Key Strategies for IT success in today's distribution environment

Key Strategies
FOR IT SUCCESS IN TODAY'S
DISTRIBUTION ENVIRONMENT
EPICOR White Paper September 2009
CONSULTING GROUPAbstract: In many cases, new technological advancements become associated with "Buzz Words" which by definition have no defini-The technology world around us is changing rapidly. Keeping tion. It is important to start by clearing the inconsistencies and up has become tougher for managers and supervisors. Today's establishing a firm baseline to build from. Then it is possible to economy has focused limited information technology resources on move forward and look to the future for opportunities.immediate results, not research or long term strategy. In this envi- The following five technologies are receiving a great deal of ronment, an understanding of how to apply new technology for up- attention. For each, there is a high level definition, a description and-coming management is very worthwhile. This document pro- of how it might be used in an industrial application, and some vides high level definitions, opportunity identification, and future thoughts for the strategic application of the concept. potentials for: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Anytime, Anywhere Availability, Mobile Service Oriented Architecture - SOADevices, Web 2.0, and Report Cards or Balanced Scorecards as a Business Intelligence (BI) capability. It is a foundation for becom- An early advancement in developing efficient computer code ing more valuable to an organization by being able to generate a was called structured programming. The concept was that code Return On Investment when applying the latest capabilities to the elements could be reused by "calling" a subroutine, passing real world. parameters, and receiving a response. SOA is very similar, just on a much larger scale. In an SOA environment, programs are devel-oped in a way that they can easily talk to each other. For example, Key Strategies for Information Technology in a SOA implementation of an ERP system, the code for customer Success in Today's Environment look up would be shared between the CRM, Order Entry, Billing, and Accounts Receivable applications. Not only is there a single database, but a consistent look and feel to the retrieval, without Background: regard to which application an employee is using. The economic expansion of the 90s and early 2000s has SOA is important for many reasons. First, it makes coding slowed. With reduced activity, cutbacks, and lower sales, compa- more efficient and effective. When any part of the environment nies have restricted time and resources available for long term is improved, every other application using the updated function strategy and research. Projects have been focused on what can shares in the new enhancements. This is very meaningful when be done now to improve the bottom line. The fact is that there are developing code in house, but it is also important for application technologies that are not well understood that can have a signifi- code purchased from third parties. A true SOA environment allows cant impact on the industrial distributor if they can be utilized. the firm to take advantage of "Best of Breed" applications whether In the past, many IT departments, even in smaller companies, created in house or out. This can be critical if the organization has had the luxury of providing time and resources for managers and a few requirements that provide competitive advantage, but need supervisors to stay on top of technology trends. In return, new special programming to work. methods were considered, tested and made available to the enter- There is a concept called Big SOA which is what happened when prise. Often, the returns were excellent and the proactive approach very large companies and very large programming firms got together provided a path to upper management for the individuals who took to create very large projects. These are getting some bad reviews. a leadership role. With restricted budgets, it is more difficult to They turn out to be expensive and rarely live up to their promise. On have new opportunities approved. That should not discourage IT the other hand are the "service-orientation" people who use SOA to professionals from staying on top of the technology and looking make applications easy for diverse users to "call" and to segregate for ways to apply new concepts within their organizations. application ... [download for more]