By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 2nd July 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

One of the forgotten but vital areas of manufacturing is operations management of the processes that happen between the taking of orders and their delivery back to a customer. Many initiatives such as Lean Manufacturing and TQM have been focused at improving this process, however it is my experience that certain parts of the whole seemed to have been missed by many of the well-known ERP packages, and so a special software market has grown up. These packages are targeted at all levels of the manufacturing spectrum from the very large enterprise to the small manufacturer. They provide mechanisms to control the allocation of the resources to keep in balance supply and demand. One of the players in this market is Symphony Metreo, part of Symphony Technology Group. At the end of May 2008, I had a briefing with Bennett Indart, their VP of Marketing and Business Development.

The Symphony Technology Group was founded in 2002. They have a mission statement to invest in and operate excellent technology companies. The combined revenues of the group last year reached $2.1 billion, which represented a double digit growth over the prior year. The Group has some 7,000 employees. The group includes Aldata, Capco and IRI as well as Symphony Metreo. Symphony Technology Group is also a significant minority shareholder many other companies including Lawson.

Symphony Metreo have their headquarters in Palo Alto, California. Besides their Operations Management suite they have 2 other product lines: Enterprise Pricing Suite and Performance Management Platform. The company was formed in 2007 by combining SymphonyRPM with Metreo. They have some 200 customers worldwide, including Hagermayer, Owens Corning, Honeywell, Linksys and Harris Stratex. The Performance Management Platform is OEM'd by Agile, IRI and Sungard BancWare. IBM Global Business Services are the main implementation partner and both IBM and SAP are technology partners.

Symphony Metreo has the following stated hypothesis, "Financial planning and operational execution are disconnected in many companies in terms of management approach, business systems and processes resulting in inconsistent performance, misaligned objectives and myopic decision making."

Figure 1: Solving the disconnected planning and execution processes (Source: Symphony Metreo)

What Symphony Metreo sees is that there is a disconnect not only horizontally between the management of price, operations and offerings, but also vertically between strategy, for instance of financial management, which is done at the aggregate level, and the tactical everyday world in operations. These disconnects lead to barriers and inefficient information exchange, which lead to missed opportunities. Symphony Metreo's FS&OP product solution puts in place a strategic functional planning layer that connects the top-down financial plan to the bottom-up operational layers, and breaks down the silos, for a more efficient and proactive business.

FS&OP Manager aligns the organization, so that it easier for operations to formulate responses to the market, competitive pressures, and unexpected events that further the strategic goals of the organisation. It monitors the events affecting forward supply and demand, and highlights the changes that have the biggest impact on corporate targets. FS&OP Manager has analytics and modelling capabilities which can be used by operations decision-makers to:

• Monitor performance in real time,
• Model decisions in a collaborative process with other areas in the business, and
• Execute decisions to internal systems with write-back capabilities.

Symphony Metreo FS&OP Manager provides the following capabilities:

• Projections: the solution can be used to predict a trend by extending current time-based data forward. Several forecasting and smoothing algorithms are provided, or the use can use their own methods.
• Collaboration: share live scenario models for joint cross-functional problem solving and issue resolution. Seamless integration with standard email systems.
• ScenarioFlow: guide users through each step of the operations planning workflow using a set of configurable analysis workflow templates.
• Advanced Analysis: support for all the common analysis capabilities, e.g., drilling, pivot, drag-n-drop rows and columns, hide/show dimensions, and more.

Symphony Metreo compliments FS&OP Manager with a suite of Enterprise Pricing Solutions that help to complete the Operations Management vision by bringing together the disciplines of Volume and Price management together for an Integrated Business Planning view of Revenue across the organization. Symphony Metreo's suite of pricing solutions includes:

• Price Planner, which bridges the gap between the pricing assumptions required to hit the financial plan, and resulting price points required at product segment level to achieve it. Additionally, it supports the continuous improvement of the Price Plan.
• Guideline Manager, which is a price setting application. It gives organizations the ability to manage and execute pricing strategies across products and segments and to deliver consistent segment level guidelines to the field in order to meet business objectives.
• Price Manager, which allows pricing and product managers to quickly manage their price strategy versus the competition and to set new prices and measure the impact of these price changes to continuously keep pace with changing market dynamics.
• Vision, which analyzes and highlights problem areas by providing a means of understanding where current pricing policies are leaving money on the table and providing a strategy for gaining market share.
• Response, which evaluates customer sales requests to create guidance on obtaining profitable deals by applying best practice.
• Deal Analyzer, which allows companies to assess deals by evaluating different scenarios for deal improvement, and by providing visibility to key information that can lead to leakage control and margin gains. It contains a time-based alert system with support for multiple alert type including Price, Discount, Margin, Multiplier, Customer, Product and Sales Person.

Symphony Metreo is a technology enabler of "Make The Number Approach" developed by Mark Payne. This approach supports all functions within a business. MTNA allows a business to continuously plan, decide, and adjust the future demand and supply activity, in order to maximize profit potential. So if your company has those sorts of issues, Bloor would recommend a close look at Symphony Metreo's FS&OP Manager and the complementary pricing solutions.

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By: Sergey Karas, VP of Global Strategy, Luxoft Posted: 24th June 2008 Copyright Luxoft © 2008

It has its detractors, but in reality there is little evidence to suggest that the outsourcing market is doing anything other than booming. Research firm TPI has found that Europe and Asia-Pacific are both still experiencing strong outsourcing growth. Outsourcing activity in Europe for the first quarter of 2007 was up by two-thirds compared to 2006, with $9.7bn-worth of contracts signed, while Asia-Pacific experienced a 30 per cent rise to $2.1bn. Outsourcing is still, and will continue to be, a boom market. However the nature of the outsourcing deals is changing.

In the past in the financial services sector, reducing overheads to maintain a competitive edge or simply staying afloat was the underlying force behind every outsourcing decision. In some respects outsourcing was seen as a way of passing on a problem that was too expensive and resource-draining for the company. Financial services organisations have been guilty in the past of viewing outsourcing primarily, if not solely, from an operational perspective.

Nowadays, a more mature and wiser outsourcing market has emerged. Companies no longer see cost as the principle driver behind outsourcing deals - more and more companies are viewing outsourcing as a way to add value to their organisation as well as gaining additional domain and technology expertise. By employing a supplier with high-level industry knowledge to develop complex technology that transforms or re-engineers a key business process or function, the end user aims to change the operation so that both the performance improves and the cost decreases.

Outsourcing the development of high-end technology, which will re-engineer the company's key processes - transformational outsourcing - is a new and exciting development in the outsourcing marketplace. Analysts describe transformational outsourcing as "an emerging form of IT outsourcing that combines cost saving with the potential for enhanced IT flexibility".

One example of transformational outsourcing is within banks and financial services organisations, which outsource software aimed to improve or re-engineer their front line operations. By employing a supplier with the domain and technology expertise to deliver mission critical software, the banks accelerate process transformation and build software that is a vital part of their operations.

When outsourcing is approached from a transformational perspective, the economic advantages are a beneficial result rather than an objective. The key aim is to accelerate and finance process transformation. This is geared around key business needs such as strengthening front line operations, accelerating speed to market, closing the skills and knowledge gaps and primary technology demands such as building a strong and flexible infrastructure. A recent IDG study on transformational outsourcing found that firms are increasingly using transformational outsourcing as a way to introduce strategic flexibility into their business models.

The transformational model implies another level of the vendor / end-user relationship. It is more of a partnership in which an outsourcing provider can demonstrate flair in thought leadership, pro-activity, domain expertise and an ability to adapt and respond to the end user's business requirements. This approach can be used in any sort of outsourcing practice, from high-end applications through to complex IT systems and business process outsourcing.

With the rise of transformational outsourcing has come the realisation amongst end users that outsourcing isn't a matter of simply handing over a problem to a supplier. The transformational model is different. As research firm TPI explains, transformational outsourcing is "the process of effecting continuous strategic change and tying the results of the outsourcing initiative to strategic business outcomes. It is a collaborative, risk- and gain-sharing relationship among the organisation and its service providers to drive enterprise transformation and achieve significant business process improvements." By harnessing the outsourcing process, and working in tandem with the supplier towards the same goals, transformational outsourcing can have a strategic effect on achieving company goals.

There are both huge benefits and potential pitfalls when outsourcing such development to a supplier. On the plus side, the promise of rapid, substantial, sustainable improvement in enterprise-level performance, as well as an improvement on the bottom line has tempted end users to consider transformational outsourcing.

However, it is essential to follow best practice guidelines when considering a transformational outsourcing solution. As in any outsourcing deal, finding the right supplier is vital. The difference in transformational outsourcing being that the supplier must be trusted absolutely to know the end user's business, the systems that are used and the operations and processes that are to be transformed. The domain-level expertise has to be one step above traditional outsourcing because of the fact that core processes are actually being transformed, rather than amended or simply being managed.

One other issue that must be thought through within transformational outsourcing is the need for the end user as well as supplier to look at their relationship as a business model, that benefits both partners, and not just a deal. It is very important that the strategic purpose should be kept at the centre at all times.

The advantages of transformational outsourcing come about as a result of intelligent outsourcing processes. When transformational outsourcing is put in place, monetary benefits are an inevitable outcome, but it is the improved value to the end user's organisation and processes that is the most significant benefit to the end user.

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By: Sergey Karas, VP of Global Strategy, Luxoft Posted: 5th June 2008 Copyright Luxoft © 2008

It was recently announced that the CME Group's technology department will be working weekends and even all through the holiday season to integrate the merged Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange onto one infrastructure by Spring. CME Group has spent about £500m on technology over the past 10 years. As Mark Ainis, director of front-end systems technology at CME Group has stated, "Our big thing here is our markets are sacred. Every group's responsibility is to make sure we have performing systems." With markets being ‘sacred’, the technology development that can make or break the platform itself is absolutely crucial.

Within bond trading the value of shares is changing not just every hour, not just every minute, but every second. If a company's technology is not absolutely up-to-the-minute, they will be losing money to competitors whose systems will process information more quickly and effectively. Traders, in particular, have no end of complaints about their IT systems failing to meet requirements—both the day-to-day obligations and the necessity to comply with ever-changing legislation.

In any project, from a school assignment to the most detailed software development, you will know more about it at the end than the beginning. It's hardly rocket science. So why, when thinking about the implementation of detailed software development plans, do so many companies map out every micro detail at the very beginning? Surely it makes sense to perform the first part of the project, define short-term requirements, examine results and conclusions, and then plan again for the next stage.

Agile software development, producing software in short iterations, is the common sense approach to software development. Projects are developed in two to three week timescales at the end of which the user can see a working version of the software for sign-off before progressing to the next iteration. By constantly testing and integrating the results at each stage, the final product can be released earlier if it is ready, or changes can be made that will lead to an implementation that is both rapid and successful.

Plan...develop...integrate...test—it's the same as any normal software development project, but done in a matter of weeks. With almost guaranteed results in a short space of time, agile is the super noodles of the IT world.

"Failure is not an option," said Gene Kranz aboard the Apollo 13. And with the more traditional ‘waterfall’, process-led, approach to software development, this is perfectly true. With all of the stages of the project planned from the beginning, one malfunction in the whole process will cause the whole project to fail. Whilst failure was not an option for Apollo 13 or traditional software developments, slippage or mistakes can be reconciled in agile software development, as each project is broken down into smaller parts.

Imagine a writer spewing out a whole book without pause for thought or reflection. Whilst many of us must have questioned how much planning the likes of Barbara Cartland genuinely put into their books, the reality is that constantly going over your work and reassessing is part of the process. Because the agile methodology is broken down into shorter projects, there is always time to reflect and make changes where necessary, as well as testing and integrating these changes.

In a more strictly planned development, such reflection is not always possible. Come the end of a waterfall project, there is the possibility of looking back and finding that the outcomes have not been in line with the original objectives. Additionally the results may not be in line with new specifications that the end user may have, particularly given the fast pace of change in the IT industry. In a constantly evolving business environment predicting only a few weeks in advance minimises wastage in terms of time spent on document writing at the outset and takes into account everyday variables like personnel and regulatory changes that may have an impact.

The London Stock Exchange has recently completed a four year trading system development project known as Technology Roadmap (TRM). TRM's main objective was to introduce a next generation trading system that would provide more capacity, less latency and a reduction in the time and cost needed to roll out new services. It is worth examining the impact that an agile approach could have had on this project. TRM had a four phase release, so in this way it mirrored agile development methodology in that the development was released (and therefore utilised) before the whole project was complete. However, the project could have been broken down into even smaller iterations; if, for example, the first release (enhancements to the corporate data warehouse) had been done using agile methodology, a working version of the software might have been put out earlier and therefore the obvious financial gains of the system could have been maximised earlier. This is even more pertinent with release four—TradElect™—which increases the speed and efficiency of trading, provides the framework for the rapid development of new markets and asset classes, enhances the market structure to better support order routing, settlement and clearing and extends functionality for order handling, quote management and trade reporting. Every second counts, and the fact that the third and fourth elements of the project took two years to release suggests that agile could have delivered direct benefit to the bottom line.

But agile isn't all a bed of roses—it has its limitations. For one, it is very dependent on the structure of the client organisation—some organisations have particularly rigid and inflexible structures and therefore will not have flexibility to allow for constant change in a project. If a (somewhat pre-historic) company has a rigidity of structure, whereby all projects are strictly planned (and therefore predictable) from beginning to end, then attempting to put in place a methodology that embraces constant change and development is likely to cause internal confusion and consternation.

The need to get customer buy-in at every stage can be a potential difficulty, particularly for customers who are inherently used to the waterfall methodology. Whereas in the waterfall methodology the customer involvement is limited to two stages—beginning and end—the requirement for on-going participation and input in the agile methodology may prove problematic for some organisations. If the supplier is trying to develop software using the agile methodology, but the customer is not getting involved, the benefits are immediately lost. It can also prove costly if the customer is continually suggesting changes—the project can quickly grow larger than its original scope. Suppliers have to take this into account when costing projects of this nature.

Henry Ford believed that, "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is a success." Whilst the direct communication between supplier and end user is one of the key potential benefits of agile, it can also be its downfall if complete buy-in from all sides isn't achieved.

Faster, more up-to-the minute technology is, of course, beneficial to every FTSE 500 company. Insurance companies, hedge funds, private equity funds, broking and trading firms, investment banks, consultancy and accountancy firms, data providers, law firms, regulators and stock exchanges all stand to benefit from a methodology that allows trading platforms and equity systems to be developed in the most efficient manner. Agile is becoming more widespread and sceptics are being won over, whilst the waterfall method seems to be on the brink of freezing. The realisation that you have the most information at the end of the project, as opposed to the beginning, is infiltrating into mainstream software development methodology. Doubters amongst end user organisations are realising that a shift in internal ideology can create a more rapid and successful deployment of software. Although many organisations are tied to the more traditional waterfall methodology, whose main benefit remains the "illusional predictability" of delivery, agile—the challenger methodology—is becoming ever more popular due its faster delivery and the greater involvement of the end user at each stage in the development process.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 29th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

In my research on the RFID Middleware market, I came across a number of vendors that were new to me. In a series of articles, I will provide a short overview of these products. The third of these is WareLite, who provide a grid-based event driven integration product called BOSS that sits upon a .NET platform.

WareLite was founded in 2000 and has its headquarters in Andover, Hampshire in the UK. They also have a sales office in Milan, Italy. Not surprising when you consider that the CEO and one of the founders is Italian—Elena Pasquali. WareLite have a very small set of partners, that include Motorola and IBM. The latter is using BOSS as part of its retail proposition.

WL BOSS (Business Operating Support System) is a grid-based, event driven Enterprise Application Platform for Extreme Transaction Processing (XTP). A WareLite business process is a piece of complex logic triggered by an elementary, low-level event, such as a sensor signal, providing an automated, complete business response to such an event. On receipt of the signal, the WL BOSS computer ‘grid' selects an appropriate business process and executes it, propagating modified enterprise data to any number of databases.

Figure 1: BOSS Architecture (Source: WareLite)

BOSS is made of 3 layers:

• The Solutions layer contains all the Enterprise Business Logic in the form of collections of Business Rules, Business Processes and the Events and Agents that trigger them.
• The Infrastructure layer provides the following services:
  • Persistence Providers built on top of a standard RDBMS manage persistence for all global persistent objects.
  • Node Managers are responsible for the execution of transactional business processes.
  • Lock Managers provide contention resolution
  • Scalability: WL BOSS provides scalability as a service both at execution level (Node Managers) and at persistence level (Persistence Providers). This means that developers can develop single-threaded solutions that will be executed as multiple, completely parallel threads by WL BOSS on computer grids made of as many Node Managers and Persistence Providers as needed to provide the required capacity
• The Presentation layer is based upon XML.

For an RFID solution, WareLite have added some additional components to WL BOSS:

• RFID Abstraction layer (RAL)—provides the translation of RFID tag data from reader into XML. It also provides data aggregation support where a number of reads of the same tag have occurred in a sort space of time.
• RFID Simulation tool

Key findings
In the opinion of Bloor Research the following represent the key facts of which prospective users should be aware:

• As a result or the architecture of the persistence layer, all business rules can have immediate access to all enterprise data. This means that different development teams, not communicating with one another, will develop event driven solutions for WL BOSS that will be natively interoperable.
• Developers do not need to take care of transaction management, determinism and scalability when developing solutions.
• WL BOSS does not expose any proprietary interfaces or APIs. Events are presented to BOSS as XML frames via message queuing

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 27th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

In my research on the RFID Middleware market, I came across a number of vendors that were new to me. In a series of articles, I will provide a short overview of these products. The second of these is noFilis Ltd, who provide a device manager for the SAP AII environment.

noFilis was founded in 2005 and, although a registered UK company, has its headquarters in Ismaning, Germany. The company is hoping to open a USA sales office during this quarter of 2008. It is partnered with the following well-known RFID hardware vendors: Identec, Impinj, Intermec, Alien, Motorola, Psion, Siemens, Sirit, Brooks Automation, Hoeft&Wessels, Avery Dennison and Zebra. They also have partnerships with a number of less well-kown European hardware vendors: Beckhoff, Caen, Datalogic, Deister, Feig, NordicID, Hoeft & Wessels, Scemtec, Tricon and Sick. Customers of its CrossTalk product include: Daimler, Metro, Volvo, DHL, Conti, Stihl, Grammer, Hoerbiger, Huelsta, Hansgrohe, Transpharm, ElringKlinger and many more.

Today, noFilis has many partners in implementing RFID solutions based on CrossTalk: IBM Global Services, SAP, T-Systems, oce, Cap Gemini, Inconso, Itelligence, Serkem, ESG, Ciber, Siemens, Intel ISS, and over 40 more.

CrossTalk is aimed at supporting device integration and operation and has been designed to work with SAP AII, IBM Premise Server, ORACLE Fusion, BEA Enterprise Server and others. It is based on a modular, robust Java architecture. All components are designed for high availability and optimised hardware resource use. The core engine is able to run directly on small devices like RFID Readers, on "out of the box" appliances, up to clustered data centre environments.

CrossTalk consists of the following components:

• CrossTalk Control Center is the remote management platform for all CrossTalk and AutoID components. The central Control Center provides an easy to use web interface for infrastructure configuration, monitoring, diagnostics and debugging.
• CrossTalk Agents are common runtime environments for remote execution of any device and device-service operation. Agents are designed to run inside the local device environment and are centrally monitored and configured.
• CrossTalk Bundles are libraries of device drivers and device services. A Bundle includes execution code, version information and configuration metadata. Bundles are loaded dynamically into an Agents engine, dependent on the used device type and required processing logic. These include:
  • RFID Gate Services
  • PLC Services
  • EPC Services
  • Appliance Services—for clustered Gate operations
• CrossTalk Mobile is a UI Framework and Runtime engine for mobile devices. It combines the advantage of online application design and offline execution. It is being released in Q1 2008
• CrossTalk live monitor is a UI Framework where multiple views and graphs can be configured to monitor low level sensor events in real time. This will be available in Q1 2008.

Figure 1: CrossTalk Architecture (Source: noFilis Ltd)

Conclusion
In the opinion of Bloor Research the following represent the key facts of which prospective users should be aware:

• The CT Engine can be run and executed directly on a RFID reader device, on a PLC System on a industry PC in a production environment or, together with SAP AII middleware, in a computer centre or even distributed over several locations.
• The CrossTalk Engine works partially in real-time. After the system starts, all necessary components (e.g., processes, device connections, services) are started and monitored automatically. Configuration and monitoring are done via the CrossTalk web interface.
• An Agent's functionality can be extended by developing custom services and bundles via the open service interface. An SDK will be available in Q2 2008.

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By: Peter Williams, Practice Leader - IT Infrastructure Mgmt., Bloor Research Posted: 23rd May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Who'd be a CIO? He or she has to be a special type of person—who understands the technology used by the business, what it can and cannot do, and be able to give a technical lead to the Board—while also taking the flak from the Board for IT not meeting their business needs.

CIOs need to turn the business policies into IT reality if they can, something getting ever harder to do with the growth of regulatory compliance and security concerns. IT is always under the spotlight; costs are high and rising, while issues include retention of IT staff with appropriate skills, retraining costs and salary bills. Still, CIOs worth their salt will at least have their fingers on the pulse of the IT infrastructure...won't they? Well no.

Much of the IT infrastructure management software available provides masses of information—but not actually the "step back" overall trend stuff that the CIO needs to let him or her see the wood for the trees—to take wise actions and present meaningfully to the Board.

So I found it very refreshing to talk to BDNA (stands for Business DNA) last week. Here is a company that has ploughed its own software furrow, focusing explicitly on the sort of information the CIO is looking for.

BDNA's Insight software does not compete with the likes of IBM, CA and HP with their mega-management solutions, and does little or nothing in real-time. Instead it simply takes regular checks on the infrastructure assets to show what is happening where—and enriches them for the CIO to be able to visualise and then explain the IT situation in language and graphics that are meaningful to the corporate business executives affected by what is happening.

Once you know what the problems are—performance, energy costs, utilisation, gaps in business applications and so on—then maybe you can address the real business needs. Yet the 24/7 real-time IT infrastructure world is often too involved in fire-fighting to stop and deliver the appropriate answers.

At its heart, Insight has an agentless discovery engine which will pick up operating systems, databases, applications, layers and multiple protocols from the whole corporate infrastructure. (This might be run, say, monthly or quarterly; not being real-time it will typically use less than 0.1% of the bandwidth.) It will also go on to run the results against its product catalogue to auto-add vendor content automatically; so the first the CIO sees is when this has been done.

So, you may think: "My IT infrastructure management software does real-time discovery of everything as it changes; so why would I bother to repeat this process?" Here are a few good reasons...

• All these IT assets can be presented by business function to show the line managers what is happening.
• They can, in true asset management style, be highlighted in business terms against what operating systems or applications are out of date, unlicensed, not being used but being paid for and so on. (Who knows, for instance, how many "free" downloads of Linux are in use—even in production systems, let alone why?)

As BDNA's CEO Ray Homan told me, "This answers the simple question of what are you using it [an application, operating system etc.] for?" This information is often a rich seam for revenue retrieval in things such as: deleting unused software, cancelling unnecessary licenses and negotiating better licensing deals with vendors. Major IT management systems providing lots of detailed information do not always provide straightforward answers to simple questions like these.

• Then, if this process is run, say, a week or month later, this builds up trend information, showing clearly at fixed points in time, what has changed, got worse or improved. It also provides some clear evidence for the CIO to take to the Board about the progress on requested actions the IT department—or maybe a department that is a heavy IT user—has made since the last check.

In ITIL v3 there is a best practice recommendation that users should do a regular reconciliation of their configuration management database (CMDB) using an external source. One reason is that the CMDBs the major vendors provide and update in near real-time will typically "age adrift" of the true over time. Vendors may deny this ever happens to their CMDB of course. OK, then run Insight against the CMDB as the external check—and see what it throws up. The results might surprise—and reveal more IT asset savings or improvements to be had.

This is hardly rocket science. Yet it is a practical, commonsense approach. CIOs who use it seem to love it—perhaps because it is the only show in town that really helps them.

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By: Gerry Brown, Associate Analyst - BI and CRM, Bloor Research Posted: 22nd May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Omniture is the self-appointed king of digital marketing. It has acquired other competitors in the space (e.g. VisualSciences, Offermatica, Touch Clarity), and is ambitious and aggressive. Josh James is their 34-year-old founder and CEO. Apparently he has 5 children and is probably the most likely man to say “sleep is for wimps!”. He addressed a young and enthusiastic audience of 500 open-necked Ad agency types in London last month.

Josh talks fast and straight from the hip. With $143m in annual revenues and 1,000+ employees Omniture is “3–4 times larger than our next competitor and growing 2–3 times faster”. Well, growth for Q1 2008 was 117%. Omniture’s 4,400 customers include Argos, John Lewis, BA, BT, and Vodaphone. Omniture also supports pure-play digital businesses such as lastminute.com, Opodo, and Expedia. Omniture sells 3 product categories and a platform:

1. Reporting & Analytics (SiteCatalyst, Discover)
2. Marketing Campaign Management (SearchCenter)
3. Conversion (Test&Target)
4. A platform for partner applications integration (Genesis)—a bit like salesforce.com’s AppsExchange

So what are the applications for digital marketing? Best Buy (the US electronics retailer) identifies that the Canon 1.07MP Digital Camcorder is often being viewed on its web site, and instructs its retail stores to place the product where customers can find it quickly and easily. Need help when you are on the Best Buy web site? Press the “click to talk by PC” button. Some call centres can now ‘see’ you visiting their web site, and can send you an IM message “do you need any help?”

If you buy a Sony Vaio you enter a flight path of friendly emails that inform you at carefully staged intervals where you can, for example, buy extra batteries, or remind you to renew your warranty. Email marketing for add-on sales and customer retention rather than new customer acquisition in other words.

BT identify when and where their web site visitors get fed up and abandon their shopping carts. They also use A / B Multi-variant testing. This means emailing out 2 or 3 versions of an advert or promotion to a test market. One has a picture of a pretty girl on it, one doesn’t. One has a free trial promotion and one doesn’t. BT then measures the stats e.g. number of opened emails, resulting visits to BT’s micro-site, resulting sales orders etc. The test version with the best response wins and is rolled out for a national campaign. As a result BT reckons sales order conversion rate is up by 5%.

OK, so understanding how customers and potential customer behave on your web site is interesting, but hardly earth-shattering. What is more interesting is what happens if you connect your customer data warehouse to activity on your web site, and to how customers respond to your email campaigns. Then you can overlay behavioural data (e.g. what click paths people make on your web site) against the demographic, socio-economic and geographic customer profiles in your data warehouse.

Marrying up real-time customer digital behaviour with customer profile data is the holy grail for digital marketers. This enables highly targeted real-time marketing campaigns based on both what customers are doing and what they look like e.g. “let’s run a sales promotion email campaign to 35–45 year-old professional males, with families, based in North London, earning more than £40,000 pa who have viewed the Canon 1.07MP Digital Camcorder on our web site in the last 2 weeks”. The benefit messages crafted for such a targeted audience should be pretty compelling, and should co-incide exactly with the timing of customer purchasing intentions. Powerful stuff.

The truth is that digital marketing has a long way to go just yet. The applications outlined above are just scratching the surface of the possibilities. When McKinsey spoke about trends in digital marketing at Internetworld earlier this month the queue was so long you would have thought it was a Take That concert. So the audience is ready and willing.

Omniture have positioned themselves at the forefront of digital marketing market developments. I believe it has the traction and the ambition to become a $1Bn company in the future. Even some competitors grudgingly admit that Omniture has re-invigorated a faltering dot com CRM market. Exciting times.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 20th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

In my research on the RFID Middleware market, I came across a number of vendors that were new to me. In a series of articles, I will provide a short overview of these products. The first of these is on Omnitrol Networks.

Omnitrol Networks was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California, USA. The company has a sales office in the UK. It partners with the following RFID hardware vendors: Alien, AWID, Intermec, Motorola, Ekahau, Impinj, Printronix, Psion and Zebra.

Omnitrol has developed a close relationship with Boeing, being involved in 3 key initiatives of the latter; namely IGO Initiative, US Air Force SCOUT Initiative and T-NESCO Initiative.

The vision of the company is that services dealing with the edge of the network (RFID, sensors, actuators) have to run at the edge of the network (not within the back-end applications) in order to provide real-time sense and response and scale to support hundreds of devices and thousands of events in a single deployment.

The OMNITROL appliance encompasses a scalable (both vertically and horizontally) and modular multi-processor server architecture and an integrated WiFi LAN controller and switch, including sensor and multi-protocol device integration. It integrates Ethernet and WiFi network infrastructures. In addition, it pulls together Real-Time Location Services (RTLS), WiFi access points, passive Gen-2 (UHF and HF) and active RFID readers with an open workflow automation and business process service creation engine (EASE - Edge Application and Services Engine). Omnitrol have just added Ultra Wide Band with Time Domain support.

EASE can analyse thousands of EPC/RFID tags per second while simultaneously reconciling the information on the federated OMNITROL peer data network. The EASE workflows can process the events to completion with appropriate back-end ERP context in the business process executed right on the work-floor. EASE has 3 key facilities:

• Device adaption and management layer: all the devices are managed from a single unified management portal. This layer abstracts all the devices and is not limited to RFID. Any sensor that can send an event gets mapped through this layer and sent to the engine.
• Services execution environment: this uses their own workflow service creation language (SDL) to provide a high level event-based language to reduce the time it takes to create these services without having to worry about the reader technology.
• Integration with back-end layer: this layer allows the OMNITROL appliance to connect with enterprise applications through ESB, Websphere and other EAI products/technologies.
• The OMNITROL Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) has a set of adapters to support XML/SOAP, EDI and ODBC interfaces.

Omnitrol software architecture (Source: Omnitrol Networks)

There are a few software products that are available to Ominrol customers:

• Service Creation Environment. This is a toolkit that includes an Integrated Development Environment to develop SDL services. The Environment also includes an emulator to simulate the deployment without the need for real readers or sensors. A user can position their readers and sensors and simulate tags, people and assets interacting with the environment and executing the logic developed in SDL.
• Asset Tracking Appliance. This is a complete solution based on the OMNITROL appliance that is used to track assets that are using either passive or active RFID. The solution is completely self-contained in the OMNITROL appliance.
• Work-in-Process Appliance (WIP). A solution used to track orders, assets and employees following a specific process within the four walls of a manufacturing or logistic operation. The solution includes hardware (OMNITROL, reader, handheld device, printer), and software.
• Wide-Area WIP. Built on top of the WIP appliance, it integrates with EPCIS to provide complete visibility across the supply chain.
• EPC Appliance. This product is for customers who are looking to connect their readers to their own application using EPC standards (ALE, LLRP and EPCIS).

Conclusion
In the opinion of Bloor Research the following represent the key facts of which prospective users should be aware:

• The OMNITROL appliance isolates all the devices (RFID readers, PLC, sensors etc) from the rest of the corporate network, protecting it from broadcast storms coming from the devices, and creating virtual networks for added security.
• OMNITROL is completely web and SNMP managed, with SNMP based device management for all sensors and RFID readers,
• The OMNITROL appliance was designed as a multi-processor server appliance. The architecture of the OMNITROL supports scalability though upgradeable processor modules or stacking peer OMNITROL systems.
• EASE has its own workflow Service Description Language (SDL).
• Omnitrol's additional product built upon their platform makes this a tool worth investigating further.

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By: Louella Fernandes, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 20th May 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

Although HP's recent announcement to acquire EDS for $13.9 billion (£7.1 billion) may have sparked talk of consolidation in the IT services industry, spare a thought for the impact of this deal on Xerox, a long-standing EDS partner. With HP aggressively looking to widen its footprint in the corporate printing space as part of its Print 2.0 strategy, the acquisition of EDS will help it make further inroads to compete with Xerox Global Services (XGS), currently a $3.4 billion (£1.7 billion) organisation and a key growth engine for Xerox.

EDS' relationship with Xerox as an outsourced IT provider is long established and was recently extended with a deal in April 2008 where Xerox signed a $263 million agreement for EDS to manage and support its end-user, service desk and mainframe operations. But it is Xerox's position as an EDS Agility Alliance partner which is where the HP/EDS deal is going to hurt most.

Xerox has been an EDS Agility Alliance partner since 2004. EDS acts both as a systems integrator for Xerox products, software and solutions, as well as working with Xerox to deliver joint managed print services (MPS) such as through EDS Managed Output Services offering, which combines Xerox's office services and systems with EDS' desktop services support. Although Xerox also works with other consulting companies such as IBM Global Services, Deloitte and Accenture, it is its global partnership with EDS that elevated it to being Xerox's key strategic partner. Its most notable deal is with the UK's Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which is a £400 million ($781 million), seven-year printing contract that helped to more than triple the total contract value of Xerox/EDS services from 2006 to 2007.

Xerox has for some time now been squarely focused on growing its business by leading with services in large enterprise relationships. XGS has been the growth engine in this strategy and in 2007 demonstrated a services annuity growth rate of 8%. XGS is organised along three business areas—Office Services, Business Process Services, and Document Outsourcing and Communication Services—and as such offers competencies across the complete document lifecycle. Xerox Office Services (XOS) is the largest of these three groups, offering MPS to large enterprises and has seen double-digit growth in contracts from 2006 to 2007.

HP is Xerox's most notable competitor in the MPS market, offering assessment, optimisation and management of the document output environment. Although HP has been ramping up its MPS portfolio, it currently lacks the document lifecycle and workflow and document outsourcing capabilities that Xerox is able to offer through its other XGS offerings. Another key differentiator is multivendor support capabilities—Xerox claims to have approximately one million competitive devices under XOS management, made possible by its multivendor trained support staff. Also, Xerox's higher penetration in the high volume production and copy centres gives it the ability to better manage and optimise environments using these devices.

But with HP looking to increase its penetration in the enterprise printing market, it is actively expanding its MPS capabilities and already benefits from its heritage in managing the enterprise IT infrastructure. Meanwhile, its recent acquisition of Exstream software, a provider of document automation software for high volume transactional printing and customised communications, is an example of its intention to play in the wider space of production printing, which is a space where Xerox is firmly entrenched. Its acquisition of EDS is potentially giving it broader access to IT services engagements where HP equipment and solutions can be sold.

EDS's main selling point is that it is the largest services firm that is independent of any hardware or software vendor and, as with many mega IT vendors, have to work by co-opetition due to having their fingers in so many pies. Existing EDS/Xerox contracts will have at least need to run their course and where there is a major end user commitment involved may well be renewed. However, whilst HP have stated that it will continue to advise clients to buy systems from all vendors, it will clearly be positioning its managed print services as a viable alternative to other vendors' offerings.

In the light of the EDS deal Xerox may well now consider deepening its ties with its current global IT partners to exploit the potential opportunities to be gained from engaging with potential IT outsourcing clients. Although IBM Global Services is already a global partner for Xerox, its relationship with InfoPrint Solutions Company (a joint venture between IBM and Ricoh) may mean that Xerox will also need to focus on its other partners such as Deloitte, Atos Origin and Accenture. Dell is another key supplier that could potentially be hurt by the EDS deal, and could be a company that Xerox chooses to strengthen its alliance with. Whether Xerox would look to make an acquisition of its own in this space is doubtful—CSC is the smallest, yet still worth around $7 billion (£3.6 billion)—a lot for Xerox, a $17 billion (£8.7 billion), company to swallow.

For now, XGS has plenty of growth opportunities from its already successful office services, document and business processing services and has developed a strong portfolio to maintain its leadership as a document services provider. HP's acquisition of EDS will certainly impact XGS' momentum, but it should be well positioned to maximise the value of its other established partnerships. What remains to be seen is if HP makes any further acquisitions which threaten Xerox's stronghold in its established markets. In the meantime, the combined power of HP and EDS will certainly enable HP to extend the reach of its Print 2.0 strategy into new markets and support its strategy of gaining more inroads into the coveted enterprise printing space.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 9th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Warehouse management is viewed by all involved in Logistics as a key to being successful in this fast moving industry. But the price of IT systems with the right mix of functionality for the SME market has been a major issue in the reticence of these organisations moving away from the use of Excel spreadsheets. 3M Supply Chain Solutions has been a major player in the warehouse management system (WMS) market with its HighJump product since their foundation in April 1983. They have over 1,300 customers worldwide; these include such well-known names as Duracell, Sony, Yamaha, Pepsi, Toyota, Bridgestone and of course parent company 3M. At the end of 2007, 3M Supply Chain Solutions released a version of their WMS—HighJumpWarehouse Advantage-45—specifically for the SME market. Bloor was given a briefing on the capabilities of this new venture by Chris Goldsmith (Director, Product Strategy), Hugh Murphy (EMEA Marketing Manager) and Chad Eckes (Director, Product Strategy).

Goldsmith stated that "Globalisation continues to increase competitive pressure even for smaller companies, which result in several challenges for these companies. They are being forced to innovate while, at the same time, they need to cut costs to remain viable. SMEs have fewer resources but must interact with larger, more advanced companies in the global supply chain. On top of this, goods movement and logistics are riddled with inefficiencies due to lack of investment in technology." In the past SMEs may have needed new systems, but were unable to afford a long and expensive implementation cycle. Additionally, they have wanted a simple system without the full complex support for warehouse management, but this system has to be able to grow with them. Because of their size, SMEs also need a system with fast employee adoption. What an SME would really like is a WMS vendor who will provide them with best of breed functionality and architecture without best of breed pricing and, most importantly, who will be there in the future.

Eckes explained further: "3M Supply Chain Solutions has built HighJump Warehouse Advantage-45 to address the pains of SMEs. It is a rapidly configured WMS that is designed to be fully implemented within 45 business days. The solution contains all the key warehouse management features an SME needs, and is built upon the same technology as our enterprise-class WMS—HighJump Warehouse Advantage." WA-45 provides the following WMS features:

• Tracking and visibility of inbound orders
• Receiving: automatically validates receipts against orders
• Directed put-away: ensuring the right materials are put away in the right location. Materials can be put away using a variety of algorithm choices, including FIFO and LIFO.
• Picking: support for by order, batch or label.
• Coordinate packing and shipping processes to increase fill rates and cut preparation time for shipping documents and ship confirmations.
• Replenish materials automatically so associates have sufficient inventory to fill orders, and short-shipped orders are minimised.
• Inventory control: 3M Supply Chain Solutions claims that the solution can achieve up to 99+ percent inventory accuracy, visibility and traceability.
• The system captures every transaction in the warehouse and presents operational information through a web interface.
• A web page development tool, WebWise, that allows the user to edit and create pages, so users see information in the terminology and format to which they are accustomed.

To achieve the 45 day implementation, 3M Supply Chain Solutions has provided a number of aids to make implementation easier and faster. These include:

• Playbook: the analogy Goldsmith and Eckes gave Bloor that it was like a sports playbook
• User guide: this provides specific direction by Job Category; namely the warehouse leader and the system administrator
• HighJump University: this is a set of online courses, involving about 30 hours of class time. The courses are aimed at the SMEs' key users with the goal of making them productive from day one
• Warehouse Wizard: this wizard provides an easy to use means of converting the Logical Warehouse definitions to the actual Physical Warehouse environment.

Murphy described the flexible pricing of WA-45, "For some users, we realise that they want to make an outright purchase so WA-45 is available on license covering a maximum of 20 concurrent users. Other users prefer a subscription-based manner. So WA-45 is also available in this way. The conditions are the same as for the perpetual license, and clients sign for at least a one-year license, which is renewable annually. WA-45 also has an la carte functionality, allowing a user to only buy the functionality they need."

With the current pressure of SME logistics companies, WA-45 is a welcome addition to the software available to run effective warehouse operations. Bloor are particular impressed with the way 3M Supply Chain Solutions has gone about the engineering of a version of their Tier 1 product to meet the needs of SMEs, but at the same allowing them to grow into the larger system. The portfolio of tools to support the quick implementation is very impressive. 3M Supply Chain Solutions is consolidating their position as a serious player in the WMS market.

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By: Gerry Brown, Associate Analyst - BI and CRM, Bloor Research Posted: 8th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

There is a plethora of white papers, webcasts, newsletters, conferences, and general advice emanating from the technology industry today. But why are many messages from the most dynamic and innovative industry on earth so similar? For example, this is the latest advice, paraphrased from one leading analyst organization, on how to implement BI:

• Ensure business vision and sponsorship
• Ensure data lineage, governance and quality
• Combine planning, reporting and analysis
• Enable forecasting and simulating (modeling) scenarios
• Account for cultural change
• Make applications more intuitive, making them easier for business users

Granted these are all sound management principles, but are they ground-breaking? A similar set of 'to do' actions could be applied to virtually any enterprise software including ERP, CRM, and SCM. How many times have you heard "set goals and milestones, implement in bit-size chunks, and measure results"? In recent times the IT industry has been mesmerised by investment appraisal techniques such as ROI and TCO.

Much of what we read in the technology industry media today follows good data governance and general management practices. This is all well and good. Now this might be because, as Larry Ellison believes, real innovation is now largely dead in a fast-maturing software industry, and we no longer have enough ‘new' new stuff to talk about. I prefer to believe this is not the case. The IT industry is as vibrant and as energetic as it ever was.

However, times have moved on and the technology is now the easy bit. User interfaces are now much easier to navigate. Implementations can be completed in weeks in many cases. The depth and breadth of software functionality is awesome. Software mostly works.

We now understand that failed CRM and BI implementations (for example) are not mostly the fault of the software, but rather overall project management. Typically problems have centred on available project management and technical expertise, lack of executive sponsorship, and lack of buy-in from end users. No wonder business management advice is in vogue.

In addition, many IT project management techniques such as ITIL and PRINCE have proved unwieldy and frustratingly slow from an end-users' point of view. Empowered business managers with BlackBerrys in their pockets, laptops in their knapsacks, and PCs in their homes want their say. IT is becoming inseparable from the business and deeply embedded in our everyday lives. Who can say where technology ends and life begins? Data (or IT) management and general management principles are becoming blurred.

Vendors and industry commentators have an obligation to help customers navigate through the complexity of the technology industry so they can make well-informed superior purchasing decisions. This will help the industry to continue its high levels of growth despite the world economy slowing down.

Increasingly technology consumers will value knowledge that combines elements of both technology know-how and best business management practices. This knowledge needs to be at an appropriate granular level to enable effective project management and implementation of a specific technology. More focus on helping and guiding customers and to listening to their specific information needs will help to provide the compelling and rich hybrid ‘business and IT' content that customers need and want.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 7th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Last month, I had the pleasure of having a briefing from Martijn Iseger, Product Marketing Manager of QPR Software Plc, on their QPR Business Process Management Suite. QPR Software has a different approach to providing BPMS solutions, which allows a phased approach for BPM adoption. The major benefit of this approach is that the customer does not have to commit a large amount of resources to a "make or break" BPM project. Instead, this flexible BPM adoption approach allows customers to bring BPM in-house at a pace that suits them best.

Have you heard of QPR Software before? They were founded in 1991 and their headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland. They went public in 2002 and are quoted on the Helsinki Stock Exchange. They have 60 employees with a subsidiary in South Africa. Their go-to-market strategy is based on a large partner network with 72 VARs in 58 countries, and 184 partners in total. This extensive partner network has resulted in QPR Software having an impressive worldwide penetration for a company of their size. The key markets for QPR Software are Nordic, UK, USA, South Africa, and Japan. They target organisations in the process of transition and who, from a technology viewpoint, are Microsoft .NET Platform based. This sales and go-to-market strategy has been very successful as they have over 1,500 customers, which include Bosch/Siemens Domestic Appliances, TTSL/Tata Indicom, Canon, Emirates Identity Agency, Petrobras, Copel, City of Oulu and Swiss Post.

With 75 % of the Swiss market share, PostParcels, the parcel division of Swiss Post, is the leader in parcel distribution. About 4,000 employees are responsible for transporting around 105 million parcels a year and an average of about 500,000 per day. Krystian Lasek, Head of Strategy at PostParcels stated that the QPR BPM solution significantly improved the quality of their services to customers, something their customer surveys clearly identified.

So what is different about QPR Software's approach to BPMs? QPR Software has put together a well integrated suite of best of breed products to provide support for organisations implementing Business Process Management from strategy formulation, process design to live running with Performance Management, an important driver for continuous process improvement. Some of these products are engineered by themselves, whilst others are OEM'd from organisations QPR consider to be the pick of vendors in these niches. The QPR BPM Suite consists of the following products, all of which are based on the Microsoft platform:

• QPR ScoreCard - is a Performance Management tool. It provides both support during the formulation of business strategies for the capture of objectives and measures, as well as the automatic collection and consolidation of data from business processes. The information is provided in the form of scorecards, digital dashboards and strategy maps.
• QPR ProcessGuide - provides support for analysis and design of business processes for business users. It provides support for BPMN, with the ability to convert the BPMN models into BPEL specifications for making process designs executable with workflow execution engines.
• QPR FactView - is a Business Analysis add-on to QPR ScoreCard. It provides support for dashboards and alerts, multi-dimensional analyses, slice and dice of data. QPR FactView is a tailored version of QlickView from QlikTech. This technology provides in-memory analysis and data association so that data is loaded, prepared and presented on the fly.
• QPR Workflow - is the Business Process Automation add-on to QPR ProcessGuide. It is an OEM version of PNMsoft Sequence. It works in Microsoft Internet Explorer environment to provide automation of human-centric business processes.
• QPR Portal - provides the portal glue both at runtime and during development for pulling together the product suite through a single user interface.

QPR have put together an impressive set of products to provide an environment for the development and management of business processes. By using standards for their interfaces they have also allowed their potential customers to purchase only those pieces of the suite that they require. This provides greater flexibility as well as the ability to start small and expand to the full capabilities as required. All the products work on a client server approach.

QPR Software has cleverly chosen the portal medium, in the form of QPR Portal, to pull the different products together into a single suite, which is able to be customised to include other products depending on clients needs. There is a key business user focus to the whole suite with all the tools being easy to use. The BAM environment provided by QPR ScoreCard and QPR FactView is very powerful being based on tools originally developed for Business Analysis and Performance Management

The QPR BPMS Suite provides an impressive portfolio with an innovative approach based around flexibility, whilst at the same time providing the necessary IT controls and business user ease of use requirements that are needed. Bloor would recommend that potential BPMS users take a closer look at this flexible solution.

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By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 6th May 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

In economically challenging times it is no surprise to see the knee-jerk reactions of many organisations to ‘cut costs'. Overall solvency (profitability), and the monthly demands of liquidity (cashflow) are vital for the health of any company—most businesses cannot rely on government rescue like that extended to some now infamous banks—so it sometimes seems that cutting costs is the best thing to do.

However cutting equally across all cost centres in a blind panic is rarely effective in the long term and should be taken as a last, rather than first, resort. There are often many avenues that can be addressed before wielding an indiscriminate axe. This is particularly important in those areas where direct expense is most visible, but the true business value is opaque or diffuse.

Take mobile telephony as an example. Those responsible for telecommunications in most organisations have a pretty good idea of how large their total phone bills are and can see how much certain elements, for example mobile calls, are growing by. This makes it an easy target area for swingeing budget cuts. According to recent Quocirca research, around a half of companies are not seeing mobile spending falling in line with tariff reductions. Telecoms managers can also see who the worst offenders are, as over two thirds believe they have sufficient accuracy and detail to know ‘how much' and ‘who spends what' from itemised charges on a mobile phone bill—what they don't know is ‘why?'.

This piece of information is critical, because not only does it provide an indication of what value might be being gained, it also offers some intelligence that could be used to decide if it is possible to find an alternative, so that the value can be retained while the cost reduced.

Businesses obtain significant value from voice communication, and the mobile phone has become a primary tool for delivering this, ensuring that people can be reached when away from their desk. Decisions can be made faster, avoiding costly delays, and improving responsiveness. Individuals are able to make use of previously dead time, hopefully either improving their personal productivity and taking control of their work/life balance, or perhaps just as likely staying in touch friends or relatives.

Making mobile calls while in an office with perhaps a lower cost fixed phone nearby is of more questionable value, but something that many employees will do. Why? Because it is more convenient and generally the desired contact numbers are already in the phone and just a click away. There's also the flexibility of being able to start a call while sat at a desk but not having to hang up and call back when other demands make it necessary to get up and move, say to head off to a meeting, or to go home.

If the call is important, mobile flexibility means it does not need to be curtailed, promoting value over cost. What is the value of a lost opportunity when a salesperson is unable to make a mobile call because of penny pinching, or the loss of loyalty when a rapid response to a customer can not be made because the person needing to call is out of the country? The reason for the call is more relevant than its length or distance.

However not all calls are that instantly vital. They may simply be being made because it is all too easy to call a contact out of the address book or click to return a missed call. Employees are so familiar with using a mobile phone as consumers that they would rarely think twice about the cost of making calls from a business supplied mobile phone. Other alternatives—an email, instant message or text message—may be seen by the employee as too awkward to use, are not encouraged by their employer or are not available because of the devices or services currently being supplied.

These alternatives can only be pursued with appropriate knowledge of ‘why', and this requires an appraisal of the impact of current usage by line managers and the individual affected employees. This awareness encourages personal responsibility among employees, perhaps making them think twice about too many personal or unnecessary calls, and allows managers to make business oriented decisions balancing value with cost.

There is also a need to understand outside influences, such as the viability of other services, a comparison of current tariff options and best practices in place elsewhere. This is where a good telecoms manager, either on their own or with external specialised help, can provide more effective support to users than simply an itemised bill and a budget squeeze.

The business value of mobile telephony stems from the importance and timeliness of making contact there and then, coupled with the convenience of how contact is made. If companies take too simplistic a view to cutting costs of mobile telecoms that means cutting usage or users. They may of course be able to negotiate a better deal with a supplier, but according to the same research, even with falling tariffs, for most companies mobile bills are still rising. Convenience, timeliness and perhaps over familiarity are driving up the demands for usage and the number of users.

Companies have to be more effective to continue to get good value out of advanced communications, and use other tools to help manage telecoms budgets than just an axe. To look in more detail at obtaining value from telecoms, download this free report from the Quocirca website, "Total telecoms expense management".

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 2nd May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Business Community Management (BCM)—there's a new name for you. It certainly was to me when I met the EMEA management team of Inovis, John Redfern - MD, Paul Tatam - Sales & Marketing Director and Stephen Jefferies - Director of Retail. Redfern described BCM as "BCM creates a comprehensive view of an organisation's supply chain by integrating the technology, business processes and communication of the entire business community. By unifying the technology and business community communication, a company can optimise its supply chain and create sustainable value through three key avenues: increasing end-to-end visibility, reducing B2B complexity and automating the entire trading community." Now that seems to be quite a mouthful and you may still not quite get what is involved.

Let's go back to look at a typical supply chain. There you are, a manufacturer of widgets—of course, the best in the market. You have a number of partners who provide services and component parts that help you make your widgets. The first requirement to operate in today's fast changing world is that you have all the necessary systems that allow you to manage your own operations. This is normally provided by an Enterprise Resource Planning package. This helps you manage your sales and purchase orders and their links into your production orders and, importantly, your finance systems. You can manage your own inventory in your own warehouses and WIP on the shop floor. Now all manufacturers have heard of Lean Manufacturing or one of its many derivatives such as TQM, Six Sigma and so on. All these are ways to help the manufacturer reduce their costs through managing their inventory through a just-in-time principal. There is a fundamental key to this—you have to collaborate with your partners. This means you need to share information, make compromises and work for the benefit of all concerned—that, of course, includes the customer. Now come the problems:

• They don't have the same meaning for the data terms that you use
• They don't use the same ERP system as you do
• They have other customers who are your rivals so there is a need to secure sensitive information on both sides
• In a number of scenarios, it is not just 2 companies involved but a plethora—for instance component manufacturer, logistics company and you
• All your current ERPs are not very flexible and business users have developed lots of Microsoft Office based application front-ends
• A high proportion of your orders are in error with a large number resulting in deductions and overpayments
• You have a high number of stock-out situations occurring
• It is costing you between £20–40 a time to resolve data and invoice errors.

So what you need to be able to work this complex environment is something that simplifies it all by taking the complexity away, improving the visibility across the whole supply chain with better security and that provides agile integration between all partners. So what services do you need in place to achieve this?

The first piece is a communications layer that allows all members of the supply chain to exchange content with a gateway/portal that controls the access to the content dependent on role. The content exchanged needs to be both validated as well as synchronised. As content is added there is a need for an event driven process to be triggered. This will need to integrate with a number of transactions and processes in different organisations to support the business process. Therefore there is a need for transaction and services management as well as facilities to make interoperability between the diverse systems easier. To overcome disparities in data meaning, there is a need for a Master Data Management solution for the community and data that is shared between business partners. In order to manage the environment, provide business intelligence and support alerts around governance and compliance issues, the solution has to have a layer for management and reporting. This is what Business Community Management is all about. Does this sound too good to be true?

So how do Inovis tackle this? Inovis provide a suite of modular applications, all of which are built upon their Multienteprise Expert Services Hub (MESH) platform—this is designed on a distributed architecture around a J2EE clustered environment. The BCM suite comprises five key modules that support the BCM model I have described. Jefferies said, "The modular nature of BCM applications enable companies to add value incrementally, allowing quick adoption as business needs require and the ability to scale for future growth".

The Visibility module provides a "single pane of glass" view presented on a dashboard that enables the community to track and act upon the business intelligence in real time. The Transact module translates data from an array of protocols, standards and applications. The translation applications support VAN, Direct Connect, ebXML, Web Services, AS/1 (SMTP), AS/2 (HTTP/s) and AS/3 (FTP) and other network-based protocols and formats including EDI, EDI-INT, RosettaNet, and has specific adapters and support for enterprise integration to systems such as Oracle and SAP. The Collaboration module features out-of-the-box notification, events and alert capabilities. It allows the user to define the performance parameters and responses to meet specific community needs. The Communication module supports over 47 protocols and standards, including direct connect, AS1, AS2, AS3 and Value-Added Networks (VANs). The Optimize module is built around a centralised master data repository that standardises B2B documents, supply chain documents and catalogue items from the community. It features a tracking portal that provides visibility into every transaction in addition to tracking of data against pre-defined business rules. When errors are identified, transactions are quarantined and resolved before they can create downstream problems in the supply chain or other business process. These applications are provided as services run on the Inovisworks™ Value-Added Network hosted at Inovis's Tier Four Data Centre, which Inovis claim has 99.995% availability with automated failover. The service is supported by professional and educational services to enable the customer to make the most of the solutions provided.

So we have a new acronym—BCM—and a new outsource service from a well-known experienced provider of outsourced services. If you want to improve your supply chain and you have been nodding your head as I have described the scenario, you should certainly look seriously at Inovis's BCM solution.

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By: Louella Fernandes, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 2nd May 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

Despite the growth in digital communications and promises of the paperless office, printed documents continue to be critical to the operation of most enterprises. However the printing and imaging environment is becoming more complex and costly to manage and, according to industry estimates, accounts for between 1% and 3% of an organisation’s total revenue.

In today’s competitive business environment, the print environment demands the same strategic focus as other elements of the IT infrastructure. The benefits of a managed print environment are manifold—including reducing costs across the enterprise, boosting employee productivity, securing confidential and sensitive information, and helping support environmental targets through more efficient printing practices.

However the reality is that most organisations simply do not know how much their print environment is costing them. Many businesses cannot answer the following basic questions relating to printing in their organisation: What is the total number of printers? How many pages are printed daily? What are the operating costs of printing devices? What are the total printing costs across the enterprise?

There are several reasons why organisations have so little insight and control. Firstly, the management of the printing environment is often fragmented among IT, procurement, facilities, department managers and even individual users. These groups typically operate independently leading to organisations owning a range of printing devices from multiple vendors with incompatible software, consumables and supplies.

Uncoordinated procurement is not only time consuming but also costly by reducing purchasing power and complicating service control. An unmanaged print environment also leads to lower productivity and inefficiencies for end users as well as creating support headaches for help desk staff and problems relating to managing the process of stocking and re-ordering supplies as they are depleted.

Uncontrolled printing also raises security issues—not only are printed documents a potential source of data leakage, but many devices also store information in memory or hard disk, posing further risks to document security.

When it comes to the total cost of ownership (TCO), most organisations do not fully understand the hidden costs of printing. This relates not only to the upfront purchase price but also the running costs (consumables, power, maintenance and support) and environmental impact. On top of all this, few organisations have document accounting systems that accurately measure the true usage for printing and imaging.

A fragmented and disparate printing environment is unmanageable, strategically ineffective and costly—but through better print management these problems can be mitigated. Often organisations may take the first step to assess their print environment using internal resources to save the cost of running a more costly third party assessment. However, more often than not, because of the scale, complexity and escalating costs of their printer usage, many are turning to managed print services offered by outside specialists such as device manufacturers or other specialist providers.

Managed print services aim to take control of all or some of the print environment and achieve an optimum and balanced mix of printing and imaging equipment, efficient network controls and improved workflows. Through consolidation of existing equipment, management of supplies and remote print management, businesses can reduce costs, improve productivity for IT, end-users, procurement and facilities.

Many take an out-tasking approach enabling these organisations to choose which elements of managing their print infrastructure they wish to hand over to a third party. Features to look for in a managed print service are:

Document assessments
This is the first step to understand actual printing costs and how savings can be achieved through “rightsizing” the printing environment and adapting document workflows.

Utility-based pricing models
Contracts can offer a range of pricing models in contrast to the traditional pay-as-you-go model where consumables are purchased as required. Contracts can be usage-based or “cost-per-page” which tell the customer upfront what the cost of printing will be each month, and can cover everything from the equipment and consumables to maintenance and help desk support.

Multivendor management
This is important where organisations need to retain multiple brands due to functionality or cost issues. Independent specialists are worth considering, although some manufacturers such as HP and Xerox also offer multivendor support and a single point of contact and accountability for negotiation, procurement and management of multiple service contracts.

Ongoing management and support
Often managed print service providers will take complete control of the administration, monitoring, maintenance and support of the printing environment which can include an extended help desk facility dedicated to print related problems.