Is your open architecture, compliance, and disruption getting too complex for your IT teams? The powerpoint looked easy, but getting all the work done is not.

You have core infrastructure and administrative activities that your basis team performs, but do they have the time or skill set to perform all the tasks when needed? If it doesn’t get done, it can get expensive and messy.

Titan’s Fractional Consulting Services can alleviate the stress, worry, and frustration of these tasks not getting done or done on-time. These technical tasks and activities don’t take up a lot of time – a few hours here, a few hours there. But when you add up the hours, it requires planning, unique skill sets, and often performed at the expense of core, mission-critical tasks.

Our fractional consulting services are short-term engagements for specific or targeted purposes and results. For example, one client needed help upgrading their security protocols, SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and TSL (Transport Layer Security).

Software vendors like SAP and Salesforce use these security protocols. The certificates expire on a certain date and require updating. The updates occur infrequently, and for a manager or administrator, it may be a secondary priority even though it is of high importance. If you do not perform these tasks often, it takes much longer than the few hours it takes for an experienced person.

We brought in a Senior Consultant and performed these updates along with some other clean up tasks in a couple of days. For them, it is so much easier to bring in an experienced consultant to get this done and out of the way – less stress, guarantee results.

Another client survived an internal audit, and the report disclosed numerous violations in their user roles. The audit report required immediate remediation for elevated risk violations in 60 days. Most consulting service providers and consultants will not pursue a short-term, high-intensity project due to risk and difficulty in finding the right consultant.

At Titan, we recognize that these are typical events that occur in your business and we have a solution to help you – that is what we do, help our clients solve problems.

Our solution, we brought in a Senior GRC and Security Roles Consultant that helped remediate the high-risk violations. He worked remotely for two weeks, full-time, and tackled the biggest issues. Then for the next four weeks, he was used part-time as an advisor, counselor, and hands-on fixer.

The client met the 60-day deadline demanded by the auditors which helped in the eyes of Executives and IT Management.

Fractional services are not used for just emergency situations, but that is where many clients need them. We also perform short-term planning and working sessions. Test Data Migration is a growing concern and effort for many clients. As ERP landscapes evolve in complexity and volume, putting together a timely, cost/value test environment becomes a challenge.

It is not uncommon for a manager to spend weeks or months cleaning up orphan transports in the Test/Quality environment. Getting your TDMS strategy aligned is another area that can streamline your RUN phase of operations.

One client was feeling this pressure after a few mishaps that resulted in some unexpected downtime due to incomplete testing data – yes it happens to other companies too. They realized that they had to improve their TDMS practices; spending weeks to prepare for a weekend shutdown was not an efficient way to support the business.

We prepared a 2-day workshop to identify where improvement opportunities existed. Topics evaluated during the workshop include:
• Current landscape with an overlay of critical business processes,
• Current TDMS Tools,
• TDMS Governance Policies and Practices,
• Benchmarking Activities and Effort,
• Current Metrics and Expectations.

The result of the workshop identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the current model. Also, a list and timeline of opportunities and investments such as TDMS tools, critical test scenarios, and opportunities for improvement and cost reduction. The next phase of the workshop is to implement the recommendations and develop new benchmarks.

Where do fractional consulting services work effectively to reduce risk, worry, and frustration?

Our clients tell us that our Fractional Consulting Services take the weight off and help:
• Offload complicated, high-risk tasks,
• Complete infrequent but critical activities, and
• Supplementing service level tasks when the backlog is too great!

If you are interested in learning how Titan’s Fractional Consulting Services can streamline your operations, help you get more work done, or drive changes in your current processes, contact Warren Norris, warren@titanconsulting.net, 972.679.5183; or, contact your Titan Consulting Director. You can also see additional information on our Advisory Services page at www.titanconsulting.net.

2017 was the year of planning for SAP HANA. Will 2018 be known as The Year of The HANA Upgrade?

SAP has done an exceptional job of incentivizing customers and sales reps to migrate to the latest suite of SAP applications – most notably S/4 HANA, HANA, and BW4/HANA. Which application is a top priority for you to upgrade, ERP or EDW – Enterprise Data Warehouse?

What are some of SAP’s clients saying about their road to HANA? Are they realizing the business benefits of migrating to a HANA-based platform? The expectation is that HANA will deliver process and performance improvements that speed up transaction processing and reporting.

Simply, HANA is about performance and data volume. Because of poor data management policies, some customers are not getting the performance. Is this HANA’s fault?

The data volume issues we saw are grouped into three categories:
• Database size and transaction volume
• Reporting, and
• Data Usage

ILM, Information Lifecycle Management is a major benefit of migrating to HANA. However, many customers either do not have an ILM model or their practices are not current.

First, what is ILM? ILM is the segmenting or tiering of data based on criteria such as usage, relevance, compliance, and others. You usually hear this referred to as Hot, Warm, and Cold data.

Since HANA uses in-memory storage and a premium is paid for this storage, it is in your best interest to segment your data to pay only for what you need.

One recent adopter had a 15 TB DB. Can HANA handle this efficiently? Maybe, maybe not, according to our sources, it depends on how the data is managed. Before the upgrade, we recommended that they archive their data. Archiving is another form of tiering, making the archived data cold or off-line.

This customer did not archive their data and the result – slower than expected reporting and transaction processing. After the upgrade, reporting efficiency and duration did improve, but not as expected. SAP suggests that you will get up to an 80+% improvement due to the HANA and S/4 simplified data scheme. They were only getting a 30% improvement.

Data analysis and preparation should be performed before the upgrade. Define your data according to the three tiers. Do this analysis and it could dramatically impact your HANA sizing exercise; Enterprise HANA, BW4/HANA, or S/4 HANA.

The exercise can take between 2-days to 2-weeks. We recommend including stakeholders from both business and IT in the workshops. However, a deep dive into some data statistics on volume, frequency, and type can streamline the analysis. The criteria to assess your data is common, the approach and results are unique to each customer and industry.

Each customer, business, and environment evaluates their data differently.

Using this criterion, segment the data into Hot, Warm, and Cold. Typically, Hot and Cold data is easy to define. The grey area is with Warm data. And this definition may change based on the business function and processes; financial data has a different scoring or weight than operational data.

Hot data, or Tier 1 data, is recently acquired data relevant for months or years. Hot data benefits from the HANA in-memory computing and capabilities. This is the data that HANA manages best for performance and speed.

Warm data, or Tier 2 data, compressed, but disk-based rather than in memory, but needs to shift from warm to hot in short order.

Cold data, or Tier 3 data, is lower cost and value data and commonly extracted using Vora or Hadoop, for example. This data is stored off-line with lower cost platforms.

Once you have performed this exercise prior to the upgrade, take periodic snapshots to see if your assumptions on the criterion has changed.

Recent articles spoke of the importance of archiving. Start with the archiving strategy you have in place and evolve it towards ILM Best Practices.

If you do not have an ILM strategy in place or need an experienced team to review your strategy or upgrade plan, contact Warren Norris, warren@titanconsulting.net, 972.679.5183; or, contact your Titan Consulting Sales Director.

Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) was invoked more than 15 years ago. It seems like yesterday when Enron and many other reckless companies cooked their books.

The goal of SOX was to restore confidence and close loopholes that allowed companies to defraud investors. The regulatory impact of compliance on companies is considered a major concern according to a recent survey of C-level executives. The Cost of Compliance and risk on these companies has increased exponentially and digitization will substantiate this trend.

Section 404 of the regulation is one of the most arduous to implement. It requires companies to perform extensive internal control tests and include the results in the audit report. However, over the past 15 years, most companies have attacked this approach using standalone tools that target the various controls.

The current trend is to combine your governance and controls requirements and build synergistic solutions. SAP GRC accomplishes this integration and lowers your cost of compliance and reduces your risk.

Another significant trend is to combine management objectives of business performance, compliance, and value / cost control.

There are many areas of risk, but one certain violation of controls, risk for fraud, deception, and loss is user access. The four primary functions of User Controls in SAP GRC are:
• Access Risk Analysis (ARA),
• Business Role Management (BRM),
• Access Request Management (ARM), and
• Emergency Access Management (EAM).

Where should you start?

Audits or the notification of an audit is the catalyst for many businesses to tighten up their controls. When audits trigger your actions, we see ARA or Access Risk Analysis as the starting point.

For instance, one of our clients resolved their Access Controls challenges with SAP GRC. This $1 billion USD manufacturing company resided in the portfolio of a private equity group for many years. As a privately-held company, access controls weren’t aggressively enforced. Management’s goal was to grow the company for future sale. Controls were a secondary objective for management and to ensure major breaches did not occur.

Then they were sold to a publicly-traded global company that had governance and risk controls as a measurable objective of management. They had a controls program in place co-sponsored by the CEO, CFO, and CISO and were rolling it out to the newly acquired entity.

The first time they ran ARA for the new business there were over 4,000,000 conflicts. The divisions management had to abate these conflicts or suffer the consequences. The task fell squarely on the shoulders of the division controller and IT Director.

It took two months of reviewing the conflicts and either remediating or mitigating them. In today’s manufacturing and economic environment, you will never remove all conflicts due to:
• Lean Manufacturing Environment,
• Overlap of Primary and Secondary Responsibilities,
• Cost and Risk Analysis.
After the focused effort, the conflicts were reduced by 75%.

Some of the challenges that occur in lean companies are False Positives. A false positive typically happens when secondary roles are assigned; for example, a user can receive goods and put them away. This is common in smaller warehouses and lean plants.

In these situations, you need to ensure that remediation occurs and is reviewed and signed off by the appropriate approval levels and internal audit. This may be as simple as running a weekly report or performing random sampling of conflicted areas.

Even in the best governance practices, there will always be conflicts. The balancing of conflicts and risk is the art and science of a well-designed GRC environment. Attention to the business roles, part of BRM, is the activity where you weigh the cost/risk of the roles.

A function that streamlines a burdensome workload and provides great benefits is Access Request Management (ARM).

“I don’t have enough time to do all of this compliance work!” is a common complaint we hear from controllers and plant managers. By leveraging the ARM functionality, you automate the role creation process and it saves you time and frustration.

One IT Director we work with loves this functionality.

Now, when a new employee is hired, the hiring manager submits an electronic request for the new employee or contractor. The GRC system builds all the necessary user ids, roles, and authorizations – no human intervention other than to review the audit report.

Where should you start is a common quandary. We recommend a diagnostic that targets areas of risk in your processes. The diagnostic will highlight the low hanging fruit: risks, rules, opportunities, and effort to remediate or mitigate.

If you need assistance getting your Cost of Compliance under control, Titan Consulting is here to advise and guide you. Contact David Geaslen at 832.422.3251, or david@titanconsulting.net; or contact your Titan Sales Director.

The CFO was nervous! Operations were panicking! How big was this inventory write-off going to be?

Year-end bonuses were in jeopardy and stakeholder’s jobs could be lost!

Paul was brought in to fix the Warehouse Automation Project. He was the leader they needed for this project: he should have led the project in the first place! He was bright, fair, respected, and had worked in the company for 20 years – management and operations trusted his judgment.

The inventory shortage problem surfaced when they started doing their quarterly cycle-counts at their Southwest warehouses. The smallest differences were around 10%, with some locations having as much as a 30% gap: the quantities in the bins did not agree with their SAP system.

What happened?

The warehouse automation project started a few years ago when the manufacturing company wanted to automate their North American warehouses. The solution was to harmonize and automate the primary warehouse processes:
• Receiving and Putaway;
• Inventory, Bin and Location Methodology;
• Pick, Pack, and Ship;
• Internal Warehouse Movements and Processes.

A team was formed to evaluate the warehouse locations, current practices, and finally choose a WM Automation software package.

It was like opening Pandora’s Box. No two locations had the same layout, work practices, and procedures.

The project team chose a bolt-on package, and the investment was less than they had expected. The team elected to move forward and customize the mobile software rather than harmonize the SAP WM process. The emphasis was on laying out the screens on the mobile platform in a WYSIWYG format. The problem, you can’t harmonize business processes just through a common screen layout – Mistake #1.

The software did what it was supposed to do, build a flexible, easy-to-use front-end, but the software companies consultants didn’t know SAP. But they gave their best effort to integrate the data. Mistake #2!

When items were taken out of inventory to fulfill a Sales Order, it was done manually. The inventory was relieved from stock after the truck had left. The updates were only performed periodically throughout the day. No one trusted the numbers in the system. Mistake #3.

When the next order that selected those items couldn’t find them, the warehouse handlers fulfilled the orders from other bins and locations. It was with good intention, but with horrible results. The warehouse teams chalked it up to business as usual, but no one could begin to imagine the snowball effect on the inventory counts.

Paul and his new team brought in a partner with expertise on mobile applications and SAP. They had tough choices to make. Where would they start? The immediate goal was put trust back into the process, or their problems would continue to mount. Their priorities:
1. Harmonize the warehouse processes so that the system reflected the physical
2. Automate the good processes they had
3. Integrate the front end mobile app with back-end SAP.

During their investigation, the SAP WM system, while not optimal, was performing as designed and configured. The primary culprit was the mobile software. It did not send correct information back to WM.

Paul had to rip the bandage off and start all over! No one liked the decision, but when the steering committee evaluated the alternatives, this made the most sense.

The key takeaway and lesson learned from this experience – UI/UX is important, but only one part of the solution. A pretty screen without tight integration is a recipe for lost bonuses and jobs as well as late nights and overbudget projects.

Titan Consulting and their Titan Software’s Warehouse Management solution, easyShip® addresses all the checkboxes for your mobile warehouse environment on SAP.
• Updates back-end integration and synchronization with Warehouse and Inventory Management View real-time          integration.
• View real-time stock in the warehouse by product and by bin.
• Perform transfer order picking with quantity updates.
• Perform transfer order putaways with bin confirmation.
• And more features that streamline operations and control inventory.

What you’ll find in the easyShip® Management app:
• HTML5 technology to design the ultimate UI/UX work experience.
• Warehouse Cockpit: Review the workflow for the day.
• Shipping Calendar: Assists you in scheduling time and resources.
• Full Device Integration: Lets you get the most out of your device.

Paul and his team have many months of work to do before they can untangle their Warehouse Automation Project, but they now have a clear path to the right solution.

We will continue updating you with Paul’s progress with this project in the next few months. If in the meantime, you have challenges in your Warehouse Automation Project or you are planning a new project and need assistance, Titan Consulting is here to advise and guide you on the right mobile and warehouse automation strategy for your company. Contact David Geaslen at 832.422.3251, or david@titanconsulting.net; or contact your Titan Sales Director.

December seems to be a good time to reflect on the past year and start making plans for the coming year. I believe we are conditioned to that at a young age with the idea of New Year’s Resolutions. In reality, moving from 2017 to 2018 is just the passage of time through a linear path, but we look for a “reset” each year when we start again in January.

2017 has seen its challenges on many fronts, including natural disasters that affected many people. It is reassuring to see how as a society, we put aside other differences and help our fellow man in times of need like this, and I pray that those affected continue to recover and see a much better 2018.

From the business side, we see 2018 as an exciting year. More projects are being planned, and it appears that companies are seeing more and more how IT can enable the business to be more successful and competitive.

At SAPPHIRE NOW 2017, SAP unveiled technology that just a couple of years ago seemed like it was years in the future. Now, with HANA, SAP Leonardo, and the continuation of IoT technology, the advancement of business solutions will progress at speeds we have not witnessed before. It will be very interesting to see how technology advances business as well as things in our everyday life over the next few years.

I am reminded of how much advancement we’ve seen in the last 20 years when my kids ask me what kind of cell phone I had when I was a kid. I explained that I didn’t get my first mobile phone until the 90’s and then it was a ‘bag phone’ and then a ‘candy bar phone’ and they were AMAZING!

Now we have a computer that we carry in our pocket (or on our wrist for some people), that continues to progress and lessen the need for a computer on your desk.

As businesses look at how this new technology fits into their landscape, they are still evaluating it for ROI. It only makes sense to look at quick ROI projects first when technology is advancing so rapidly.

Don’t forget to just look for all of the new technology for high ROI projects. Over the last several years, many companies have shelved projects that may need another look now. The technology and ROI may now justify those projects.

Total Cost of Ownership is always a relevant discussion. Now more than ever, we are having discussions with clients on how to get more from their current systems. These discussions can take several paths, but typically include one of the following:
• Implementing functionality that they already own, but aren’t using,
• Reviewing existing solutions to see if they still meet the needs of the business, and if they can be served with a better solution,
• Reviewing business needs that may be able to be streamlined with Mobile or Web-based Solutions.

Reducing TCO continues to be a primary focus of our services in 2018, as we deliver high ROI solutions to our customers.

We would like to thank all our clients, partners, consultants, and friends for your continued trust in Titan. It is because of you and your trust in us that we come to work with passion and enthusiasm to support you.

We look forward to 2018 to unleash the power of together® and to deliver solutions that help grow your business and realize the full potential of your SAP investment.

I was watching my college team on Saturday and could not believe how many commercials were on. The one that stood out was with actor Dean Winters practicing his many test crash dummy impressions. The point of the commercial, how a simple incident turns into a bigger problem and conflagrates into a full five-alarm fire.

The funniest incident starts at a tailgate: the barbecue explodes erupting into a massive fire inside the car and sets off a chain reaction.

“And you were in such a hurry to get into the game?”, Winters continues. Does this humorous portrayal remind you how much we need insurance to cover the unpredictable and unforeseen?

You also need insurance for your SAP Applications!

Because the unexpected happens with your systems and applications and you need insurance for big and small fires. You need more than just insurance; you need a partner that is there for you when the fire alarm sounds – Titan’s Application Management Services (AMS).

Our AMS provide you with:
• Reliability
• Predictability and Flexibility
• Insights
• Value

Have you had one small incident engulf your entire system, time, resources, and your energy?

One of our clients had this problem, and we covered it. They called us, and we dove right in and resolved their Transport Layer Security (TLS) upgrade issue.

They were stable for many years on SAP and needed to upgrade TLS levels. The tests were successful in Development and Quality, but when it got to Production, the system crashed. What happened? Customer Sales Reps could not enter quotes and sales orders for two days.

The CIO called us to help, and we resolved the problem within a few hours.

They rely on Titan Consulting to fix their issues when they happen. We specialize in SAP systems: R/3, ECC, BW, BOBJ, CRM, and more. We provide project management, functional, Basis, security, and application development support for all their SAP systems as level 2 and level 3 support.

Another client uses our services as an extension of their IT organization because our rates are fair, predictable, and our service model is flexible.

They have a core team that handles most of level 1 and level 2 work, but at times, needs support due to the volume of tickets, incident urgency, or skill set.

Also, we provide level 3 and level 4 application support. Level 3 covers enhancements, roll-outs, and upgrades to their existing applications and systems. Level 4 is for new products or projects.

They acquired a new business, and we performed the roll-out of SAP modules across the US and Canada. Since our team has dedicated and named resources, we understood their business processes, configuration, and customization. We supplemented our support team with some additional consultants and could deliver the project in 10 weeks.

Our agreement has a defined rate card and getting a budget estimate, and planning was easy. We scoped the processes and customization that were needed and applied the rates to the estimated hours. The Capex was quickly compiled, and the roll-out plan was approved.

Also, we assisted their IT and Business with upgrades, training, enhancements, and new business processes.

Our AMS services provide insights that spotlight opportunities and threats to your SAP system. During our Quarterly Business Review (QBR), we provide data-driven insights into where you are spending your time and resources.

The dashboard is organized by functional area or by service level type that resources are consumed: in Finance or by Application Development. Understanding where the scatter diagram of incidents are coming from may also uncover where you need training, corrections, or additional support.

For another AMS client, we identified a pattern that suggested a need for training. In Finance, we saw a need for training after related tickets were submitted over a 6-month period. After some discussions with the controller, and due to resource promotions and turnover, knowledge transfer was required on Report Writer and AP processes.

At Titan Consulting, we always start with the end in mind so we recommended an intensive 4-hour workshop over a couple of days to review these suspect processes. The Finance team was pleased with the training because they wanted to avoid these repeated blocks and problems in the system.

Yes, our AMS offerings provide more than just insurance. We deliver reliable, predictable, and flexible services that help you run your business more effectively at a lower cost.

Do you want to avoid Mayhem and bring order and clarity to your SAP environments? Contact Blake Snider, blake@titanconsulting.net, or call him at 469-835-5358; or contact your Titan Consulting Director.

You can also see additional information on our AMS services at Titan Consulting, www.titanconsulting.net.

Why do more than 80% of enterprise Mobility projects fail? And what do you need to do to be part of the 20% that succeeds!

I am going to synthesize the numerous conversations, presentations, working sessions and mobility projects to give you the actions you need to take to deliver your project as one of the successful 20%.

You can place the main challenges, hurdles, missteps, and myopia in the following areas:
• Project Results Take Too Long
• Happy and Unhappy Users
• Project Owner and Processes

I don’t want to scare you and say that if you don’t mobilize you die. It’s not that dramatic, but your competition is going to use a mobile platform to serve their customers better and maybe steal some of yours!

Smartphones and tablets are changing the way we run our lives and conduct business. Developing apps for a distributed enterprise is no easy task. Usual challenges include multiple technologies, highly distributed environments and computing networks often built on a hybrid infrastructure combining legacy systems with newer ones to work on a myriad of mobile devices.

Your mobile strategy does not have to be complex. In fact, the ROI should easily provide you with a 4:1 or 5:1 ROI or better. One of our clients invested about $200K in Titan’s easyPrice application and is realizing about a 2 million dollar benefit.

So, what are the success criteria?

“Why do these projects take so long?”
I have had several clients ask me this question. Mobility projects get bogged down for many reasons; infrastructure, functionality, user experience, sponsors, and conflicting objectives.

Success in mobile projects follow these simple principles:
• Follow agile project objective and deliver usable functionality, fast
• Focus on user experience and ease of use
• Collaborate with Business and IT

To start, focus on some quick wins in the shortest timeframe. An agile model best suits this approach. Build the apps as an extension of the enterprise transactional backbone. Typically, this is SAP ECC or S/4 HANA for our clients but could be Salesforce, Workday, or other leading enterprise applications.

By extending your SAP processes through easyApps, you ensure the integrity and controls in processing your mobile transactions. This solution includes your business rules, security, and integration for domestic or global implementations.

One of our clients started their mobility roadmap with easyPrice which mobilizes Quotes and Sales Orders. Or you can start with one of the back-office processes such as HR Benefits Requests, PTO Approval, or AP Invoice Approval.

“Why are users unhappy with their mobile applications?”
When I hear this question, it drives me batty! The most common complaints I hear are:
• “Our Sales Quoting app is not intuitive like Amazon or Uber.”
• “I am not a SAP user, why can’t I use functions I am most familiar with?”

Our “User First” approach allows us to focus on the screen and form size to simplify use and navigation on the devices they are familiar with, smartphones and tablets. This approach increases user acceptance and accelerates deployment and usage rates.

Developing the UI/UX with HTML5 adopts the ease of use and capabilities that mobile users use every day on their phone and tablets. Users like our easyApps because they work and they are comfortable with the navigation.

“Are building mobile apps an IT project?”
No, our experience with successful projects engages joint sponsorship with both Business and IT.

Jumping on the mobile app bandwagon is common these days. The number of ‘killer’ apps increases every day in the App Store. Still, more than 80% of these apps are never downloaded and used. Why?

The recipe for success for mobile apps demands participation and commitment by business users to design and test the app. The testing of the app by the users should identify more issues during test cycles rather than in the field.
Developers and users collaborate in an agile format to develop the look, feel, and processes to reap the capabilities of the mobile devices.

IT will continue to focus on the ERP transaction backbone, infrastructure, connectivity, security, and governance. These elements can’t be ignored and require consistency across your mobile platform.

We answered these questions and more for our clients, SAPPHIRE attendees, ASUG attendees, and other conferences.

Titan Software easyApps are designed and built to extend your business processes using native SAP integration. The same services integrate Salesforce, SuccessFactors, and other cloud and on-premise applications into the hands of your anytime, anywhere workforce.

Our Titan Software easyApps are designed to deliver business value to your mobile workforce with a focus on reducing your IT and Business TCO. We offer mobile solutions for Finance, Supply Chain, Customer Engagement and Human Resources.

Are you looking to a 4:1 or 5:1 ROI on your mobility project? If you are interested in seeing Titan’s easyApps, perform on every day mobile devices, contact Joseph Lamb, joseph@titanconsulting.net, or call him at 972-743-2872; or contact your Titan Consulting Director.

You can also see additional information on Titan Software at Titan Consulting.

“Everyone has a plan until you get punched,” Mike Tyson said in his heyday. Hurricane Harvey did that to Houston and much of southern Texas and Louisiana.

When I started writing this article, I wanted to talk about TechEd and the many benefits of attending the event. TechEd is a brilliant community of techies learning and sharing with one another at this annual conference in Las Vegas.

Then Hurricane Harvey hit and devastated Houston and the neighboring areas in south Texas and Louisiana. We have customers, consultants, employees, and friends in these areas. They witnessed the total disruption of what is near and dear to us through many days of rain, wind, terror, fear, and prayer – lots of prayers!

The flooding we saw on TV looked surreal and cast directly from The Walking Dead. The devastation was real, the fear was palpable, and the connection to the community was overwhelming.

Like a punch from Iron Mike, how you respond to a punch shows the character of the fighter. And that’s how Texans responded to Harvey. You may have seen the sign on TV, “Harvey, Bring it ON!”

However, it is at the time of disasters like Harvey that we see the beauty and humanity of our community. Not just in the local community, or the SAP community, but across the country and from around the world.

The outpouring of help was noticed by everyone. During college football games, the TV commercials supporting Texas were on every channel – “The Lone Star State is not alone!”

From Walmart to the Red Cross, we saw acts of kindness, giving, and compassion. Look at the caring and giving created by Houston Texans Defensive End, J.J. Watt. He wanted to help the victims of Harvey and started by trying to raise $500,000. His Houston Flood Relief Fund has now raised over $30,000,000 with new donations arriving daily.

But it does not take an All-Pro Football Player to have an impact; everyone has lent a hand.

David Geaslen, one of our Sales Directors who lives in the Cypress Creek area of Houston, was affected by Harvey. Water came up to within inches of his home. He was fortunate as he only lost part of his mailbox – it was hit by a passing boat evacuating neighbors.

Many of his neighbor’s homes were underwater, and the streets flowed like the creek that usually runs through his neighborhood. He helped move people, furniture, memories, and valuables to higher ground, 2nd floors, and attics. He moved an elderly neighbor to his 2nd floor as the neighbor’s house flooded.

Little acts like David’s and many like him throughout the stricken area leaves the biggest impression during events like Hurricane Harvey.

A lot of disruption occurred, not the type of disruption we talk about with SAP, but the disruption of lives, houses, memories, and dreams.

If you were not able to attend this year and would like highlights of key topics at TechEd, contact Warren Norris, warren@titanconsulting.net, 972.679.5183; or, contact your Titan Consulting Director. Check out our other informative thought-leadership articles at www.titanconsulting.net.

Do you like going to the dentist? Do you like implementing compliance and governance systems?

They are necessary, but few look forward to it!

Master Data Governance (MDG) and Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) are two of the fastest growing applications areas where, ironically, systematizing processes saves time and money. We think that MDG and GRC can benefit your company, and in some cases, position the processes as a profit generator.

Let’s face it, compliance and governance is not going away, so what is the best way to deal with it? The way to learn how to manage and control your data is to implement these systems efficiently, effectively, and economically.

Here are a couple examples how Master Data Management (MDM) and the innovation leading Master Data Governance (MDG) improves the process efficiency of your data creation and maintenance:
• For the Material Master
• For the Customer Master

Controlling the Material Master
One of our clients, a global oil and gas company was implementing their specialty chemicals division on SAP ECC. In the initial analysis, there were over 400,000 materials.

We dug into the legacy system to validate these findings and realized how much duplication was occurring between the ERP transactional, 3rd party, and analytics systems.

The problem was system and process related. There was not a system, therefore, the process was fragmented and permitted duplication in the departments and systems. An estimated 30% of the periodic reconciliation was focused on reconciling or rationalizing the numbers, quantity and unit-of-measure between the various systems.

Symptoms of this problem are exasperated in processes where variations of a material are used. This is common where Variant Config (VC) is used for materials management, quality management, and production.

Implementing MDG provides a system for effectively managing the material master. Additionally, MDG delivers a Best Practices process with rules and workflow to streamline the efficient and consistent creation of data.

Material Requests, the request to create a new material, came from multiple departments in the company. The material master presents a challenge in that many departments need to contribute to the accurate setup of the data: planning, scheduling, purchasing, and accounting are a few owners of the data in the material master.

A major complaint we hear in many companies is “it takes too long to create a new material!”. In our compliance driven world, getting data owners to update and approve the information is critical. This could delay procurement from purchasing, controlling from costing, or schedulers from properly planning the production; all of which slows down your operations.

The workflow in MDG is designed to simplify the creation and approval of the material views in a timely manner. Your systems and processes should not hinder your business, but promote the efficient scaling of the data.

On-boarding New Customers
The current IT landscape of cloud, on-premise, analytics, and governance contribute to the complexity of managing your customers aka business partners. If you have your prospects and customers in Salesforce.com (SFDC) integrating the partner attributes consistently to ECC or Analytics is essential.

Another client used MDM, now being enhanced by MDG to govern control of new customers. The company was growing through acquisitions in the same markets and duplicate customers was a major concern to ensure proper pricing, credit control, and analytics by segment.

Data Governance serves as a bridge between the business and IT. Getting everyone on the same page was a critical outcome of the project. The first part of the project was to define who owns the Customer Master.

Every company has a different approach to data ownership.

Controlling data management is not a one-size-fits-all model. For a global beverage company, a separate group centrally owned all the master data creation. This group reported to IT, but relied heavily on the business to provide the proper attributes based on contractual agreements and existing business rules.

For a global telecom company, finance business users owned the partner data, but stakeholders in pricing, tax, credit, and sales have a clear picture of their responsibility for governing the master record. IT provided a review and veto role in the process, but the business owned the data.

With cloud-based applications like SFDC, the rules need to apply enterprise-wide at the time of creation in all customer-centric applications, not just at the time when partners hit SAP. Building and educating your organization to coordinate and integrate the creation process simplifies the compliance, creation and reporting for this data.

Master Data Management and Governance ultimately may not end up as a profit center. However, the benefits of MDG and MDM help to control your risk and costs. Achieving centralized and integrated systems to support your creation and maintenance flag data quickly and more consistently to ensure that your data is there when you need it. Maybe even contributing to generating more revenue with the right customers.

How do you manage and control your most valuable data across multiple platforms? Is the cost of compliance costing you too much?

Our Governance and Compliance consultants know the SAP business processes and can recommend the best compliance and risk strategies. Contact Kevin Kirkland, kevin@titanconsulting.net, 214.435.8411; or, contact your Titan Consulting Director. You can see additional information on our Advisory Services page at www.titanconsulting.net.

At TechEd, I drove a miniature “sensor-tagged” vehicle through a maze of obstacles. The goal was to drive the vehicle quickly through the maze without hitting any of the obstacles.

It was challenging, and my kids and grand kids could have kicked my butt in this game.

The point of the game was to demonstrate how to track deliveries or school children on buses, and how you can monitor their route and progress. The premise is how to use technology to compete, digitize and transform the business.

At dinner, we discussed how much fun it was to play the game and talked about some of the cool things that are emerging in this area. However, one of our guests mentioned that while it was great to see these toys, they had to get more from their current data collection systems before talking about tracking vehicles, machine learning, Big Data and other leading-edge initiatives.

We got into a fascinating conversation on how to get the best of both worlds – a bimodal approach. Get more from your current systems and still have the bandwidth to initiate new exploratory projects like IoT, Machine Learning, and Big Data.

The path that we guide many clients on their journey follows these straightforward steps:
Step 1 – Automate the Shop Floor
Step 2 – Building a Preventative Shop Floor
Step 3 – Migrate to a Predictable Shop Floor

For this article, we will focus on Automating the Shop Floor.

The Journey of 1000 Miles begins with the First Step!
Where are you today? The best place to start your journey to IoT, Big Data, and Machine Learning is to have a reality check on where are you today?

The goals of automating the shop floor benefit COO’s, Controllers, Asset Managers, Maintenance Teams, Front Line Employees and other stakeholders.

If you automate, you should expect to improve:
• Product Output and Quality
• Equipment Efficiency and Effectiveness
• Employee Morale and Safety

What data are you capturing? If you are on the path to Machine Learning, Big Data or IoT, you will need to know what data to capture and is it the right data. An objective of shop floor automation is to standardize processes and data models.

From our experience, many shop floors in the US and other countries have a hodgepodge of equipment; some old, some new. Standardizing on common processes is not always possible due to the age and technology of the equipment. Modern equipment is easier to automate as it has the capabilities built into the equipment.

We encourage our clients to standardize and harmonize on consistent data and analytics models – everyone capturing and measuring the same things!

One of our customers uses SAP’s MII for their shop floor data collection and analytics system. This extrusion manufacturer of plastics uses common metrics to help them manage products and machines.

For product metrics, they capture over 50 quality and quantity metrics: weight, length, thickness, color, surface, batch, and other traceable metrics that are shared with their customers, support product quality and traceability, and analytics.

They found out that tracking smartens their business and puts them on the path to other initiatives such as Big Data and Machine Learning.

Improving OEE:
The equipment metrics support their OEE objectives for Equipment Efficiency and Effectiveness. Some of these metrics include runtime by machine component, temperature, and throughput. Accumulating these metrics help the maintenance team build their decision support for their preventative maintenance initiatives.

One challenge they faced, equipment was being transferred from one location to another. The company would downsize one plant and move lines of equipment to a location where demand and capacity required it. But tracking of the equipment as part of the move was often lost, and the new maintenance teams struggled to stay on top of the maintenance plans.

These metrics along with the equipment work order history now allows them to develop rules for maintaining the specific lines, and components. In their business, an unplanned equipment outage can cost tens of thousands of dollars in missed delivery dates, customer delivery penalties, and goodwill.

Hang a Jumbotron!
Are you looking for a quick win? Hang a monitor for each line and one for the entire floor or plant and keep score!

One of our customers enhanced their shop floor operations simply by hanging a monitor at the end of each line. After getting feedback from the shift managers, automating the shop floor improved the processes on the lines, but did not engage the employees.

They were afraid of losing their jobs to automation, robots, and technology. The client supported an open and candid work environment and discussed how the automation investments were mutually beneficial.

One solution, hang a Jumbotron to keep score. It does not have to be as big as the one in AT&T Stadium in Dallas. One large enough that line and shift workers can see their progress by lines, shifts, and plant, together as a team.
Some friendly competition ensued and surprisingly – not – yield improved, output increased, and change over time was reduced.

Another byproduct of this decision: plant morale improved, injuries and sick days trended down, and output increased.

Is your Shop Floor Automated? Is Shop Floor Automation or MII meeting your expectations? Are you on the roadmap to Leonardo? Our Advisory Services Consultants have the business process and technology experience to streamline your Supply Chain, Shop Floor, and Analytics. Contact Kent Lamb, kent@titanconsulting.net, 214.632.5621; or, contact your Titan Consulting Director. You can see additional information on our Advisory Services page at www.titanconsulting.net.