the organization as well as providing scalability for its future growth and its requirements to go global. This paper highlights the emerging role of PMO for enterprises establishing themselves as global organizations. Global Implementations: The chosen alternative for complete business advantage

Harmoniously Implementing HRMS on top of Existing Fin, CRM, SCM Modules

Complete HR modules implementations are on the rise due to the focus on workforce excellence. Any modification in the Core HR setup can impact other existing modules ... and business processes. If you are planning to implement complete HR modules over your existing non-HR modules, it is imperative that you conduct a thorough impact analysis based on the Oracle documentation. This would enable you to save ad-hoc costs and streamline your project.
Based on the various HRMS implementation experiences, Infosys shares its views to address your key setup decisions for Core HR module implementation.

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