Week 5 Project

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Web-Based ESS and EAI Software—Part 1

When EAI middleware integrates and ties key applications together on a common platform, it is a good idea to tie the interfaced information into an ESS to help senior managers speed up decision-making. ESS helps senior executives with unstructured problems, combining data from external and internal sources to create a generalized communications and computing environment. This data is used to apply and focus on a changing array of problems. ESS helps forecast trends, identify problems, monitor organizational performance, spot problems, and track the activities of competitors while increasing the upper management’s span of control. ESS gives executives the ability to drill down, moving from a piece of summary data to lower levels of detail. OLAP tools for analyzing large databases provide this functionality.

Implementations of ESS can take on the following different forms:

Activity-Based costing: Identi�es all the corporate activities that incur costs while producing a speci�c service or product. This helps managers see which services or products are at a loss or a pro�t so that they can make changes to maximize pro�tability. SAP offers a web-enabled mySAP Strategic Enterprise Management module that features corporate performance metrics, planning, and simulation tools. Executives can use the Management Cockpit tool to monitor strategic performance indicators using external and internal benchmarks. The system can focus on customer accounts and contribution margins with the ability to calculate the lifetime and current value of each account instead of reporting in terms of income and product. Detroit Edison which is the seventh- largest electric utility company in the U.S. needed an in-depth understanding of the true nature of its costs to cope with new sources of competition and deregulation. It implemented PeopleSoft’s Activity-Based Management (ABM) analytics software, which provides executives with operational views of the processes and activity costs for which they are personally responsible. ABM extracts information from existing ERP systems to provide industry-speci�c, high- level, role-based pro�tability and performance measurements, reporting, and analysis. The software helped the company analyze their production processes and costs to identify cost reduction opportunities and process improvements to save millions of dollars.