Event Summary
Cincom
Systems, Inc. (www.cincom.com),
a privately-held, Cincinnati, OH based provider of software solutions and services
primarily to complex manufacturers for nearly four decades, continues to strive
to provide its customers an evolutionary path through frequent major technological
changes, enabling them to keep pace without major disruption of their business.
To that end, on March 14, amid worldwide economic woes and strong global competition
from peer companies, Cincom Manufacturing Business Solutions
claimed to be weathering the storm by providing compelling business value to
those seeking to eliminate waste, improve business processes, and integrate
disparate business systems
In fact, Cincom's case may even illustrate a new role for former traditional ERP vendors. Not only have these vendors expanded their suites to offer supply chain management (SCM), CRM, portals, analysts, supplier relationship management (SRM) and what not applications, they also now offer BPM and integration software for managing a client's entire applications portfolio environment together. Cincom's growth will have likely come from extended applications, but also apparently from the integration and the BPM opportunity. Most mid-size and larger companies already have multiple types of CRM, SCM, or even back-office systems, and must find ways to get those systems to work together. Going forward in the near to mid term, these enterprises will likely allocate most of their budgets on improving and better leveraging already installed applications, given that a vast majority of them will have yet to improve their mission-critical processes. As a result, the major enterprise applications providers have had to open up their architectures so that they can interconnect with other systems.
The
above story becomes pervasively told by many of contemporary enterprise applications
providers as they prepare themselves for the enterprise service model', involving
service-oriented architectures (a.k.a., software as a service) that are all
open standards- and Web services-based. These moves have partly been in tune
with recently outlined challenges that the future enterprise applications should
try to solve. Namely, in TEC's recent series of articles, named "What's Wrong
With Application Software?" discussed have been the realities of business versus
the ability of application software to cope with those realities. Those realities
included:
Apparently, many
in the enterprise applications vendors' community recognize these realities
and many are attempting to offer solutions that will deal with them. However,
most of these seasoned vendors like Cincom are logically evolving their existing
application framework to meet these market needs. Evolving means a slower process
where incremental changes are made to the existing architecture in such way
that it eventually meets these demands. However, if history helps us predict
the future, it is very difficult to execute this strategy effectively, and only
the most resourceful and/or steadfast vendors are tipped as winners in the long
run.
This
is Part Two of a two-part note.
Part
One detailed recent Cincom announcements and began discussion of the Market
Impact.
The Competition
SAP's
recent announcement of xApps would also be an excellent example
of an evolutionary strategy. With xApps, SAP is enabling composite applications
to be built more easily since xApps uses SAP's NetWeaver infrastructure
to tie other applications into SAP applications (see SAP
Weaves Microsoft .NET And IBM WebSphere Into Its ESA Tapestry). Moreover,
Oracle with its 9i Applications Server (9iAS) Enterprise
Edition, PeopleSoft with its AppConnect, J.D.
Edwards with its eXternal Process Integration (XPI)/eXternal
Business Process (XBP), Baan with its OpenWorldX,
and Cincom with Environ have all been ringing the changes of their BPM platform
roadmaps.
However, the status of almost all above composite applications is that mere announcements have been made and we are now awaiting delivery. Building composite or cross-applications has not been an easy feat as shown by only a few of, e.g., SAP xApps developed so far. Most of them are still a figment of someone's imagination and will require much custom work until becoming tried-and-true and reusable. Each individual cross-application will involve sophisticated process modeling and process-level, data-level, and UI integration, and often it will involve creating and supporting a system of record that comprises data from multiple systems. Even after all that effort beforehand, the wide variety of technologies and formats of various independent software vendors' legacy solutions one can encounter in any new application for some cross-application, will inevitably mean some tweaking anew.
The
mitigating factor for Cincom, though, could be its narrow focus on complex manufacturing
and the longevity and a repetitive nature of its multiple partnerships, mentioned
above. The vendor has already envisioned a number of typical painful processes
and has delivered their templates within Environ to speed up the cross-applications
deployment. The following list of ready-made templates bellow should give enough
room for improvement to both existing and prospective customers:
-
Quote to order.
- Order
change management.
- Order
to build.
- New
part/product introduction (NPI).
- Engineering
change management (ECM).
- Electronic
kanban management.
- Order
fulfillment.
- Order
to cash.
- Legacy
systems integration.
- Many
other measurements of KPIs.
The customer has a choice to apply one of Environ's flexible business-process templates to the most distressing business activity, and to possibly experience the recognition of the cross-functional nature of most business processes and the elimination of non-value-added steps. Alternatively, customers can use the Environ/BizTalk tools to create their own business process orchestrations to span multiple transactional systems. Still, while Environ provides the core foundation to interlace the existing technology infrastructure investment so that the user can reap the rewards of real business-process optimization, when used on top of applications Cincom do not typically partner with and/or that are based on non-Microsoft technologies, its deployment will likely depend on customized or 3rd-party EAI technology.
Further, Environ, XPI/XBP and/or SAP xApps/NetWeaver will mainly address the above issue No. 4 -- "Business processes, not application boundaries", but the other three burning issues will not necessarily be addressed with these announcements. In other words, hardly any product above makes the underlying product architecture future-proof' allowing developers to both add business functions and change underlying technology platform as justified. The next generation of enterprise architecture must allow for business change to be adopted on an on-demand basis within the existing architecture as the business evolves, and it must provide the cost, time and quality characteristics to make change a practical choice for the business. It would be quite utopian to expect that from product instances based on outdated and/or very proprietary technologies like COBOL, RPG or ABAP, despite Cincom's notable effort to componentized CONTROL.
Challenges
To
that end, while the evolution strategy is safer in the short run for both the
customers and the vendor, minimizing both investment and disruption, the evolutionary
strategy has limits in how much can be accomplished. The existing product becomes
a limit on the amount of innovation that proves practical. Namely, CONTROL was
originally written in COBOL, which has prompted Cincom to decompose the code
into an object-oriented similar approach in its later releases. Contrary to
it, its newer products (i.e., iC and iD Solutions) have long
been based on objects and Microsoft-centric technologies. CONTROL also initially
ran on Supra DB only (therefore being the most proven there, and with a majority
of installations), while the support for Oracle DB was introduced during the
mid 90s.
Thus, while Cincom has lately embraced the trendy Microsoft technology that promises a building-block approach to application development, and XML-based interconnectivity, its vast majority of customers still run on a fat client two-tier client/server architecture and on its proprietary Supra database. Migrating these onto new, more advanced product releases and/or continued concurrent support of diverse product architectures will demand immense R&D resources. The technological foundation disparity of the products has also taken its toll by doubling the development expenses and in delivering products integration tools.
Cincom
will also have to address other challenges in order to continue to thrive in
this ruthless competitive environment (i.e., complex manufacturing) with a limited
opportunity and functionality that is not easily leverageable in many other
diverse sectors. Many larger vendors with more resources and leading-edge technology
have invaded Cincom's stronghold, and have also been closing the functional
parity gap. The likes of SAP, Oracle, Baan,
Intentia, IFS and Ramco Systems
have espoused strong counterpart offering to CONTROL. Particularly challenging
would be IFS, both in terms of strong vertical functionality and proverbial
few generations mature component-based product architecture that has been amenable
to accommodating many of the above four challenges, as illustrated in the fact
that over 80% of its global customers are on the single code base and in its
components' compatibility even if coming from different major product releases
(see IFS
To Be At Customers' (Web) Service).
Some
vendors have even decided to attempt using a brand new approach to software
to solve our issues. One vendor in case would be Ramco who has used an internally
developed Model Based Architecture to build a series of application products
and do customized applications development. With its recent announcements, Ramco
is attempting to address all four issues above (see Ramco
Ships Technology And Products. Is This The Future Of Enterprise Applications?).
Although the proof is still to come based upon the experience of the early adopters,
the early returns are promising since its customers are seemingly reporting
that the basic economics of application software has indeed been impacted.
Today, the subject of improving core product technology often arrives at a discussion of Model Based Architecture. Although not necessarily a panacea, what makes Model Based Architecture different is that it is practical, proven approach, and which is changing some of the basic rules and paradigms of software development. It is rather a metadata about the application; it applies many of the basic concepts of manufacturing to the creation of code, and is rather a life-cycle tool, not just a design or development tool.
Manufacturers have been increasingly using Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) to design products from automobiles to VCRs to microwaveable dinners. PLM takes an integrated approach to the product lifecycle, from the initial idea to design & development to production to product retirement. In other words, PLM covers the entire lifecycle, from the idea to create a new VCR or flavor of ice cream to the design specifications, to production, to managing engineering changes to product retirement. Before PLM, we had a number of individual tools that helped in part, but they were not integrated, for example, computer aided design (CAD) helped in design, whereas manufacturing execution systems (MES) only helped manage a product in production.
Likewise manufacturing, we can look at today's enterprise software architecture and typically identify similar islands of automation, since there are a series of development tools that help with initial development, but little or no integration exist across the software lifecycle (i.e., specifications, design, evaluate, construct, test, deploy, and replace). Most software development tools are thus like manufacturing CAD systems helping with development but not across the lifecycle. The new enterprise applications architects should, therefore, learn from PLM and take an integrated, lifecycle view of the effort, possibly by observing Ramco's approach.
Consequently, the necessary evolutionary delivery of the above diverse products/technologies has thus somewhat stretched Cincom's resources during last few years. In addition to that, venturing into new territories, outside of traditional ERP boundaries and into some non-manufacturing industries, might have resulted in an additional value proposition and new opportunities, however, the multiple products delivery had for some time confused/detracted customers, sales force, and partners.
Still, by recently focusing on helping its customers leverage their existing installations to pull together and improve their business processes, Cincom might again pursue just enough avenues for the company to handle the opportunity to attract new business and remain in control of its ETO heartland.
User Recommendations
Cincom's target market, multi-site and multi-national complex manufacturing companies and their divisions with up to $250 million-a-year revenue range and up to 300 concurrent users per site, with a support for the entire lifecycle of a product or project should consider the company's value proposition. Existing Cincom customers should continue to follow Cincom's product path. They should evaluate the new products and technology with an eye towards moving forward with Cincom, while bearing in mind what the other vendors have to offer.
Cincom's
manufacturing solutions target complex manufacturing, but they can also handle
other manufacturing modes like repetitive, make-to-order (MTO), make-to-stock
(MTS) and assemble-to-order (ATO). CONTROL is aimed at larger mid-size organizations
in A&D, instrumentation and control, machinery, medical, telecommunications,
heavy equipment, transportation, power engineering, and maintenance, repair
& overhaul (MRO). The system is particularly a good fit where the products'
specifications vary enormously according to end user configuration, products
are of a very high value, there is significant value-adding activity in design
and manufacturing, where product lifecycles are long, and hybrid (mixed-mode)
manufacturing techniques are involved.
Nevertheless,
many industries outside of Cincom's target market such as insurance, banking
& financial institutions, healthcare, and education, may benefit from evaluation
Cincom's iC and iD solutions in a stand-alone manner. Existing users of
earlier product releases, particularly those running on Supra database, may
benefit from querying the company's future product development, product
migration path, and/or service & support strategy.
On
a more general note, enterprises looking for new solutions should consider the
vendors who have either rewritten their products on a new framework or are taking
new approaches described above. Enterprises who are looking to fill in their
existing application portfolio should look first at their incumbent vendors
for a solution. However, they should investigate alternative suppliers and the
possibility of creating composite applications as an alternative approach. If
the incumbent vendors do not adequately fill the need, vendors with strong application
function plus the ability to participate in composite applications should be
favored.
There
is also the reality that there are often areas of the business process where
there is no underlying application to support it, such as a manual process/workaround,
a spreadsheet, or some other solution that keeps the business process from being
fully automated by applications. What is required from an ideal composite solution
is the ability to integrate the business process, integrate the applications
and data, and supply additional functionality to "fill the gaps" to
produce a cohesive, composite application that ensures transactional and contextual
integrity across the entire business process.
Very
detailed information about Cincom CONTROL is contained in the ERP Evaluation
Center at http://www.erpevaluation.com/.