E-revolution: the role-based, anything, anywhere browser world

Imagine the following scenario. You’re a sales manager for a manufacturing firm, sitting at your desk looking at your PC screen. You see a customer alert come up on your ‘portal’ window, which is personalised for your specific role and interests. And you have three separate systems deployed: Oracle, Siebel and Peoplesoft. You can click on the customer and drag it over to your sales system (Oracle). The Oracle window now opens up within the portal view, and you see that the client has recently placed a large order. And let’s suppose you now think it’s worth sending one of your sales reps to the client. You can click on the customer (in the Oracle screen) and drag it to the CRM (customer relationship management) system. A Siebel screen appears, showing information about the customer, and you can now see that Mr Jones is the sales rep for that account. By clicking on Mr Jones and dragging to the Human Resources system, a Peoplesoft HR screen opens up within the portal window, and you can see all his personal details and contact information. All the information you need is now at your fingertips allowing you to make more effective management decisions, faster and better than ever before. Well, it doesn’t have to be fiction because the technology is now here. The problem is that many businesses don’t know how it can help them attain real value, or they think they can’t afford the time, resources or price-tag associated with such systems. The result is limited uptake so far, particularly in UK manufacturing. But the business benefits case is compelling: with portals and thin client technology, all the software works together in a single browser-based environment – or window – as if it was a single, integrated application. The idea is that you no longer have to interrogate several databases before reaching an important conclusion. And there’s no need for complicated queries either, you can just click away with your mouse to find the information you require, fast. There’s no re-keying of data, no time wasted launching and closing down different applications, and no logging in and out of systems. But as Simon Bragg, analyst at ARC, points out: “People aren’t used to this way of discovering, connecting, following, and using information, but that will change. It may be different, but it’s not hard, and it’s extremely powerful … Users no longer need to think about where, when, how, or what applications hold the desired data. A configurable, role-based interface will do it all for them.” Nigel Montgomery, European e-business research director for industry analyst AMR Research, says it’s all about giving the user access to relevant information and giving them ‘multi-roles’. “ERP is built around processes, not peoples’ roles. The next generation of ERP software [ie ERPII] is different. Business processes are tied into these multi-role people, delivering focussed, relevant reports to them. Certain users are given drill-down access, and customers can log on to the portal and view stock information and track works orders through the factory,”he says. But industry analysts have taken this concept one stage further. AMR Research, for example, describes this new world of business computing as ECM, or ‘enterprise commerce management.’ This concept brings together all the disparate processes, applications and services companies are now using to run their businesses. The main pieces of ECM are therefore enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM), product lifecycle management (PLM), e-procurement and the like. Last month AMR published the results of its annual study of the application software markets, by interviewing more than 900 vendors in its ECM field. And it predicts that, taken as a whole, “The global ECM market will double by 2005, surviving the current economic slump.” Getting the value? Russell Johns, marketing director for Baan UK, stilll one of the ‘big five’ enterprise software vendors, describes the firm’s iBaan enterprise ‘portal’ software as, “Simply getting the right information to the right people at the right time.” But he warns: “Industry is very conservative at the moment. Some are using portal technology and personalised browsers over the web, but the demand is not really there. It’s a matter of education really, not money. And value is the key issue for these people.” Johns suggests that firms should tackle their internal business processes first, then expand the project to suppliers and customers later. “The competition being one click away may have been applicable to B2C [business to consumer] but with B2B [business to business] it’s all about locking-in your suppliers and customers.” And Baan has customers to prove the point. One of these, Herman Miller, a $2 billion turnover furniture manufacturer in the US, is using iBaan and portal technology to communicate with 600 of its global suppliers, sourcing everything from nuts and bolts to exotic wood material. By customising each supplier’s view of the business, Baan has helped the company support different peoples’ roles throughout this supply chain with relevant, real-time information and alerts. According to Johns: “Suppliers can view real-time data based on how their individual portals are configured. And they can easily notify Herman Miller of issues relating to the purchase of their items.” Issues such as alerts on defective materials, late shipments on parts, manufactured items behind schedule, manufacturing requirements, current receipts, invoicing and payment data are all available through the portal technology. “It’s all pushed to the end-user’s portal so they can get straight to the point with any issue that they encounter,” says Johns. And enterprise software giant SAP is really starting to gear up for portal technology sales growth. Nigel Ford, UK solutions marketing manager, comments: “The mySAP SCM [supply chain management] product has reached a new level of power to remove the process and interface walls that separate people and companies.” But what’s new here is SAP’s adaptive event management tools. “These,” explains Ford, “are designed to monitor and respond to events and processes across an electronic network, dealing with routine issues automatically, but bringing operators’ attention to exceptions to improve responsiveness and ultimately, customer satisfaction and profitability. And it can include mobile wireless technology, so users need not be desk bound.” Another enterprise software vendor, Frontstep (formerly Symix), services the mid-to-lower end of the market, focussing on metal bashing, electronics and capital equipment industries. It can offer manufacturers a more affordable (£200k rather than £500k-plus) ‘portal’ solution. Adrian McNay, UK md, agrees that education is the real issue today. “Most customers we speak to, see portal technology as phase two after ERP implementation,” he says. “But the realisation process is a slow one I’m afraid. They want to see real value before committing their money.” Pripps Carlsberg is another manufacturer using portal technology. Based in Sweden, the company manufactures 600 million litres of beverages per year, including famous brands such as Pepsi, Schweppes and Carlsberg beer. It has an annual turnover approaching £250 million, and has 2,500 employees spread across its four Scandinavian sites. In the Summer of 1999, Pripps chose Intentia’s ERP software product, Movex, to replace its home-grown Tandem Computers system. The cost and skills required to maintain the original software were becoming too high. But the company also wanted to set up an ordering and information portal for its sales teams, integrated fully with these back-office systems. Portals at Carlsberg According to Jan Ulrich, Pripps Carlsberg’s project manager for the implementation of Intentia software: “We chose Movex because it was the best fit solution, and wasn’t the most expensive either.” 50 Pripps sales staff currently use the portal for placing of orders and retrieving information. And its fully integrated too – orders placed on the portal are automatically routed to the Movex ERP system. Ulrich explains: “Sales can now get hold of all the information they need, faster. They can track orders for customers, and they can change or postpone orders easily now. Each individual has personalised information now, and we can check all a clients’ order details in one screen.” And Ulrich estimates that, “Without the portal technology, we would’ve been forced to increase our sales staff by 50% to cope with the workload. “When a customer telephones us, we have all his details on-screen. Information about his buying patterns, sales history, name, address, turnover, and which supply chain he sits in. It all helps us service the client better, but gives us a very professional look too,” he adds. “And administration costs have come down too. Our field sales guys used to take 15 minutes to transmit an 80 line order down their mobile phone into the Tandem system. With Movex and the new Erickson ‘wireless merchandisers’ [WAP mobile phones], we can dial straight into Movex and do the same task in one minute!” So did Pripps need to overhaul its existing IT infrastructure? “Switching to an IBM AS/400 platform meant we needed 10 new servers. We also needed a new telephone handling system to cope with incoming customer calls. It’s called our ‘enterprise interactive centre’. It communicates directly with the portal, and when a client phones in, the database retrieves an ID for his phone number, so we’ve all his details on-screen instantly,” he says. The cost of the project, which ran from mid-1999 to April this year, was around £3.3 million in all, about £1.1 million of this sum on the portal technology and associated integration work. Ulrich concedes that the project had its problems though. “The biggest issue for us was integration between the portal and Movex. We also ran into difficulties with web browsers. We were using Netscape before the Intentia project. As Intentia uses a lot of Microsoft technology, we found there was conflict here. We therefore had long delays from promised delivery and ran over-budget. “Consultants often find it difficult to understand exactly what companies want from their portals, and we were no exception here. We had delays while software customisation took place. So for us, the key to the whole project was really about getting the systems distributor to understand our business processes.” Be warned.