Disruption of core business functions may adversely impact the performance of a company. A formal disaster recovery manual can minimize the impact of disruptions and help to restore regular operations in a timely...
manner. This white paper provides guidelines about general procedure for SAP APO solution in case of business disruption or disasters. Starting with the escalation of an incident to a disaster, this paper outlines the main phases of a recovery procedure along with the various options available for each recovery phases.
Smart organizations are focusing on increasing workforce flexibility and productivity by enabling information access for critical decision-making anytime, anywhere. While mobile solutions are imperative across domains and verticals, several parameters...
need to be considered while choosing a platform or middleware to implement the mobile solution. This perspective attempts at addressing the benefits of enterprise mobility. It explains how the combined approach of SAP and Sybase Unwired Platform addresses both the present and future needs of an organization.
Customer - IT supplier relationships are subject to several pulls and pressures ranging from sourcing strategies to business imperatives. Organizations look at maximizing sourcing gains while suppliers attempt...
at getting a bigger share of the IT budget. As outsourcing relationships get more value focused, supplier switches are becoming commonplace. In such a scenario, organizations should aim at dealing with the reality of supplier switches by evaluating risks and pre-empting them with a comprehensive mitigation approach.
Accounts Receivables is a critical balance sheet item. It is a topic that merits a serious discussion in the context of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) compliance. An accurate...
reporting, measurement and disclosure of receivables is of huge importance to any business. SAP application brings forth the best practice in the industry in business context. Our expert discusses the challenges in IFRS compliance while reporting receivables. He also explores the relevant business processes in the industry, features in SAP that help comply with standards and limitations therein.
During SAP ERP implementation, various methods and techniques are deployed by customers to execute critical project phases to suit requirements. AcceleratedSAP (ASAP) implementation approach...
for SAP ERP implementation has five major phases. Fit and Gap Analysis (FGA) is a sub-phase, which is very critical and demands greater care to realize the full potential of ERP. Our experts bring together popular methods of system Fit Gap Analysis. They describe methods that explain techniques applied while executing Fit Gap Analysis.
The possibilities for innovative marketing have exploded in the digital age and companies are considering alternate ways to maximize their investment and drive business. Companies seeking to leverage digital capabilities are faced with the challenge...
of seamlessly integrating traditional and online systems. While digital channels empower marketers with a tremendous advantage in terms of their extensive reach, leveraging their potential requires effective management of multiple channels with complex variables. This document provides a point of view on the usage of digital marketing, its impact in the CPG industry and IT solutions available to support its deployment. Our experts explain how an SAP-powered system, with its rich functionalities and varied features, can go a long way in helping the CPG industry meet the marketing challenges of the digital millennium through improved campaign management, web channel management, web channel analytics, and digital asset management.
Understanding the critical factors that drive a company's profitability as well as cost is vital to maximize profits and thus shareholder value. Research points out that a considerable number of companies agree that their current profitability management...
and reporting system have limitations. Our expert explains how an analytical cost and profitability management system like SAP BusinessObjects Profitability and Cost Management (PCM) can fill the gaps in traditional costing systems. SAP PCM tool with features such as inbuilt ABC engine, data integration with heterogeneous sources, and what-if simulation capabilities can help organizations get the details of factors affecting costs and profitability. It enables business to identify steps to maximize its efficiency and effectiveness and simulate it using the tool before implementation.
Against the backdrop of global warming and the resultant climate change crisis, organizations are keen to adopt a green approach and reduce their carbon footprint. But several organizations lag behind in incorporating green initiatives...
into their business models. Our experts explain the goals and boundaries of a green campaign, and recommend a SAP-based solution framework to reduce carbon footprint. Further, they share vital information on how to appeal to the environmentally conscious consumer.
A majority of SAP enterprises cannot leverage the speed and flexibility of SAP Business Intelligence (SAP BI) due to concerns about using it as an enterprise data warehouse. SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence Accelerator, powered...
by Intel Xeon processors, introduces scalability and performance enhancement to the SAP BI ecosystem, making it an ideal fit in many enterprise data warehouse environments. Our white paper discusses the business scenarios where SAP BI Accelerator and Intel Xeon processors enhance performance. We share performance-related findings with and without SAP BI Accelerator using Intel Xeon processors.
SAP's recent announcements to discontinue direct maintenance support to earlier versions of its SAP R/3 software (3.1i, 4.0b, 4.5b, 4.6b, 4.6c), coupled with the unveiling of its next-generation mySAP ERP and SAP R/3 Enterprise product roadmaps,...
creates a business need to analyze which SAP version and strategy is most appropriate for your organization.
Since the turn of the century, the total annual warranty expenditure of the U.S. Automotive industry has risen from US$ 10 billion to US$ 14 billion, whereas annual sales have remained stagnant. The situation is escalating further as warranty periods become longer,...
regulations mandating disclosure of warranty data (FASB-45, TREAD Act) become more stringent, and electronics in vehicles increase to meet customer demands for safety, performance and economy. A holistic approach can be achieved by balancing automation, manual claims processing and analytics. We believe that the best way of achieving this balance is through the blended use of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and an Early Warning System (EWS) based on advanced analytics.
Driven by competitive pressures, cost considerations and increasing globalization, automotive enterprises are striving to automate business processes to improve operational efficiencies. Among the several business processes in an organization,...
billing and reconciliation are usually rife with complexities. The self-billing building block provided by SAP R/3 is a step forward toward automating these complex business processes and enhancing efficiency. This Infosys paper details challenges posed by these business processes and discusses the gaps in the solution provided by SAP R/3. It provides a couple of scalable, modular, integrated, and flexible approaches to manage them.
The Aerospace MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) supply chain is grappling with challenges thrown up by regulations, inefficiencies, lack of visibility, and the rise of third-party players in an attempt to control costs...
. The inability to quickly track and trace components and equipment for repair imposes expensive timelines on the entire supply chain. The solution lies in automated identification, capture and processing of information, besides better collaboration between all stakeholders. This paper reveals how SAP RFID technology can be leveraged to build a robust solution that eliminates inefficiencies and provides improved visibility and control of the MRO supply chain.
In the flattening world, the need of the hour is agile and flexible IT systems. Although many enterprises have stabilized their processes, they find large under-utilized investments scattered across geographies...
. This Infosys paper outlines an approach with which companies can maximize returns from existing systems. It offers a multi-layered architecture that can provide consolidated analytics for a global view of the organization.
With Business Intelligence (BI) emerging as an all-pervading success factor for strategic, tactical and operational information users, access to information is no longer enough to separate winners from the losers...
. The focus of strategic technology leaders is now on creating seamlessly integrated solutions across the IT landscape, global visibility and analytics on lagging, as well as leading indicators of business for near real-time decision making. The BI Accelerator is an appliance developed by SAP in collaboration with Intel to address these challenges for high performance and scalability of SAP BW implementations. Fitting easily and seamlessly into the NetWeaver environment, the appliance responds to business queries from NetWeaver data. Consequently, the BI Accelerator lowers the costs associated with performance-tuning, designing, building, and maintaining of queries that read huge volumes of data.
SAP R/3 offers enormous flexibility in configuring applications. This advantage, however, poses risks in terms of the impact it can have on the business owing to the size, complexity, and demand for shorter implementation cycles...
... Further, there are the obvious financial implications. This raises the bar for effective and extensive quality assurance (QA) of key business processes and configuration, in ever-shortening cycles, before a release can go live.
Timely QA testing of your SAP applications and legacy systems will ensure that all your systems work together, reliably. The key to a robust solution for automated regression testing is to select the right test tool and automation framework, besides the right business scenarios and test cases.
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.
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.
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