CRM On Demand Recommended Practices Integration, The Oracle Advantage phần 2 pps

With over 5000 enterprise implementations based on the Siebel CRM Data Model, the same model underpinning Oracle CRM On Demand, the likelihood is that within our global services organiza

business IT infrastructure

Organizations that have or plan to develop a clear middleware integration strategy are able to maximize their

investment by further adopting the following approach:

 Define systems that will become the record of

source This does not have to be a system for all

records, in many businesses product mastering may

be in a different system to customer mastering

 Ensure the most appropriate systems are in control

of key data A CRM system is ideal for managing

customer information, but is not a suitable

platform for financial account control

 Assemble a Common Object Model – an enterprise

wide data model that all application specific data

types are transformed into when integration occurs

 Build processes and services such that they support

and promote usability such as common error

handling escalations etc

 Look to standardise on existing assets, for example:

out of the box Web Services from the CRM On

Demand environment

Quite often the concepts and goals for delivering integration processes are understood Leading practice books and documentation recommend the common model, abstract approach with consisten transformations and connection technology However this underestimates the efforts involved Building a common object model for customer information that supports hierachical relationships and the complexities of CRM data is not a simple project

Oracle/Siebel‟s experience can help in this situation

Our implementation teams and experts have documented reference models available that they can leverage They have experience and

documented transformation mappings that outline how to convert a CRM On Demand customer object for example into an SAP customer object Just because the incumbent middleware strategy within a customer is not based on Oracle technology, it does not mean we lack the experience or know how on how to achieve enterprise level integration With over 5000 enterprise implementations based on the Siebel CRM Data Model, (the same model underpinning Oracle CRM On Demand,) the likelihood is that within our global services organization someone has experience of an integration landscape, or value to add in a unique situation Working collaboratively with customers existing middleware teams and resources, the Oracle CRM On Demand consulting services has approaches and methodologies that have been proven to deliver robust and rapid results leveraging existing middleware So for many Enterprise organizations, this is an ideal starting position If the existing middleware environment needs further enhancements to enable its use to be effective and complimentary to the CRM On Demand project goals, then many low cost Industry Standard approaches exist to facilitate this and we discuss some of these in the next section

Complementing Existing Assets with Industry Standards Based Tools

There is an emerging trend of simple desktop applications that do specific tasks very well The more familiar of these include Google‟s Gadgets and Yahoo‟s Widgets These are simple HTML and JavaScript applications that can be embedded in WebPages, the desktop and other applications

Being built-on industry standard JavaScript libraries makes it easy to create gadgets that include tabs, Flash content, persistent storage, dynamic resizing, and more Tools such as the Google Gadgets Editor allow you to build and distribute gadgets quickly and easily Each gadget needs only to be written once, with minor changes it can run in multiple places Millions of gadget developers exist in the marketplace, testifying to the ease of build, and availability of resource

Analysis of the usage patterns for gadgets show that they are now being used more frequently and are becoming a pervasive part of a user‟s daily computing experience In the internet space, gadgets are used millions of times a week for many diverse applications attesting to the success of this format In a business context, gadgets provide a superb vehicle for partners, and internal developers to facilitate corporate data consumption in an easy to use and non-invasive deployment method

Other industry standard approaches for data distribution include RSS (Really Simple Syndication) RSS is a term that describes a family of standardized web formats used to publish frequently updated data The most familiar use of RSS is with blogs, news headlines and rich media types But because the technology is based on the publication of (a „feed‟) a document that can include text, metadata and validity periods its use in data distribution is expanding to include enterprise integration, both within and outside the corporate firewall

RSS is supported by tools that allow rapid and automatic syndication of data and information

using recognized industry standards It also simplifies application design by supporting data

aggregation So rather than having to design an application to support multiple feeds, using RSS,

data from multiple sources is automatically combined into a single local source RSS adopts a

strict re-use model by enforcing an industry standard XML format This strict adherence to

standards provides the foundation to publish once and be consumed by many different

subscribing systems RSS feeds are typically read by an "RSS reader," "feed reader," or

"aggregator," these are typically web-based or desktop-based applications Oracle‟s CRM On

Demand includes a simple to use layout item that acts as an RSS reader, enabling the aggregation

of a number of different RSS sources into the world of CRM

The maturity of RSS standards allows alternative sources to be considered when adopting RSS as

a data feed solution These include middle platforms, web server coding tools such as PHP and

dedicated RSS tools such as RSSBUS

The emergence and rapid acceptance of Web 2.0 and the association with Ajax as one of the primary enablers is somewhat of a misnomer Certainly the social aspects of Web 2.0 are not dependant on Ajax In simple terms Ajax is a programming approach that combines different technologies in order to achieve a level of functionality and interactivity for web applications that had only previously been possible with rich client applications For example, through the use of Ajax an entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time a user makes a change, resulting in a smooth and interactive experience Amongst the most popular Ajax usability features are drag & drop, in-browser text editing and zooming capabilities as seen in Google Maps

The technologies that Ajax incorporates include:

 XHTML and CSS for standards-based presentation;

 The Document Object Model for dynamic display and interaction;

 XML and XSLT for data interchange and manipulation;

 XMLHttpRequest for asynchronous data retrieval;

 Industry Standard JavaScript to binding everything together

Based on these rich features, today Ajax can be used to develop rich user interface applets which again can be simply consumed into the CRM On Demand environment

The development and management of standards based components for integration is greatly facilitated by adoption of Integrated Development Environments (IDE) based on the Eclipse software platform Eclipse is primarily written in Java, and it‟s codebase origins come from the highly respected Visual Age development platform

The IDE provides software developers and administrators a complete environment, with tools and runtime solutions that are highly evolved for adherence to industry standards In its default form it is meant for Java development, but through an extensibility framework, plug-ins allow many others to be supported Part of the attraction of Eclipse, is that it is open source and freely available under the terms of the Eclipse Public Licence This results in significant adoption and familiarity amongst the global developer community

There are a number of vendor specific initiatives which, because of their popularity and pervasiveness are also worthy of inclusion for consideration These include:

Adobe Flex - a highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems

Adobe AIR - a cross-operating system runtime that lets developers combine HTML, Ajax, Adobe Flash®, and Flex technologies to deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to a desktop and allows developers to use familiar tools such as Adobe Dreamweaver® CS3, Flex® Builder™ 3, Flash CS3 Professional, or any text editor to build their applications and easily deliver a single application installer that works across operating systems

The Oracle Approach

Oracle‟s approach adopts the benefits outlined in the „Internal Development Platform‟ whilst supporting all relevant open standards and development environments Oracle‟s customers can leverage Oracle‟s Business Platform tools to gather and deliver content locally: They use JDeveloper, ADF Components, Faces, and WebCenter for content delivery They use Oracle Fusion Middleware to distribute data for integration overlaid with an industrial strength business process engine to deliver flexible business processes on top of a common object (consistent) data model

Oracle‟s open standards based platform is designed to work within heterogeneous environments and our Process Management functionality enables you to orchestrate business processes between applications seamlessly

With our Development Tools we provide the capability to consolidate the user experience in key areas to help improve end-user productivity and satisfaction while adhering to industry standards, providing you with the

opportunity to staff developers more cost effectively, and productively speed up development time

Application Integration Architecture - The Oracle Advantage

As we have discussed earlier, for many companies it can still be a challenge to understand and rationalize business processes that can scale to meet business needs today and over time Oracle‟s Application Integration Architecture (AIA) removes this challenge by delivering industry best practice reference models These reference models outline key industry processes and activities that provide a starting point for you to design your process flows More

importantly, these process blueprints are application independent, allowing you to create business processes that can grow and change over time, without worrying about the underlying applications

Customers that want to quickly enable business integration scenarios

using industry standards can deploy Oracle‟s innovative Process

Integration Packs (PIPs) PIPs are SOA-based, pre-built integrations

between best of breed Oracle applications allowing you to quickly

implement mission critical processes, like Order to Cash between Siebel

CRM and Oracle EBS These integrations minimize lower level

integration work, provide a rapid time to value, and reduce ongoing

maintenance costs because of their sustainable nature

Although a PIP may be targeted to integrate between EBS and CRM

On Demand, its reference model is a useful starting block to alternative

back office platforms and the included Foundation Pack enables strong reusability and business value to be

delivered

Oracle‟s AIA strategically moves the integration challenge from a toolkit approach to an application solution

approach and moves its perspective from data only to a process level approach This drives a more appropriate and scalable model for integration knowledge and intellectual property AIA is built on mature technologies utilizing open standards which together provide an enterprise capable and robust integration environment

Oracle‟s AIA is unique in that it delivers industry best practice integration models to support your key processes It

provides a starting point for you to design your own specific process flows which are application independent, allowing you to create business processes that can grow and change over time without worrying about the underlying applications AIA quickly enables business integration scenarios by the deployment of Process Integration Packs (PIPs) Its SOA approach allows quick implementation of mission critical processes, (e.g Lead to Quote) which enables organizations to optimize business performance by quickly deploying industry best practice processes

Other major challenges addressed by AIA include the deployment of a proven Common Object Model (COM) Oracle has identified that it is sometimes difficult to align agreements between stakeholders when creating a bespoke solution Oracle‟s proven enterprise ready and extensible COM removes one of the key pain points encountered by our customers AIA elegantly removes the N² mapping complexity issues encountered with point to point

integration It is extensible to meet unique customer requirements; it handles horizontal and industry specific

processes and is upgradeable All issues which custom or bespoke integration development struggles to address AIA is designed from the outset to support reusability The integration processes, transformations and common object models all support this requirement, as do the cross referencing and error handling services An organization‟s real or near-real time integration requirements can be fully met by Oracle AIA, whilst creating a strategic approach for integration and removing significant cost and complexity out of the IT infrastructure

How AIA delivers value to companies

With the Application Integration Architecture Oracle is revolutionizing the integration space by maturing the

problem from a services and technology solution to one of a pre-built integration application Just like applications have developed out of tools and build your own environments in the past, Oracle is taking the COTS approach for solutions such as CRM to the integration challenge The advantage to customers is that AIA delivers integration in a much shorter time to value, enabling organizations to instantly leverage years of intellectual property The application approach provides a business aligned solution which also then has support for upgrades

From a business process implementation aspect, existing AIA solutions for Oracle CRM On Demand enable you to connect to Oracle EBS and the Siebel On Premise platform, implementing real time data synchronization capabilities This ensures users are not kept waiting with delays in updates to account, product and pricing information as they traverse systems in the enterprise Ensuring systems aren‟t out of sync with each other is also key to data mastering requirement of any organization and the Oracle AIA approach addresses this Clearly not every customer has EBS or Siebel

On Premise, but the ability to re-purpose the artifacts that underpin these integrations means that they can still provide value for other integration scenarios As the AIA product portfolio grows, additional PIPs are on the roadmap including connections to SAP and other similar platforms If however a company does have EBS, or wishes to combine the power of Oracle CRM On Demand with the Siebel On Premise platform today,

or in the future, then it is easy to see how this innovative approach to integration can deliver value With one

approach, Oracle AIA takes away the complexity of coordinating different middleware, applications, database and implementation vendors with this simplified, single vendor solution

Partnering with Oracle for Success

Many organizations, strategists and CIO‟s today believe that adopting a Service Oriented Architecture will drastically reduce the costs and challenges associated with integration At its heart, the strong re-usability model, which is only possible through the enforcement and widespread adoption of easy to use standards, has potential to enable the re-usability of existing assets in a composite manner alongside new solutions unlike any other model of the past Moving towards the end goal of an SOA environment that is; industrial strength, adaptive and stable, takes an iterative adoption roadmap that delivers value at each step Integration is not just about SOA though, its about using all the capabilities available in the enterprise to create a holistic data interchange environment that delivers

information at the right time to the right place In order to achieve this, organizations need to follow well defined

and proven processes that lead to the ultimate business

goals Oracle‟s, Siebel‟s and now BEA‟s joint knowledge

delivers unprecedented expertise and guidance that is

available to all our customers Through joint

partnerships, thousands of customers have worked with

all three of these leading technology companies, both

independently and jointly to deliver success after success

in solving the integration and SOA challenge

For Siebel CRM deployments and Oracle CRM On Demand, experience enabled us to develop blueprint

methodologies that have been field proven to deliver results and the expected values It is worth understanding the value of this approach as it applies to the integration challenge:

A Blueprint (Redprint) Methodology for Integration Success

The first steps of any project are critical, but this is no less important when it comes to integration You must ensure that as an organization, and working with partners such as Oracle, you develop a baseline understanding of:

 Current Integration Processes

 Current integration architecture and data synchronization methods

 Pain points of current integration methods

 Capabilities of the Integration Platform and Pre-built Objects

 Requirements for Integration

 Supported Integration Servers, processes, transformations etc You also need to identify the needs for any Platform Independent Foundation, those items that will be reused on such a scale, maybe not just within the CRM domain, but across the enterprise, and the parts they will play in the overall solution This also needs to be assessed alongside the role of any corporate ESB infrastructure and BPEL enterprise initiatives

At this stage it is important to define your vision for the future state of your Business Integration Processes (BIPs) During this process, again you will have a number of aspects that should be taken into

consideration:

 The future state af any Platform Independent Foundations as part of the enterprise initiative

 What will be the foundation for a scalable integration architecture

 How you can maximize re-use, both internally to the CRM Project and externally in other systems

 Can you leverage any existing Pre-built Common Object Models and/or documented transformations

 Do you have a well defined, measurable and documented success criteria

If the integration process focus is purely for the CRM project, at all times consideration must be made as to what is required, procedures, approaches, documentation etc, to guarantee a smooth adoption of the proposed solution by in-house Enterprise Integration groups

As you start to define your integration processes and functions it is important to have in place a

methodology that takes account of these simple facts:

 Time and effort for comprehensive requirements analysis is high

 Securing key resources to ensure all elements that cover a process are identified can be time consuming

 Several moving parts lead to unstable assumptions so have protection checks in place

 Exception handling scenarios are easily overlook so ensure your definition process has steps to check these are covered off

A best practices approach, and leveraging partners such as Oracle in the definition process will:

 Ensure the right resources are dedicated to produce high quality requirements analysis/use cases

 Help plan and guarentee the right access to business process owners and subject matter experts

 Will provide access to application experts

 Share processes and methodologies that tightly define scope and manage change rigorously

 Enable the integration definitions to drive and leverage Platform Independent Foundation design documentation and concepts

 Create a working framework which includes a special focus on the handling of key challenge areas such

as error scenarios Documenting the Definition of Works effectively with targets and measurement plans is key to a successful integration project

Now starts the build and deliver stage, again expect that things will not always be as easy as you expected in the define stage and have contingencies and processes in place that de risk the project and can

accommodate them You will find missing requirements exist from the definition stage and as you develop and construct your solution, field level mapping exercises will account for significant design time As you solidify your integration framework you will find that changes will need to be made and where these occur

to any of your common objects, you will find that the most simplest of changes will have a strong impact

on BIP configuration and its testing As you start to test, you will find errors, expect them and have controlled test cases that will highlight them Most errors typically appear during BIP connected testing Other factors for consideration are:

 Most Integration Processes logic is dependent on application data Many issues appear when testing on

real production data

 Any changes in the edge applications can impact the solution so you need to have plans that control this

 Testing necessitates different eyes looking at the solution

 The validation stage is too late for end user involvement as changes at that stage are very expensive Again, following best practices and leveraging strong partnerships should ensure you have in place:

 A Change Management Process that is well defined and followed religiously

 A development approach that recognises that a change in the Integration Framework is usually less expensive than a change in the source and target applications

 A project roadmap that ensures the Common Object structure is released and frozen before BIP

configuration starts

 Plans to perform end to end tests as early and as often as possible using different personel who are

rotated to keep observation levels high

 All available Pre-documented Siebel to Platform Independent Foundation transformations so that these can be leveraged to expedite field mapping

 A plan that ensures you can perform unit testing by connecting to the actual source and target applications as you should always insist on having real production quality data in the applications Now is the time to check if you have achieved your vision and measurable targets set in the define stage This is an opportunity to confirm back to the business that the envisioned business results have been achieved There is a likely hood in some cases that gaps will appear, this is normal in projects where the integration challenges being addressed are substantial, so at this stage the key is to have plans in place that enable you to define any remaining effort required to realize the vision

At this stage there is clearly an expectation that your plans and controls have targeted an end goal where you can support and manage the solution according to your business needs, delivering capability and service levels in line with the business expectations Developing integration is however never an isolated process, needs and opportunities will always arise that present a requirement to optimise the solution Ensure your methodology has plans in place for continuous improvement, capabilities to evolve and enhance the solution for future business needs In many cases this is a great opportunity to re- visit areas previously defined as “out of scope” or address new needs identified as the business grows and changes Finally it‟s good to have goals and targets in place that seek solution improvement opportunities based on

performance metrics analysis

The SOA Adoption Model

To assume that all one has to be concerned about in driving a successful SOA or integration project is exposing the WSDL, is missing the largest and most challenging part of the problem that companies face today Many approaches

to SOA are uncontrolled and when deployed are failing to deliver on the initial aspirations of the project Typically the biggest problems companies face as they start to role out on the SOA vision is understanding if all the

component parts, the artifacts and supporting technologies and elements that make the service are ultimately going to

be easy to consume and reuse Also, during the development process the magnitude of services being developed escalates rapidly and soon organizations start to ask “are they duplicating on mass rather than normalizing the number of services they are developing?”

It is important to ensure that during the development and growth of an SOA environment you not only consider the production side of the work and its associated products (WSDL, best practices, architectural diagrams, components, APIs, etc.) but that you also take into account the business requirements and use cases of the services and how they will all operate together The problem with many of today‟s SOA developments is that companies have forgotten to remember about the need to manage, distribute and govern the development of the underlying services Managing your service directory, controlling its development and the ultimate explosion of its use, all has an impact on the architectural components, adapters, legacy system APIs, data views, and other elements that support it

Putting the right management processes in place is vital in order for your SOA initiatives to be successful Design time asset based governance is a key factor in holding every facet of your SOA environment together and connecting all the disparate stakeholders into a

consolidated governance process

Expanding this governance view to include the service producers and consumers completes the story It‟s key that you have

an approach that brings together both the consumers and producers, making sure they are involved at all levels of the governance granularity Achieving this ensures all needs and requirements are represented and managed effectively by whatever repository/registry and governance solutions you choose

Developing your approach to SOA is typically a journey of increasing maturity overtime, having the right plans in place and methodologies is critical in making sure that your SOA initiative is ultimately successful

Why Oracle, in Summary

Oracle is the world‟s largest enterprise software vendor, and for some projects, especially maybe a simple SaaS CRM

On Demand solution, some competitors may like to give the impression that you do not need this size of

organization But Oracles real value is that it brings unprecedented strength and expertise to all scales of companies and business problems Oracle has the strongest product portfolio in the industry, with for example over 43,000 applications customers and nearly six million CRM Users, enabling us to combine thought leadership and unrivaled experience to drive unique CRM vision and leadership

CRM though is not just about the product and its capabilities, it‟s about the technology and how the CRM platform can become an intrinsic element of the corporate ecosystem

Oracle's leading industry technology experience enables the synergies between applications requirements and

technology flexibility to be fully exploited Coupled with this is the recent addition of BEA's industry leading

experience, methodologies and tools Today, Oracle is Number one in Middleware, CRM, Retail, Financial Services, Banking, Enterprise Performance Management and Data Warehousing, to just name a few Every product developed

within Oracle has the opportunity to leverage this market leadership and the strength of the underlying technology platforms below Each new acquisition brings new opportunities for product enhancement and solution strength But it‟s not just about products Each individual consultant within Oracle has at his fingertips a comprehensive library of

knowledge and knowhow that grows with each acquisition This knowledge library can help anyone, no matter the size of the company or application problem, making sure Oracle has the capabilities and experience to tackle any problem and guarantee our customers success Finally, Oracle has an ecosystem of over 20,000 Partners who not only leverage Oracle's capabilities and expertise but also contribute their own R&D and thought leadership

For the typical SaaS CRM On Demand customer this is an unparalleled opportunity to deal with the combination of some of the most innovative software companies in the industry, but as One Company, One solution and One support desk It allows CRM On Demand customers to take advantage of a company pivotal in driving Industry Standards and their use, ensuring the flexibility this drives into customer decisions is seen as an advantage for both them and Oracle This is clearly a very different approach to that taken by other SaaS CRM vendors, who appear to see open standards as a threat to their business growth and therefore deliver solutions based on proprietary platforms designed to lock the customer in

When it comes down to integration with SaaS CRM, fundamentally there are two approaches (External/Internal) for data integration But once an Enterprise really reviews the considerations, challenges and risks associated and how it makes business sense to leverage as many local assets, technologies and standards based approaches as possible The decision does typically polarize the choice to one approach, and at that point clearly; Oracle‟s expertise and

experience is here and ready to help you deliver the envisioned business value from your project

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