Enhancing Enterprise Intelligence: Leveraging ERP, CRM, SCM, PLM, BPM, and BI

Vivek Kale

• Publisher: Auerbach Publications
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781498788199
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Operazioni
• Index: Business

Enhancing Enterprise Intelligence: Leveraging ERP, CRM, SCM, PLM, BPM, and BI takes a fresh look at the benefits of enterprise systems (ES), focusing on the fact that ES collectively contribute to enhancing the intelligence quotient of an enterprise. The book provides an overview of the characteristic domains (i.e., business functions, processes, a

Chapter 1

Intelligent Enterprises

Agile Enterprises

The difficult challenges facing businesses today require enterprises to be transitioned into flexible, agile structures that can respond to new market opportunities quickly with a minimum of new investment and risk. As enterprises have experienced the need to be simultaneously efficient, flexible, responsive, and adaptive, they have transitioned themselves into agile enterprises with small, autonomous teams that work concurrently and reconfigure quickly, and adopt highly decentralized management that recognizes its knowledge base and manages it effectively.

Enterprise agility is the ability to be

1. Responsive—Adaptability is enabled by the concept of loosely coupled interacting components reconfigurable within a unified framework. This is essential for ensuring opportunity management to sustain viability.
   The ability to be responsive involves the following aspects:
   • An organizational structure that enables change is based on reusable elements that are reconfigurable in a scalable framework. Reusability and reconfigurability are generic concepts that are applicable to work procedures, manufacturing cells, production teams, or information automation systems.
   • An organizational culture that facilitates change and focuses on change proficiency.
2. The ability to be intelligence intensive or to manage and apply knowledge effectively whether it is knowledge of a customer, a market opportunity, a competitor’s threat, a production process, a business practice, a product technology, or an individual’s competency. This is essential for ensuring innovation management to sustain leadership.

The ability to be intelligence intensive involves the following aspects:

• Enterprise knowledge management
• Enterprise collaborative learning

Agility is the ability to respond to (and ideally benefit from) unexpected change. Agility is unplanned and unscheduled adaption to unforeseen and unexpected external circumstances. However, we must differentiate between agility and flexibility. Flexibility is scheduled or planned adaptation to unforeseen yet expected external circumstances.

One of the foremost abilities of an agile enterprise is its ability to quickly react to change and adapt to new opportunities. This ability to change works along two dimensions:

1. The number or “types of change” an enterprise is able to undergo
2. The “degree of change” an enterprise is able to undergo

The former is termed as range, and the latter is termed as response ability. The more response-able an enterprise is, the more radical a change it can gracefully address. Range refers to how large a domain is covered by the agile response system; in other words, how far from the expected set of events one can go and still have the system respond well. However, given a specific range, how well the system responds is a measure of response or change ability.

Construction toys offer a useful metaphor because the enterprise systems we are concerned with must be configured and reconfigured constantly, precisely the objective of most construction toys. An enterprise system architecture and structure consisting of reusable components reconfigurable in a scalable framework can be an effective base model for creating variable (or built-for-change) systems. To achieve this, the nature of the framework appears to be a critical factor. We can introduce the framework/component concept, by looking at three types of construction toys and observe how they are used in practice, namely, Erector Set Kit, LEGO Kit, and Model Builder’s Kit.

You can build virtually anything over and over again with any of these toys; but fundamental differences in their architecture give each system unique dynamic characteristics. All consist of a basic set of core construction components, and also have an architectural and structural framework that enables connecting the components into an unbounded variety of configurations. Nevertheless, the Model Builder is not as reusable in practice as the Erector Set, and the Erector Set is not as reusable or reconfigurable or scalable in practice as LEGO, and LEGO is more reusable, reconfigurable, and scalable than either of them. LEGO is the dominant construction toy of choice among preteen builders—who appear to value experimentation and innovation.

The Model Builder’s kit can be used to construct one object like airplane of one intended size. A highly integrated system, this construction kit offers maximum esthetic appeal for one-time construction use but the parts are not reusable, the construction cannot be reconfigured, and one intended size precludes any scalability. It will remain what it is for all time—there is zero variability here.

Erector Set kits can be purchased for constructing specific models, such as a small airplane that can be assembled in many different configurations. With the Erector Set kit, the first built model is likely to remain as originally configured in any particular play session. Erector Set, for all its modular structure, is just not as reconfigurable in practice as LEGO. The Erector Set connectivity framework employs a special-purpose intermediate subsystem used solely to attach one part to another—a nut-and-bolt pair and a 90-degree elbow. The components in the system all have holes through which the bolts may pass to connect one component with another. When a nut is lost, a bolt is useless, and vice versa; when all the nuts and bolts remaining in a set have been used, any remaining construction components are useless, and vice versa. All the parts in a LEGO set can always be used and reused, but the Erector Set, for all its modularity, is not as reusable in practice as LEGO.

LEGO offers similar kits, and both toys include a few necessary special parts, like wheels and cowlings, to augment the core construction components. Watch a child work with either and you will see the LEGO construction undergoes constant metamorphosis; the child may start with one of the pictured configurations, but then reconfigures the pieces into all manner of other imagined styles. LEGO components are plug-compatible with each other, containing the connectivity framework as an integral feature of the component. A standard grid of bumps and cavities on component surfaces allows them to snap together into a larger configuration—without limit.

The Model Builder’s kit has a tight framework: A precise construction sequence, no part interchangeability, and high integration. Erector Set has a loose framework that does not encourage interaction among parts and insufficiently discriminates among compatible parts. In contrast, each component in the LEGO system carries all it needs to interact with other components (the interaction framework rejects most unintended parts), and it can grow without end.

Stability versus Agility

Most large-scale change efforts in established enterprises fail to meet the expectations because nea...