centralization vs. fragmentation

[Mark Huffman]

Hi Jocelyn,
 
Sorry that I missed one of your rare visits to these shores - but I
should be back in Australia for Chrissie, so maybe we can catch up then.
 
I've been reading about the Business Connector and generating XML docs
from BAPIs/IDOCs etc as the cure to all of our ills.
 
In your experience, do the Business Connector and Workflow fit together
to make a more complete solution? I guess what I'm asking is: What is
the effort needed to generate XML docs from a workitem?
 
Best Wishes,
 
Mark
 
 
Dart, Jocelyn wrote:
>
> Hi Mark,
> I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that history is repeating itself.
>
> *#@&! Irritating isn't it?
>
> I'm amazed at how many people seem to forget all the hard-learned lessons of
> the past
> as soon as the phrase "e-commerce" comes up.  Funnily enough, little things
> like project
> planning and ROI, for instance, do still apply.
>
> Very VERY frustrating to see people try to implement quick and dirty
> e-commerce
> solutions which have a snazzy facade but little or no thought has been given
> to how
> the business process is going to work behind all of this. End result - loss
> of face and
> loss of user buy-in as it becomes evident that the process is missing behind
> the facade.
>
> Too much "got to be on the 'net" panic out there.  Certainly we have to move
> quickly but
> that's no excuse for not thinking through the business process.  It doesn't
> matter what or
> how many e-commerce applications you put out on your website - if the
> process doesn't work
> it's going to become evident to your users very quickly.  If anything
> e-commerce requires
> greater attention to slick streamlined business processes with attentive
> problem resolution
> - e-commerce users expect speed, don't have a lot of patience and have no
> reason to be loyal
> to a site that gives them grief.
>
> At least these days we have workflow - and it's relatively straight forward
> to hook it
> behind your e-commerce application.  My two favourite methods at the moment
> would be
> 1) Using the ITS and the generated WWW transactions to kick of the workflow
> or execute the workitem
> 2) Have the e-commerce application call an RFC to raise the event
>
> Just saw webflow at the Las Vegas TechEd - looks promising although there
> are still some
> security issues to be resolved in more depth.  Bad news is you need R/3 4.6C
> to run it.
> I guess in the meantime we can simulate cross-corporation flows by adding
> steps to
> trigger RFC calls or XML doc sends to other systems.
>
> The other good news is that there are more and more workflow solutions
> coming out of Walldorf
> - nearly all the new e-commerce solutions involve well-defined
> pre-configured workflows at some point.
> Lots more samples and examples for us to build on.  Also the condition
> editor which lets you
> basically do simple check function modules without programming is useful.
>
> Would recommend people also have a look at the new workflow miniapp which
> sucks the workitems from
> multiple systems into the one web inbox - very interesting!
>
> Regards, Jocelyn.
>
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Mark Huffman [mailto:m.r.huffman at worldnet.att.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, 13 June 2000 2:08 PM
> To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: centralization vs. fragmentation
>
> I'm not claiming any great insight here, but over a quiet beer this past
> weekend, was reflecting on the state of the IT industry and in
> particular some of the large organizations that I consult with.
>
> For those of us who were in IT before SAP R/3, the eighties and early
> nienties was a time of decentralization, with every department wanting
> their own database, standalone expert systems etc.
>
> Then SAP came along with the central database repository concept - I
> remember when I took my first course, the teacher was actually kind of
> sheepish about discussing the architecture as it sounded so mainframish.
>
> For awhile that architecture swept all before it and all sorts of
> systems died only to have their data sucked into some module of SAP. For
> workflow the name of the biggest game was implementing cross-module
> processes within SAP.
>
> But now it seems that the centralization tide has crested and we are
> back to decentralization or even fragmentation. Every deparment wants
> their own customer database and business rule set (deja vu?) with the
> Internet spinning off all sorts of CRM/SCP systems and other acronyms.
>
> Now the SAP teams are being accused of reacting too slowly to change
> requests and for workflow the biggest game apparently is webflow or for
> survival at least backending to a hot new Internet project that just got
> budget.
>
> Any comments? Would be nice to get a good systems debate going again
> rather than just answering the same old questions from consultants who
> can't be bothered calling up their online help.