Enterprise Performance Management - Data is First Priority

A very good article by Dave Hannon - Successful Procurement? It's A Numbers Game  . I fully agree with Dave on this one. Thanks Prashant

Exceprts and link to a good procurement article by Chris Salis, SAP's Global Vice President of Procurement Solutions - The procurement organization has never been afraid of technology. It rode the dot-com wave like many other departments, rolling out e-procurement and reverse auction functionality, while launching public and private marketplaces by the dozens. It used technology to automate routine tasks with the goal of taking the next step and focusing on more strategic areas like supplier risk management and detailed spend analysis. But for many procurement organizations, that next step didn’t come. They got bogged down in resource constraints or budget cuts and never deployed the technology required to truly transform procurement. Now is the time for procurement to take that step. In the current market, many companies are focused on bottom-line savings and top-line growth, and the latest wave of procurement technology can help drive both. To learn how new innovations ar...

If you are SAP Service partner and looking forward for new business avenues with growth trajectory in 2012 - here are some convincing pointers coming out from SAP from their financial results outlook and all the buzz around just concluded SAP FKOM in New Orleans and Milan. Lets look at the highlights of 2011 financial results and outlook provided - ( http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-25/sap-forecasts-higher-profit-sales-this-year-on-analytics-mobile-software.html ) 1. Record Software Revenue 2. Exceeding Revenue Guidance 3.  Exceeding Operating Profit Guidance 4. S trong Margin Growth 5. Exceeding Company Expectations for SAP HANA and Mobile In general - SAP will ride heavily on 5 things in next 2 years to reach to that critical goal  of 320 Million euros from HANA only and 2015 goal of 20 Billion euro company. HANA Cloud Mobility Sustainability Analytics If you are already in atleast one of these - lot of opportunities to grow - if you are not - ...

In today's competitive business environment (as if it was less competitive at some point ), the most important thing is analytics. Analytics because it gives some kind of actionable intelligence. This intelligence when implemented correctly through multiple actions inside organizational business units provides a predictibility - which directly business bottomlines. SAP is having this complete solution suite - Enterprise Performance Management - which includes different solutions for different problems. The end goal for each of these is same - to gain some predictability and enhance performance of the function and then collectively enhance performance of the organization as a whole. Lets look at these different solutions - Strategy management – Set your goals, map your strategies, and then manage performance from high-level objectives to operational metrics. Planning and consolidation – Increase the accuracy and effectiveness of planning, budgeting, forecasting and financial...

So there is a new animal in the zoo. Is it really really different ? probably yes - probably not. But yes - world seems to be curious to know - if its different then whats that difference is? SAP recently launched its long awaiting "new" product in Spend Analytics named as "SAP BusinessObjects Data Enrichment and Classification" (SAP BOBJ DEC). You can read official SAP page  here  and also download the product related information in this  SAP DEC PDF . Is it a game changer ? Yes. Since SAP took over Analytics Inc in 2008 and Business Objects in the same year - they announced a product roadmap integrating the technology platform with the engine that Analytics got on board. 3 years of big effort and we got this good new product. So whats the real difference that SAP partners like Bristlecone can offer now ? 1. A faster engine - Which means less execution time for a engagement - traslated into quick spend visbility 2. Large vendor repository - a real good more...

Guys - You will see few changes to the concept, design and content of this blog in coming weeks. All these years, we focused more on the data management related to Spend Analysis. All studies in recent term, shows customer is more interested to convert this analysis in some kind of intelligence. Basically, to use this analysis to an actionable inputs, which saves money, lowers cost and increase revenue so at the end maximize shareholder value. So the focus going ahead is more on that Business Intelliegence - and how to collaborate more with Business to realize value for organization. Looks interesting ? Keep following. :-) Thanks Prashant Mendki

Yesterday we all read about a news that Brightpoint sued Emptoris - a leading Spend Analysis Service provider based at MA over failed to deliver the service as expected - Brightpoint suing software vendor for negligence There are multiple posts and opinions started pouring the web about why this would happen and what Emptoris should do to respond. Competitors may start using this as a point to win some of the deal and so on. But I think there is a larger message in all this - and that’s about how you sell your product / service, how you setup customer expectation and how your delivery mechanism has been setup - business sensitized or mere a product delivery and lastly whether you stress on value or volume. In today's Spend world, what are the components that one needs to ideally talk about while engaging with customer for Spend Analytics requirements? 1. A strong analytical BI tool - which allows you to maximum slice dice capabilities 2. A strong backbone data service - whi...