Day2 - Lessons Learned by Basak Tektemur

ERP II connects suppliers and customers to the system; it allows you to integrate with them too.

Major players provide cheaper alternatives like ASAP. There may be a single module that can be implemented which costs less. ASAP costs less during implementation, it is also claimed that ASAP does not require that much consultancy. It is basically faster implementation.
SAP uses solution manager approach, for the initial installation, and it helps up to some level.
There is SAP configuration module and it works.

If you definitely want to work with a small vendor and you are not sure if they will be around for a long time it will be a good idea to develop some in-house capabilities or even attract people from the provider.

CRM is abbreviation for customer relationship management

CRM Opportunities:
MyprojectHelp.com
Experienced professionals helping entry level professionals
They are offering new way of educating people

From the speech of Mr. Kumar:
A company-wide business strategy designed to reduce costs and increase profitability by solidifying customer loyalty
Improve customer relations
There are mid market CRM and on-demand CRM
The competitors of Siebel: Oracle, SAP, Peoplesoft

Why Siebel CRM?
Highest market share and easy to implement
More number of integration points
Catchy GUI and very user friendly
Very easy to configure, code and deploy
Easy administration and maintenance

Siebel applications:
Siebel CRM enterprise
CRM professional edition
CRM on-demand

Siebel industry implications:
Consumer goods
Finance
Phama
Energy
Media
Clinic

Employee Application:
Call center
Marketing
Sales
Field service

Partner application:
Partner portal
Partner manager

Customer application:
Advisor
Configurator
Orders
Pricer
eService
eSales

Mobile solutions:
Remote
Wireless

*Mobile solutions are very useful since they can handle information better.
Companies can use their Siebel partners in order to interpret about customer behavior

Siebel Clients:
5 types
Web-client => internet explorer, u purchase the application
Handheld client => like blackberry and so on
Wireless web client => mostly used one
Mobile web client => software developers uses this one, install to the laptops
Dedicated web client

Siebel physical architecture
There is a Gateway server, which is bought by the enterprise, where all the requests are collected, also there are Siebel servers (number depends on the needs of the enterprise) that are helping GS and these two types compose the enterprise server. Also there is database server which is a separate one. The Siebel servers in CRM system benefit from the enterprise database server like the modules of ERP. There is also Siebel file system which usually contains configuration files, it eases the maintenance since you do not need to install configuration files to all other servers. All these are connected by a web server. All the orders from customers come from web and reach to the gateway server, GS sends the job to appropriate servers and they are processed in the Siebel server or servers.

Siebel application:
Siebel versions/releases
Siebel client demo

There is a possibility to use free trial versions for Siebel applications and learn about the program before buying it can be downloaded from Oracle’s site.

There are forecasts, tariffs, and other similar things in the sales module.
Siebel tool:
It is a step based configuration tool
Objects explorer
Drag&Drop facilities or Wizards
Tool Layer: GUI LAYER => Object layer => Data Layer

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ERP systems alone cannot increase company’s competitiveness.
If you can solve your problems with simpler applications use them because ERP systems are very expensive.
If you believe that ERP will allow you lower costs in the future use it, but it is good to keep in mind that maintaining ERP will be expensive.

Why does the company feel the need for an integrated system?
More control, share information, accounting purposes, process innovation and automation, data integrity, fewer people to maintain the same function => efficiency increases, one system-easy to maintain and competitiveness.

Why not?
* Costs
* The costs don’t justify the benefits
* Organization readiness
* Time consuming-not enough staff-not enough money
* No need for growth
* No accessible knowledge and capability

When you implement ERP, some processes become more efficient but some others get worse; because system brings some requirements. Therefore, it is important to have flexibility at least up to some levels.

Potential Analyses:
Before implementing ERP systems it is good to make some analyses such as:
SWOT Analysis
GAP Analysis: you determine where you are now first and then you decide where you want to be in certain time period. And then you look at the gap in between.
Enterprise architecture
Elevator Speech: a short but impressive speech to introduce yourself or your company

Executives-Identify top -3 items:
* Improvement opportunities (provides)
* Benefits (triggers)
* Benefit Category (achieved)
* Implementation Plan (measured)
* Metrics

Then you need to link these to strategic objectives. Companies must have key performance indicators that must be relevant with their businesses.