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| ───────────────── Silos and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) in 1980’s & 1990’s |
| The history of application software is not lengthy, only stretching back about 50 years. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, when application software reached its 25-year milepost, we developed silo systems and used EAI to link them together. At that time, human beings simply couldn’t create one system or a few systems that would satisfy the general needs for enterprise automation because we were limited by our experience at that time. |
By the time we reached the 2010’s, we had doubled our amount of experience (50 years) and we could model one system or fewer systems to accomplish the general enterprise automation needs. We then found the biggest benefits of one system or fewer systems are not only the BIG savings in cost, but that the information was far more agile, accurate and multi-dimensional for decision support.
Most people know what they need to do, clearly and promptly, if they see the KPI, gaps or issues. But if information is hidden or vague or simply cannot be found, the response may be sluggish; effectiveness is tremendously compromised. 8thManage is designed to provide agile, accurate and multi-dimensional information; to help businesses to make improvements to important fundamentals. |
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| One Design One System to Achieve Integrated Management in 2010's ─────────────── |
The key in integrated management is effective information; the purpose of One Design One System is to provide agile, accurate and multi-dimensional information. Getting agile and accurate information in a linked silo system (mentioned above) is impossible since there are different models of each element (e.g., order) in a linked silo system. The data mapping is done EITHER automatically but superficially, resulting in inaccuracies OR in detail but manually, resulting in slow delivery of information.
Human beings often see things one-dimensionally; but real life problems often are multi-dimensional. Human brains are far more effective if the system can respond quickly (i.e., a few seconds) with the multi-dimensional information that they need to |
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understand the problems and make their decisions. The speed with which the system can provide the multi-dimensional information will make a BIG difference from humans’brain effectiveness and their responsiveness to the business events standpoints.
Another significant value of effective information is to keep people honest. Effective information prevents the creation of multiple versions of the truth, reduces defensiveness and gets people more focused on problem-solving.
8thManage One Design One System covers CRM, product management, inventory management, project & portfolio management, supply management, HR management and document and knowledge management. 8thManage automatically integrates all of the information in these areas and aggregates it up in real-time and provides the agile and effective information that people need to work constructively and effectively. |
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Real-time Business Map to View Activities & Results in Multiple Layers of Organizations in 2010's |
| When managing multiple stores, factories or offices in different locations, one must be able to see their activities and results in real-time. For example, one must know the revenue, product (stock), human resource and cost information of each store and the aggregated information of all stores. The decision won’t be effective if only 1 out of the 4 important categories of information is provided. Also, poor information supply leads to poor decisions: decisions will not be accurate if the information such as revenue |
shortage, wrong product in stock, inability to hire or overrun cost can only be obtained after the facts.
8thManage is One Design One System. Once the information is captured, the system will automatically integrate multi-dimensional information and aggregate them in real-time. Accountability is built-in for each data entry and business result. The 8thManage Business Map screen allows multiple views of the business structure according to line of business or operation. If someone is viewing the business map and another person is submitting issues or reporting deliveries, the business map viewer will see the business map update instantaneously. The ability to be able to view changes and results in real-time helps people make more effective decisions; the transparency (since everyone who has the appropriate privileges can see the information clearly in real-time) helps keep people honest. Both are important improvements in the fundamentals.
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| Sales, Product, Procurement, Project and Team Performance in 2010's ─────────────── |
| The key in managing sales, product, procurement, project and team performance is to ensure “said” and “done” are consistent. If this fundamental is not properly managed, the team will focus more “said” than “done”. |
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KPI can be used to narrow the gap of “said” and “done”, but KPI must be (i) representative and (ii) continuously measured. If the measurement is done once a year, by the time each employee or the team realizes there are gaps, it is already too late because they can’t change the facts. All people can do is to “defend” and the defensiveness will result in even more energy being spent on “said” rather than on “done.”
8thManage provides historical data to help teams establish representative KPI. 8thManage also continuously measures and reminds people of the target, gaps and issues from day one. Once each person or team successfully submits and finishes their deliverable, they will immediately see the impact on the KPI measure. This will encourage people to focus their energy on getting things done.
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| ──────────────────────────── Real-time Strategy Execution Management in 2010's |
Strategies fail because strategies and their execution plans and people are not in synch. 8thManage helps to connect strategy planners to the execution steps early. In the 8thManage environment, the strategy planner will need to structure the relationships of each strategic goal and the deliverable in each layer. This will bring vagueness and disconnection to the surface and the overly grand or vague strategies will be either altered or terminated. The upfront altering and elimination of the problematic strategies helps avoid false hope and waste of efforts on the strategies that would yield little or no results but instead focus efforts on the useful and executable strategies.
In 8thManage, each strategic goal is linked layer-by-layer down to one or more deliverables of the bottom layer. When a |
deliverable is successfully complete, it will impact the KPI from the bottom layer up to the topmost layer. Once strategy execution starts, the entire process is transaction-oriented. Each transaction has a owner so that accountability is crystal clear and the result of each transaction will affect other transactions and/or the KPI in each layer. Managers at each layer can watch transactions and KPI changes daily or even hourly to observe progress and issues. The structural thinking and planning and the accountability-oriented tool help the successful execution of strategies.
Strategies are for the realization of a vision. Visionaries must use an effective platform to gradually and systematically transform the present state to the future they envision. Without 8thManage, some visionaries may know what they want the future to be, but cannot know how to successfully transform the present complex reality to fulfill their vision.
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| Real-time End-to-end Business Management in 2010's ────────────────────────── |
| In end-to-end business management, people often need to merge different data from different systems into the data warehouse and then use business intelligence (BI) tools to analyze. This process is not only “expensive,” but also “impractical.” The problem occurs because most business users do not have a sufficient IT background to operate the BI tools. Some business users manage to obtain their IT colleagues’ assistance, but the process is far too “slow” for real-time monitoring of end-to-end business and making timely operational decisions. |
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8thManage database is designed for CRM, product management, inventory management, project & portfolio management, supply management, HR management and document and knowledge management and can be extended with real-time interfaces to other transactional systems. For obtaining multi-dimensional view of data in 8thManage, it is as simple as doing a “search” or an “advanced search” and most business users know how to do searches. Furthermore, 8thManage can combine the search results with other embedded functions so that the business users can analyze and take instantaneous actions at the same time.
8thManage also provides a point-and-click report generator to allow business users to put search results in the format that they want for their reports. |
100% browser-based |
100% real-time |
100% multi-currency |
English-Chinese |
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