A lot of companies discuss the

differences between Oracle/Peoplesoft and SAP, when they go for any implementation. I feel there are two BIG ones:

1.

Superior Integration in SAP due to Organic build up vs acquisition strategy of Oracle.
2. SAP's vision for next 5-10

years is very tangible and clear - so reduced risk for a CIO vs Oracle with its stable full of various competing and myriad

products like Peoplesoft/Oracle/Siebel and no clear, well defined, strategy for a CIO of the next 5-10 years.

Query Execution and Efficiency is a major concern in organizations

with large amounts of data! SAP has come out with a Business Intelligence Accelerator (BIA) tool that does a good job.. but

Google's technique and architecture is still the best!
Here is what Naeem Hashmi

says about BIA:

The Integration between Powersim and SEM BPS is a very interesting one. Not many clients

use it. But those who do, find the body of information hard to come by. Here is a little primer that maybe used for help in

configuring the integration.

There are five broad steps for the configuration and to get the integration

going:

1. Variable Selection in PowerSim
2. Creation of the Planning Hierarchy (Area/Level/Package) within SEM BPS

I have been asked so many times about the SAP

training facilities in India. Well, here is the basic list.

Only two - Siemens and Genovate are SAP Training

partners. This means that only these two institutes can help you get SAP certification at the end of their courses. Now

this also makes them expensive!

Genovate: Genvate promises these

services:

Despite the conventional wisdom about outsourcing of processes, here is some Best

Practices reality check from the Best Practices Big Daddy The Hackett Group on where the direction for Finance Processes is

headed to.. its the Shared Services that clients feel most comfortable about while outsourcing. Currently the onshore Shared

Services are ruling the roost but this trend will change soon to the offshore Shared Services Centers as the demand and

maturity grows!

On-demand CRM is a hot

thing these days!

As webpronews puts it best:

On-demand solutions offer good value to the

customers, which is why companies such as Microsoft and Oracle are now joining the established players such as

Salesforce.com.

On-demand CRM provides enterprises with the opportunity to concentrate on their core-competencies and

let the hosted provider take care of the maintenance and technical aspects. According to research firm IDC, the on-demand CRM

was of $ 4.2 billion in 2004 and will rise to $ 10.7 billion by 2009.

As against on-premise solutions, on-demand

solutions are easier and quicker to install. The process of installing and deploying a traditional CRM can be a long-drawn

process that may take anywhere between nine to twenty-four months. It begins with the purchasing of the required hardware,

enlisting the help of professionals for configuring the hardware, setting up a data center, configuring routers, and making

arrangements for backups.

I was recently thinking that

if you are starting a new SAP implementation - what are major things that you would like to nail down first at the team

level? Some of the things that you would attack the first! Here are some of the Org Structure and other stuff that I could

think of. Do you have anything to add to this list?

• Chart of Accounts - Fiscal year Variants, Posting Period

  Variant

• Company Codes

  - incl. International Company codes.

Ok, finally it seems that

there might be a ray of hope for Oracle if it shows some positive trends in its earnings as this article says:

Oracle is expected to show a return to underlying growth in its applications software business when it

reports its earnings on Monday, ending a troubled period that followed its contested takeover of PeopleSoft.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a new way to

marry IT and Business side of the enter Enterprise Architecture equation. The idea is that the underlying IT assets should be

used in a changeable Business environment by changing the configuration of the "middle" layer that works with any

IT system irrespective of its platform while delivering the changes to the business! This is how XML.com explains SOA:

Here are some best practices for BI Tool selection. These are good pointers

here from Tim Furey - however, he has analyzed this important decision

from the BI silo only! In my view, that is a major problem with most of the decision making that goes

about in the industry today! BI is the HOTbed on which most of the future applications (assuming the company is still

running with OLTP but not much of OLAP environment in place).Â