Patent Publication Number: US-2009234689-A1

Title: Method and a system for supporting enterprise business goals

Description:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION  
     The present invention generally relates to methods and systems for enterprise management, and more particularly to a method and a system for a new approach to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and enterprise business goals. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     For software-as-a-service, Web-based software or on-demand applications, products such as NetSuite™ and Salesforce.com™ are changing how small and mid-sized businesses look at productivity tools. The rise of these Web-based services means enterprise-class business tools without the big hardware costs or long deployment times. However, “Enterprise Software”, and more generally “Business Process Reengineering,” are well-known to suffer from:
         Long and costly processes for requirement gathering;   Highly subjective decisions made regarding requirements and appropriate solutions;   High estimates of costs and durations;   Budget and schedule overruns—missing the estimates;   Gaps between reality and the designers&#39; or implementers&#39; understanding;   Over-promising and under-delivery; and   High costs of changing to meet new business situations.       Evidence of these issues can be listed as follows:
       The success rate in customer relationship management (CRM) deployment is low—e.g. 15% “full success” in an IBM study;”   The same IBM study says “developing a value proposition, managing the budget process, change management, governance, and process change . . . can boost the success rate among CRM projects to 80 percent;” and   Other areas of enterprise software have similarly low success—see http://www.lessons-from-history.com/Level%202/Project%20Success%20or%20Failure.html. These are generally attributed to misaligned requirements, budget, decisions, planning, and change management.   
       Prior art measures taken to address these issues include:
       “Change management” and “Business analysis” practices;   Consulting groups developing expertise and commanding very high prices;   Modular software architectures, e.g. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA); and   “Software as a Service” claiming to require zero or minimal configuration effort—but limited in what it can supply.   
       The present art provides these stages:
       Analyze business needs;   define requirements;   design solution;   implement via assembling, configuring and integrating solution components;   deploy;   test;   fix;   support; and   repeat to respond to changes   
       The State of the Art is still lacking:
       Repeatable, trainable, scalable ways of translating business understanding into operational decisions regarding:
           Choosing and prioritizing goals   Defining plans to achieve these goals; and   Implementing plans through training people and through configuring software;   
           Minimization of subjectivity in the above translation;   Performing the above in a “Continuous-improvement” cycle as mandated by business environment, goals etc;   Process for concretizing lessons learned and delivering them to other groups, lines of businesses, or operations; and   A solution to the most pressing prior art problem where upon implementing deployment, the business situation has changed so much that the solution is no longer appropriate, and a gap in understanding develops during the analysis and design stages.   
       

     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     Accordingly, it is a principal object of the present invention to provide a method for a new approach to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and enterprise business goals. 
     It is one more principal object of the present invention to provide a method for business planning and implementation where the effort is always one of maintenance mode, never design mode. 
     It is one further principal object of the present invention to provide a method for business planning and implementation having the following steps:
         asking minimal questions;   creating a fully-working solution as soon as possible, simply because “time is money”; and   engaging in dialog to adjust the solution to enterprise needs.       

     It is another principal object of the present invention to provide a method where the initial deployment is very similar to the change process which already-deployed systems routinely have gone through. 
     It is one other principal object of the present invention to support multiple roles and perspectives, such that each user interacts with the solution differently, subject to at least two items making up the context of the interaction: role of the user, and stage in the process. 
     Lee Iacocca, the president of Ford and the CEO of Chrysler Corporation said “So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don&#39;t sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we&#39;ve satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.” This is the essence of the present invention:
         asking minimal questions;   creating a fully-working solution (as a quick first step); and   engaging in dialog to adjust the solution to enterprise needs.       

     There has thus been outlined, rather broadly, the more important features of the invention in order that the detailed description thereof that follows hereinafter may be better understood. Additional details and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the detailed description, and in part wilt be appreciated from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       In order to understand the invention and to see how it may be carried out in practice, a preferred embodiment will now be described, by way of non-limiting example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: 
         FIG. 1  is an exemplary schematic illustration of a shared model empowering a goal-driven enterprise to continuously and harmoniously adapt to a changing WORLD through the collaboration of complementing roles executing consecutive stages, constructed in accordance with an embodiment of the invention; 
         FIG. 2  is a schematic illustration of a knowledge-based, goal-driven cycle for business planning, implementing, monitoring and managing, constructed in accordance with an embodiment of the invention; 
         FIG. 3  is a schematic illustration of the two modes of the goal driven enterprise cycle, Preparation in which what-if scenarios are analyzed to define a desired solution and Run in which such solutions are implemented, constructed in accordance with an embodiment of the invention; and 
         FIG. 4  is a schematic illustration of the architecture for enterprise goal-driven business planning, implementation, monitoring and management, constructed in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF A PREFERRED EMBODIMENT 
     The principles and operation of a method and an apparatus according to the present invention may be better understood with reference to the drawings and the accompanying description, it being understood that these drawings are given for illustrative purposes only and are not meant to be limiting. 
       FIG. 1  is an exemplary schematic illustration of a shared model  1100  empowering a goal-driven enterprise to continuously and harmoniously adapt to a changing WORLD (world-at-large)  1400  through the collaboration of complementing roles  1200  executing consecutive stages  1300 , constructed in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. 
     Shared model  1100  is a knowledge base comprised of factual information derived from the world-at-large. Shared model  1100  provides a common interpretation of the world to harmonize the activities of process collaborators in their various roles  1200  and through stages  1300  of the business cycle. 
     The embedded knowledge in shared model  1100  comprises a description of the business  1110 , its needs  1120 , a business solution  1130  to satisfy needs  1120 , a technology solution  1140  mirroring business solution  1130  and the implementation  1150  of technology solution  1140 . Roles  1200  include, for example: sales  1210 , business analyses  1220 , deployment  1230 , executive  1240  and operations manager  1250  define “what the business is” and at what stage  1300  the business is in the process. WORLD  1400  is generally exemplified and manifested by interactions over the World-Wide-Web or Internet. 
     The Knowledge Base of shared model  1100  supporting the architecture is structured as a catalog of business entities, choices and rules linking relevance and validity of choices to other gathered information. It is equipped with editing tools and learning capabilities, such as aggregation, data-mining and pattern inference, and includes ways to identify when the requirements exceed the “operational envelope” of capabilities supported by current contents. 
     Additional functions of exemplary knowledge base shared model  1100  are:
         supporting tags for contextual exploration, security and ownership of knowledge capsules and aggregates; one type of tagging relates to aspects of the context of the interaction, supporting the above-mentioned capability for the context-dependent flow guided by user role and stage in the process;   supporting distribution for large bodies of knowledge, which may be created by collaborating but separate groups; and   allowing knowledge to be shared between groups, while allowing the owner of each item of knowledge to define whether the item is to be shared, at what costs, with what accompanying data, such as identity of the contributor, reasons and results of adding this knowledge, etc.       

       FIG. 2  is a schematic illustration of a knowledge-based, goal-driven cycle for business planning, implementing, monitoring and managing, constructed in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. A central knowledge map  2000  supports human assisted  21   xx  and automated  22   xx  evolutionary stages in the business cycle. Starting with a business objectives definition  2305 —the enterprise goals, a set of defined business requirements  2310  are established using a model based wizard  2110 . 
     Business level requirements definitions  2310  are then solved by a model based wizard solver  2120  into a business solution  2320  that is maintained in a human readable form. Solution  2320 , in its human readable form  2320  is then interpreted by a human model-supported assistance interpreter  2130  into a machine readable solution description  2330 . Description  2330 , in turn is automatically implemented  2210  into the operational system  2430  in the form of software configuration, manuals, operation scripts and policy statements. 
     Real world demand  2410  is fed into operational system  2430  to estimate the supply  2450  for it. Demand  2410  is constantly monitored and classified  2205  automatically to improve the correctness of solution  2330  being established for the current conditions. Demand  2410  represents the direct effect of the real world on the business. The metrics of supply  2450  are monitored  2220  and automatically translated into a performance “state” description  2340 . Performance is constantly audited and demystified  2140  to create a description of the current state of affairs, the observed human readable business performance measurements and trends  2345 . In parallel to demystifier  2140 , an audit trail  2341  is collected in an archive  2343  to enable the perception of trends. 
     Business performance and trends  2340  are both fed back, through a refine/define wizard  2150  into business requirements definition  2310  and analyzed for gaps vis-a-vis changes in the environment (world-at-large)  2490  to re-adjust definitions of business objectives and goals  2305 . 
     Changes in the model used for the various parts of the cycle are a part of the natural evolution of the system. This is preferably reflected in new world phenomena and internal changes in the enterprise. A knowledge model builder  2190  enables analysis and incorporation of such changes and is a key for establishing a learning system that is agile and built to reflect change. 
     To establish the cycle a system with the following details is described: 
     Information-gathering “sensors” comprising questionnaires with pre-defined possible answers, automated data gathering and automated configuration-gathering; and 
     Suggesting/implementing policies and “actuators,” which are mechanisms for creating:
         business documents: presentations, business cases, relevant case studies, return-on-on-investment (ROI), recommended policies, change management;   technical documents: designs, architecture, integration, configuration, work plans; and   changes to software components: settings, parameters and configuration, policy documentation, process documentation and manuals.       

       FIG. 3  is a schematic illustration of the two modes of the goal driven enterprise cycle, What If mode  3200  and Execute mode  3100 , constructed in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. The method of the present invention starts with a reasonable guess of a solution and adapts it to requirements as they develop using a trial and error approach in the form of a “What If” simulation that is run on a copy of the same system that is currently in operational mode. In What If mode  3200  potential scenarios are analyzed to define desired solutions. In Execute mode  3100  such solutions are implemented. In Execute mode  3100  the World  3110  is “fed” into the system  3120 , resulting in captured metrics  3130 . In What If mode  3200  a simulated world  3210  is “fed” into a copy of the system  3220  to yield simulated metrics  3230 . 
     In Execute mode  3100  World  3110  is also classified  3140  so that the best solution  3150  can be implemented as system  3120 . In What If mode  3200  the roles are reversed, with the World modes  3240  defining both simulated world  3210  and a corresponding solution  3250 . Solution  3250  is implemented as system copy  3220  and defines what metrics are desired  3260 . Comparing desired metrics  3260  with simulated metrics  3230  a gap  3270  can be established and used to refine solution  3250 . 
       FIG. 4  is a schematic illustration of the architecture for enterprise goal-driven business planning, implementation, monitoring and management, constructed in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. 
     Starting with a business case definition (preliminary) a business level case description  4110  is established. A requirements analysis  4120  is then performed, and documented as a business requirements description  2125 . Once the requirements are captured, a best solution generator  2130  is engaged resulting in a solution description  4135  document. This solution is then implemented  2140  and documented  2145  to create an operational instance  4200 . 
     With actual demand “fed” into the instance  4200 , it is monitored  4210 , and gaps in expected performance affect changes  4215  in the initial description  4110 . Monitoring results is also made available to a strategic analyzer  4220 , which provide new insights  4230 , and is used to drive changes in requirements  4235  and through the knowledge management console  4240  is embedded in the modeled knowledge  4250  used to drive the transformation of a case definition  4110  through the various stages to become an operational instance  4200 . 
     The baseline case definition, the modeled knowledge  4250  and the current set of requirements  4120  are used to create a demand model  4310  used in a what-if mode. These demand models  4310  are used by a demand simulator  4320  to generate simulated demand to the operating instances  4200  for what-if analyses. Monitoring  4210  is provided for analyses  4220  and influence the What-if scenarios  4330  used for the generation of simulated demand. 
     In this way the real world system and the what-if simulated system are converged to constantly generate hypothesis and test it, evaluate the result and embedding said results in the real operating system. 
     Having described the present invention with regard to certain specific embodiments thereof, it is to be understood that the description is not meant as a limitation, since further modifications will now suggest themselves to those skilled in the art, and it is intended to cover such modifications as fall within the scope of the appended claims.