COLLABORATIVE MEANS PRESTIGEOUS AND PROMISING

A. V. Ivakhin,
CBOSS Association

The key solutions of CBOSSmis enterprise management system comprise human, production, financial and information resources. The author considers CBOSSmis in the uncommon aspect — the collaborativeness of the high-tech product targeted at intelligent business.

Mobile Systems # 8, August, 2004

The Egyptian emperor Ptolemy I, having developed an interest in geometry, asked its founder Euclid if it was possible to easily and quickly master this science. The scientist answered with dignity: «There is no royal road to geometry!» which, when translated, meant that there were no privileges in science.
We admit that there are no royal roads to management as a business process. To be more precise, there had been no ways until integrated enterprise management systems appeared. However, our goal is not to track the stepwise development of such EAS (Enterprise Application Suites), but to explain our outlook on collaborative solutions including the CBOSS electronic business management platform that can be referred to them by a number of features.

First, let us clarify the terminology. It is difficult, of course, to consider the word collaborative as commonly used. This term has a right to exist, and more than thousand links to collaborative on the Internet are the most convincing proof. A mini-research showed that apart from systems and solutions — the subject of our consideration — collaborative could comprise technologies, projects, processes, programs, applications, creations, education, researches, business, etc.

The English word collaborative means common, united and cooperative. What does collaborative mean in Russian? The basis of all these objects and concepts is collective work. The cooperative character of group work, i. e. collectivity, co-authorship, cooperation, collaboration, connects these objects.
Historians evidence that collectivity is the original trait of Russian people. The inborn feelings of solidarity and brotherhood always excited foreign observers.
This may be one of the reasons why we readily accepted the systems that enabled collaborative support and contributed to their development and promotion, as CBOSS products can be placed among collaborative solutions by many parameters. There is one reservation: our systems had not been initially positioned as collaborative, though they actually were. Our systems differ from the western products that had been originally called collaborations by their developers who later started wondering what this notion implied and to what extend the functionality and potential of their creations addressed it.

Voluntary-compulsory self-service systems

According to Gartner Group, the concept of ERP (Enterprise Resource Management) in its classic meaning is gradually giving way to the cooperative business ideology, the so-called c-commerce (collaborative commerce). When it came to Collaborative Manufacturing Management and the need to include effective cooperative work services into ERP systems, there appeared phrases like «ERP II (Enterprise Resource & Relationship Planning) = to collaborative ERP», which defined the new concept of business relations. Earlier, attempts were made to connect this concept to Customer/Provider Relationship Management (EPR II = ERP+CRM+SRM). Now, we speak about integrated EAS enterprise administration systems including the SCM supply chains and PLM lifecycle management, apart from the above-mentioned functions. The term itself is now treated as a comprehensive e-business platform for electronic business management. We are bound to stick to this definition, as it characterizes «comprehensiveness» of the current enterprise administration solutions and corresponds to its apprehension in the IT society.

By the way, we could use the common term IRP (which Baan once tried to use as a name for its uninterrupted manufacturing planning module) for our intelligent business systems. Unfortunately, this abbreviation compromised itself by inconsistency of interpretations: first, it was called Intelligence (Intellectual, Intelligent), then Integrated Resource Planning.

What systems are we talking about then? The operation of most today? s organizations is based on active interaction between employees, divisions and other organizations. Such business contacts can be divided into groups, the so-called «three C»:
Communication: employees send information and/or request it from somebody.
Cooperation: the company employees use common workspace to perform functions that require interaction with other people.
Coordination: specialists of different divisions and organizations are involved in specific processes that are governed by some preset rules.

• E-mail and messaging systems;
• Shared databases;
• Automation (workflow) tools.

The above-mentioned technologies are the basis of collaborative systems, including Lotus products (Notes, Domino, Same Time) and Microsoft Exchange designed for intra-corporate communication and equipped with the template and routing functions. These systems can be characterized as shared distributed DBs integrated into e-mail features, i. e. not only users can exchange e-mail messages, but databases and applications as well can send documents to people and other databases, which is crucially important for business automation.
The mentioned solution providers do not position their systems as enterprise management systems, underlining just the products? communication features. Nevertheless, Lotus Domino and Notes are valid solutions in the sphere of collective systems, which allow solving difficult tasks on any organizational level.
Recently, there have appeared collaborative systems aimed at large information volume and a large number of subscribers. Thus, the term collaborative systems became common for them.
WE can distinguish the following collaborative systems:

• Oracle Collaboration Suite Application Software to manage e-mail and voice mail, personal calendars, web conferences and to synchronize data with wireless communication devices;
• Sun ONE (Open Net Environment) — a new-generation software platform with free Star Office packet for UNIX systems that connects all components of the computer systems into one complex. Its resources are used to design web services and provide network services, and enable to create high-end solutions.

The specific featured of the platforms deployed by these solutions are:

• Centralized data warehouse on the DB server;
• System deployment on high-end J2EE application server;
• Identification and authentication of users and their actions by the system itself without involving the OS;
• Open API (Application Programming Interface) and orientation to the current electronic data interchange standards (EDI), including XML;
• Orientation to platform independence;
• Orientation to high-performance file services (9iFS, NFS) instead of file storage in the operating system.

At the same time, Sun ONE preserves the benefits of Lotus/Exchange in terms of integration into office applications, which is not the feature of Oracle Collaboration Suite.

Here we can mention a series of web-oriented groupware solutions that are interesting only in terms of architecture, as they cannot be considered significant players on the collaborative solutions market. Born inside public services («personal offices» of subscribers of Internet providers, «free e-mail», teleconferences with expanded user services), these solutions include transaction functionalities, which earlier were not typical of groupware: online/offline registration of users (registration of working time), and booking of commonly used resources (premises, transport). They are close to collaborative systems by architecture, as they use centralized data warehouse at the database server and internal authentication. However, such solutions cannot compete with classic groupware, due to lack of integration into office software. Nevertheless, they are more technologically advanced and more affordable.

Groupware, with its orientation to messaging, PC compatibility and integration into popular office applications (word processors, electronic spreadsheets, etc.), soon became an integral part of IT infrastructure of many enterprises. A question arises — «What’s the point in switching to powerful business packages of collaborative systems, if there is relevantly affordable groupware that meets the needs for messaging services and document workflow? The answer is obvious. Firstly, benefits of deploying an integrated solution to manage all business processes, including communication, are indisputable: the more business processes the system manages, the higher is its efficiency as a complex tool. Secondly, integration of groupware and a management system into one solution cuts down TCO (professional consultants, business analysts and auditors pay much attention to this aspect).

What are the factors that lead to lower TCO when an integrated enterprise management and groupware solution is deployed at an enterprise? Primarily, the company may switch from «desktop-network» solution of IMB Lotus or Microsoft Exchange class to a centralized solution, as the cost of ownership for these local solutions is increasing along with the business growth and expansion. The issue is not only with the licensing policies of the solution providers, but also with the system architecture, because the data is stored in file services, which places higher hardware requirements for expansion. Moreover, they require efficient technical support and maintenance, and are platform-dependent.

An important advantage of integration of collaborative services into information systems is context-sensitive notification. If you try to integrate Lotus in SAP or Exchange in CBOSS, you will fail to open a SAP transaction from a Lotus letter, you will not view the source of information by clicking it, and you will not be able to register event-related actions online. The situation changes fundamentally, when messaging services are integrated into the kernel of the collaborative system. Each system message is directly linked to the source of information, ensuring significant time saving, stimulating large-scale system deployment, and concentrating the accumulated knowledge within an integrated information environment of a corporate business system.

CBOSSmis Management Information System was originally oriented at collaboration and use of messaging services on the enterprise level. Any event in the System is accompanied by notification; each notification — a letter, memo, event notification, entry in the personal calendar, bulletin board message — is assigned system properties. Each message is signed by an identified author, corresponds to the user's authority and his/her position in the enterprise structure, and has a context-sensitive link to a system object.

Specifics of National Collaboration

SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft advertisements often state that the high scalability of business in the new economic environment requires community empowerment. This requirements demands implementation of self-service technologies for customers and partners; self-employment; ensures efficient communications within an integrated information system; cooperation in internal communications and in relations with customers, suppliers and contractors.
As a result, in 2000, after the popular abbreviations B2B (business-to-business), B2C (business-to-commerce, -customer, -consumer), a new term — B2E (business-to-employee) — was introduced to describe relations between a company and its employees. However, sometimes it is interpreted as «business-to-extended enterprise». It does not change the essence of B2E: ensuring efficient usage of corporate information system by all employees; regular data registration at the workstations instead of usage of delegated operators; and cutting down information channels not monitored by the enterprise management system.
Strange as it may seem, the simple and obvious ideas, now called collaboration, self-service, and B2E, have occurred to western ERP system developers recently, after their analysts made them believe that their solutions were collaborative not in form, but in essence. For example, Simon Howard from Gartner noted that workflow was gradually replaced by collaboration — cooperation and interaction, including external consultants and organizations involved in the business processes of the enterprise, and customers that were willing to participate in the company's activities.

Even before CBOSSmis become a brand, it was a B2B system, because such features as CBOSS Mail and CBOSS Bulletin Board used to notify all employees; the Organizer was a comprehensive business support tool; Worktime Registration allowed all employees to check in, register their leaves and check out. Later, these modules formed the integrated and complementary independent solutions that covered the major management areas (human, production, financial and information capital), which are implemented in the CBOSS enterprise resource planning system aimed at collaboration.

For example, the Time Administration module was initially designed to be a collaborative tool that plays a significant role in the company due to the team spirit it helps to maintain: every employee can view the status of any other employee online. The implemented monitoring and administration mechanisms ensure efficient time management and control, precise monitoring by the volume of work, and planning by using timesheets and schedules.

By means of corporate publications, messaging system and contacts, the Communications module ensures efficient information exchange within the company, forming the enterprise information and communication field. It guarantees the integrity and development of the corporate information resources and provides for structured and documented relations between employees.
As a production resource planning and management tool, the new multifunctional Organizer within the Task Planning module is initially designed for collaborative deployment in any company. The module allows managing the working limit and employee load, dispatching internal tasks and orders, controlling and correcting task execution procedures, thus increasing the transparency of decision-making and its availability for internal audit and control of work efficiency.

Nowadays the collaborative strategy and self-sustainability are surely the benefits of CBOSSmis. First, because it has been developed for intellect-intensive enterprises that actively use the approach of pervasive computing to enterprise production resources, ensuring maximum efficiency of the self-service-oriented system.

Some Russian top managers still believe that «it is good and prestigious to have an ERP system», but «an efficient document control system is absolutely indispensable, as it provides for workflow organization and decision-making». This statement is not applicable to CBOSSmis, as this system does not require bulky and expensive additional content modules! The convergent system ensures consistent processing of any type of information, enables efficient management of content, knowledge, and unstructured data that accounts for over 80% of the total workflow in a modern company. Due to its collaboration features, the system provides transparent groupware functionality, which is commonly believed to be a feature of document control systems. It is important to note that CBOSS, an all-inclusive business management platform, a full-fledged business tool for teamwork, is originally designed for enterprise and its intellectual assets management, while automation of separate operations is considered a subsequent task.

Many specialists suppose that the majority of ERP systems developed in Russia differ from foreign systems by their purpose to automate routine operations and comply with legal regulations, while western solutions are aimed at primary automation of management functions. The reason for such discrepancy seems to be in the following: to meet customer needs, western ERP software manufacturers stake on optimization and re-engineering of business processes, while the Russian developers work on automation as such. Consequently, the target groups of the solutions are different: enterprise management for western solutions and employees for Russian ERP systems.

Collaborative benefits

If we say that CBOSSmis is mainly oriented at enterprise management and, at the same time, declares the collaborative concept of the system, we do not contradict ourselves. All employees use the system, thus they collectively benefit from optimization and enhancement of automated business processes. Besides, top managers gain additional «dividends», as they can operate information based on the real statistics data and take balanced decisions.
We respect the personality of each employee, but we are sure that each intellect-intensive enterprise is not unique from the viewpoint of management technology, and can be automated by using replicated solutions (of course, we must consider business specifics and personal preferences of the decision-maker). Besides collaborativeness, CBOSS products have another benefit — they are universal. CBOSS enterprise resource management system is based on cross-industrial principles that allow deployment of the system at any enterprise with any form of ownership, number of employees, industry and state. For instance, currently CBOSS specialists are preparing for implementation of our CBOSSmis system for one of mobile carriers in Norway.