I will be providing several overviews of operational risk management (ORM), enterprise risk management (ERM) and supply chain management (SCM) in the coming weeks. In this review for searchSAP.com I provide a review of the non-financial enterprise performance management (EPM) solution from SAP BusinessObjects focused on increased supplier effectiveness.
For more on this and other SAP BusinessObjects EPM solutions, please consider my SAP Press title, “Understanding SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise Performance Management” available at both Amazon.com and SAP Press. Visit the book fan page on Facebook.
Earlier this month my firm released a white paper written in cooperation with SAP partner iPoint Systems on the topic of conflict minerals. The impending Dodd-Frank Act and the impact on conflict minerals on the manufacturing supply chain is of great concern. Particularly for electronics manufacturers and suppliers, the reporting issues are ambiguous and the requirements are defined by legislation but appear to be poorly written when it comes to execution. As my colleague Liz Garnand explains in the paper, there exists a wide chasm between the “what” and the “how” of the new US legislation.
In the event you missed my post on SDN, here is the link. Login required. I will be presenting with (hopefully) SAP Research at the November ASUG Fall Focus event in Anaheim, California.
What do you do when you realize your IT offshore provider has their fingers up to their shoulders in the proverbial cookie jar? In this month's compliance offering I have a look at those great "bargain" IT offshore providers and what happens when the access profiles inadvertently include restricted product and manufacturing information.
This month I will be publishing a series of blog posts on the introduction and best practices on sustainable supply chains. This will be a four-part series.
Why is it that often sustainability programs, except for leading Fortune 1000 commercial organizations, still a "nights, weekends and lunches" activity?
Read about the three practices that can change your program at my blog here.
This coming FIN 2011 conference will yield some new developments in both the direction as well as some of the partner capabilities emerging in the area of strategic collaboration, financial mobility, and in-memory analytics.
Leading the list will be early work that SAP in conjunction with its partners Column5 and Cipher BSC will present in the area of collaboration and sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis - and in a more contained form called "crowdsourcing" - polls individuals and groups for the opinion and sentiment and can aggregate that back to management for direction. How well will the new purchasing guidelines be accepted? Can they be implemented on time? Does the policy make sense? Do we have the staff capable to do this work? When will the change impact me? These change leadership questions can be associated to strategic initiatives inside SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management and articulated via an integration tool to SAP StreamWork, a relatively new, very intuitive group sharing platform leveraging many personal benefits of corporate social media.
Another area I am very interested to see is the development of mobility in areas that seem as mundane as - well - paying and approving expense reporting. Richard Barrett from SAP has blogged about days where "approving your expense reports in the back of a taxi" are not too far away. We will see more of these quick utility-like financial apps coming out over the years and I am eager to see what's next.
Finally you KNOW there is going to be some big - new - next announcement about SAP HANA, the in-memory analytic application that makes batch processing about as today as watching Howdy Doody on a Westinghouse black and white television. There are HANA-based applications already taking advantage of this appliance, look for these to be part of one or more discussion points during the conference keynote addresses.
For more information on the Strategy Management - StreamWork integration, please visit the Column5 booth at the exhibit hall, and plan to attend my session entitled, "Optimize Enterprise Performance by Aligning and Reconciling Key Performance Indicators across Multiple Functional Areas" at FIN 2011.
Studies have shown that 95% of all systems transformation issues are rooted in causes other than technology. Change management talents are in high demand and these practices are in great need in the post-crisis economy.
Our friend and fellow consulting practitioner Jesse Jacoby provided a recent check list for change management in 2011. Feel free to have a look at his blog here.
Today’s sustainability landscape looks more like a sprawling metropolis with no building design than it does well-intentioned regulations threaded together to provide transparency and visibility to consumers, governmental agencies, and investors. The University of Oregon Sustainability Leadership Program tracks nearly 50 standards, methods, regulations, and approaches that an organization, based on its particular operating location, industry segments, and communities, may be obliged to follow and report on.
The immediate reporting introduction for those companies operating in the US is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Mandatory Reporting Rule (MRR, defined in 40 CFR 98) which is designed to collect greenhouse gas (GHG) information, including specific emissions from specific industry participants and a list of other industry segments that may apply. Unless your company is squarely in the crosshairs of the MRR filing requirements — called “all-in” source category companies, such as aluminum manufacturing — it may be difficult to determine your actual reporting requirement. Further complicating the lack of clarity is the impending deadline of January 30, 2011, to submit certification of representations to the EPA. The EPA has created a portal called the electronic Greenhouse Gas Reporting Tool (e-GGRT), which organizations can use to capture their initial GHG tallies and provide them, as needed, to the agency. According to the EPA Web site, the mandatory filing window for “all-in” source category companies begins on March 31, 2011. It also lists industry segments considered “all-in.”
As such, it is important for organizations, particularly for those “all-in” source category companies and those organizations operating in their supply chains, to begin to gain visibility into their carbon footprint. This provides visibility into their specific position in the exposure of dangerous emissions as well as the use of natural resources and toxins in their day-to-day operations. Once this information is known, the organization and its supply chain can begin proactive measures to address reduction of GHG emissions and its overall carbon footprint. I’ll start by explaining some ways you can assess sustainability impacts in your organization, and then go into how SAP Carbon Impact helps you monitor these impacts with various on-demand reporting tools.
Read the full abstract on the View from C-Level blog here.
Wondering what to be on the lookout for in 2011? Read the top five watch-list items for any good executive heading into the new year at The View from C-Level blog.
I will be providing several overviews of operational risk management (ORM), enterprise risk management (ERM) and supply chain management (SCM) in the coming weeks. In this review for searchSAP.com I provide a review of the non-financial enterprise performance management (EPM) solution from SAP BusinessObjects focused on increased supplier effectiveness.
Earlier this month my firm released a white paper written in cooperation with SAP partner iPoint Systems on the topic of conflict minerals. The impending Dodd-Frank Act and the impact on conflict minerals on the manufacturing supply chain is of great concern. Particularly for electronics manufacturers and suppliers, the reporting issues are ambiguous and the requirements are defined by legislation but appear to be poorly written when it comes to execution. As my colleague 
Studies have shown that 95% of all systems transformation issues are rooted in causes other than technology. Change management talents are in high demand and these practices are in great need in the post-crisis economy.
Wondering what to be on the lookout for in 2011? Read the top five watch-list items for any good executive heading into the new year at The View from C-Level 
