Continuing from my previous blog, I am providing here my perspectives on some of the common questions asked by customers regarding Oracle SCM cloud.
What should be my co-existence strategy?
Co-existence strategies as I mentioned in my previous blog are unique for each customer and depends on the business and IT situations. To provide some of the basic ideas, I am giving below some common examples which can be considered for most of the industries and organizations
Procurement cloud
Logistics cloud
Order Management cloud
MDM Cloud
Procurement Cloud
Oracle procurement cloud has multiple modules including Oracle Self Service procurement, Oracle Purchasing, Oracle Sourcing, Oracle Procurement contracts, Oracle Procurement and Spend Analytics, Oracle Supplier portal covering end to end business function of procure to pay cycle.
In co-existence model customer can get started with Oracle Sourcing, Contracting and Analytics functionality in a low cost, low- risk model without discarding their investment in the current purchasing system. Oracle Procurement, especially for indirect procurement also can be a good co-existence strategy and can work with E-Business suite, JD Edwards or Siebel purchasing systems.
Logistics Cloud
For some organizations, we do suggest looking at the Transportation Management cloud as a good starting point. Oracle transportation management Or Global Trade Management cloud. Implementing cloud solutions for these products makes perfect sense to start with as it is completely independent with respect to your core ERP solutions and get you started with your cloud journey. OTM cloud provides end to end support for order's transportation life cycle. It provides complete integration with Order Management, Shipping, Inventory Management, Purchasing, and Financial.
Order Management Cloud
Order Management cloud is a good choice if you have a complex order capture and orchestration environment. What I mean is you have multiple systems sending orders and you are applying different orchestration strategies for sourcing and fulfillment. The Order management cloud provides good Channel and Process integration options in order to streamline your order management process. It can very well integrate with SCM cloud and on premise ERP applications. This has also been very beneficial for some companies who have acquired new companies and are in the system merger and acquisition situation. Another choice for order management cloud is an extension to your quoting solution
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Product Information Hub
Oracle Product information hub offers a good starting point for SCM cloud. Customers having complex application requirements like ERP, CRM, PLM, Field service needs accurate product information to drive key business functions. Combined Enterprise Data Quality tool for Product and Product Information management helps you to consolidate product information, cleanse the data, and remove duplicates and enable governance structure for the organization.
Should I upgrade my Oracle applications or go for SCM Cloud applications?
As mentioned previously this depends on the customer situations. However the best-recommended practice, we suggest is to upgrade the latest APPS release, adopt standards based technology like Oracle SOA suite, AIA, Oracle OBIEE and start looking at extending the current applications with the use of co-existence strategy for cloud applications
What should I do with the customizations?
One of the first steps in assessing the cloud fitment for your organizations is to review CEMLI- (Configurations, Extensions, Modifications, Localizations, and Integrations). The number of CEMLI's and the complexity (High/Medium/Low) can affect the approach to cloud solutions. For customizations following steps are recommended while moving to the cloud 1.Reduce your customizations only to what it is absolutely needed and cannot be handled by the seeded functionalities2.Make use of the extension/personalization framework to achieve the functionality3.Make use of PaaS for SaaS offering for extending your applications
What should I do next? How can Infosys help?
Infosys Oracle SCM Cloud experts will work with you in a 2 day workshop on understanding the current business situation, current system landscape, and future objectives
We work collaboratively with the customers and work out a detailed plan in next 2 to 3 weeks about upgrade strategy, co-existence options, integration options, conversion options, road map for future adoption, etc.
Infosys team also works on providing the short term and long term Return on Investment analysis, helping IT organizations receive a buy in from their CXO leadership about the cloud transformation.
Summary
Every organization is looking at some scale to move their applications to the cloud. Coming out of the Upgrade cycles is one of the major advantages business users see and are looking forward to either moving some of the SCM functionalities in cloud Or enhancing existing footprint with the co-existence model. We have seen IT organizations are caught in a conundrum between drawing co-existence strategies, integration options, Returns on investment and a long term plan. If your organization is also going through similar challenges it is time to step back and decide your long term upgrade and SCM cloud strategy road map. We @ Infosys Oracle Supply Chain Cloud practice have the required skills, tools and experience to work with you and help succeed your business on your Oracle SCM Cloud journey
Contact
In case you have additional questions or need more detailed discussions, please drop me a note @ vishwajitshankar_b@infosys.com.
Connect with Infosys
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