J. D. Edwards' supply chain management (SCM) software

J. D. Edwards' supply chain management (SCM) software

What is supply chain management?

Supply chain management (SCM) aims to eliminate unnecessary steps in the supply chain model and thereby reduce organizational operating expenses. SCM software deals with the planning, organization, and management of every element in the supply chain, from raw material to final delivery to a customer. Solutions for SCM work in conjunction with a company's underlying ERP system, which deals with sales and forecasting data, production and capacity planning, production, and logistics.

Creating a successful SCM model

The SCM solution must adapt easily to changes and developments in your business relationships

An effective supply chain management model develops a complete understanding of the business relationships you wish to have with suppliers and customers at all points of the management chain. It uses this understanding to design an application that will support the desired relationship. Crucially, the resulting SCM solution must adapt easily to changes and developments in your business relationships in order to maximize the company's investment while minimizing disturbances in the supply chain and inconvenience to the customer.

J. D. Edwards provides two SCM solutions

Denver-based J. D. Edwards & Co. target their ERP and SCM solutions and their underlying architecture, OneWorld?, at medium-sized enterprises. J. D. Edwards' goal is to provide a complete single-vendor solution for its clients. Additionally, its business plan includes expanding SCM into the previously undertargeted services sector.

As a result, the company has developed SCM solutions for two very different enterprise markets. SCOREx (Supply Chain Optimization and Real-Time Extended Execution) serves the manufacturing market and AIMx (Asset Investment Management and Execution) serves the newer ERP market of service industries, such as banking, real estate, health care, construction, and entertainment. Both these solutions focus on providing flexibility in a network-centric environment that results in customer-centric supply chain management.

The SCOREx solution

SCOREx provides visibility through a company's supply chain and links to customers and partners. Its modules include

• order management

• warehouse management

• transportation management

• customer service management

• human resources management

• electronic storefront

• data warehousing

Additionally, it includes advanced planning and scheduling and cost-management applications. It is also HTML enabled, which is essential today in SCM applications.

AIMx

Targeted at the newer service-sector market, AIMx provides an integrated software product for managing business resources such as facilities, employees, stakeholders, and customers. In developing AIMx, J. D. Edwards recognized that industries such as construction, banking, entertainment, and health care must optimize assets, enable information flow, and adapt to changing environments. It includes

• billing and payroll modules

• ability to monitor customer service management response times

• escalation procedures

• fulfillment rates

• profitability module for managerial accounting

• activity-based management and costing

• expanded decision support system for information analysis

Industry-specific modules are also available to assist a company in optimizing assets during procurement, maintenance, and retention.

Integrating SCOREx and AIMx

The J. D. Edwards OneWorld architecture provides the ERP platform for SCOREx. OneWorld can be deployed across different computing platforms, but uses a single-user interface and software version with them all. This strategy and the almost seamless integration between OneWorld, SCOREx, and new and third-party applications allows J. D. Edwards to achieve single-vendor-supplied functionality.

Business-led SCM

ERP and SCM systems are regularly criticized for their inflexibility after installation. J. D. Edwards has developed ActivEra in response to this inflexibility, providing a system that allows business leaders to manage business rules, rather than having business rules governed by IT constraints.

ActivEra tools

ActivEra allows change after an SCM system has been installed. For example, managers can easily alter business practices, such as changing work order processes. The tools and interface assist in personalizing sales and service for different customers and minimize the need for customized interfaces.

ActivEra console

The ActivEra console is an intuitive GUI interface that guides users step by step through retooling certain processes. Using 180 Activators that ship with the console, managers can redesign forms, create customized reports, add data warehouses, and change other business processes without involving IT. Additionally, IT managers use ActivEra to manage SCOREx, AIMx, and OneWorld.

Extension Architecture

To further facilitate flexibility, Extension Architecture allows users to create new Activators. IT managers use it to integrate third-party software to the system.