Empowering excellence in manufacturing
Role-based productivity solutions boost business performance
By Hope Neal -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 5/1/2008 12:00:00 AM
Imagine a world in which everyone in your enterprise has fingertip access to vast amounts of both historical and current process data, presented at the right level of detail based on their specific roles. Imagine them actually using this information to make real-time business decisions because they can retrieve it easily through a single, familiar user interface. Now, imagine a similar interface opening those same data stores to your trusted value chain partners.
Such a world surely would have value chains boasting higher levels of productivity—and profitability—than most can today. And while this may all seem like some sort of pipe dream, scenarios like this are becoming more common every day as Microsoft works with its partners in the independent software vendor (ISV) community to fulfill a vision that Microsoft refers to as role-based productivity.
The result is an emerging group of solutions—called Office Business Applications—that give individual knowledge workers all of the information they need to perform their specific jobs.
These role-based solutions are created by integrating the pertinent components of the Microsoft Office suite with various vendors' line-of-business (LOB) applications. Once these components are merged, users are presented with composite applications that allow them to do all of their work—even tasks that require tapping into the LOB applications—within the confines of an Office application.
Whether their role is sales, marketing, design, or manufacturing, each person in a manufacturing organization needs to make decisions that drive business success on a day-to-day basis. But all too often, only a few of those users have access to the LOB systems that support decision-making.
The question is: how do you give each individual employee the capabilities they need to succeed in their specific roles and support them in the way they are accustomed to working?
The answer is bridging the gap between the business productivity of LOB applications and the personal productivity supported by the Microsoft Office environment that almost all users are familiar with.
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Microsoft has created an architecture that makes it easy to blend third-party applications into the Office environment. This has inspired the creation of easy-to-use, role-based solutions that are boosting productivity for both individual workers and entire enterprises. |
Analysts at Boston-based Aberdeen Group say this is becoming increasingly important. “Best-in-class companies are 81 percent more likely to be able to complete process flows without switching between desktop and enterprise applications,” says Aberdeen VP and group director Cindy Jutras. “Role-based productivity applications that leverage a familiar Office environment are key to wider adoption of business applications throughout the enterprise. That's because these applications are easily accessible, intuitive to navigate, and perhaps even make it transparent to the users that they are using applications such as ERP.”
Unified communications
These integrated, role-based applications also allow groups of workers to share both structured and unstructured information, something most business applications do not do own their own. The ability to access—and collaborate on—different data types is especially important for managing exceptions, those unexpected events that cause normal business processes to break down.
“Even the most structured environment can become chaotic when exceptions happen,” says Sanjay Raveendranathan, director of global manufacturing industry marketing at Microsoft. “People need to be empowered with the insight to make quick, informed decisions specific to their roles.
”For example, the smooth running of a well-planned vendor managed inventory system can go awry in the event of a sudden, unexpected spike in customer demand.
“In such circumstances, quick decision making demands visibility into the available alternatives, as well as collaboration across various roles both within an organization and across its key trading partners. Resolving the exception requires the ability to do both structured and unstructured collaboration.”
The Microsoft Office business application platform enables both structured and unstructured collaboration. Once decisions are made—whether as part of a formal process or on an ad-hoc basis—the results can be passed seamlessly to back-end LOB applications. This integrates both business and personal productivity for specific roles within an enterprise.
Unlimited business value
Charles Johnson, General Manager of Manufacturing & Resources, Microsoft Corporation, calls this “enterprise performance management for the masses.”
He notes that Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 enables access to powerful analytical tools that help users make sense of data coming from multiple sources. “So every general manager, every product manager every sales manager—anyone accessing business data—has a scorecard tracking key data across various applications.”
Because users can customize their scorecards to fit their specific roles, they see only the information they need to take make quick decisions—and take quick action.
“You want to be able to understand, collaborate, decide, and act in real-time,” Johnson says. “In many cases, people do these things away from their desks.”
Microsoft's answer to this dilemma is unified communications. “Microsoft's unified communications approach reduces complexity by putting people at the center of the communications experience,” Johnson says. “Our goal is integrating all of the ways we contact each other by using a single identity that spans phones, PCs, and other devices.”
In the end, says Johnson, “It's about people, not systems. It's not about the LOB systems; it's not even about Office. We can improve the productivity of the those people whose roles call for them to take part in design collaboration, as well as those who work in production operations, value chain management, or customer service. By working with our ISV partners to create leading-edge, role-based productivity and unified communications solutions, we can help companies improve overall enterprise performance.”
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06/09/2009Technology
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