At a broader level, some of the sub-verticals of this industry include Chemicals, Metal and mines, Food and Beverages, Pharma etc. There are a few more like Glass, textile, paper manufacturing etc, which again can be broadly categorized under the above or can be a different category by itself. Within each of these sub-verticals, there are categories like the Food and beverages have dairy, chocolate, juice, meat and poultry etc. as categories, whereas the Chemicals have streams like paints, fertilizers, specialty chemicals, glass etc. This list can be endless, but the common thread across these verticals, sub-verticals and categories is that there are formulas, recipes, operations, routings, batch processing yielding products, co-products and by-products, measuring product in multiple unit of measures, quality grade and status, ensuring traceability of material across the supply chain.

I have been fortunate enough in my working career to be associated with these different verticals directly or indirectly. Every association has resulted in some new learning about the process manufacturing stream, with each vertical/sub-verticals having a few common challenges like:

-          Ingredient characteristic variability, which affects product quality

-          Process control and stability to yield consistent product quality

-          Visibility and traceability across the supply chain

-          Cost and margin pressures

-          Process cycle time and shop-floor control

-          Non-conformance and deviation

-          Regulatory Compliances

Right from the initial process manufacturing solution GEMMS, till the recent Oracle Release 11i, most of these requirements have been addressed directly or indirectly. With the introduction of some new features in Oracle’s R12 OPM solution and a combination of new modules which are now available for OPM customers, most of the above mentioned challenges  can be addressed quite comprehensively.

Today I would like to conclude here. In my next update I would initiate a discussion on R12 upgrade as an option for any existing OPM enterprise on 11i or earlier version, typical challenges, some best practices and then move on to the new features and modules available for OPM enterprises.

Find Part 1 of Pankaj’s series here.

You might want to ask question, how TDD is different from traditional development methodology?

Unlike traditional or standard development process, in TDD approach, the testing will start at the early stages of the product development and validates the completed activities for the desired output.  Most importantly focus on quality starts at the beginning of the product development rather than at completion.  This gives opportunity to learn lessons quickly and apply best practices in subsequent implementations with the increased productivity.

What are the real challenges with the TDD approach?

• Define work breakdown structure and work breakdown dictionary;
• Define sequence of activities and identify critical path;
• Prepare realistic schedules;
• Prepare cost estimates;
• Getting budget approval.

You might be surprised with the above non-technical list.  Since developer needs to write automation test cases for the completed activities immediately, project manager should plan these efforts meticulously without disturbing the critical path.   Project manager might want to use schedule compression techniques by resource crashing or fast tracking to meet customer deadlines.  In either case, additional budget is required to implement the TDD approach.

Really there is no technical challenge to take up the TDD approach, because several open source tools honor this approach and provides technical support through online forums and blogs.   If you think about TDD, it appears like a unit testing approach, but it’s not!    Using unit testing tool, you can test a specific part of the code segment.  But in TDD, you can perform integration testing and business analysts can verify those test cases at the same time.

FIT and FitNesse are two open source tools allow us to apply TDD principles efficiently and improve communication with customers and business analysts. Framework for Integrated Testing (FIT) is an acceptance testing framework.  FIT improves the collaboration and allow customers and business analysts to write and verify tests.

Writing FIT tests require general programming knowledge. FitNesse is a web-based server, allowing easy collaboration. Business analysts and other non–technical people do not have to set up any software in order to use FitNesse. Any browser will do just fine.

You can find more information about Fitneese at http://fitnesse.org/.

Customer relationship management (CRM) was never meant to be an arcane discipline. However, in many cases, this has been the case. Many clients look at successful CRM practitioners, including the winners of CRM Excellence awards in variety of forums, and think they must have some secret to their success — a secret that’s difficult to discover. This is not the case. What appear to be secrets are really best practices — things that enterprises have learned (in some cases, the hard way), and you can emulate and incorporate as well. The only thing secretive about them is that many successful enterprises don’t want to trumpet them to their competitors. Let’s look at top 10 secrets

Secret No. 1: CRM is ongoing.

Enterprises that understand CRM well realize that it’s not a “once and done” strategy. They never think in terms of a stand-alone CRM project. Instead, they see it as an ongoing re-examination of customer needs, processes and internal dynamics. Enterprises that want to be successful in CRM look at it as a journey that never really ends, and as one that will continue to yield valuable insights and customer benefits via iterative processes. You should realize that customer needs are dynamic, never static. What was satisfactory a year ago may be woefully inadequate today.

Action Item No. 1: View CRM as a process that rolls out over time, and embraces its iterative nature.

Secret No. 2: CRM yields competitive advantage, not parity.

Many enterprises believe that everyone has “done” CRM; therefore, the only value is in matching them. They admit that they may be at a competitive disadvantage if they ignore their customers, but they are not really looking to gain an edge. This is wrong on several counts: 1) only about 50 percent of enterprises have undertaken CRM initiatives. In some industries, it’s even lower. 2) This argument assumes that CRM is about automating functions. If that were the case, they’d be correct, but it’s hard for enterprises to gain an edge when everyone has automated the same basic business functions (think of expense reimbursement or human resources). However, CRM is different because it’s a strategy based on the needs of your customers.  These needs are different for every enterprise and, probably, across different segments. So the key to success is understanding what your customers are saying and meeting those needs accordingly. Understanding this shows that real competitive advantage will come from creating a value-based relationship with your customers.

Action Item No. 2: Use CRM to gain an edge in the market. Don’t just copy others — understand what’s unique about your enterprise and your customers.

Secret No. 3: Think about processes, rather than functional automation.

Process automation is “the buzz” in CRM right now, but few enterprise really understand it or practice it accordingly. Successful CRM revolves around the analysis and redesign of customer-facing processes that provide real value to the customer. When enterprises talk about automating functions (for example, marketing, sales or service), they’re emphasizing the wrong thing, unless they carry it to the next step and start to identify the processes within the function. Truly successful CRM emphasizes these processes, redesigns them and automates them, even when they cut across functions, and even when they cut across the back office.

Action Item No. 3: Don’t just automate functions — concentrate on processes. Model, analyze and redesign them from the customer’s perspective, even when they stretch across political divisions in the enterprise.

Secret No. 4: CRM is about the long term, not the transactional.

An interesting misconception, which is often perpetuated by vendors, equates CRM with transactional systems, whereas other areas (such as analytics, planning and process) are viewed as outside CRM and part of some other acronym. This causes many enterprises to think of CRM exclusively as a solution for Short-term interactions — that is, basic transactions. At successful enterprises, CRM is viewed as a long-term relationship, across the customer life cycle and across all channels. You need to begin to think in terms of your enterprise, rather than individual departments, having a relationship with the customer. Discussions of who “owns” the customer will disappear, because such a concept has no place in this way of thinking. Strategies should be designed to optimize segments across time, products, channels and multiple interactions.

Action Item No. 4: Although making interactions more efficient is important, don’t forget long-term efficiency in sales, marketing and customer service when you’re designing your CRM strategy.

Secret No. 5: There are real economic benefits to CRM.

Return on investment (ROI) in CRM has been elusive for many enterprises. It been frequently asked for simple ROI rules of thumb. The problem has been that many enterprises do not track, or they track badly, the sorts of returns they’ve attained with their CRM initiatives. And those that do it well often don’t want to share this information, because they feel it’s highly confidential and not something to share with competitors. But we see this as enterprises achieve real economic benefits from CRM. Payback periods of less than a year are not unusual, and, in many cases, ROIs are higher than any other IT-based initiatives enterprises are pursuing. In fact, several enterprises have indicated privately that their CRM initiatives were generating more benefit than their enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects and that, had they known that, they would have started CRM even sooner.

Action Item No. 5: Put good measurement and tracking in place to quantify the real value of CRM, and you’ll see tangible numbers.

Secret No. 6: CRM failure rates are improving and are irrelevant anyway.

Several years ago, more than 50 percent of all CRM projects were viewed as failures. This has now become an excuse for enterprises to avoid meeting their customers’ needs. Now that many practitioners understand why CRM fails and how to avoid it, failure rates are declining. The research on the subject should be used as insurance, not as an excuse to avoid CRM. Doing so is similar to saying you won’t drive a car because some people have had accidents. Its better is to know how to drive safely and not worry about what other people do. Beyond that, in many cases, the failure rates should not be a factor anyway, because customers are demanding that the enterprises they deal with become more customer-centric, so CRM is a necessity, not a luxury. Failure rates will continue to decline as more enterprises begin to listen to their customers and invest accordingly.

Action Item No. 6: Don’t use failure rates as an excuse. Figure out what can be learned from them, and then “blaze your own trail.”

Secret No. 7: CRM is far from mature or out of date.

Because CRM has been around for a while, many enterprises seem to think that it is mature, at best, and out of date, at worse. They often ask what the next hot acronym will be. However, CRM is still maturing, and it has a long way to go. Many enterprises are just embarking on their first, contained CRM projects, and customer processes have a long way to go to before they’re fully optimized. Successful enterprises see CRM as “young and vibrant,” with lots of opportunities for positive change, and wide open spaces for improvement and economic value. As the world’s economy begins to rebound, CRM will present you with an opportunity to position yourself to reap the benefits of increased business and consumer spending. On Gartner’s Hype Cycle, we see CRM moving up the Slope of Enlightenment, and achieving value in the pantheon of IT enabled strategies. In many ways, the best days of CRM are still ahead.

Action Item No. 7: Do not reduce CRM to a formula. Embrace it as an iterative process that will be unique to your enterprise and it will grow as you learn to listen to your customers more effectively.

Secret No. 8: Not doing CRM is more expensive than doing it.

Successful CRM practitioners are always surprised — and secretly pleased — when they hear rivals talking about how expensive CRM can be. However, CRM is less costly than the alternative: losing customers to poor service, overspending on lackluster segments, not having enough insight to make intelligent marketing decisions and running the business on only operational and financial data, rather than with customer data. Successful CRM-oriented enterprises view their implementations as wise investments that pay for themselves economically, as well as in customer satisfaction, better decision making and a more-balanced view of running the business. Many enterprises that initially resisted CRM have become some of the biggest supporters, once they realized how inefficient they’d been before.

Action Item No. 8: Allow CRM to become the third piece of a balanced view of your business. Enable the voice of the customer to enter into decision making with operational and financial concerns.

Secret No. 9: Even if you are doing fine right now, you need to do CRM.

The key business strategy of the 2010 to 2020 will be CRM. That means that many enterprises that did well in the past, based on product or brand, are not positioned to move forward as the world becomes customer-centric. Rather than resting on the laurels of past accomplishments, successful enterprises are using CRM as a foundation from which to remake themselves into customer-oriented businesses. This is not to say that you should abandon what got you where you are today, but rather that you need to adapt it to the new world of the 21st century.

Action Item No. 9: Build on your past successes, using CRM as a base to build a customer-centric philosophy.

Secret No. 10: CRM is change management, not technology.

Technology is important to CRM — it is one of what Gartner calls its “Eight Building Blocks” — however, the real benefit of CRM is in the positive change it brings to an enterprise. Internal silos break down, better and timelier information become available, customers are better served, and processes are streamlined, and effectiveness and efficiency increase. As the enterprise develops a common mission based on the customer, employees become more engaged, take ownership of business processes, and your customers begin to notice and start to feel better about dealing with you. The result is one of the rarest phenomena in business — the win/win situation. Your enterprise makes more money, and customers are happier to do business with you.

Action Item No. 10: Plan for change from the beginning, and embrace it when it happens.

Match Point:

The real secret to customer relationship management is that it is different for every enterprise, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn from the knowledge of others. Successful enterprises will aggressively apply these 10 secrets of CRM to transform their businesses and, in the process, set themselves up for greater success in the years ahead.

Through this blog I want to share my views  on the R12 solution, upgrade approach, best practices, challenges for process industry vertical. As a part of its strategy for R12, Oracle has introduced many solution enhancements for the Process industry customers. I believe the R12 upgrade initiative by any process industry enterprise  is a major decision which should be evaluated and planned with proper due diligence.

In the next part of this series, I would write about the process manufacturing industry in general, the typical challenges that they face and so on. The subsequent blogs would be about IT approaches suited for this industry, challenges, solutions and best practices available as of now. 

Stay tuned.

The breadth of services covered under the Acclivity tool program spans across the life cycle of an Upgrade Project ranging from pre-upgrade assessment services, impact analysis during the upgrade and data reconciliation efforts in the post upgrade phase.

To help our Oracle ERP customers align with Oracle’s direction, Sierra Atlantic has always believed in making available to its customers, cutting edge technology tools and Solutions that enable them to seamlessly upgrade and leverage the product benefits. These tools are aimed at managing the complexity associated with the myriad of customizations that enterprises have, so that they can have crystal clarity into their future application roadmap.

Having already implemented the Acclivity tool in several successful R12 engagements, we have yet again taken another generational leap in futuristic technology tools by migrating it to a cloud based paradigm that would help our customers access the tool from anywhere, pay per use, and leverage the compelling benefits that the multifaceted cloud computing architecture offers.

There is well known interesting theory called “Rule of 8” – It specified that if the load-time of a web page exceeds eight seconds, users are unlikely to wait, or “stick around”, for its completion. So “Performance is a “must have” feature”, No matter how rich your application is functionally, if it fails to meet the performance expectations of your customer then the product will be branded a failure. Fast enough is not really enough; need to attach the security string to pull the customer confidence. Present emerging market is completely revolving with internet – Anywhere you can post your data and access your data. “How safe is the data as it navigates a complex internal and external network?” Turning all these performance and security risks into actionable results and mitigate, Testing is not solution and its not about just discovering defects, it is about de-risking delivery. It is about assessing risks as early possible in the SDLC to enable us to take appropriate actions to delivery quality on time.

Security assessment and Performance monitoring must take place throughout the entire project life cycle and need to have a new set of test process and methodology applied with right set of tools and correct blend of technical and business logic will help us to move to the next level. Web 2.0 brings in myriad ways of converting prospects to customers and providing a hassle free customer experience. SOA testing has really come up as another big thing in the world of Web 2.0. SOA will only makes sense if its tested in right way using right tools and right methodology. Today there are SOA test tools that can test the underlying interoperable components of an application without going through the front-end – not just from a functionality standpoint, but also from a Security and Performance standpoints.

Common sense would tell you to take your message where the majority of the people are gathering and paying attention, which just happens to be Web 2.0(Shift in consumer habits: From expert driven content to User driven content) social mediums. The data is growing every single day. The number of connection points to the DATA is becoming increasingly available. Realizing what information is available about the business relationships becomes more critical as dollar value increases. Every dollar and every minute spend on marketing tactics is for one purpose: Business Growth!  Let me share this interesting quote from Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO – “People relate to people, not companies”, Social media provides us an opportunity to humanize the brand and engage the companies with consumers at personal level, which can provide substantial results in long-term like decreased customer support costs, customer feedback management, good PR and marketing channel to engage with target market.  Social Media is for every company that genuinely wants to engage with their customers, it doesn’t matter whether you are fortune brand or Local restaurant. As Sandy Carter, Marketing Head at IBM quoted, “I think the primary difference here is not in big or small company. But the difference is in how close you are to your customers”. I personally find that it is very interesting and exciting “Net Space” to be in and also rewarding if used in the right manner.

The first Video Game I ever saw and played, which I still remember to this day, was the Freeway on Atari. The first computer game I ever saw and played was Paratrooper. They were so much fun, no matter how blobby the graphics look and monotonic the sound effects sound now. Pacman infact still has cult following.

Video Games, these wonderful illusions provide an audio visual experience, tricking one into thinking they are inside a fantastical world, moving, jumping, racing and doing what all not when actually staring at a physically stationary screen. Fascinated with this thought, one of the first “gamey” things I tried to program in Pascal was a “walk through a tunnel” simulation, where you would walk through a tunnel and use the arrow keys to, accelerate, decelerate, turn left and right.

Games continue to evolve, rapidly, their hunger for hardware pushing growth in that segment as well. Let me try and take you through this evolution as I have witnessed.

Shooting Games…

I’ve been a big fan of shooting games, so I’ll start with this genre. Wolfenstien 3d, good old days those, the game would fit on a 3.5 inch floppy. This game was a trend setter and pretty much gave birth to first person shooting games. Shooting down Nazis and their rogue dogs, changing weapons, seeing the protagonist’s face change with his health was a lot of fun, a new experience. The PC was now being looked at as an entertainment machine as well.

The popularity of the first person shooters saw a lot of hugely popular titles like the Doom series, Duke Nukem series, Redneck Rampage, Blood and the revolutionary Quake Series. Quake hit it big time with its online game play over the internet.

On consoles the Halo series has created much more than a stir, contributing significantly to XBOX sales. Half Life added the sci-fi angle to first person shooters. Unreal is another extremely popular example.

Lara Croft, the protagonist of Tomb Raider came in and changed this genre by adding a new dimension to it. This was the beginning of Third Person Shooters. With the protagonist visible on the screen, albeit from behind or from over the shoulder, the protagonist suddenly started getting a lot more attention, literally. MDK became popular with it’s really intelligent enemies and the sniper mode. Max Payne with his story of vendetta being brought out in a comic book like story line, killing the bad guys is one of the most popular Third Person Shooting games.

And can I go ahead without mentioning Contra, the Nintendo console game when talking about shooting games? I still remember the button combination that allowed 30 lives.

Combat Games…

“Finish Him”. If you know that phrase, there’s a good chance you have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome setting in your wrists. Yes the fatalities did take a toll on those overworked nerves and tendons along with the Mortal Combat characters.

Street Fighter II was another immensely popular arcade combat game, where you had to perfect those hard to remember and time special moves. And then you had the Capcom Vs. Namco games as well.

Racing Games…

One of the most popular ones, this genre appeals to varied demographic groups.

The relatively easy learning curve attracts a lot of new/non gamers.

I fell in love with racing games on the computer when I played Test Drive eons ago.

I was thrilled with the concept of being able to upgrade my car with the race money I won. Bikes, cars, I could race them all. Pole Position was also a popular game.

With new versions, one could see increasing amounts of realism being thrown into the game. You could honk, switch on your lights, and operate your vipers to increase visibily if it were raining. The asphalt on the game road started looking truer with better textures being used. The trees you whizzed past also assumed a more life like form as compared to mere triangles that would barely catch the corner of your eye earlier.

One could tweak various parameters in the car to suit personal preferences or the track/weather requirements. One could tune the suspension to suit the track, change the tyres from slicks to treads to suit the weather conditions. The game could be made more challenging by switching from automatic to manual transmission, the features were increasing at a break-neck speed. The physics in these games kept getting better. The damage sustained by your vehicle now also started to impact you vehicle’s performance if you so wanted.

“I feel the need, the Need for Speed”, the iconic dialog from the blockbuster movie Top Gun possibly gave birth to the title of one of the most popular racing games ever, the Need for Speed series.

Some racing games like Carmageddon and Road rash started endorsing violence, hung around for a while and yes, gained popularity.

Adventure Games…

Breathtaking backgrounds, an interactive story with an element of mystery and solving a lot of puzzles, now we’re talking Adventure Games.

The Legend of Kyrandia, that’s the first name that comes to my mind in this genre. Of course there were adventure video games (starting with text based adventure games) before that, but this was the first one I ever played.

Leisure Suite Larry, ok, let me just skip this one.

Games like Space Quest, the Monkey Island series also became popular. Myst took this genre world by storm.

The number of people following such games is dwindling and this is attributed to the other genres gaining popularity because they are not as “slow”.

RPG s…

Now this is one genre that has everybody talking. And by everybody I mean millions of hard core gamers, people who take games very seriously spend a lot of money and time on them.

The origin of this genre dates back to the invention of games like Chainmail and Dungeons & Dragons. These games were played by a group of people sitting across a table, using dice and pen and paper (we’re talking pre compter era days here ), assuming the roles of characters of fantasy, leading armies to conquer kingdoms, set out on adventues, honing their skill points with each adventure, becoming stronger.

The popularity of these games gave way to computer RPGs (also referred to as CRPGs).

CRPG’s like The Final Fantasy series, Elder Scrolls, The Legends of Zelda and Baldur’s Gates are some of the most followed ones in this genre.

Strategy Games…

The two genres of RPGs and Strategy Games often overlap, the line between the two being very thin if not non-existant. Games like World of Warcraft, Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic, Commandos, Command and Conquer, Sim City, Dune, Age of Empires, Starcraft could easily fit into either of the two genres, because of the combination of strong Role Play and Strategy. Turn Based and Simultaneous Strategy games are both popular.

Casual Games…

I have seen more than one serious gamer calling the term “Casual Games” an oxymoron with a lot many more unmentionable adjectives thrown in. Come to think of it, the term serious gamer is also an oxymoron! Anyway, hard core gamers scoff at this genre, hard core game programmers probably want to stay away from programming these, but does that take away anything from the humungous fan base that these games have managed to build? I am sure all your facebook friends can be categorized into two buckets,

1.) Who play (or have played) these games a lot. Yes I’m talking about your friends whose crops have withered, or the Russian job that has to be carried out

2.) Who totally detest these games

Love them or hate them, but you can’t ignore them. They have a user base spanning all demographics, from kids to grannies. These games have spawned a whole new parallel economy of virtual goods and the numbers, both monetary and in terms of user base are gigantic in proportion.

Where are we headed?

Better graphics? More intriguing game play? MMO FPS games?

I feel it is the controllers that are going through a phase of revolution right now and the trend will continue for quite a while. The Nintendo Wii with its moderate processing hardware and just about ok graphics became immensely popular with its accelerometer and gyroscope driven Wii mote. You feel you’re in the game.

I’m also sure everybody is looking forward to this holiday season with the Microsoft’s Project Natal aka Kinect. If the demos and blogs are anything to go by, you might never see a controller again. The camera which is smart enough to recognize 31 body parts, 6 different players, with gesture and facial expression recognition is being touted as the future.

So what next? Gaming Hardware that detects eyeball movement? Maybe a game that reads your mind and doesn’t require even a camera.

Game for a brain implant for a game?

Computer games take from one to three years to develop (depending on scale). Testing begins late in the development process, sometimes from halfway to 75% into development (it starts so late because, until then, there is little to nothing to play or test). Testers get new builds from the developers on a schedule (daily/weekly) and each version must be uniquely identified in order to map errors to versions.

Once the testers get a version, they begin playing the game. Testers must carefully note any errors they uncover. These may range from bugs to art glitches to logic errors and level bugs. Some bugs are easy to document but many are hard to describe and may take several paragraphs to describe so a developer can replicate or find the bug. On a large-scale game with numerous testers, a tester must first determine whether the bug has already been reported before they can log the bugs themselves. Once a bug has been reported as fixed, the tester has to go back and verify that the fix works – and occasionally return to verify that is has not reappeared.

Evaluation of game rules: Game rules adequately explain operation of all components of the game including features, free games etc. Consistency with game rules and pay tables

UI and Functional test: Games outcome and data are correctly shown when games are played. Intermediate and final game outcomes are displayed for a reasonable time.

Verification the Integration points: Game win determination aligns with game rules.

Reviewing gaming procedures: procedures will be reviewed by System management, player account management, tournaments and promotions.

Infrastructure and security review: Secure and reliable operation for example time synchronization and OS reliability and security

You can follow few tips

• Need to identify the algorithm from Source code to identify issues
• RNG seeding checked in source code.
• Need to verify the source code appropriate use of random numbers, error handling, no unused variable etc…
• Need to verify the RNG mapping to make sure the output of game symbols, cards & other outcomes
• Need to test validate and evaluate the game predefined rules and its consistency
• Need to Make sure the indecent or offensive content/material display
• Irrespective of Single/Multi player games we need to validate bandwidth and client software.
• Reports need to validated with data accuracy Different date and time format, larger win, total money played, total no. of games etc.
• Infrastructure plays a vital role need to verify the network architecture and device configuration, OS reliability & security. Need to verify the gaming procedures with change control mechanism, game management and player management.

Keep all these tips and regardless of background experience in game programming and testing, anyone can become a game tester successfully.

While continued-support issues like non-availability of critical patch updates makes a strong case in itself for the need to upgrade to the latest available Oracle application release available in the market today, I believe the decision to upgrade to a higher release should stem from a more fundamental need like the additional business value that the new functionalities of the latest release promise to deliver.

IT heads are seeing an increase in requests from their users for an upgrade who want to leverage the enhanced functionalities of Oracle R12 and thus gain a better visibility into their mission critical business processes.

With premier Oracle support ending this November and extended support ending the next year, an upgrade makes a compelling case for the Finance teams as well, who would not be very willing enough to spend on extra maintenance packages and at the same time keep the users deprived of the tangible business benefits that the upgrade brings to the table.

For those who are wondering if an upgrade requires a huge upfront investment, you might be interested in reading this.