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ERP
ASAP is dead! Long live ASAP!
My colleague Mendel Koerts has been publishing guest blog-items on SAP BMP / eSOA and the SAP TechEd before and it is with great pleasure that I give him the stage again. Yep, you guessed it, it's about SAP. But not the SAP as we know it. I happen to watch Mendel working on an important book about 'Architected SAP'. Consider the following item by Mendel as a prelude, and follow this blog for more news soon.
ASAP is dead! Long live ASAP!
Since this title obviously caught your attention you are most likely familiar with AcceleratedSAP, the good old methodology for implementing and upgrading classical SAP solutions. In spite of the title, ASAP Roadmaps, like those for implementing ERP, are still living happily in the SAP Solution Manager 7.0 product. True. But the point is this. Having worked with various clients over recent years on adopting and taking advantage of services-based SAP solutions, it became evident that as-is ASAP is not by far sufficient as a robust approach for services-based SAP projects. With the irreversibly rise of ‘thinking services’, it is time to declare ASAP dead and to coronet the new ASAP: ArchitectedSAP.
Pretty self-explanatory name, I guess. ArchitectedSAP is a fusion of the architecture profession and the SAP world. It simply makes a broad range of architecting techniques instrumental to guiding the happy few that master SAP services configuration. Helping you to navigate from strategic intent to delivered SAP solutions, regardless of their nature: be it a classical one, services-based or a mixture of those. ArchitectedSAP encourages deploying the services-aware SAP Enterprise Architecture Framework (SAP EAF) to its full extent to allow addressing both business and IT change in an integrated way (guess what the source for the SAP EAF was…). Another architecting goodie adopted in ArchitectedSAP are the architecting processes from the TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM), each process complemented with services-based SAP specific merits.
To the Centre of the Enterprise and now back out again!
I seem to remember that the academics in the early 90s were writing fascinating papers on the need to rethink the alignment of resources through out the enterprise by using the new wonder technology of Client-Server which of course led to a whole round of investments in ERP systems. Now there is a whole new round of papers saying we got it wrong, this has not added value etc., and not surprisingly, there is Nicolas Carr, of ‘Does IT matter’ fame, or notoriety depending on your point of view right there at the front of the movement.
For a more thoughtful approach on the topic, Andrew Mcfee, of Sloan Business School, offers an evaluation of the pros and cons in his Blog titled ‘Are Enterprise Systems part of the problem or part of the solution?'
As Andrew points out using other pieces of published work from other people as well;
‘if ERP wasn’t working then business managers wouldn’t keep investing in it’. I think I would go one stage further; my view is; if you want to stay in business with your auditors you will need to invest in your ERP system.
But, this also illustrates what I see as the real issue, namely ERP is now seen as good, but standard, business practice and not as a competitive capability, the usual case of the cutting edge of technology becoming blunted with time and change. Enterprises need effective ERP systems, but not so much for the competitive edge of utilising their resources better, more just to stay in business these days. Why these days? Because rules and regulations assume that you can manage through ERP.
The competitive argument has moved from centralised understanding of resources towards decentralised optimisation of opportunities in doing business. The, so called, Front Office now being the point to focus upon as opposed to the, so called, Back Office of ERP systems. Interestingly there is a fair argument to say that technology has created both the need and the capability through cause and effect. Again Andrew Mcfee comes in with a good contribution, (if you haven’t guessed by now, yup I am really interested in a lot of his work), in which he introduces the idea of ‘de-coupling’. As far as I am concerned is another way of saying ‘loose coupled’ and therefore firmly pins this new focus to changing technology capabilities.
Now comes my own thinking; I believe that the so called ‘Long Tail’ effect is forcing businesses to enlarge their revenues, and profits, by entering more segments in more markets, and that this is where the competitive benefit of a new wave of technology lies. However, there is a corresponding impact on an enterprise in the fragmentation of its core activities, and this drives two requirements; a stable effective ERP for recording commercial transactions through Data integration, and, something new, that I call ‘Synergy Resource Planning’, or SRP. This is a horizontal layer across the business between ERP and the new optimised to differentiated Front Office where integration takes place through process. Yup it’s the SOA argument, but thought about in a different way.
The CEO acquires companies, and reorganises business operations, in order to gain the beneficial leverage across the business from the combination of capabilities. We need to approach SOA with this business driver in mind and design the differentiated element in the front office to be as ‘thin’ as possible, and gain the synergistic benefit across the business in those elements of the business process where shared orchestration will create this elusive business value.
SAP and Oracle, or Oracle and SAP just to ensure that I am not seen as playing favourites here, seem to be pretty close to this, and BEA seems to almost be saying it, but I have yet to see an open and clear statement as to what we are trying to achieve with SOA in these terms. Having advertised other people’s white papers I hope it's acceptable to mention my own called ‘Changing the Game’ that deals with this in more detail around thinking of four business layers:
- Personalise – the layer of Web 2.0 if you like
- Differentiate – the layer of optimised business solutions
- Organise – the layer of Synergy Resource Planning through correctly applying SOA
- Comply – the layer of ERP
I haven’t talked about Personalise and Differentiate in this blog, that’s a different question about the use of Mashups and Web 2.0 in the enterprise rather than a challenge to the value of ERP.
It's SAP, remember
Frequent visitors of IT events know it's true: a race car simulator will guarantee one of the busiest spots in the hall. Even the most self-controlled manager transforms into an introvert, white-faced maniac the moment he is seated behind the steering wheel and the virtual race begins.
Luckily enough, the Sapphire in Vienna had an exciting attraction like that. Because for the rest, the atmosphere at the annual SAP user conference was a bit on the dull side. At least, that is my personal perception and I feel I should build with a few words on Andy’s analysis of what went on at Sapphire, adding an extra perspective (feel free to add your own, if you have been there; our comments section is open).
Some people could not escape from the feeling that a part of the lukewarm experience was due to the sudden departure of Shai Agassi, until recently the undisputed technology visionary of Walldorf. Agassi could do so well, wearing a black turtle-neck when addressing a big audience. Always ready for a joke or two about his unworthy competitors. Always unveiling a surprise or some new, innovative concept. With the vision behind NetWeaver he actually managed to create a hint of a trendy brand around SAP. Wearing your Nike Airmaxes and Apple iPod while implementing a standard package: who would have thought that ERP could be cool.
Unlikely Love
Sometimes, life is not so bad at all. Writing a blog-item on the balcony of a Paris hotel on a sun-drenched day in spring: doesn’t feel like a prison camp. Especially not with a panoramic view of the Eiffel tower, just a stone’s throw away. Did the Open Group have a metaphorical brainwave when they organised their next Architecture Practitioners conference at exactly this place? One would think so, with hundreds of IT-architects from all over the world discussing the balance between the undeniably ugly appearance of the metal construction and the deep, mathematical drivers that inevitably had to lead to precisely this design.
IT-architects - or ‘Enterprise Architects’, I am not even going to start a discussion here - like to spend time with each other. They can occupy themselves for days with their own methodologies, abstractions and meta models, often refreshingly far removed from daily reality. Introspective and unworldly: delicate qualities that sometimes seem to be firmly-embedded in the genetic material.
Yet, changes are coming.