Coordinating the EM Project
As we described in out book on SAP SCM, events must be agreed upon and tracked through implementation during an Event Management projects. Events are different that other SCM objects in that the events come from a variety of sources and partner systems. There thus needs to be a method of sharing the event capability and status during the implementation. Our solution has been to create one entry per event in a password protected blog, like this one. The next step is to provide the password to the invited parties, and manage the documentation on the objects in this way. An example would look like the following:
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EM Event Description: Item Scan At 3PL Warehouse
EM Event Location: San Jose, California
EM Event Projected Frequency: Daily
EM Event Providing System: Penske Logistics Warehouse System
EM Event Message Format: XML
EM Event Message Transmission Begin Date Partner Committment: Jan 10 2010
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These are a sampling of the necessary fields and the feild set would certainly grow. However, the concept would stay the same.
Cross Enterprise Projects Requires Cross Enterprise Project Tools
As cross enterprise projects become more common, companies have going to have to come up with new ways of coordinating these projects with groupware.
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Caught in a Timewarp
Many companies implementing cross enterprise projects have done nothing to change or update their project tools and methodology. Many companies seem to think they can simply graft on tools and methods that are top down and hierarchical onto implementations that are based upon the voluntary cooperation of a variety of supply chain partners. Large consulting companies are not of much assistance as they themselves are extremely hierarchical. Several years ago we tried to explain the benefits of WordPress to a major consulting company and they needed to convene a committiee to analyze the “cost benefit” on software which is..
- Free
- Has an enormous benefit
- Can be brought up in 30 minutes and can allow contributors from anywhere to add and read content
This large company decided instead to stay with its current information management solution – sending PowerPoint and Word documents by email. By the way, this company consults others on how to “use technology.”
The commonly praised collaboration project was Wal Mart in the retail replenishment space. However, Wal Mart is a special situation, they can force their suppliers to go with their program because their suppliers receive such a high percentage of their overall sales from their relationship with Wal Mart. Other companies that are less dominant over their suppliers, which is most companies, will need to take a collaborative approach in order to get collaborative software installed.
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WordPress and SharePoint
WordPress is an excellent blogging platfrom, and there are project coordination tools like Huddle that manage both data and have project tools. The problem is not enough companies use them, because not enough companies care to learn about them. The document management standard is becoming Microsoft Sharepoint. Companies that elected to go with SharePoint will have a serious problem in implementing collaborative projects, and can not be used effectively across enterprises. However, the software is just part of the problem, companies are by in large still not thinking in terms of collaboration.
