As To Good Reading and Background...
I'd suggest starting with Geoff Moore's THE GORILLA GAME.
It will help set up certain concepts, giving you some
background about both SAP, the giant Enteprise Resource Planning vendor, and, of course i2.
The coming battle IS pretty much between SAP and i2. Most
analysts, including Forrester Research and Gartner Group and
Meta Group, recognize that i2 has a considerable lead in Supply
Chain Management (SCM) and most particularly supply chain PLANNING and OPTIMIZATION. SAP will be hammering home two things:
(a): All enterprise applications are enterprise applications are
enterprise applications... and thus SCM is just a logical extension
of ERP.
(b): We, meaning SAP, have a giant install base of ERP customers who don't want to have to hassle with another best-of-
breed solution (i2) or, less kindly, a "bolt-on application" that will
create all sorts of integration problems.
As for (a), it's a patent falsehood. There is a difference in
kind between ERP, a transaction-focused system, and SCM,
a multi-enterprise, collaboration-based system. Truth to tell, ERP
hasn't even perfected being ERP, yet... and now it wants a chunk
out of my supply chain? No. Repeat: HELL, NO... not MY supply
chain. Further, ERP has long been a misnomer. It's weak in the
"P", the planning area. And Planning is something that i2 is prohibitively strong at. But, all of that said, SAP is a giant and has
giant BRANDWIDTH and will try to make this case in a GIANT
way.
Further, i2's been perfecting its supply chain management
products and services--its services are pretty darned awesome
as well--FOR TEN YEARS. Has 500 customers worldwide, including
all of the world's top 10 PC companies... including your beloved
DELL (a topic I am, well, somewhat familiar with... a-hem). Has
something called a Business Release Methodology that ensures
a project achieves ROI quickly, thus buildiing momentum and
the business case within the enterprise. Has certain customers
who are now working on their SIXTH repurchase of ITWO products...
a wonderful, though quiet endorsement. Etc...
As for (b), there is at least a grain of truth here. But, the largest
SAP R/3 installation in the world is an i2 customer---so much for the
integration problems. Add in Texas Instruments, OxyChem, Vanity
Fair and other SAP R/3 sites that are also i2 RHYTHM (that's the
product name) customers... and the integration bugaboo seems more
like specter than substance.
As for reading and resources, here's my pick list...
cio.com has an ERP/SCM executive resource center
that, aside from the fact it lumps two disparate topics together, is
a pretty good place to start. Please note that in that center there
is a Forrester Research report called Beyond ERP from 1997 that
is a helpful piece. Also, in general, just keep your eyes open for
Bobby Cameron's (A Forrester analyst) work on SCM and what
Forrester calls "dynamic trade"... which sounds a lot like e-BPO...
i2's latest initiative. By the way, i2 just presented at Forrester Friday
afternoon during their "Real--Time Economy" show.
erpsupersite.com is a resource and links site created
by Jim Zimmerman, an R/3 guru (I guess). The site, as one might
guess is very, very focused on SAP and ERP... but it does have
occasional articles on i2 and the supply chain management sector.
Try to get your hands on brokerage house reports, most especially
those from George Gilbert at CS First Boston. If there is anybody who
knows more about ITWO... with the exception of Sanjiv Sidhu...
I don't know who it is.
There are about three books on supply chain management that
I have bothered with... but I would save those for later in your research.
When this site isn't buggy, I'd also suggest
news-real.com, an INFOSEEK spin-off with a product called Industry Watch that helps you find references in somewhat obscure publications like the Asian pub, The Straits Times, and the Journal of Commerce. Also, I'd go to newspage.com and do periodic one-week searches for articles... sometimes these will be labeled PREMIUM, meaning they will want to charge you. But, do what I do... copy the URL reference and see if you can get into the REFERENCED site directly without paying a red cent.
In general, remember that when doing searches at search
engine sites like hotbot.com or infoseek.com
or metacrawler.com (which pretty much obviates the
necessity of searching the other places), it is wise to put your
multi-word search query in QUOTES... or you will get too much
garbage. As a final note, I have recently downloaded Infoseek's
marvelous distributed search tool called Express and signed up
at companysleuth.com to "stake out" ITWO and others
in my portfolio.
Hope this helps. And good luck with your ITWO investment.
Best Regards,
c m |
