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Welcome to the first Soltius newsletter for 2009. This issue discusses a number of SAP products and Soltius services that streamline operations, improve efficiency and reduce cost. We also have included a practical white paper to assist in the decision-making process when assessing and evaluating IT investments.

White Paper: Calculating the ROI

New IT projects require a strong return on investment (ROI) to be justified and some benefits, such as improved user experience, can be difficult to quantify. But as budgets get tighter, decisions on which projects should proceed will be based on the financial value it can deliver. To make the right decisions, the costs versus the potential benefits need to be clearly understood.

In this Soltius white paper Dr Peter Catt provides a formula and step by step process to calculate the ROI in dollar terms, from estimated financial benefits to the number of months it will take for the solution to pay for itself.

Download the white paper and an Excel spreadsheet with the formulas to perform your own calculations from the Soltius website.

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Cutting costs in procurement

In these uncertain times, it is vital for any organisation to control and minimise costs. One area where there is a substantial potential for cost reduction is procurement. The ever increasing emphasis on lean processes and the availability of newer technologies and tools to realise them means there is no better time than now for reviewing and enhancing existing processes.

SAP’s Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) provides good tools to not only meet today’s challenges, but also to achieve long term process improvement and cost efficiency. We will briefly look at three of these tools, and the flow on effect from their use.

• Catalogues: With electronic search capabilities, version management, uniform and easy-to-use presentation of rich content and seamless integration with the shopping cart process, catalogues not only make procurement an enjoyable experience for the end user, they also allow the organisation to decentralise the process. Control over expenditure is maintained via pre-agreed prices and a reduction in users buying the ‘wrong’ products, which can occur in a non-catalogue based procurement. Organisations that have a high volume of spend managed via catalogues should be constantly looking at adding to the total catalogue item count. SRM offers rich functionality for the setting up of catalogues, including bills of materials, sales kits and price scaling. Consider also that some of these common use items may require extra data to be passed back to the supplier. The E-Form can be used to satisfy this requirement, such as with the procurement of business cards.
• Sourcing and Contracts Management: The supplier source determination and contracts management functionality in SRM can be used to lead the users to the correct supplier for the commodity rather than the users trying to find the supplier themselves. The benefits of this approach are the reduction in the end users’ time to find a suitable supplier and avoiding maverick spend. From an organisational point of view, contracts often mean lower prices for products of an acceptable quality.
• Automation: The end-to-end procurement process from catalogues to payment presents multiple opportunities for process automation making the process more efficient and bringing about long term administrative cost savings via the reduction /elimination of manual steps.

Supplier invoice processing is one such area which often is a pain-point and organisations should look to bring more suppliers to electronic invoicing. The suppliers that provide catalogue items should be the logical first choice for electronic integration, primarily due to the accuracy of price and standardisation of data in the purchasing process.
 

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Upcoming seminars

SAP Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) is supported by a set of tools, applications, and processes that help companies control and manage their business and operational performance. It combines strategic goal setting and alignment with planning, forecasting, modeling capabilities, analytics, and tactical reporting.

Soltius is holding seminars in Auckland and Wellington on EPM  and its capabilities, with a overview of the solution set and a demonstration of SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, a product within the EPM suite. With an emphasis on the high level, strategic benefits of the product suite, this presentation is relevant to finance professionals and other senior managers within your organisation.

Auckland: Thursday, 30 April 2009

Wellington: Thursday, 7 May 2009

For more information or to register your interest in attending one of these seminars, email info@soltius.co.nz

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Supply chain risks minimised in new model

The Supply-Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model is a well established methodology for identifying efficiencies in a supply chain and the latest version is now enabling Soltius experts to minimise risk and address environmental issues as well.

The latest release of the Supply-Chain Council’s process reference model, SCOR 9.0, includes expanded risk management capabilities and new features to aid environmental sustainability.

Unexpected disruptions to an organisation’s supply chain have a significant cost in both lost revenue and service levels. Not only that, a publicly listed company’s share price can plummet by more than 15% as a result of a high profile supply chain event. To avoid these losses, an organisation can utilise the model’s calculation metrics to identify, quantify and mitigate the risks.

The new version also includes capabilities from GreenSCOR, formerly a standalone model that enables organisations to minimise the environmental impact of their supply chain by reducing energy consumption and waste.

Go to the SCOR page on our website to find out how Soltius can help to cut costs and increase profits with the Supply Chain Operation Reference model.

Download an overview of the model's latest release, SCOR 9.0, as a pdf (273KB).

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Meet the consultants

Ryan Lewis, Solution Architect

Solution Manager is becoming increasingly important in the SAP landscape and Ryan Lewis is ensuring Soltius clients are getting the full value from the toolset.

Ryan is a Solution Architect at Soltius and recently returned from stint as an SAP consultant in Switzerland, having previously worked for more than three years in Soltius’ Auckland office.

With more than a decade’s experience in SAP, he is now managing the Soltius Basis team and says his new role gives him the opportunity to help clients make full use of Solution Manager’s improved capabilities.

“Solution Manager has matured a great deal over the past few years and it offers a lot of very good tools. It’s already a part of most SAP landscapes so it’s just a matter of configuring it to gain the full value.”

Some organisations may have been reluctant to spend the time implementing Solution Manager in the past, Ryan says, but SAP has placed more emphasis on it in recent times. And as a requirement for downloading and installing patches, Solution Manager has become vital for the ongoing support of SAP investments.

He says that Solution Manager offers a range of benefits with a fast return on investment. “The management of Java, for example, has been problematic in the past but improvements to Solution Manager are making that a lot easier. In addition, Enhancement Pack 1 includes great automated set-up tools, which makes it even easier to implement.”

To talk to Soltius about how you can gain more value with Solution Manager, email info@soltius.co.nz

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