OFBiz › OFBiz - User

Workday

_‹ Previous Topic Next Topic _›

Classic

List

Threaded

9 messages Options

Jacques Le Roux

Workday

Administrator

Hi all,

I recently had an exchange with Vikrant Rathore about new accounting efforts. I think it is worth to be reported, here it is

Vikrant : Have a look at http://www.workday.com/ I would prefer to implement finance in their way not the traditional ERP way.

Me : What is so specific in their offer apart it's an ASP ?

Hi Jacques,

In financial component they combined 5 major parts of Finance:
1. GL Management (ofbiz is still working on to implement it)
2. Reporting (both statutory and financial management related)
3. Auditing
4. Budgeting and tracking.
5. Asset Management.

Normally none of the Financial Management system itself comes close to it. As you have to buy separate software to do it. Besides
this the way they presented the whole solution is more business oriented then technical jargon oriented which is what most ERP's do.

So I feel there way of doing Financial Management linked to all the other parts of business is a good implementation. You do not
need a separate budgeting, asset management, reporting and auditing requirements (for SOX compliance). Everything comes out of the
box. I haven't seen such a offering either by SAP business byDesign or Netsuite and I guess ofbiz can do it since it's a single data
model but no component is there to address it.

Regards,
Vikrant

David E Jones

Re: Workday

I would be really interested in hearing more from Vikrant about what
he likes about Workday. If you're listening in Vikrant, please do
write more about what parts of the Workday approach you like.

For my part I have looked into it a little bit and I think their
approach is great. More specifically what I like is the idea of
creating a software suite for a particular type of business that
basically does everything that such a business would need. Doing just
this sort of thing as a derivative work based on OFBiz has been part
of the long-term strategy from the beginning.

The accounting piece would benefit from this, but in a way that is
similar to how all other parts would benefit. That benefit is reducing
redundant data and tying things together directly that might otherwise
be in different systems. For accounting this is great because you
don't need to introduce so many artificial structures to take partial
data from other systems that is needed for operations or reporting,
especially ad-hoc reporting when creating a data warehouse to
consolidate data from multiple systems is not really a tenable
approach. The "cost centers" thread that was active recently is a good
example of partially redundant data that is necessary because of
separate systems and a light integration between them.

I don't know if that is what Vikrant liked about Workday, but that is
something that struck me as I was reviewing the public material
available.

-David

On Jan 11, 2008, at 2:59 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I recently had an exchange with Vikrant Rathore about new accounting
> efforts. I think it is worth to be reported, here it is
>
> Vikrant : Have a look at http://www.workday.com/ I would prefer to
> implement finance in their way not the traditional ERP way.
>
> Me : What is so specific in their offer apart it's an ASP ?
>
> Hi Jacques,
>
> In financial component they combined 5 major parts of Finance:
> 1. GL Management (ofbiz is still working on to implement it)
> 2. Reporting (both statutory and financial management related)
> 3. Auditing
> 4. Budgeting and tracking.
> 5. Asset Management.
>
> Normally none of the Financial Management system itself comes close
> to it. As you have to buy separate software to do it. Besides this
> the way they presented the whole solution is more business oriented
> then technical jargon oriented which is what most ERP's do.
>
> So I feel there way of doing Financial Management linked to all the
> other parts of business is a good implementation. You do not need a
> separate budgeting, asset management, reporting and auditing
> requirements (for SOX compliance). Everything comes out of the box.
> I haven't seen such a offering either by SAP business byDesign or
> Netsuite and I guess ofbiz can do it since it's a single data model
> but no component is there to address it.
>
> Regards,
> Vikrant

Enrique Ruibal

Re: Workday

Hi,

I just wanted to point out that Workday is based on the REA Model
developed William E. McCarthy, it's a very straightforward approach to
design and implment business processes, you can check out the excelent
book by Hruby on this, please check this link:

http://www.squidoo.com/REA

I'm new to Ofbiz but as far as I can see, its architecture resembles a
lot from what is described in the basic examples I have seen in this book.

Regards,
Enrique Ruibal

David E Jones wrote:

>
> I would be really interested in hearing more from Vikrant about what
> he likes about Workday. If you're listening in Vikrant, please do
> write more about what parts of the Workday approach you like.
>
> For my part I have looked into it a little bit and I think their
> approach is great. More specifically what I like is the idea of
> creating a software suite for a particular type of business that
> basically does everything that such a business would need. Doing just
> this sort of thing as a derivative work based on OFBiz has been part
> of the long-term strategy from the beginning.
>
> The accounting piece would benefit from this, but in a way that is
> similar to how all other parts would benefit. That benefit is reducing
> redundant data and tying things together directly that might otherwise
> be in different systems. For accounting this is great because you
> don't need to introduce so many artificial structures to take partial
> data from other systems that is needed for operations or reporting,
> especially ad-hoc reporting when creating a data warehouse to
> consolidate data from multiple systems is not really a tenable
> approach. The "cost centers" thread that was active recently is a good
> example of partially redundant data that is necessary because of
> separate systems and a light integration between them.
>
> I don't know if that is what Vikrant liked about Workday, but that is
> something that struck me as I was reviewing the public material
> available.
>
> -David
>
>
> On Jan 11, 2008, at 2:59 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I recently had an exchange with Vikrant Rathore about new accounting
>> efforts. I think it is worth to be reported, here it is
>>
>> Vikrant : Have a look at http://www.workday.com/ I would prefer to
>> implement finance in their way not the traditional ERP way.
>>
>> Me : What is so specific in their offer apart it's an ASP ?
>>
>> Hi Jacques,
>>
>> In financial component they combined 5 major parts of Finance:
>> 1. GL Management (ofbiz is still working on to implement it)
>> 2. Reporting (both statutory and financial management related)
>> 3. Auditing
>> 4. Budgeting and tracking.
>> 5. Asset Management.
>>
>> Normally none of the Financial Management system itself comes close
>> to it. As you have to buy separate software to do it. Besides this
>> the way they presented the whole solution is more business oriented
>> then technical jargon oriented which is what most ERP's do.
>>
>> So I feel there way of doing Financial Management linked to all the
>> other parts of business is a good implementation. You do not need a
>> separate budgeting, asset management, reporting and auditing
>> requirements (for SOX compliance). Everything comes out of the box. I
>> haven't seen such a offering either by SAP business byDesign or
>> Netsuite and I guess ofbiz can do it since it's a single data model
>> but no component is there to address it.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Vikrant
>

Vikrant.Rathore

RE: Workday

In reply to this post by David E Jones

Hi David,

I haven't used workday extensively was just intrigued by their concept of the way they structured the application in a relatively simple design based on how people work.

If you read the book and see the way they applied those concepts is quite good. But I really doubt still if it would be easy to sale this to a CFO of a company who are entrenched in the traditional thinking.

Indeed building a software is easy but making people use it is the hardest part today, since there are so many similar offerings.

But overall I like the concept of workday and the reporting and other things come into place automatically :). Since its structured around the way people work.

I feel since ofbiz GL and Financial component is not yet complete and remaining processes are in place indeed some help can be taken from workday since in their offering the finance is the last part :). Although I have to admit the first reason company wants an ERP is because they want to see consolidated finance which in itself is a problem right now.

Regards,
Vikrant

-----Original Message-----
From: David E Jones [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 3:10 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: Workday

I would be really interested in hearing more from Vikrant about what
he likes about Workday. If you're listening in Vikrant, please do
write more about what parts of the Workday approach you like.

For my part I have looked into it a little bit and I think their
approach is great. More specifically what I like is the idea of
creating a software suite for a particular type of business that
basically does everything that such a business would need. Doing just
this sort of thing as a derivative work based on OFBiz has been part
of the long-term strategy from the beginning.

The accounting piece would benefit from this, but in a way that is
similar to how all other parts would benefit. That benefit is reducing
redundant data and tying things together directly that might otherwise
be in different systems. For accounting this is great because you
don't need to introduce so many artificial structures to take partial
data from other systems that is needed for operations or reporting,
especially ad-hoc reporting when creating a data warehouse to
consolidate data from multiple systems is not really a tenable
approach. The "cost centers" thread that was active recently is a good
example of partially redundant data that is necessary because of
separate systems and a light integration between them.

I don't know if that is what Vikrant liked about Workday, but that is
something that struck me as I was reviewing the public material
available.

-David

On Jan 11, 2008, at 2:59 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:

Vikrant.Rathore

RE: Workday

In reply to this post by David E Jones

HI David,

Further to this would suggest following article they are good:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=5983#more-5983
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=128

Thanks
With best regards,
Vikrant

-----Original Message-----
From: David E Jones [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 3:10 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: Workday

I would be really interested in hearing more from Vikrant about what
he likes about Workday. If you're listening in Vikrant, please do
write more about what parts of the Workday approach you like.

For my part I have looked into it a little bit and I think their
approach is great. More specifically what I like is the idea of
creating a software suite for a particular type of business that
basically does everything that such a business would need. Doing just
this sort of thing as a derivative work based on OFBiz has been part
of the long-term strategy from the beginning.

The accounting piece would benefit from this, but in a way that is
similar to how all other parts would benefit. That benefit is reducing
redundant data and tying things together directly that might otherwise
be in different systems. For accounting this is great because you
don't need to introduce so many artificial structures to take partial
data from other systems that is needed for operations or reporting,
especially ad-hoc reporting when creating a data warehouse to
consolidate data from multiple systems is not really a tenable
approach. The "cost centers" thread that was active recently is a good
example of partially redundant data that is necessary because of
separate systems and a light integration between them.

I don't know if that is what Vikrant liked about Workday, but that is
something that struck me as I was reviewing the public material
available.

-David

On Jan 11, 2008, at 2:59 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:

David E Jones

Re: Workday

Out of curiosity I looked into Workday a little more. It sounds like
they are using a VERY object-oriented architecture, so much so that
they only have 3 database tables and map all objects to them in an
automated way.

This may seem really nice from a development perspective, but I've
been through a few of these systems and they are a bit of a nightmare.
When you get into millions of records and query on more than one field/
column you end up joining on the same table, etc, etc.

My worst experience with this was part of a project to migrate of off
such a system, namely the now mostly defunct Blue Martini which did
persistence in a very similar way. Fortunately I've never done
significant development or support on such a system. The queries to
pull data from the database were massive and required about 3 man-
months of effort to complete the migration of product, customer, and
order information to the OFBiz database. The normal effort for that
sort of thing is generally around 2-3 weeks for complex mid-high end
systems, or for simple data (like basic product information
spreadsheets) the time required can get down to a couple of hours.

It's amazing to me how many systems still try to do things this way.
IMO OFBiz has about the right number of tables and columns in the
database, ie 758 tables and 7817 columns. The tables in general
represent a nice level of conceptual granularity and are adaptable to
many variations on the supported concepts.

When looking at a database for an enterprise system I get really
scared by 2 major trends:

1. a really small number of tables, like 3, where everything is in the
object model
2. a really large number of tables and columns, like Oracle Financials
~2 million columns, where things are excessively denormalized,
redundant and in general just chaotic

-David

On Jan 15, 2008, at 7:26 PM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]
> wrote:

> HI David,
>
> Further to this would suggest following article they are good:
> http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=5983#more-5983
> http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=128
>
> Thanks
> With best regards,
> Vikrant
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David E Jones [mailto:[hidden email]]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 3:10 AM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: Workday
>
>
> I would be really interested in hearing more from Vikrant about what
> he likes about Workday. If you're listening in Vikrant, please do
> write more about what parts of the Workday approach you like.
>
> For my part I have looked into it a little bit and I think their
> approach is great. More specifically what I like is the idea of
> creating a software suite for a particular type of business that
> basically does everything that such a business would need. Doing just
> this sort of thing as a derivative work based on OFBiz has been part
> of the long-term strategy from the beginning.
>
> The accounting piece would benefit from this, but in a way that is
> similar to how all other parts would benefit. That benefit is reducing
> redundant data and tying things together directly that might otherwise
> be in different systems. For accounting this is great because you
> don't need to introduce so many artificial structures to take partial
> data from other systems that is needed for operations or reporting,
> especially ad-hoc reporting when creating a data warehouse to
> consolidate data from multiple systems is not really a tenable
> approach. The "cost centers" thread that was active recently is a good
> example of partially redundant data that is necessary because of
> separate systems and a light integration between them.
>
> I don't know if that is what Vikrant liked about Workday, but that is
> something that struck me as I was reviewing the public material
> available.
>
> -David
>
>
> On Jan 11, 2008, at 2:59 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I recently had an exchange with Vikrant Rathore about new accounting
>> efforts. I think it is worth to be reported, here it is
>>
>> Vikrant : Have a look at http://www.workday.com/ I would prefer to
>> implement finance in their way not the traditional ERP way.
>>
>> Me : What is so specific in their offer apart it's an ASP ?
>>
>> Hi Jacques,
>>
>> In financial component they combined 5 major parts of Finance:
>> 1. GL Management (ofbiz is still working on to implement it)
>> 2. Reporting (both statutory and financial management related)
>> 3. Auditing
>> 4. Budgeting and tracking.
>> 5. Asset Management.
>>
>> Normally none of the Financial Management system itself comes close
>> to it. As you have to buy separate software to do it. Besides this
>> the way they presented the whole solution is more business oriented
>> then technical jargon oriented which is what most ERP's do.
>>
>> So I feel there way of doing Financial Management linked to all the
>> other parts of business is a good implementation. You do not need a
>> separate budgeting, asset management, reporting and auditing
>> requirements (for SOX compliance). Everything comes out of the box.
>> I haven't seen such a offering either by SAP business byDesign or
>> Netsuite and I guess ofbiz can do it since it's a single data model
>> but no component is there to address it.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Vikrant
>

Jacques Le Roux

Re: Workday

Administrator

Thanks for this technical insight and interesting comment, David !

Jacques

From: "David E Jones" <[hidden email]>

>
> Out of curiosity I looked into Workday a little more. It sounds like
> they are using a VERY object-oriented architecture, so much so that
> they only have 3 database tables and map all objects to them in an
> automated way.
>
> This may seem really nice from a development perspective, but I've
> been through a few of these systems and they are a bit of a nightmare.
> When you get into millions of records and query on more than one field/
> column you end up joining on the same table, etc, etc.
>
> My worst experience with this was part of a project to migrate of off
> such a system, namely the now mostly defunct Blue Martini which did
> persistence in a very similar way. Fortunately I've never done
> significant development or support on such a system. The queries to
> pull data from the database were massive and required about 3 man-
> months of effort to complete the migration of product, customer, and
> order information to the OFBiz database. The normal effort for that
> sort of thing is generally around 2-3 weeks for complex mid-high end
> systems, or for simple data (like basic product information
> spreadsheets) the time required can get down to a couple of hours.
>
> It's amazing to me how many systems still try to do things this way.
> IMO OFBiz has about the right number of tables and columns in the
> database, ie 758 tables and 7817 columns. The tables in general
> represent a nice level of conceptual granularity and are adaptable to
> many variations on the supported concepts.
>
> When looking at a database for an enterprise system I get really
> scared by 2 major trends:
>
> 1. a really small number of tables, like 3, where everything is in the
> object model
> 2. a really large number of tables and columns, like Oracle Financials
> ~2 million columns, where things are excessively denormalized,
> redundant and in general just chaotic
>
> -David
>
>
> On Jan 15, 2008, at 7:26 PM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]
> > wrote:
>
>> HI David,
>>
>> Further to this would suggest following article they are good:
>> http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=5983#more-5983
>> http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=128
>>
>> Thanks
>> With best regards,
>> Vikrant
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: David E Jones [mailto:[hidden email]]
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 3:10 AM
>> To: [hidden email]
>> Subject: Re: Workday
>>
>>
>> I would be really interested in hearing more from Vikrant about what
>> he likes about Workday. If you're listening in Vikrant, please do
>> write more about what parts of the Workday approach you like.
>>
>> For my part I have looked into it a little bit and I think their
>> approach is great. More specifically what I like is the idea of
>> creating a software suite for a particular type of business that
>> basically does everything that such a business would need. Doing just
>> this sort of thing as a derivative work based on OFBiz has been part
>> of the long-term strategy from the beginning.
>>
>> The accounting piece would benefit from this, but in a way that is
>> similar to how all other parts would benefit. That benefit is reducing
>> redundant data and tying things together directly that might otherwise
>> be in different systems. For accounting this is great because you
>> don't need to introduce so many artificial structures to take partial
>> data from other systems that is needed for operations or reporting,
>> especially ad-hoc reporting when creating a data warehouse to
>> consolidate data from multiple systems is not really a tenable
>> approach. The "cost centers" thread that was active recently is a good
>> example of partially redundant data that is necessary because of
>> separate systems and a light integration between them.
>>
>> I don't know if that is what Vikrant liked about Workday, but that is
>> something that struck me as I was reviewing the public material
>> available.
>>
>> -David
>>
>>
>> On Jan 11, 2008, at 2:59 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I recently had an exchange with Vikrant Rathore about new accounting
>>> efforts. I think it is worth to be reported, here it is
>>>
>>> Vikrant : Have a look at http://www.workday.com/ I would prefer to
>>> implement finance in their way not the traditional ERP way.
>>>
>>> Me : What is so specific in their offer apart it's an ASP ?
>>>
>>> Hi Jacques,
>>>
>>> In financial component they combined 5 major parts of Finance:
>>> 1. GL Management (ofbiz is still working on to implement it)
>>> 2. Reporting (both statutory and financial management related)
>>> 3. Auditing
>>> 4. Budgeting and tracking.
>>> 5. Asset Management.
>>>
>>> Normally none of the Financial Management system itself comes close
>>> to it. As you have to buy separate software to do it. Besides this
>>> the way they presented the whole solution is more business oriented
>>> then technical jargon oriented which is what most ERP's do.
>>>
>>> So I feel there way of doing Financial Management linked to all the
>>> other parts of business is a good implementation. You do not need a
>>> separate budgeting, asset management, reporting and auditing
>>> requirements (for SOX compliance). Everything comes out of the box.
>>> I haven't seen such a offering either by SAP business byDesign or
>>> Netsuite and I guess ofbiz can do it since it's a single data model
>>> but no component is there to address it.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Vikrant
>>
>
>

Vikrant.Rathore

RE: Workday

In reply to this post by David E Jones

Hi David,

Thanks for the technical feedback on workday. What I was more intrigued by them was not the internal architecture but the way they took the approach for building a system from business process perspective and able to answer when, where, how and why of a particular transaction and have a nice integrated UI on top which very well serve the regulatory requirement as well.

In general since I am more into supporting direct business and apply technology for achieving business objective, the approach made a perfect sense to me, and if you see the article the Finance comes automatically in the end. They were not trying to build a Finance system and then slap supporting systems around. This is what I was trying to emphasize on ofbiz that it can do the same since it's not trying to be Finance system and then put other parts in place.

I have seen other open source alternative like Compiere, Adempiere (offshoot of Compiere), Postbooks, OpenBravo (the data model borrowed from Compiere, which in turn inspired by SAP), TinyERP they all are built around Finance and then supporting process built around Financial Management. Indeed Oracle and SAP works the same way although they try to cater to multiple industries and in trying to be generic they are really very heavy.

This is for some good reason as well since the heaviest users for ERP are mostly financial staffs (which are forced to use a system due to regulatory and statutory requirements). The company is compelled to invest money in these system because it's forced and then if the same vendor offers a better business management suite along with Finance it's an easy sale.

Recently I was reading Mcluhan theory of Laws of Media which opened my eyes on to how innovation works. It's altogether a different way of looking at business. I find workday was trying to do the same taking up a different approach.

Ofbiz is still work in progress it's there and not there yet I envision ofbiz as a single integrated development framework for building Unified Business Applications (means you have single framework handling your core business). Then it becomes easy to manage such system with homogenous team which can rotate across or homogenous infrastructure team which can rotate across. I saw the same thing about ofbiz in my company and did some presentation of which some parts I can share with the community later.

But you know when I wanted to sale the product the only drawback came was the UI although it made perfect sense to me but to other users it seems very complicated as you know sometimes first impression is the last impression it would be nice if the OOTB applications are made a little appealing.

Anyways this was a very long post and I can write a lot about it since I really tried selling this concept against SAP, Oracle Netsuite and other open source offerings. In one case I was successful as well and its work in progress.

Thanks
With best regards,
Vikrant

-----Original Message-----
From: David E Jones [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 2:30 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: Workday

Out of curiosity I looked into Workday a little more. It sounds like
they are using a VERY object-oriented architecture, so much so that
they only have 3 database tables and map all objects to them in an
automated way.

This may seem really nice from a development perspective, but I've
been through a few of these systems and they are a bit of a nightmare.
When you get into millions of records and query on more than one field/
column you end up joining on the same table, etc, etc.

My worst experience with this was part of a project to migrate of off
such a system, namely the now mostly defunct Blue Martini which did
persistence in a very similar way. Fortunately I've never done
significant development or support on such a system. The queries to
pull data from the database were massive and required about 3 man-
months of effort to complete the migration of product, customer, and
order information to the OFBiz database. The normal effort for that
sort of thing is generally around 2-3 weeks for complex mid-high end
systems, or for simple data (like basic product information
spreadsheets) the time required can get down to a couple of hours.

It's amazing to me how many systems still try to do things this way.
IMO OFBiz has about the right number of tables and columns in the
database, ie 758 tables and 7817 columns. The tables in general
represent a nice level of conceptual granularity and are adaptable to
many variations on the supported concepts.

When looking at a database for an enterprise system I get really
scared by 2 major trends:

1. a really small number of tables, like 3, where everything is in the
object model
2. a really large number of tables and columns, like Oracle Financials
~2 million columns, where things are excessively denormalized,
redundant and in general just chaotic

-David

On Jan 15, 2008, at 7:26 PM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]
> wrote:

David E Jones

Re: Workday

Vikrant,

I agree with you totally about what is good in Workday, ie the
comprehensive system approach.

That is definitely something we're trying to do with OFBiz. The fact
that it's an ERP system without a focus on accounting is (right now
anyway) somewhat painfully evident based on the fact that the general
ledger is the weakest part of OFBiz. That is changing quickly though
and in fact the auto-posting services are quite nice now in OFBiz and
the reports are making progress. Things are going well and that part
of OFBiz is currently attracting clients to help flesh it out and do
initial implementations that are proof of applicability (we/Hotwax
have some clients asking about this right now).

Most of the rest of OFBiz is being used with some degree of
customization for all parts of enterprise automation, including
fulfillment/warehousing and manufacturing and project management and
customer service and order processing and so on. It is still a future
goal to have these things elegant out of the box and have UIs that
address common business processes with ease, which is what I guess you
are referring to by the work in progress nature of OFBiz.

Anyway, good comments all around and definitely helpful as all of us
visualize the future of OFBiz from a big picture perspective, even as
we work on the little day to day requirements and issues that come up.

-David

On Jan 16, 2008, at 6:58 PM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]
> wrote:

> Hi David,
>
> Thanks for the technical feedback on workday. What I was more
> intrigued by them was not the internal architecture but the way they
> took the approach for building a system from business process
> perspective and able to answer when, where, how and why of a
> particular transaction and have a nice integrated UI on top which
> very well serve the regulatory requirement as well.
>
> In general since I am more into supporting direct business and apply
> technology for achieving business objective, the approach made a
> perfect sense to me, and if you see the article the Finance comes
> automatically in the end. They were not trying to build a Finance
> system and then slap supporting systems around. This is what I was
> trying to emphasize on ofbiz that it can do the same since it's not
> trying to be Finance system and then put other parts in place.
>
> I have seen other open source alternative like Compiere, Adempiere
> (offshoot of Compiere), Postbooks, OpenBravo (the data model
> borrowed from Compiere, which in turn inspired by SAP), TinyERP they
> all are built around Finance and then supporting process built
> around Financial Management. Indeed Oracle and SAP works the same
> way although they try to cater to multiple industries and in trying
> to be generic they are really very heavy.
>
> This is for some good reason as well since the heaviest users for
> ERP are mostly financial staffs (which are forced to use a system
> due to regulatory and statutory requirements). The company is
> compelled to invest money in these system because it's forced and
> then if the same vendor offers a better business management suite
> along with Finance it's an easy sale.
>
> Recently I was reading Mcluhan theory of Laws of Media which opened
> my eyes on to how innovation works. It's altogether a different way
> of looking at business. I find workday was trying to do the same
> taking up a different approach.
>
> Ofbiz is still work in progress it's there and not there yet I
> envision ofbiz as a single integrated development framework for
> building Unified Business Applications (means you have single
> framework handling your core business). Then it becomes easy to
> manage such system with homogenous team which can rotate across or
> homogenous infrastructure team which can rotate across. I saw the
> same thing about ofbiz in my company and did some presentation of
> which some parts I can share with the community later.
>
> But you know when I wanted to sale the product the only drawback
> came was the UI although it made perfect sense to me but to other
> users it seems very complicated as you know sometimes first
> impression is the last impression it would be nice if the OOTB
> applications are made a little appealing.
>
>
> Anyways this was a very long post and I can write a lot about it
> since I really tried selling this concept against SAP, Oracle
> Netsuite and other open source offerings. In one case I was
> successful as well and its work in progress.
>
> Thanks
> With best regards,
> Vikrant
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David E Jones [mailto:[hidden email]]
> Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 2:30 AM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: Workday
>
>
> Out of curiosity I looked into Workday a little more. It sounds like
> they are using a VERY object-oriented architecture, so much so that
> they only have 3 database tables and map all objects to them in an
> automated way.
>
> This may seem really nice from a development perspective, but I've
> been through a few of these systems and they are a bit of a nightmare.
> When you get into millions of records and query on more than one
> field/
> column you end up joining on the same table, etc, etc.
>
> My worst experience with this was part of a project to migrate of off
> such a system, namely the now mostly defunct Blue Martini which did
> persistence in a very similar way. Fortunately I've never done
> significant development or support on such a system. The queries to
> pull data from the database were massive and required about 3 man-
> months of effort to complete the migration of product, customer, and
> order information to the OFBiz database. The normal effort for that
> sort of thing is generally around 2-3 weeks for complex mid-high end
> systems, or for simple data (like basic product information
> spreadsheets) the time required can get down to a couple of hours.
>
> It's amazing to me how many systems still try to do things this way.
> IMO OFBiz has about the right number of tables and columns in the
> database, ie 758 tables and 7817 columns. The tables in general
> represent a nice level of conceptual granularity and are adaptable to
> many variations on the supported concepts.
>
> When looking at a database for an enterprise system I get really
> scared by 2 major trends:
>
> 1. a really small number of tables, like 3, where everything is in the
> object model
> 2. a really large number of tables and columns, like Oracle Financials
> ~2 million columns, where things are excessively denormalized,
> redundant and in general just chaotic
>
> -David
>
>
> On Jan 15, 2008, at 7:26 PM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]
>> wrote:
>
>> HI David,
>>
>> Further to this would suggest following article they are good:
>> http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=5983#more-5983
>> http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=128
>>
>> Thanks
>> With best regards,
>> Vikrant
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: David E Jones [mailto:[hidden email]]
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 3:10 AM
>> To: [hidden email]
>> Subject: Re: Workday
>>
>>
>> I would be really interested in hearing more from Vikrant about what
>> he likes about Workday. If you're listening in Vikrant, please do
>> write more about what parts of the Workday approach you like.
>>
>> For my part I have looked into it a little bit and I think their
>> approach is great. More specifically what I like is the idea of
>> creating a software suite for a particular type of business that
>> basically does everything that such a business would need. Doing just
>> this sort of thing as a derivative work based on OFBiz has been part
>> of the long-term strategy from the beginning.
>>
>> The accounting piece would benefit from this, but in a way that is
>> similar to how all other parts would benefit. That benefit is
>> reducing
>> redundant data and tying things together directly that might
>> otherwise
>> be in different systems. For accounting this is great because you
>> don't need to introduce so many artificial structures to take partial
>> data from other systems that is needed for operations or reporting,
>> especially ad-hoc reporting when creating a data warehouse to
>> consolidate data from multiple systems is not really a tenable
>> approach. The "cost centers" thread that was active recently is a
>> good
>> example of partially redundant data that is necessary because of
>> separate systems and a light integration between them.
>>
>> I don't know if that is what Vikrant liked about Workday, but that is
>> something that struck me as I was reviewing the public material
>> available.
>>
>> -David
>>
>>
>> On Jan 11, 2008, at 2:59 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I recently had an exchange with Vikrant Rathore about new accounting
>>> efforts. I think it is worth to be reported, here it is
>>>
>>> Vikrant : Have a look at http://www.workday.com/ I would prefer to
>>> implement finance in their way not the traditional ERP way.
>>>
>>> Me : What is so specific in their offer apart it's an ASP ?
>>>
>>> Hi Jacques,
>>>
>>> In financial component they combined 5 major parts of Finance:
>>> 1. GL Management (ofbiz is still working on to implement it)
>>> 2. Reporting (both statutory and financial management related)
>>> 3. Auditing
>>> 4. Budgeting and tracking.
>>> 5. Asset Management.
>>>
>>> Normally none of the Financial Management system itself comes close
>>> to it. As you have to buy separate software to do it. Besides this
>>> the way they presented the whole solution is more business oriented
>>> then technical jargon oriented which is what most ERP's do.
>>>
>>> So I feel there way of doing Financial Management linked to all the
>>> other parts of business is a good implementation. You do not need a
>>> separate budgeting, asset management, reporting and auditing
>>> requirements (for SOX compliance). Everything comes out of the box.
>>> I haven't seen such a offering either by SAP business byDesign or
>>> Netsuite and I guess ofbiz can do it since it's a single data model
>>> but no component is there to address it.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Vikrant
>>
>