Creating a competitive edge

with JD Edwards and

SharePoint 2010

A Business Overview

2 CREATING A COMPETITIVE EDGE WITH JD EDWARDS AND

SHAREPOINT 2010

Table of Contents

1 The World of ERP Has Evolved

2 SharePoint 2010: The Leader in Business Collaboration

5 Business Data – Making Better Decisions

8 Business Productivity – Extending the reach of JD Edwards

10 Business Value – Driving growth

11 Innovate Now!

1 DOCUMENT NAME / DATE

The World of ERP Has Evolved

For Customers of Oracle J.D. Edwards system, the days of waiting for lengthy material

reports to emerge from the dot-matrix printer, and of departmental secretaries

phoning around scrambling to coordinate production reviews, are not so distant

memories. Then, JD Edwards transformed how those companies ran their business and

provided them with a distinct competitive edge. This white paper outlines the business

benefits of the next wave of business transformation, connecting JD Edwards and the

integrated collaboration platform of Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

When Material Requirement Planning (MRP) evolved into Manufacturing Resource

Planning (MRP II) and then into Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), companies

achieved efficiencies through standardization and coordination. The key differentiator

of J.D. Edwards was that it was designed from the ground up to be integrated. Prior to

the advent of JD Edwards MRP/ERP capabilities were sold separately, and any

integration that followed required custom code. Companies found that this ―bolt-on‖

approach made responding to rapid market changes in time prohibitively difficult. So

companies across industries chose JD Edwards for its power and flexibility in helping

them respond to new market demands quickly and effectively. Through JD Edwards,

companies gained a strategic advantage over their competition through efficiency,

standardization of processes and implementation of effective controls throughout

their organization.

With the advent of targeted vertical and market segment-specific ERP solutions, and

more recently ―cloud‖ offerings, most organizations have achieved these same process

efficiencies. Many companies continue to invest in process improvements by

enhancing their use of their ERP systems. However, incremental changes to an ERP

system can only deliver incremental improvements in the business. Rapid market

changes and customers’ demand have these companies looking for the next wave of

transformation.

This white paper highlights ways in which customers can maximize their investments in

JD Edwards by connecting their ERP system with SharePoint 2010 and discusses the

business benefits of the unified collaboration platform of SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint 2010: The Leader in Business

Collaboration

SharePoint 2010 is a clear leader in the market for collaboration platforms. It delivers

more features and functionalities than any other product today. And SharePoint

provides the capabilities necessary to achieve business innovation with one unified

63% of companies using

Oracle‟s Business

Applications also use

SharePoint for business

collaboration.

Source: Collaboration research by

Pique Solutions, Jan 2011

“42% of new Innovative

ideas will come from

employees and 38% from

business partners”

Source: The new Collaboration

enabling innovation, changing the

workplace(IBM)

2 CREATING A COMPETITIVE EDGE WITH JD EDWARDS AND

SHAREPOINT 2010

platform which can connect with a JD Edwards system in a simple and well-managed

way. Whether a company is already reaping the benefits from the implementation of a

JD Edwards system, or is still in the process of rolling it out, SharePoint 2010 provides

the right environment to:

facilitate the sharing of ideas and expertise

create solutions to meet business needs in a timely manner

visualize and share the most relevant information and make the best

decisions possible

As a collaboration platform, SharePoint 2010 enables the entire workforce to be better

connected and better equipped, all while working in a secure, well managed and

highly flexible IT infrastructure. It does this by providing such features as Enterprise

Search, Content Management, Business Intelligence, Social Networking and many

others. Companies looking to maintain their parity with the competition, or even

surpass them in quality and responsiveness, will find that the integrated platform of

SharePoint 2010 is a natural extension to the investments they’ve already made in JD

Edwards.

Once implemented, the key to leveraging the full value of a new collaborative platform

is through adoption. Adoption success hinges on how quickly and seamlessly

employees can embrace the new platform as the central tool to getting their jobs done

and to drive new value for a business and their customers. In short, it’s all about the

user experience. The user experience with an Intranet, Extranet and Internet-facing

site must be easy to use and logical to navigate. It must also be intuitive. Demystifying

the intricacies of the JD Edwards interface is a critical consideration when designing a

new user experience. SharePoint 2010 is designed to give non-specialists and

specialists alike the tools to access content from line-of-business systems without the

need to pass through professional developers, coding tools, or labor-intensive copy

and paste. SharePoint 2010 can be used as a unified presentation layer for information

contained in JD Edwards and other LOB applications. And not only can that

information be displayed in SharePoint 2010, it can also be maintained as SharePoint

2010 has the capability to write data into as well as read data from these systems.

As a core design principal, SharePoint 2010 provides an experience that enables a

broad, cross-section of an organization, including business analysts and designers, to

access, analyze, share, and make decisions on the data traditionally locked in a JD

Edwards system. This allows the part of the workforce that best knows the business to

create dashboards, scorecards and other data visualizations, build collaborative sites,

kick-off and edit workflows, and publish content targeted to specific parts of an

organization all with the no-code capabilities that come out-of-the-box with

SharePoint 2010. And because these no-code capabilities are available to business

“SharePoint is the only

product available today included

within 5 of Gartner‟s

„Leaders‟ quadrants:

• Site/Portal

• Communities/Social

• Search

• Business Insights/BI

• Composite

Applications. Source: The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted

2009 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission.

The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation

of a marketplace at and for a specific period. It

depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors

measure against criteria for that marketplace, as

defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any

vendor, product, or service depicted in the Magic

Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to

select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders"

quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely

as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific

guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties,

express or implied, with respect to this research,

including any warranties of merchantability or

fitness for a particular purpose.

3 CREATING A COMPETITIVE EDGE WITH JD EDWARDS AND

SHAREPOINT 2010

analysts and designers, companies are able to rely on their own internal skills and

expertise rather than rely on expensive consultants or wait for IT development cycles.

In fact, many JD Edwards customers have already connected their systems with

SharePoint 2010 for its rich collaboration platform and its powerful content

management capabilities that securely leverage the data and processes of their JD

Edwards system. Product satisfaction measures reinforce that those that have done so

in the last 18 months have the highest levels of satisfaction with SharePoint.

If a company finds that they want to implement more custom systems beyond the rich

set of capabilities offered out-of-the-box, they will find that the market of qualified

SharePoint consultants is the largest and fastest growing partner ecosystem in its

space. Companies have a better chance of finding a consultant that understands their

business as well as SharePoint 2010 solutions, and can take the company’s business

objectives further, faster. Now let’s dive a little deeper into the details about what

SharePoint 2010 can do for JD Edwards customers.

Business Data – Making Better Decisions

In his 2009 white paper, "Business Intelligence: A Guide for Midsize Companies", MAS

Strategies' Founder and Principal Analyst Michael Schiff discussed the implications of

the effective use of ERP systems, and the impact that can result from access to

accurate, real-time business insight when it becomes easily accessible and actionable

across the organization.

"All employees have the responsibility to make the best decisions possible, based upon

the data available to them at the time. If their ability to analyze this data and transform

it into useful information is improved, the overall quality of their decisions can be

improved as well," Schiff wrote.

"All employees have the

responsibility to make the best

decisions possible, based upon

the data available to them at

the time. If their ability to

analyze this data and

transform it into useful

information is improved, the

overall quality of their decisions

can be improved as well."

Business Intelligence: A Guide for

Midsize Companies

4 CREATING A COMPETITIVE EDGE WITH JD EDWARDS AND

SHAREPOINT 2010

A typical JD Edwards Customer has three sets of users that interact with the JD

Edwards system. The first is a small set of workers who have access and are responsible

for the operational aspects of the JD Edwards system. These employees interact with

many of the core management functions in a JD Edwards system on a daily basis; they

manage the master data, the financial planning, many HR functions and more. A

second set of users, still less than half of the workforce, are the actual users of a JD

Edwards system and perform tasks such as order entry, shipping and receiving,

inventory functions etc. This leaves the largest group of employees in the organization.

They rarely, if ever, interact with the JD Edwards system. If what Schiff says is accurate,

providing this broad swath of an organization with access to better data can truly

impact business favorably and in demonstrable ways.

SharePoint 2010 provides ways to deliver processes and data from JD Edwards to more

employees and external partners, without the need to learn the intricacies of JD

Edwards. With capabilities like dashboards, scorecards, reports and forms SharePoint

2010 allows more employees access to the information that is relevant to their tasks

through an easy-to-use interface that is very similar to that of Microsoft Office. And

when deployed with Microsoft Office 2010, organizations can be assured of an

outstanding user experience, helping to drive user adoption and compliance

throughout the organization.

Providing access to better

data can truly impact

business favorably, in

demonstrable ways.

Organizations can be assured of

an outstanding user

experience helping to drive

user adoption and

compliance.

5 CREATING A COMPETITIVE EDGE WITH JD EDWARDS AND

SHAREPOINT 2010

An organization’s decision makers, from the highest-level executives and mid-level

managers to the shop floor managers, need to make timely and accurate decisions in

order for the company to be effective and successful. To do so, these individuals need

the complete picture of what’s happening right now in the company. Consider a mid-

level manager that is forecasting time, materials, and staffing needs to meet order

requests within a particular production cycle. They need to know all relevant details to

determine how to produce the necessary outcome in the most cost-effective way.

Typically, this manager would access hard copy reports, written by an IT department,

from the JD Edwards system. Now imagine that this manager needs additional data,

not currently included in the report, to truly make an informed decision. Today every

change, every report, every new form requires a request to the IT department to write

the code necessary to create these reports from a JD Edwards system. This process is

expensive, slow and ineffective; and other, more critical demands on IT resources may

put this request at the bottom of the priority list.

Imagine the possibilities of a solution that provides a real-time, secure, and familiar

platform where more people in an organization can not only view the structured

information and business processes found within a JD Edwards system in ―real-time,‖

but can also act effectively upon it, based on their permissions. This can be their world

with SharePoint 2010 as the organization’s collaboration platform, maximizing the

value of a JD Edwards investment. SharePoint 2010 enables JD Edwards customers to

cost-effectively extend the reach of their ERP system to controllers, engineers, sales

people and many mid-management functions, enabling collaboration, business

intelligence, workflows, search and much more.

By making more of this information available to a broad base of a company’s

employees, distinct advantages to everyday operations and business growth are

realized. Efficiency improves as an organization’s power users (the same ―Excel

Jockey’s‖ in an organization today) are connected to information securely and quickly

to create reports and views, freeing up technical resources to focus on more

challenging business issues.

SharePoint 2010’s ability to connect with back-end systems through Business

Connectivity Services (BCS) allows individuals with the appropriate access to not only

view but also update data to and from a JD Edwards system easily. SharePoint 2010

also makes it easy to view JD Edwards information graphically, using external data lists,

KPIs (stop light reports), and new custom reports without writing code. With

SharePoint 2010, JD Edwards customers will have the ability to leverage their existing

information to:

“We no longer need to

remember to update our

spreadsheets or remember

where a particular set of

information is stored.

Everyone across teams

and geographies is

looking at the same

data.”

Craig Scullin, Manager of

Information Systems, Granite

6 CREATING A COMPETITIVE EDGE WITH JD EDWARDS AND

SHAREPOINT 2010

• Improve decision-making speed and effectiveness; by tracking activities through

dashboards that pull together information from JD Edwards and other Line of

Business (LOB) systems into a single view.

• Reduce errors and improve forecasting accuracy by extending Business

Intelligence and Performance Management analytical capabilities to individuals at

multiple levels and in multiple departments throughout an organization.

• Improve Time-to-Market by simplifying product reviews, changes and approvals;

also, automatically managing the entire lifecycle of a document through built-in

workflow enabling employees to initiate and track feedback and approval

processes from within Microsoft Word.

• Improve Supply-Chain effectiveness through centrally located status, schedules,

communication and information-sharing; and automate workflows to assign tasks,

and manage budget creation.

For example, in SharePoint 2010 a purchase request can be routed for approval

through a workflow and delivered to the back end system pre-approved, resulting in a

purchase order created directly in the system without having to rekey the information.

This easily implemented process automation reduces response time and costly errors.

Similarly, consider the ability of sales associates in an organization to find and enter

information into a Sales Dashboard in SharePoint 2010, connected to a JD Edwards

system. Individuals with appropriate access could directly view and update information

such as sales analytics, performance data, leads, customer contact information and

orders.

The ability to read and update data in your JD Edwards system is not only available in

SharePoint 2010 but also in the Microsoft Office 2010 client. Individuals can take data

offline, and make changes using Office clients such as Word, Excel, Outlook, and

Access, knowing that the changes will be updated in the JD Edwards system when they

next connect. This means workers can make changes to business data as they find out

about it, regardless if they have direct access to the JD Edwards system at that time.

Individuals on the go can view and update business data through SharePoint

Workspace, as well as author monthly status reports using data directly from the JD

Edwards system. This way of working enables individuals throughout an organization

to have full access to business data anytime, anyplace, and on any device.

...enables individuals throughout

an organization to have full

access to business data

anytime, anyplace, and

on any device.

7 CREATING A COMPETITIVE EDGE WITH JD EDWARDS AND

SHAREPOINT 2010

Business Productivity – Extending the Reach of

JD Edwards

As mentioned earlier, the reality is that the majority of individuals in a company’s

workforce hardly, if ever, directly access the JD Edwards system in their daily work.

Instead, these people are carrying out their day-to-day work through emails,

spreadsheets, documents, notes, and presentations. Odds are, these workers are using

Microsoft Office applications (Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access, and

OneNote), and have been for years.

Microsoft’s leadership in understanding how information workers interact with

software, based on billions invested in research, has been applied to SharePoint 2010

and makes it the most usable collaboration platform, driving adoption and value. The

SharePoint 2010 interface mimics the familiar Office experience that workers have

been working in for years. In addition, SharePoint and Office 2010 are designed from

the ground-up to provide more value when used in-tandem. By implementing

SharePoint 2010 as a collaboration platform connected to their JD Edwards systems, JD

Edwards’ customers are enabling their workforce to continue working in an

environment with which they feel most ―at home.‖ This familiarity is key to the

adoption of new collaboration features, as it provides a frictionless deployment that

doesn’t disrupt the normal cadence of how people work. This experience enables

workers to intuitively access the business information they need to get their jobs done,

because it’s how they have worked before and will continue to work after deployment.

In addition, cross-browser and mobile support means that the workforce can work

together and with their customers and partners anytime, anywhere:

• With SharePoint 2010 and Office Web Applications, users are offered full fidelity

viewing and essential editing of Microsoft Office files directly in a browser

(including IE, Safari, Firefox, and a host of micro-browsers), so people can carry

out their work even in environments where Microsoft Office products are not

locally installed.

• SharePoint Workspace enables workers to take content offline with just one click,

make the required changes, and quickly sync back to a master document,

spreadsheet, etc.

• Outlook 2010 and SharePoint Workspace also allow individuals to take their

business data ―offline‖ and sync it back with a JD Edwards system.

• SharePoint 2010 enables workers to view, share, edit, and comment on documents

and content from a host of mobile devices.

With these options, an organization no longer incurs a productivity loss when their

workforce is not in a ―traditional‖ office environment. They can take their work on

The experience enables workers to

intuitively access the business

information they need to get

their jobs done, because it‟s

how they have worked before and

will work after deployment.

Familiarity is paramount to the

adoption of new collaboration

features, as it provides a

frictionless deployment that

doesn‟t disrupt the normal

cadence of how people work.

8 CREATING A COMPETITIVE EDGE WITH JD EDWARDS AND

SHAREPOINT 2010

planes, in hotels, visiting other business sites or partners, all while staying informed and

connected. With the flexibility of SharePoint 2010, team members no longer need to

be out-of-the-loop and then work to get back up to speed when they return.

SharePoint provides the ultimate ―office on the go.‖

Maximizing Business Value

Being cost-efficient remains a top priority for many organizations. Leveraging

SharePoint 2010 to maximize and extend the investment in JD Edwards systems offers

an incredible opportunity to cut the total cost of ownership while ensuring a secure,

flexible, people-centric environment for an organization. Connecting a JD Edwards

system with SharePoint 2010 can reduce costs by consolidating Intranet, Extranet, and

Internet sites on a single platform—on-premise or in the cloud. IT administrators need

to be familiar with, and then manage, a single collaboration platform, thus reducing

training costs and allowing for increased efficiency. Training costs are reduced for the

business units as well since SharePoint 2010 offers the familiar Microsoft Office

experience that enables workers to quickly and easily adopt SharePoint 2010, use it

and become more productive. Simply put, SharePoint 2010 can help an organization

reduce costs, lower risk, increase productivity, and drive business growth. Here is a

deeper look into how SharePoint 2010 achieves this.

SharePoint 2010 enables an organization to significantly cut costs by improving and

streamlining internal processes. Having a single collaborative location to share

resources and plan projects around new initiatives, speeds time to market. An

increasing number of organizations use collaborative technologies to reduce support

calls and even formulate changes or improvements in products. Self-help can also

have a major impact on costs and is actually preferred by users. Web 2.0 has delivered

on the idea of self-service. Opening this type of technology to an Intranet, combined

with a JD Edwards system, extends the reach and value of an ERP investment and

allows JD Edwards customers to respond more quickly to market demands inside a

controlled environment.

SharePoint 2010 can lower an organization’s overall risk with security, privacy, and

compliance through a flexible authentication model that will help an organization

maximize their SharePoint 2010 deployment and still maintain secure control over

corporate assets. SharePoint 2010 directory and security services ensure that policies

and permissions are transparently enforced. SharePoint 2010’s integration with the

comprehensive features of Active Directory allows an organization to control access

and information rights beyond the firewall.

“SharePoint projects are

coming in at approximately 50

percent of the overall cost

of traditional enterprise

content management (ECM)

systems.”

Russell Stalters, BP's head of

information and record

architecture

9 CREATING A COMPETITIVE EDGE WITH JD EDWARDS AND

SHAREPOINT 2010

SharePoint 2010 enables an organization to increase productivity by effectively

leveraging the most valuable resource of any company: their human resource. A

company’s employees may reside across regional and possibly international

boundaries. Offering these employees the extended Line of Business connectivity to

the company’s JD Edwards system will help reduce the need for physical locations and

all their associated overhead cost. It can also significantly reduce the need for travel.

SharePoint 2010 enables an organization to drive business growth through providing

the right information to the right individuals in the right way. Companies that were

early adopters of Web technologies quickly realized that their customers wanted a

more personal experience. This is also true of Intranet solutions. With Web

technologies an organization can target content not only based upon the user’s role

but by the context in which they are asking for it. By providing context sensitive, role

driven content, JD Edwards customers can provide their employees with the edge they

need to make better decisions and support their customers more effectively.

SharePoint enables an organization

to increase productivity by

effectively leveraging the most

valuable resource of any company:

their human resource.

Drive business growth through

providing the right

information to the right

individuals at the right time

in the right way.

10 CREATING A COMPETITIVE EDGE WITH JD EDWARDS AND

SHAREPOINT 2010

Innovate Now!

Many JD Edwards customers have already extended their IT investments by deploying SharePoint 2010 as the collaborative

platform to leverage the people, processes, and data within their organization. These companies are today’s innovators,

driving the next level of competitiveness by working better together across the organization, with external partners, and with

their customers. They have joined businesses across the globe that have realized increased productivity and reduced the total

cost of ownership (licensing, deployment, management, adoption) through the SharePoint 2010 platform.

Find out more:

• See what SharePoint 2010 customers are saying about its value to their organization:

o Economic impact of SharePoint 2010: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/Videos.aspx?VideoID=14

o Collaboration and expertise-sharing: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/Videos.aspx?VideoID=1

o Business insight: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/Videos.aspx?VideoID=11

• Get SharePoint 2010 overview:

o Capabilities overview: http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/product/capabilities/Pages/default.aspx

o SharePoint 2010 product datasheet: http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/A/8/4A87FF37-379B-4C18-ADBD-

88C3B01F2E3E/SharePoint_2010_Datasheet.pdf

o Business productivity at its best – SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/B/3/FB39AE91-858F-49B4-9511-

5904AC324611/Business_Productivity_at_Its_Best_-_Office_2010_and_SharePoint_2010.pdf

o Total Economic Impact (TEI) of SharePoint 2010– a study by Forrester Consulting:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/6/F/A6F669F2-0EDA-48F1-9316-1448AF17AA1A/TEI of Implementing

SharePoint Server 2010.pdf

o Download the trial: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/Try-It.aspx