Introduction

L&T's design & engineering capabilities in manufacturing enable it to set new benchmarks in terms of scale, sophistication and speed. The Company has dedicated engineering centers at the manufacturing locations. Two 'Technology Development Centers have been set up to develop new products and manufacturing technologies. L&T also collaborates with the organizations like ISRO to bolster its capabilities in the strategic sectors of aerospace, defense and nuclear power. L&T's Electrical & Electronics Division, is a pioneer in the design of switchgear and switchboards that are engineered for tropical conditions. It has built further on this experience, and has leveraged its R&D strengths to develop a host of new products and features. In 2008-09, the division filed applications for over 100 patents, improving its previous years score of 101 patents. Cumulatively, L&T's Electrical & Electronics Division has applied for and secured 409 patents - a landmark for an Indian company. Patent applications cover innovations made on a variety of low voltage indigenously developed switchgear products like the air circuit breakers (ACBs) and molded case circuit breakers (MCCBs), medical products, petroleum dispensing pumps, tooling solutions and switchboards.

Process view of Organization:

Business processes followed in the Organization: Business processes are the engines that drive an organization. The performance of the organization depends on how well these business processes are designed and managed. The key is to continuously transform and align IT and business processes to changing strategic and tactical needs. In this task, they leverage their in-depth understanding of business processes and technologies to provide integrated outsourcing solutions as part of their Business Process Services. Their solutions not only seek to reduce the total cost of ownership for their clients, but are aimed at providing transformational value through re-engineering the processes. Their understanding of the operational and organizational issues faced by global companies across various industries enables them to diagnose critical performance areas. Their consulting-led approach combined with strong capabilities across project management and support allows them to provide customized and sustainable process solutions to their clients. They offer a comprehensive range of solutions across key verticals and horizontals. Their horizontal solutions are designed to improve the effectiveness of enabling business processes such as Finance & Accounts (F&A) and Human Resources (HR). Their vertical solutions are aimed at improving the performance of the sector specific core business processes of the client organization. They leverage the experience and insights gained by servicing their clients across the BFSI, Manufacturing and Energy & Petrochemicals verticals in this endeavor. Their solutions are supported by a series of technology enablers such as scanning, Document Management System (DMS), workflow solutions, dashboards and Electronic Data Exchange (EDE).

Our Service Offerings: Finance and Accounts Outsourcing: Our transformation-led Finance & Accounts Outsourcing (F&A) solutions are implemented within an integrated, end-to-end operating structure to provide flexibility and scalability across multiple sites, processes and organizations. Their suite of F&A service offerings covers the entire gamut of finance processes, right from transaction initiation to reporting:
y y y y

Procure to pay (P2P) Order to cash (O2C) Project and Fixed Asset Accounting Record to report (R2R)

Procure to pay (P2P): Our P2P solution spans the complete set of F&A P2P process right from vendor master creation to month-end closing and reporting. For each process set, at a sub process level, they have best-in-class solutions integrated with technology drivers such as scanning, Document Management Systems (DMS) and workflows. For Travel and Entertainment (T&E) expense processing, they offer a platform-based solution, which can be customized to client requirements. Their P2P offering covers:
y y y y y y y

Vendor master maintenance Invoice scanning & processing Expense claim processing Payment processing Period end processing Analytics and reporting Query resolution

Order to cash (O2C): Order to Cash (O2C) is one of the most important functions of F&A as it deals with the revenue stream of an organization. their transformation-led F&A O2C solution deploys standardization, centralization and automation as the levers to improve the performance of the O2C process leading to improved order fulfillment and reduced days outstanding (DSO). As part of standard periodic reporting, they also provide F&A O2C specific analysis and insights in the areas of order-taking, invoicing, collections and queries that the management can use to better manage the O2C function, improve cash flow and customer relationship. Their O2C offering covers:
y y y y y y y y

Customer master maintenance Order management and credit analysis Billing and invoicing Cash allocation Collections Period end processing Analytics and reporting Query resolution

Project and Fixed Asset Accounting : Their Project and Fixed Asset (FA) accounting solution spans the complete set of FA processes, right from project creation to month-end activities such as depreciation computation. For each process set, at a sub-process level, they have best-in-class solutions integrated with technology drivers such as workflow and depreciation based tax modeling tool. As part of standard periodic reporting, they also provide Project and FA specific metrics and insights in the areas of Capex spend, project cost accounting, FAR (Fixed Asset Register) statistics and KPI that can be used to better manage the fixed assets function, improve quality of accounts, reduce tax liability and enhance Capex utilization. Their offering covers:

y y y y y y

Project accounting Capitalization Asset tracking Depreciation & period-end process Asset retirement/ disposal FA master data maintenance

Record to report (R2R): With increased scrutiny by governments and the investor community in the wake of the economic crisis, the emphasis on reliable general ledger accounting and reporting is more than ever before. In this endeavor, their R2R solution enables clients to achieve standard, accurate and timely reporting through the services that spans right from master data creation to month end closing and reporting. As part of standard periodic reporting, they also provide F&A R2R specific metrics and insights in the areas of charts of accounts, other master data (cost centers), general accounting, reconciliation, period-end closing and reporting that the management can use to better manage the R2R function, improve quality of accounts and improve reporting. their R2R offerings cover:
y y y y y y y

Master data maintenance General accounting Period end closing Tax accounting & reporting Treasury & cash management Statutory, regulatory & management reporting Query resolution

Human Resources Outsourcing: Factors such as the changing role of HR, necessity to respond to market dynamics, focus on productivity enhancement and need to reduce operational cost necessitate the HR function to reallocate its resources and reduce the focus on transactional processing activities. HR outsourcing, through its unique value proposition, enables the HR leadership to respond effectively to these challenges and to move into an alternate delivery model for the HR function.

Payroll Processing:
y y y y y

Master data maintenance Periodic processing (Payroll generation, cost accounting and payout) Statutory reporting and compliance Management reporting and analysis Helpdesk

Employee Benefits Processing:

y y y y

Mailroom and scanning services Claims processing (verification, payout and benefits accounting) Statutory and management reporting Helpdesk

Core HR Processes:
y y y y

Workforce administration and engagement Training and development administration Rewards and recognition HR Analytics Industry specific Services: Banking and Financial Services They have an extensive experience of working with clients in capital markets, i-banking, wealth management, retail lending, cards and leasing. their business process services for the BFS industry will free the organization from transaction processing activities such as account management, reconciliation and accounting. Coupled with their in-depth understanding of the IT eco-system of a BFS organization, this solution leads to reduced per transaction cost and improved focus on analysis and controls for their clients. Our offerings cover following processes:

     

Marketing and channel management support Business acquisition Account servicing Transaction processing Trade support Accounting and reporting

Insurance: Their provide insurance specific business process outsourcing solution by leveraging their experience of serving various large and medium insurance organizations across property & casualty, life and healthcare insurance including carriers, intermediaries and re-insurers. their solution spans all major processes; right from new customer acquisition to claims processing and dispute resolution. Their clients benefit from their strong understanding of the insurance business processes and IT systems. Our offerings cover following processes:
  

New account opening Account servicing Claims processing

Manufacturing and Energy & Petrochemicals: They provide customized business process services for Manufacturing, Energy & Petrochemical (E&PC) companies. These solutions enable their clients streamline their business processes to serve the end-customers in a more efficient and cost-effective manner.

News
L&T Infotech and IBM announce strategic partnership in BPM space December 9, 2010 L&T Infotech, one of Indias leading global IT services providers, has announced a strategic partnership with IBM in the Business Process Management (BPM) space, using its WebSphere Lombardi Suite of products. Through this partnership, L&T Infotech and IBM aim to offer BPM solutions including business process modeling, implementation, integration solutions and services to its clientele. Leveraging Lombardi, L&T Infotech is launching customizable BPM solutions in the areas of Banking & Financial Services like corporate loans, know your customer, credit card issuance, accounts payable and insurance (claims processing, underwriter workflow). Mr. Abhay Chitnis, Vice President & Head of Technology, L&T Infotech, says, With rapid evolution of IT in recent years, enterprise IT landscape has become increasingly complex. All organizations are striving to improve agility and scalability of the intra and inter-enterprise ecosystems. their IBM partnership is in line with their constant endeavor to provide added value to their clients. The leadership position enjoyed by IBM Lombardi in the BPM space coupled with L&T Infotechs domain knowledge and modeling accelerators, provides a unique value proposition to their clients, especially in Banking & Financial Services sector. Mr. Pradeep Nair, Director - Software Group - IBM India/South Asia, adds, "Business Process Management (BPM) software and services from IBM help organizations optimize business performance by discovering, documenting, automating, and continuously improving business processes to increase efficiency and reduce costs. they know that the combination of IBM Lombardis class-leading BPM technology and L&T Infotechs depth of industry expertise will deliver superior value and most importantly, near-term return on investment, to their clients. Leading analysts have predicted the BPM market size figure of $2.6 billion globally by 2011. With agility and scalability at the core of its approach, L&T Infotech has a dedicated practice that focuses on Business Process Management, Enterprise Application Integration and Business-toBusiness technologies to cover the entire gamut of integration services. L&T Infotech's Lombardi Practice has a large pool of trained professionals working on IBM Lombardi BPM technology. L&T Infotech provides services for process design & consulting, architecture planning, development, implementation and rollout. The Practice has also developed a set of tools/accelerators which helps reduce the development time. In addition, the Practice also has developed a set of artifacts/process handbooks for consulting, implementation, migration and maintenance on Lombardi products.

L&T Infotech offers BPM services in several vertical domains such as Banking & Financial Services (BFS), Energy & Petrochemicals, Product Engineering Services (Telecom), Insurance and Manufacturing. L&T Infotechs BFS Business Unit focuses on providing business solutions to leading banks & financial institutions across the globe. Its Domain Competency Cell comprises Subject Matter Experts who are former bankers, chartered accountants, dealers with specialization in areas such as capital markets, wealth management, payments, corporate banking and retail banking. L&T Infotech leverages its Business-to-IT Connect in financial services to build effective business solutions that can be deployed to resolve real-time business challenges. Leveraging IBM Lombardi, L&T Infotech BFS has developed JukeBox+, a domaincentric solution to allow clients to jumpstart their business processes integration & automation activity. With JukeBox+, organizations are able to gain better visibility into their operations, improve straight-through processing rates and become more cost-efficient. LARSEN & TOUBRO INFOTECH LIMITED SAP Customer Competence Center Certification and SAP Solution Manager Enable Company to Extend SAP Best Practices Across the Entire Parent Enterprise Managing a huge enterprise of diverse companies can be a challenge, not the least of which is managing its IT landscape. For the Mumbai, Indiabased conglomerate, Larsen & Toubro Limited (L&T), the solution comes through its business unit, Larsen & Toubro Infotech Limited, and through SAP services. With more than US$4 billion in revenue, Larsen & Toubro Limited is Indias largest engineering and construction conglomerate and is one of Indias top five enterprises. Its subsidiary, Larsen & Toubro Infotech Limited (L&T Infotech), has 7,000 consultants providing IT services to all companies within the L&T organization as well as to 24 of the top Fortune 100 companies in 20 countries around the world. The parent company, L&T, has been a fully dedicated SAP software customer since the early 1990s, starting with a mainframebased enterprise resource planning (ERP) software predecessor of todays my SAP ERP solution. Currently, all divisions of L&T have deployed more recent configurations of SAP software, with L&T Infotech providing the IT services required to implement and support this landscape. Each division handles some of its own IT service and support while outsourcing the more critical aspects to L&T Infotech. This partial-outsourcing approach has posed some difficulties. According to Vivek Shiroor, vice president and head of SAP practice at Larsen & Toubro Infotech Limited, At one point this responsibility became burdensome as a result of too many how to questions from end users. Managing IT services to satisfy end users had become a problem. The corporate parent discerned other problems with this decentralized IT environment. It was supported by inadequate staff, and, at the same time, the attrition rate was also high. Support activities were neglected. Best practices were not shared. Standardized support structures and processes were missing, and there was no scope for providing valueadded services in the scenario at that time. No Records, No Leverage There were no records or statistics of the problems their end users experienced nor of the solutions they provided, so there was no way to leverage what they learned in the process, says Shiroor. We therefore wanted to bring in a system independent of the people providing the support and to capture each problem in a repository in a manner that would extend the knowledge base.

Also, they wanted to come up with a self-service mechanism, so that eventually the end users could see how their current problems had been resolved in the past. L&T Infotech tapped the SAP Active Global Support organization, which sent consultants to perform an SAP Operations Competence Assessment service, an offering of the SAP Empowering portfolio of services. Based on SAPs experience with thousands of installations, the assessment analyzes the existing support organization, identifies the gaps in best practices, and returns recommendations that can save time, reduce costs, and keep the SAP solution running smoothly. It involves a 10-day review performed by a technical consultant and a management consultant. The consultants are on-site for three days, gathering information on global strategy and service-level management, support desk management, business process management, SAP technology management, and software change management. After the three-day on-site visit, the consultants summarize the results and issue a final report with their findings and recommendations, along with an action plan that includes target dates. SAP Active Global Support offers help in monitoring the progress of the implementation of these recommendations to escalate the customers competency to a specified level. Recommendation: Centralize IT Services Among the recommendations that came out of the assessment at L&T were that all IT services be centralized at L&T Infotech and that key users be established within each of the other L&T divisions. Management concurred. Each division had its own problems with how to manage IT, says Shiroor. Management decided to let L&Ts other divisions concentrate on their core businesses while L&T Infotech provides all IT services to the parent group. A key user is an expert user who, in most cases, is a business department employee. Key users have a higher level of application experience or knowledge than their peers. They are responsible for assisting peers to effectively use the software supporting business processes and are the first line of support for problems and queries. At L&T, when questions or problems arise that the key user can not answer, the issue is escalated to L&T Infotech, which applies all the skills available within the organization to deal with it. If the issue actually turns out to be a software bug, then it is escalated to SAP Active Global Support for resolution. Recommendation: Pursue SAP Customer Competence Center Certification Another crucial report recommendation called on the L&T parent to pursue certification of L&T Infotech as an SAP Customer Competence Center location an organizational unit designated by the customer as a central point of contact with SAP inside the customer organization. As a permanent center of expertise, an SAP Customer Competence Center location supports efficient implementation, enhancement, maintenance, and quality of business processes and systems related to SAP software. Certification requires that the customer meets SAP standards for support desk performance, contract administration, development request coordination, information management, and service planning. L&T Infotech began the certification process with L&Ts division, L&T Engineering & Construction (L&T E&C), as a pilot project. As part of the process, L&T Infotech trained L&T E&C key users to handle routine IT questions and escalate issues that they could not handle themselves. After the assessment, SAP delivered the business blueprint identifying the gaps in their processes, says Shiroor. Then they identified the training needs and the infrastructure and support requirements and established a reporting process to follow their progress. SAP Solution Manager Helps Optimize Service and Support L&T Infotech took other measures including implementation of the SAP Solution Manager application management platform, which provides tools, infrastructure, methodologies, content, and support for the overall life cycle of SAP solutions. SAP Solution Manager includes service desk functionality that offers a complete infrastructure for organizing and operating a solution-wide support organization, as well as a

knowledge database to capture problems and the corresponding solutions. L&T Infotech used SAP Solution Manager e-learning management functionality to create and deliver training to its users. We provided training on SAP Solution Manager for all users, says Shiroor. Then they provided management and process training to their designated key users. And then they began monitoring their processes through a weekly internal audit to check if they were adhering to the processes. Shiroor and his team were working from a 10-page checklist of questions prepared by the SAP consultants and focused on the areas of his organization that needed to conform to SAP Customer Competence Center standards. As they progressed through the checklist, they performed customer satisfaction surveys to identify gaps in service and support. This was followed by a preliminary audit from SAP Active Global Support that uncovered additional gaps. L&T Infotech addressed all of them. In February 2005, SAP Active Global Support performed the final audit and awarded L&T Infotech SAP Customer Competence Center certification. Reduced TCO, Economies of Scale, and Improved ROI What kind of benefits has L&T Infotech and the parent company realized from the certification? First, it has seen a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO). With fewer end-user demands on L&T Infotech, support team size has been reduced by about 30% Second, L&T has projected economies of scale, as L&T Infotech extends its competence center capabilities to other divisions in the L&T group. We now enjoy higher self-reliance, says Shiroor, because of the self-service database that is automatically updated as a result of problem logging and solution recording. Finally, L&T receives a greater ROI from increased usage of its SAP solutions due to higher system availability, trained users, and greater reliability. Now that L&T has seen the benefits arising out of the certification of L&T Infotech in support of L&T E&C, L&T Infotech is rolling out SAP Customer Competence Center capabilities to the other divisions. The entire L&T Group, comprising 15 SAP landscapes, is projected to be brought under the L&T Infotech SAP Customer Competence Center by June 2006, with a projected 2,344 users and around 6,000 employee self-service users, all to be served by a lean support team. L&T Infotech expects to extend this expertise to its international customers as well. We have recommended to all their international clients that they set up their own internal SAP Customer Competence Center locations, says Shiroor. We have, in fact, launched a special service to help their international clients to set up internal SAP Customer Competence Center locations, which would enable them to establish knowledge bases within their own organizations and empower their users to address and resolve problems by themselves. they give them the example of their own experience, describe the journey they are on, and explain how it has benefited us.

Database Management:

Application Maintenance & Support

At L&T Infotech, they focus on industries that includeManufacturing, Banking & Financial Services,Insurance, Energy & Petrochemicals and Telecom - Product Engineering Services. they have been providing Application Maintenance & Support services to these industries for more than a decade. their service model is designed to ensure availability of systems for use, reduce maintenance and support efforts, improve scalability and increase throughput by improving productivity over time. Their in-depth business knowledge on these industries enables them to provide services aimed

at improving 'Business-to-IT' connect of their client's IT portfolios. their suite of Application Maintenance & Support services include:
   

24x7 production support Application enhancement request management Upgrade of application platforms Application Database Migration The technology landscape of their services varies from ERP, CRM, PLM packages to DW & BI technologies to legacy systems. Their Global Delivery Model is designed to leverage their process maturity on application knowledge transition, problem management, enhancement request management, service level management and thus deliver significant operating cost benefits to customers. Some of the key features of their Application Maintenance & Support services model are:

    

Reduce total cost of ownership - 22 to 32% in 1st year and further 15 to 18% in steady state Passing on year-on-year productivity gains Improve application stability and performance SLA based engagement model Rendezvous ADM services framework, their proprietary 4-tier governance model to focus on relationship, strategic, tactical and operations management aspects of the engagement Global Delivery Modeling: Our Global Delivery Model is capable of offering cost effective IT solutions to their customers, leveraging its various development centers located offshore. Typically, onsite and offshore locations will be linked via a data network connection to achieve maximum utilization of their onsite-offshore model. Some of the features of this model are:
   

Thin onsite team Rapid resource mobilization Flexible and scalable IT infrastructure Customized skill (technology & behavioural) enhancement programs

Rendezvous: Their proprietary solution framework, Rendezvous, for providing Application Development and Maintenance service is designed and developed to facilitate effective governance and operations management. The data is displayed in the form of dashboards and the system also provides drill down features to view data at granular levels. The dashboards represent data on project management, application management, relationship management and service level metrics. The framework constitutes of various applications developed to manage transition and steady state operations of an offshore centric application development and support services engagement. Diverse requirement for each engagement leading to customization, ease of use and integration with internal and external tools are catered to by inherent design features such as: Web 2.0 technology and SOA architecture Rich Interface Application (RIA) User Customizable views and layouts L10N and I18N Adaptor based and SOA based integration with customer systems Fully integrated with MS Office tools (Word, XLS, MPP) Some of the applications in the framework and their brief description is mentioned below:

Transition Workbench An application designed to manage the application development and support services transition. It can be used for application grouping, de-briefing session planning, preparing stop-light charts to indicate transition progress etc. Project Management System (PMS) An application designed for detail level planning, setting milestones, metrics goals and tracking of a development project. This application is developed based on CMMI Level 5 processes. Request Management System (RMS) An application designed for detail level planning, setting milestones, metrics goals and tracking of application enhancement requests. This application is developed based on CMMI Level 5 processes. Problem Tracking System (PTS) A web based application that can be easily integrated with customer's problem notification systems and used for notifying problems to offshore teams and tracking the problem to closure. This system also has a feature to capture feedback from the end user on problem containment/resolution services provided. Defect Tracking System (DTS) An application developed for capturing defects at various stages of project and request execution. This facilitates defect prevention activities like analysis of frequently occurring defects, identification of root cause, coming up with prevention plan, implementation and tracking of the prevention plan. Timebooking System A web based application to enable team members to book the actual efforts spent towards an allocated task. Service Level Management An application to capture agreed service levels and generate service level reports on a predefined frequency. Management Utility for Strategic Information and Control (MUSIC) A web based application to provide online information pertaining to governance, application management, relationship management and service level metrics, in the form of dashboards. Customers are given access to these dashboards. Rendezvous framework is specifically designed to provide transparency on engagement operations to their customers. It also serves as a single window of information for governance, operations management, relationship management and service level management metrics.  Knowledge retention mechanisms
 

Sharing of best practices from similar engagements

Rendezvous

At L&T Infotech, they leverage their Business-to-IT Connect to provide the winning edge to their clients through application outsourcing services. their matureTechnology Office develops

technology and business processes that allow them to provide fuller value from clients' IT spends. Our four phase outsourcing approach, Assessment, Transition, Steady State and Transformation (Continuous Improvement), facilitates seamless transition of their clients' application portfolio to offshore/near-shore locations. their proprietary framework, OMI (Offshore Maturity Index) fast-tracks assessment of the offshore readiness of client applications and recommends the roadmap in line with clients' outsourcing vision. their proprietary framework, Rendezvous, is a program management portal that allows 24x7 monitoring of engagement progress from multiple locations with features like problem tracking, productivity gains tracking, dashboards at various management levels thereby ensuring that the engagement runs on the pre-defined roadmap. Our four-tier Governance Model ensures that the engagement follows the stakeholders' requirements and expectations at Relationship, Strategic, Tactical & Operational levels. It enables proper goal setting, monitoring of milestones, measuring the returns of the initiative and allowing a clear path and responsibility for addressing challenges through out the outsourcing journey. We have an established and proven resource management model that caters to planned rampups for ongoing client requirements as well as fast track ramp-ups for initial or peak resource requirements on short notice. they have aligned their hiring processes to enable quick and highquality ramp-ups. they maintain trained and certified buffer resources. Backed up by global reach, solid infrastructure, high security technology excellence, their engagement delivery model can be needs. This in combination with their governance and outsourcing deliver on dotted lines within set parameters like Quality and experience, they work towards quantifiable benefits in reduction further reduction in steady state. standards and domain and tailored to meet their clients' tools, gives them an ability to SLAs. Based on their past in TCO in the first year and

ERP: Last Year the economic downturn caused most organizations to cut all their budgets, including IT spends thereby causing the business priorities for a majority of organizations to be changed reducing operational costs while improving productivity. As the market conditions have started improving this year, organizations have once again have started considering investments in growth oriented areas with IT being one of the key areas. Introduction: As corporations become more dependent on their ERP systems, it becomes all the more important to strike the right balance between regularly updating the software and minimizing the cost and disruption to the business. A recent Forrester study found that, Upgrades made the top concerns list of ERP customers together with Improving Integrations and Shifting the Process Orientation thereby establishing the fact that ERP upgrades is an essential activity in the ERP software lifecycle. Further, this demonstrates that an effective and efficient execution of an ERP upgrade has a tremendous impact on an organization s continuous business process

improvement. Therefore, the decision to upgrade ERP is usually not driven by code deterioration or anticipated reduction in maintenance costs alone, but on several other criteria as well. According to an AMR study (Swanton 2004), 55% of upgrades were voluntary business improvements triggered by the need for new functionality, expansion or consolidation of systems; 24% of upgrades were triggered by technology stack changes; 15% of upgrades were forced by de-support of the running version of software to avoid vendor support termination (Craig 1999); and 6% of upgrades were triggered by bug fixes or statutory changes. In this white paper, we analyze the options available to Oracle JD Edwards ERP customers for upgradation to newer ERP versions along with the challenges faced by such customers and how innovative tools and methodology coupled with the onsite offshore model significantly reduces overall project cost and time.

When to Upgrade? ERP is designed to be an integrated system that captures the transactional details of a business, including financials, inventory and order management, along with the operational side. It covers everything - from manufacturing to human resources (HR) and dealing with suppliers and customers. While early versions of ERP had a narrower focus around manufacturing, distribution and financial components, subsequent releases have expanded in features to incorporate Advanced Supply Chain Management - right from Advance Forecasting, Warehousing planning, Logistics, Human Resources Management and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), among other capabilities. Ideally, ERP systems should serve as the primary source for all critical data while delivering analytics and reporting functions that help companies make better decisions. If they don't, or if one of the following scenarios sounds familiar, it may be time for an ERP upgrade. When the current ERP system lacks the features and functions required to efficiently run the business.

The new versions of ERP offerings are generally packed with contemporary business processes and also Intelligence apart from Web functionality that help companies meet evolving business requirements, be more competitive and provide new features to facilitate e-commerce. If the existing ERP system is unable to meet functionality requirements in the changing business environment such as manufacturing requirements, advance logistics tracking or e-commerce compatibility, then it is time for assessing new ERP versions. When consultants aren't available to support

Finding right consultants to support outdated ERP systems could become a nightmare for the Recruitment Department as working with an older ERP platform that does not support the latest technologies could potentially hurt the consultants skill set in an open market. The cost of hiring the right consultant and maintaining outdated ERP systems can be a huge drain on a companys IT budget.

When employees aren't using the system Outdated ERP systems can be a huge deterrent in motivating internal customers to use the ERP system - not to mention a turnoff for attracting and retaining new talent. If companies find users backing away from the system because it's outdated or because it doesn't support modern productivity tools, it's clear that the existing ERP platform has run its course and CIO should look for upgrading to new ERP systems. When ERP system integration is difficult.

Companies often spend considerable time and money in building and maintaining custom software for integrating in-house or third party systems to address specific business processes. They often end up with a complicated mess of custom code that becomes difficult to scale and support as more functionality and end users are added to the system. When IT department spends more time in integrating or managing a host of older systems and new functionality that is added from third-party applications or internally developed software, it's time to upgrade to a single ERP system and get rid of the integration and maintenance work. The new ERP platforms, almost all of which are based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) foundation, go a long way in reducing integration and maintenance costs When its matters most irrespective of ROI.

There is difference of opinion among experts whether making a ROI case is necessary for justifying an ERP upgrade. Formerly a level of business case justification is needed. Now that ERP systems are an absolute requirement for business, just ROI may not be justifiable for an ERP upgrade. According to AMR Research Inc., formal ROI analysis used to be required 70% to 80% of the time to justify an ERP upgrade; now it's more like 10% to 15%. Today, upgrading an ERP system is not an option but an absolute requirement to support expanding businesses in current challenging environment. A ROI Analysis for an ERP upgrade may not necessarily be required as it is for any capital project as it is synonymous withanalyzing ROI for upgrading one s lifestyle.

Upgrade Options
Oracle JD Edwards provides for two different types of ERP systems viz. Oracle JD Edwards World Build for IBM i-series platform, JD Edwards has the largest installed base for i-series. Oracle has released two new versions of JD Edwards World viz. World A 9.1 and World A 9.2 providing enhanced functionality to meet the business requirements

Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne has multiple releases right from One World Xe which was released in Sept 2000 to EnterpriseOne 9.0 which was released in Sept 2008

The existing JD Edwards World customers who own the earlier version of WorldSoft have the option of upgrading their WorldSoft environment to a higher version namely World A-9.2 or migrate to a higher version of EnterpriseOne 9.0. The final choice of upgrading to WorldSoft or migrating to EnterpriseOne depends on matching new functionality requirements to new business processes, Integration requirements, availability of resources for providing support etc. Oracle EnterpriseOne 9.0 is functionally richer than JD Edwards World A9.2. The functionality in JD Edwards World 9.2 is a subset of functionality as available in EnterpriseOne 9.0. JD Edwards 9.0 not only provides functionalities for Real Estate Management and the Food & Beverages Industry, it also provides dash boards (BI) for Financial Management and Plant Management besides providing a new functionality in CRM.

Migration to EnterpriseOne ERP system provides an option for moving away from proprietary operating systems and DB2 database on the existing IBM platform to open source operating system with a multiple choice of databases. As a rule of thumb, existing WorldSoft clients do not requiring multiple double byte languages to upgrade their ERP system to higher version of JD Edward WorldSoft provided the functionality in WorldSoft meets their business needs. However Multi site, multi nation and multi instance customers on JD Edwards World should explore the option of migrating to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne for newer functionality and superior Return on Investment.

Pros and Cons of Migrating to EnterpriseOne from WorldSoft Platform

There is no doubt to the fact that Upgrades are essential to get the maximum return out of JD Edwards ERP investment in the long run brings new functionalities and features to the ERP solution, while keeping incremental costs low. However an organization looking to extract the maximum benefit of an ERP upgrade, is recommended to engage a Consulting partner who could also work as your business partner to facilitate exploring out of the box functionalities. to reduce the level of customization. Such consulting partners also bring with them best in class methodology, tools and resources to ensure completion of the upgrade project within schedule. Upgrade Challenges and L&T Infotech Solution ERP upgrades bring significant challenges pertaining to managing project expenses and controlling project scope. While ERP users benefit from technical and functional benefits on upgrading to higher versions, upgrades can often be quite time consuming; identifying the

potential problems with interfaces and testing systems appropriately can be a complex task. In our experience of delivering JD Edwards solutions to global enterprises, we have identified the most common challenges enterprises face while upgrading. Here are a few key imperatives CIOs typically face. Customizations, Bolt-On Applications One of the main reasons for the complexity of ERP is its flexibility in allowing users to fine-tune and customize the system to address their particular needs and procedures. The trade-off is ever-increasing code complexity, which in turn results in inability to accurately predict whether the multiple customizations and changes will function properly after upgrading to the new version or implementing other major changes. Further it is seen that many organizations customized their standard JD Edwards applications without changing the system code. Since such changes are carried out in the system over a long period of time, it becomes difficult to identify such changes in the absence of proper documentation. Thus creating an inventory of existing customizations in the system and determining the strategy to move these onto the upgraded system is a critical task and should be part of the upgrade planning process. Most upgrades have to work with very less documentation, which often proves to be a major hindrance. Organizations, traditionally have been dealing with this challenge by using a manual trial-anderror approach to find such customizations. However, the shortcomings of this method become more apparent as the complexity of the ERP system increases. This includes, for example, an inability to detect customizations, higher costs due to increased utilization of development and testing resources, extended implementation time, and inability to accurately calculate the project timeline and costs. To tackle the shortcomings of traditional approaches, there is a growing need for solutions to automate event rule comparison processes. These solutions should provide comprehensive capabilities such as impact analysis of customizations and changes to an application, Batch applications, Data dictionary items and changes in business functions and NER. L&T Infotech has developed a tool RetroDash which provides details of all custom objects making it easy to identify the customization in the existing ERP system and hence considerably reduce the total time required for the upgrade. The tool provides the following information : y y y List of all custom and standard objects Percentage change in the custom object and standard objects List of standard objects used by custom objects in source release and not in target release

Processing Options After the technical upgrade of the JD Edwards ERP system, it is important to ensure that the processing options values, data sequencing and data selection values are in sync before testing is undertaken. The traditional way of comparing the processing option values requires a lot of manual intervention and is prone to mistakes which can jeopardize the success of the testing phase besides creating doubt in the mind of user community about the upgrade process. L&T Infotech has developed a JDE based tool named J Cart, developed using

BSFN s and Reports. It allows for comparison of Processing Options, Data Selection and Data Sequencing across releases or environment. The tool allows the project team to ensure that Processing options and Data selection values have not undergone any change during processing the Upgrade work bench. Brittle Integrations and Data Replications In many enterprises, business processes consist of silos of application software connected by the slapdash integration equivalent of duct tape, chewing gum, and string. Such integrations pose major challenges during an upgrade given that these integrations are often created in a way that makes it very likely for them to fail. Validating and correcting such brittle integrations one by one after an upgrade can easily consume as much as half of the entire upgrade budget. L&T Infotech recommends that the focus for developing integrations for data synchronization needs to be on creating maintainable integrations which are independent of application specific interfaces. In this context, well defined and upgrade resilient interfaces in the form of application web services are the first important building block. They offer stable integration interfaces that hide application technology concerns and also make use of validation logic built inside the applications business logic.

Supply chain management of L&T

The case highlights the main operational functions of L&T's construction division - ECC. It focuses on the diverse and vast geographical spread of ECC's business and examines the challenges that the staggered and diversified nature of its business posed to the company. The case discusses in detail the supply chain management strategies adopted by ECC in order to streamline its supplier network and improve the efficiency of its supply chain. It also identifies the importance of information technology in ECC's supply chain. A lot of importance has been given to the functioning of ECC's enterprise information portal (EIP) and its web-based supply chain management solution. The case also tries to bring out the fact that implementation of Information Technology in the supply chain of ECC has helped it make its operations lean and agile.

Issues:
Understand supply chain management best practices in the Indian construction industry Understand the challenges posed by the staggered nature of the construction industry to its supply chain Appreciate the importance of information technology in streamlining the suppliers' network

 Examine the different initiatives taken by ECC in order to streamline its supply chain Understand the importance of Business-to-Business (B2B) long-term relationships for an organization to increase the effectiveness of its supply chain

The Engineering Construction and Contracts (ECC) division is the construction division of Larsen & Toubro Ltd., (L&T). With project sites located in all parts of India, ECC expanded its operations to countries like the UAE, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and South Africa. Given its large geographical spread of operations and the large number of participants involved in the supply chain (in India alone, it had approximately 6000 suppliers, spread over 350 locations), the effective management of the supply chain system turned out to be a challenging task for ECC. The absence of any established IT solution for the construction industry made the situation still more complex. In order to handle the challenge of implementing an effective supply chain management (SCM) system in the company, L&T ECC opted for a web-based SCM solution. It not only made the task of tracking the vendors easier but also reduced the time spent on negotiations with them since the vendors could post their bids online through ECC's website.
In order to keep track of its operations at different locations, ECC came up with the idea of connecting all its project sites with its headquarters in Chennai through the Internet and launched its in-house information solution, Enterprise Information Portal (EIP). EIP not only helped ECC keep track of its activities at different locations but also allowed it to leverage on its huge purchasing power. It also helped in reducing project costs and increasing the return on capital employed (ROCE). Company sources claimed that EIP was of great help in bringing together the different phases of the construction cycle - design, development, tendering/bidding, budgets, planning/scheduling, etc.

It helped the company streamline the huge supplier base it was working with, and this, in turn, reduced the time taken to identify and communicate with the suppliers

L&T's ECC Division

ECC handled turnkey industrial and infrastructure projects in civil, mechanical, electrical, and instrumentation engineering and it also offered turnkey construction services. Headquartered in Chennai and with more than 50 years of experience and expertise, ECC commanded a leadership position in the industry...

Supply Chain Management Strategy in ECC

ECC structured itself into seven regions in order to handle the complexity in terms of stage of completion, size of project, and the geo-political situation. Each region catered to the demand of specialized construction services in that region and had its own materials department. The materials department of ECC got itself ISO-9002 certified, indicating the level of importance it gave to the management of its suppliers. ECC adopted a sound and efficient Supply Chain Management Strategy in order to keep the supply chain costs to the minimum. Its quality policies emphasized minimum landed costs, transparent practices, and optimum inventory levels.

The Challenges
One constant challenge that ECC faced was in integrating and collaborating its supply chain participants. The root cause of this challenge was the construction industry itself. The project sites being spread out at various locations and the large supplier base made it difficult for ECC to minimize its supply chain cost...

Supply Chain Management Solution

In order to handle the complex challenge of implementing an effective supply chain management (SCM) system in the company, L&T ECC opted to implement a web-based SCM solution built on Microsoft technologies - SQL Server 2000 and Windows 2000 Server in early 2000. The system worked on an on-line-order-off-line-delivery strategy. The company could now streamline its entire vendor network. ECC also arranged a proper training program for its vendors in order to familiarize them with the functioning of the system..

Resources and supply chain management

Resources & Supply Chain Management is responsible for Plant & Machinery, Materials Management, Resources Planning, Vendor / Subcontracts Management and Information Systems, in terms of standardization, sustaining systems, classification, ratings, materials planning and procurement Plant & Machinery Plant & Machinery Business Unit, which is part of Resources & Supply Chain Management function, has India's largest fleet of Construction Equipment worth around Rs.770 Crore and numbering more than 12,000 pieces of equipment. The fleet comprises of a wide range of sophisticated and specialized equipment for achieving speed, quality and cost-effective construction. The asset base includes Heavy Duty Cranes, Heavy Earthmovers, Asphalt, Batching & Crushing Plants, Asphalt & Concrete Pavers, Vibratory Compactors, Concrete Pumps, Booms Placers, Drilling Jumbos, Rock bolting / Shotcreting machines, On / Offshore Hydraulic Drilling Rigs, Core Drilling Machines, Winders, Compressors, D.G.Sets and Mobile Crushing units.

Materials Management
Materials Management Department, which is the most important link in Supply Chain Management, supports global operations of ECC by catering to the needs of all the projects, factories and offices by constantly enhancing input efficiency for our operations. The function of Materials Management Department includes procurement from both indigenous and overseas markets, storage, logistics, inventory management at regional stores, disposal etc. the overall operations of Material Management Department are monitored from ECC's Headquarters in Chennai.

Resources Planning Resources Planning Department at HQ takes care of allocation, distribution and movement of Staff and Plant & Machinery to meet the requirements for deployment in various regions and overseas across the company. Resources dept in the Regional Offices takes care of this function with the regions and also acts as a resource center to support project sites with data on subcontractors available for various types of works.

Information Systems Information Systems applications enhance internal efficiency of Business Process by eliminating redundant process nodes, optimizing productivity and reducing business costs. This Department takes care of company's IT requirements Information, Planning & Organization, Acquisition & Implementation, Delivery & Support and maintenance. It also takes care of IT resources e.g., people application system, technology, facilities and data. Construction Enterprise Management (CeMA) / EIP - the Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) of ECC is a web-enabled Project Management System, developed and optimised internally on a 24 X 7 VPN network infrastructure

L&T
RESOURCES SUPPORT Resources Support Department provides manpower and Plant & Machinery for various projects in India and abroad. It helps in identifying and mobilizing the right resources for the right job to facilitate timely completion of the projects.

The Department is focuses on optimizing productivity by maintaining a balance between the availability, requirement and utilization of resources (Staff and Plant & Machinery). It also facilitates the process of decision making to maintain the in-house asset base at an acceptable level and monitors hiring of equipment from external agencies. This department plays a vital role in effective distribution and deployment of resources in co-ordination with all Sectors/ BUs, Service Units & Regions. PLANT & MACHINERY MMHW OCs Plant & Machinery Business Unit, which is a part of Resources Support & Supply Chain Management function, has the largest fleet of Construction Equipment worth around Rs.600 Crore and numbering more than 5500 pieces of equipment. The fleet comprises of a wide range of sophisticated and specialized equipment for achieving speed, quality and costeffective construction. The asset base includes Heavy Duty Cranes, Crawler /tyre mounted Hydraulic cranes, Heavy Earthmovers, Batching Plants, Concrete Pumps, Boom Placers, Hydraulic Drilling Rigs, Winches, Gantry, Compressors, D.G. Sets and various types of welding plants. P&M Business Unit offers Total Equipment Management Services which include identification, evaluation, selection, mobilization, commissioning, operation & maintenance of plant and machinery at all MMHW sites in India. MMHW OCs resources in terms of Equipment, People and Facilities enable it to undertake construction of complex structures of large magnitude with quality and stringent time schedule.

MATERIALS MANAGEMENT Materials Management, is a vital link in supply chain management supporting the operations of MMH&W OC by meeting the needs of M&M, BMH, WET BUs projects by constantly enhancing value creation by doing right sourcing for the materials and services needs of MMHW OC. The entire materials management functions right from indents for materials required till disposals, including e-auctions/reverse auctions, executive reports etc. are organized through EIP. The Department has received BS EN ISO 9001:2008 certification through LRQA.

Customer relationship management

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a widely-implemented strategy for managing a company s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. Customer relationship management describes a company-wide business strategy including customer-interface departments as well as other departments. Customer relationship management (L&T) L&T InfoTech has an established CRM practice for over a decade and has executed several diverse and complex CRM projects. The Sales force practice is an extension of the current CRM practice with many cross-skilled consultants across popular CRM packages. Description L&T InfoTech offers a complete suite of IT Services focused on faster and scalable IT applications, through adoption of cloud based computing. As enterprises grapple with the problem of managing a wide array of computing resources that reside both inside and outside the corporate network, L&T InfoTech s consultants assist organizations in managing these applications in a systematic, cost efficient and secured manner. The 'Cloud Innovation Center' allows the creation and testing of more business relevant applications intune with modern trends and leveraging latest technologies.

L&T InfoTech s cloud computing experts have worked across the globe on diverse and challenging assignments. Robust architecture and development methodologies, automated and high-coverage testing and stringent regulatory compliance allows us to service our clients through these experts.

Highlights Strong CRM capabilities Cloud innovation center End-to-end services on the cloud (creation to management) Geographic Focus: Global

The company provides the winning edge to our clients by leveraging Our Business-to-IT Connect, proprietary diagnostics and accelerators to extract full value from investments in the Oracle family of products. The company is an Oracle Platinum Partner, which is the highest level of Partnership with Oracle. As Oracle Platinum Partner, it access to latest Oracle Solutions, methodologies, and a dedicated team of executives to address issues, if any. The mature Oracle practice has a proven track record that has allowed the company to emerge as a 'Thought partner' for Fortune 500 companies. The rich experience spans global implementation, upgrade, rollout, application maintenance and support, Integration and consulting services. Company combines technical and industry leading practices to deliver successful business solutions and enable clients to maximize returns on their Oracle investments. Company has rich experience of deploying and maintaining best-of-breed solutions on the Oracle suite of packages. It offer a complete spectrum of services across technologies, including Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne & WorldSoft, PeopleSoft Enterprise, Siebel CRM, EPM/ BI and Fusion Technology. Leveraging extensive experience in Oracle applications and rich domain expertise, which enable clients to use Oracle for their business advantage. Oracle Center of Excellence (CoE) is the innovation engine. It studies emerging technologies and identifies ways to leverage these for faster and best-fit solutions for our clients. Continuous investment in the CoE initiatives brings value to our clients in several ways. It enables them to get a preview of the technology without actually investing in it; it generates solutions for critical business needs and it delivers accelerators and frameworks that reduces time-to-market and ensures faster Return on Investment (ROI) for our clients.

SAP practice has a proven track record that has allowed Company to emerge as a 'thought partner' in the SAP consulting space for Fortune 500 companies. It spans global implementation, upgrade, rollout, application maintenance and support, solution consulting services and business transformation. L & T leverage this to combine strong domain and technology expertise with innovative and flexible delivery models to deliver sustained value to the clients. It deploys a process-based approach for delivering SAP services. Unlike the traditional modular approach, the practice is organized by the business processes followed in the industry. The company uses a service-oriented delivery model to deliver true business value to clients.

SAP Center of Excellence (CoE) is the innovation engine. It studies emerging technologies and identifies ways to leverage these for faster and best-fit solutions for the clients. The continuous investment in the CoE brings value to clients in several ways. It enables them to get a preview of the technology without actually investing in it; it generates solutions for critical business needs and it delivers accelerators and frameworks that crunch time-to-market. The solutions development are certified by SAP and are available as value-adds to global clients. L&T also have many firsts to our credit such as implementation of CFM, PLM, SEM, LSO, DBM, Warranty Management and setting up of a SAP Certified Customer Competency Center (CCC). L&T support 125,000+ users everyday across industries and geographies. This allows company to factor in the all-important end-user perspective into our deliveries. SAP CRM Practice provides consulting services to world's leading companies across a wide range of industries. It provides the advantage of cutting edge technology to our clients' customer-centric business strategies and in turn maximizes business value from their CRM Investments. Supported by a CRM Center of Excellence (CoE) and proven frameworks and accelerators, L&T Infotech's CRM consultants ensure high quality implementations, upgrades, system enhancements and production support. Service Offerings


Comprehensive range of service offerings including Implementations, Global Rollout, Production Support and Upgrade Services CRM Services in the areas of Marketing, Sales, Services, Analytics Value added services includes Pre-Implementation Scoping and Impact Assessment, Developing business blueprints, Creation of proof of concepts, Performance Tuning, Post Implementation user assessment and Training Integration services include integrating SAP CRM with SAP Suite of Products as well as Legacy systems

 

User Interface development offerings including integrating CRM with SAP Portal, Adobe Forms & Web Dynpro / BSP Developments

Differentiators
 

In-depth understanding of business impact of CRM technology through Industry expertise Expertise in multiple functional areas in CRM Marketing, Sales, and Service across different customer touch points i.e. customer interaction center, Mobile applications and the Internet Extensive Implementation experience on all the SAP CRM versions Multi-skilled CRM experts with domain experience Internal Center of Excellence develops reusable components, accelerated POCs and support projects Partnership with SAP Labs in developing the latest versions of CRM Extensive Integration experience with third party systems and legacy applications.

  

 

Successful running of wealth management business necessitates full integration of all products/services within wealth management portfolio and with bank accounts, instant access to current status of customer relationship and simultaneous on-line viewing for client collaboration. The technology framework provides deep functionality and the architecture to integrate easily with third party solutions. Focus areas are data warehouse, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and MIS (Management Information System).

It offers following services:

INTEGRATION

y y y

Full integration with all components and with bank accounts Instant access to current status of customer relationship Simultaneous on-line viewing for client collaboration

DATA WAREHOUSING/ CRM/MIS

y y

Visual presentation of portfolio model Aggregated customer profile detailing risk appetite, time frames for various exposures, preferences in investments MIS tools for tracking of customer requirements and performance, CRM, checking need/actual, etc. Report generation (product / client / RM / region) Mechanism for checking asset allocation proposed and advised by customer Analytics on product/customer/RM profitability and other MIS needs Analytics like 'what if' analysis Forecasting model as a financial planning tool Sales force tracking, commencing from initiation of the call to final deliveries

y y y y y y

Last Year the economic downturn caused most organizations to cut all their budgets, including IT spends thereby causing the business priorities for a majority of organizations to be changed reducing operational costs while improving productivity. As the market conditions have started improving this year, organizations have once again have started considering investments in growth oriented areas with IT being one of the key areas.

As corporations become more dependent on their ERP systems, it becomes all the more important to strike the right balance between regularly updating the software and minimizing the cost and disruption to the business. A recent study found that, Upgrades made the top concerns list of ERP customers together with Improving Integrations and Shifting the Process Orientation thereby establishing the fact that ERP upgrades is an essential activity in the ERP software lifecycle

ERP is designed to be an integrated system that captures the transactional details of a business, including financials, inventory and order management, along with the operational side. It covers everything - from manufacturing to human resources (HR) and dealing with suppliers and customers. Early versions of ERP that L&T were using had a narrower focus around manufacturing, distribution and financial components, subsequent releases have expanded in features to incorporate Advanced Supply Chain Management - right from Advance Forecasting, Warehousing planning, Logistics, Human Resources Management and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), among other capabilities. Ideally, ERP systems should serve as the primary source for all critical data while delivering analytics and reporting functions that help companies make better decisions.

Advantages of ERP y y y y possible use of existing infrastructure and custom objects Users familiarity with the system statutory requirements Availability of in-house trained resources

Disadvantage of ERP y y y Higher Ownership cost (High Application Cost / High Hardware Maintenance Cost) Locked into AS-400 system -maintenance intensive system Difficulty in handling multiple double-byte languages