An Oracle White Paper September JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor on Oracle SuperCluster M6-32

Transcription

1 An Oracle White Paper September 2013 JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor on Oracle SuperCluster M6-32

2 Executive Overview... 2 Introduction... 3 Oracle SPARC SuperCluster M Deriving Business Benefits from Oracle SuperCluster M Advanced Virtualization and the Oracle SuperCluster M Deploying on Oracle SuperCluster M Virtualization Architecture for In-Memory Applications Storage Architecture for In-Memory Applications The Objective: Drive Sales Revenue Suggest Additional Sales in Real-Time Generate Higher Customer Satisfaction The Objective: Improving Profit Visibility Monitor Order and Customer Profit Margins Planned Roadmap for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor Suggest Additional Products and Discounts in Real Time Generate Higher Customer Satisfaction Improve Revenue and Profit Visibility Conclusion For More Information... 20

3 Executive Overview Companies with customer service centers want to take advantage of their customer interactions to drive additional revenue. Managing multiple price lists and promotions makes it difficult for customer service representatives (CSRs) to recommend higher quantities, related products, or promotional discounts to drive sales. Product sales must be profitable to keep a company in business. Executives need insight into the impact of changing sales conditions on their bottom line to enable knowledgeable decision-making. Analysis of current and historical data is an important aspect of future product pricing and promotions. Oracle s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor solution for Oracle engineered systems combines the hardware of Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 with the application layers of Oracle s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne providing unprecedented speed for gathering, aggregating, and summarizing real-time customer, product, and sales information. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In- Memory Sales Advisor brings visibility to revenue opportunities during order capture to drive sales, as well as insight into future revenue and profitability to enable proactive decision-making for changing sales conditions. The ability to access customer history, product bundles, and volume discounts in real time enables CSRs to be more efficient and speed up the order-capture process. CSRs can recommend quantities and related products, ensure profitability of orders, and communicate product availability during order entry, which drives the perfect order and provides a great customer experience. Because CSRs can capture orders efficiently, they can enter more orders per day, increasing their throughput and the company s sales volumes. With all relevant information at the CSRs fingertips during order capture, the cost of entering the sales order decreases, which translates into higher revenues. Creating the perfect order ensures the customer gets the right quantity of the right product at the right price on the right date. This increases customer satisfaction and loyalty, so customers remain in good payment standing. When customers pay their invoices in a timely manner, a company s days sales outstanding (DSO) improves and the administrative time spent on collections decreases. 2

4 Introduction Ask any company its goals, and it s not surprising that increasing revenue is always at (or near) the top. To be effective, an organization needs visibility into revenue-driving opportunities. When overloaded with cumbersome processes for locating quantity discounts, cross-selling opportunities, and inventory availability, CSRs lose communication with customers, which decreases the probability of additional sales and increases the cost of sales-order capture. CSRs should help drive revenue for the company in addition to providing a great customer experience. The task of recommending higher quantity levels for products or suggesting additional products to the customer is cumbersome. Visibility into real-time product suggestions during sales-order entry gives CSRs information to drive additional sales for the company. With CSRs up-selling and cross-selling during order entry, both sales volumes and revenue increase. It is not always feasible for companies to evaluate this information during order capture, due to heavy I/O and serialized processing. For example, a company might process up to 300,000 sales-order lines per day and millions of historical sales records. Insight into large volumes of data in real time enables CSRs to leverage sales opportunities and proactively adapt to changing sales conditions during order capture. The large volume of data is compiled, summarized, and displayed for the CSR to make recommendations to the customer in subseconds, instead of using error-prone, manual processes to locate information, which takes minutes and can require return calls to the customer. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor leverages Oracle SuperCluster M6-32, an Oracle engineered system, to offer a compelling solution that sits on top of existing JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Sales Order Management, Advanced Pricing, Inventory Management, and Fulfillment Management information to enable CSRs and executives to increase revenue and profit margin while not interrupting their existing processes. This innovative real-time solution enables faster decision-making based on new visualizations of summarized large volumes of data within JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne running on Oracle engineered systems is the culmination of Oracle s Engineered to Work Together strategy. Customers realize immediate business and technical benefits and set the foundation for the next generation of in-memory business applications. 3

5 This white paper explores the benefits of deploying the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor solution on the Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 engineered system. It also points out new and automated features that enable business users to quickly access real-time information from big data during order capture and provide a remedy for manual processes that are holding so many businesses back today. 4

6 Oracle SPARC SuperCluster M6-32 Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 is a multipurpose engineered system that has been designed, tested, and integrated to run mission-critical enterprise applications such as JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In- Memory Sales Advisor and rapidly deploy cloud services while delivering extreme efficiency, cost savings, and performance. It is well suited for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor because it supports multitier enterprise applications with web, database, and application components. This versatility, along with powerful, bundled virtualization capabilities, also makes it an ideal platform on which to consolidate large numbers of applications, databases, and middleware workloads, or to deploy complex, multiuser development, test, and deployment environments. It combines highly available and scalable technologies, such as optional Oracle Database 12c and 11g Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) and optional Oracle Solaris Cluster software with industry-standard hardware. Its architecture enables a high degree of isolation between concurrently deployed applications, which may have varied security, reliability, and performance requirements. Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 also provides hardware isolation between groupings of CPU, memory, and I/O for higher availability within the node. Figure 1. The Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 configuration. Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 provides an optimal solution for all database workloads, ranging from scan-intensive data warehouse applications to highly concurrent online transaction processing (OLTP) applications. With its combination of Oracle Exadata Storage Server, Oracle Database software, and the latest hardware components, Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 delivers extreme performance in a highly available, highly secure environment. 5

7 One example of the performance gains with SuperCluster is provided with each Oracle Exadata Storage Server used in the rack. Each Oracle Exadata Storage Server uses Exadata Smart Flash Logging, which improves user transaction response time and increases overall database throughput for I/O-intensive workloads by accelerating performance-critical database algorithms. In addition, since SuperCluster is a large-memory engineered system, it s ideal for running mission-critical applications inmemory such as the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor application. As the newest member of the SuperCluster family, Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 offers new capabilities, such as more processing power with up to 32 SPARC M6 processors from Oracle, more memory with up to 1 TB per physical SPARC M6 processor, more built-in I/O with 64 PCIe Gen 3 slots, and finally, all three levels of virtualization: physical domains (or PDoms), logical domains, and Oracle Solaris Zones. Customers can integrate Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 systems with other SuperCluster systems, Oracle Exadata, or Oracle Exalogic machines by using the available InfiniBand expansion ports and optional data center switches. The InfiniBand technology used by Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 offers high bandwidth, low latency, hardware-level reliability, and security. For application environments that follow Oracle s best practices for highly scalable, fault-tolerant systems, no application architecture or design changes are required to benefit from Oracle SuperCluster M

8 Oracle s SPARC M6-32 Servers The SPARC M6-32 server offers a large memory capacity and a highly integrated design that supports virtualization and consolidation of mission-critical applications. Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 comes in either base configurations or extended configurations. Oracle Exalogic Provides extreme performance for key technology segments in the infrastructure. Integrated Virtualization Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Delivers a converged hardware management solution. Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 storage Rack InfiniBand delivers up to 63 percent higher transactions per second for Oracle RAC versus GbE networks. There are three InfiniBand switches in SuperCluster offering private connectivity within the system. Sixteen to 32 SPARC M6 processors from Oracle Each processor comes with 12 cores and eight threads per core. The SPARC M6 processor utilizes Oracle s S3 core, which provides the latest advanced core design. 8 TB to 32 TB of memory 512 GB (16 GB DIMMs) or 1 TB (32 GB DIMMs) of memory per SPARC M6 processor. Sixteen to 32 disk drives. Oracle s Sun PCIe Dual Port QDR InfiniBand Host Channel Adapters A low-latency 40 Gb/sec InfiniBand HCA in a modular hot-pluggable PCI Express (PCIe) low-profile form factor. Between 8 and 16 InfiniBand cards are included. Sixteen to GbE ports. The 10 GbE ports are for client access to Oracle SuperCluster. Supports Java applications and Oracle Applications Supports enterprise applications Reduces application implementation and ongoing costs Enables private clouds to be assembled from separately sourced components Supports multiple virtualization environments: o Dynamic Domains (aka physical domains) o Oracle VM Server for SPARC o Oracle Solaris Zones Enhances security, optimizes utilization, and improves reliability Integrates management across the infrastructure Assists IT managers in deploying/managing more efficiently Oracle ZFS Storage ZS3-ES Appliance o Provides 80 TB of capacity o Uses flash-enabled Hybrid Storage Pools o Provides storage analytics using DTrace, which improves filebased storage performance through drill-down observability Nine Oracle Exadata Storage Servers o Improve Oracle Database performance o Provide smart scale-out storage o Provide Exadata Smart Flash Cache o Provide Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression Three Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switches from Oracle o Offer private connectivity within the system o Provide high throughput, low latency, and scalable fabric suitable for: Fabric consolidation Storage connectivity Ethernet Management Switch Figure 3. Components of the Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 engineered system. o Provides network management connectivity o Manages ports on all servers/switches used in SuperCluster Note: Cisco switch is provided and customers can use their own switch if desired. 7

9 Deployments can also connect many Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 systems or a combination of Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 systems and Oracle Exadata Database Machines to develop a single, large-scale environment. Customers can integrate Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 systems with their current data center infrastructure using the available 10 GbE ports in each one of the SPARC M6-32 servers within Oracle SuperCluster M6-32. Deriving Business Benefits from Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 It is important to understand the precise business benefits that result when deploying JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor on Oracle SuperCluster M6-32. See Figure 4 to gain insight into these business benefits. TECHNICAL BENEFITS BUSINESS BENEFITS High Availability: Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 is architected with built-in redundancy to minimize downtime. Maximum productivity from uninterrupted mission-critical business processes Reduced business disruption Reduced risk of failure(s) Improvements in regulatory compliance High Performance Increased competitiveness through quick, informed decisions based on real-time access to business insights Scalability Standardization Rapid business solutions and new opportunities development New end user applications deployment that was not possible before, which improves business processes and employee productivity Improved employee productivity due to dramatically improved end user responsiveness Ability to improve manufacturing, fulfill more orders, and react to changes quickly by reducing or eliminating batch processing times for critical applications Increased revenue opportunities due to timely completion of orders or services Customer retention due to increased customer satisfaction from delivering on-time services or goods and complying with service level agreements Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) due to reduced need for developers or third-party consultants to tune custom applications Instance consolidation Global expansion Efficient, rapid, low-cost assimilation during mergers and acquisitions Ability to increase business units, users, and transactions without worrying about performance degradation Reduced TCO Simplified deployments Rapid deployments across the enterprise in multiple business units and multiple regions Advanced Storage for Analytics IT costs savings by reduced storage costs Reduced IT costs through consolidation(s) Figure 4. Business Benefits derived from the Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 technical highlights Advanced Virtualization and the Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 The SPARC M6-32 server embedded in the Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 has advanced virtualization capabilities not present in other enterprise-class servers available today. These features empower the data center manager to easily manage and consolidate workloads within the IT infrastructure while simultaneously providing high availability. These advanced virtualization features can easily 8

10 accommodate the intense compute, memory and I/O demanding workloads of In-Memory JD Edwards EntperiseOne Sales Advisor and efficiently utilize the powerful computing and memory architecture. Built-in virtualization technologies include Dynamic Domains, a domaining feature of Oracle's SPARC M-Series servers; Oracle VM Server for SPARC (logical domains or LDoms); and Oracle Solaris Zones. With this rich set of virtualization technologies, the data center manager can easily configure a server of virtually any size and configuration up to the maximum size of the SPARC M6-32 server to support compute, memory, and I/O demand, making it the ideal platform for consolidating application workloads. Oracle Solaris 11 Oracle Solaris 11 Oracle Solaris 11 Oracle Solaris 10 Oracle VM (Ldom) Oracle VM (Ldom) Oracle VM (Ldom) Oracle VM (Ldom) Oracle VM (Ldom) Oracle VM (Ldom) Dynamic Domain (PDom 0) Dynamic Domain (PDom 1) Dynamic Domain (PDom 2) Dynamic Domain (PDom 3) Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 Figure 5. Advanced Virtualization Technologies illustrated for the Oracle SPARC SuperCluster Dynamic Domains (physical domains or PDoms). The Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 scales up to 32 processors and up to 32 terabytes of memory. Electrically-isolated Dynamic Domains (PDoms) on the SPARC M6-32 server provide IT organizations with the ability to divide this single large system into multiple, fault-isolated servers, each running independent instances of the Oracle Solaris operating system. With proper configuration, hardware or software faults in one domain remain isolated and unable to impact the operation of other domains. Each domain within a single server platform can deploy a different version of Oracle Solaris, making this technology extremely useful for preproduction testing of new or modified applications. For more information on Dynamic Domains and other technical aspects of the Oracle SuperCluster M6-32, see the technical white paper entitled, Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 Server Architecture on the Oracle Technology Network. See the section titled, For More Information in this document to learn how to access this aforementioned document. Oracle VM Server for SPARC. Oracle VM Server for SPARC is a built-in firmware-based Hypervisor that supports multiple virtual machines, called logical domains (LDoms), on a single system. In the case of the Oracle SuperCluster M6-32, multiple LDoms also can be defined within a single dynamic domain. The Hypervisor allocates subsets of system resources (memory, I/O, networking, and CPU) to each logical domain, isolating each Oracle Solaris instance and workload to a virtual machine with dedicated resources. Built-in virtual machine snapshot and cloning capabilities help to speed virtual machine configuration and migration, enabling faster provisioning when growth in application solutions occurs or when consolidating application and server workloads. Oracle Solaris Zones. Using flexible, software-defined boundaries, Oracle Solaris Zones (previously known as Oracle Solaris Containers), a lightweight virtualization technology, creates multiple private execution environments within a single Oracle Solaris instance. Mission critical applications running within zones are completely isolated, preventing processes in one zone from affecting processes 9

11 running in another. Oracle Solaris Zones supports fault isolation, features extremely fast boot times, and can be configured to instantly restart applications. Because zones make it easy to prioritize applications and adjust resource allocations, they are ideal for consolidated application solution workloads. Deploying on Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 Deploying JD Edwards EntperiseOne Sales Advisor on the Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 can be accomplished easily as server configuration is flexible and highly tailorable to customer requirements because of the advanced virtualization features. In the reference architecture illustrated in Figure 6, the deployment takes advantage of the built-in virtualization technologies included with the Oracle SPARC M6-32 and Oracle Solaris 11.1 Pdom 0 Pdom 1 Pdom 2 Pdom 3 Oracle Solaris Global Zone Application Tier In-Memory Cost Management Database Tier In-Memory Cost Management Database Instance JDE EnterpriseOne JDE Database EnterpriseOne Instance Database Instance Oracle RAC Oracle RAC InfiniBand%Fabric%Interconnect% Oracle Solaris Global Zone Application Tier In-Memory Portfolio Management and Sales Advisor Database Tier In-Memory Cost Management Database Instance Instance JDE EnterpriseOne JDE Database EnterpriseOne Instance Database Instance ZFSSA% Oracle In-Memory Reference Architecture Pdom0 Configuration Solaris 11.1 Pdom1 Configuration Solaris Terabytes Memory 8 Terabytes Memory 8 Processors 8 Processors 12 Cores/Processor 12 Cores/Processor 96 Cores Total 96 Cores Total Pdom 2 Configuration Pdom 3 Configuration 8 Terabytes Memory 8 Terabytes Memory 8 Processors 8 Processors 12 Cores/Processor 12 Cores/Processor 96 Cores Total 96 Cores Total Global Zone Global Zone Solaris 11.1 Solaris 11.1 Application Tier: Application Tier: Oracle E-Business Suite In-Memory Cost Management Database Tier Oracle RAC Database 11gR2 EBS In-Memory Cost Management Instance JDE In-Memory Portfolio Management and Sales Advisor Instance Storage Tier Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Portfolio Management and Sales Advisor Database Tier Oracle RAC Database 11gR2 EBS In-Memory Cost Management Instance JDE In-Memory Portfolio Management and Sales Advisor Instance Storage Tier 3 Exadata Storage Servers 3 Exadata Storage Servers Figure 6: Deploying Oracle In-Memory Applications on the Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 Virtualization Architecture for In-Memory Applications Computing requirements for Oracle In-Memory applications are tailored around an architecture that must respond rapidly with large memory, compute and I/O demand. This type of architecture is easily deployed in a highly flexible architecture with advanced virtualization technologies included in the Oracle SuperCluster M

12 The Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 in this reference architecture is divided into four dynamic domains or Pdoms. Dynamic domain zero (Pdom0) and one (Pdom1) are simply deployed with in this case, an Oracle Solaris 11.1 instance for use in the customer s architecture, while Pdom 3 and Pdom 4 are deployed for Oracle In-Memory Applications and for two instances of Oracle Database 11gR2 Real Application Cluster (RAC). As shown in the table in Figure 6, the Pdoms supporting Oracle in-memory applications are configured with eight terabytes of memory and eight processors. The processors each have 12 cores so 96 cores total are deployed to meet the compute demand for Oracle in-memory applications while eight terabytes of memory easily accommodate the in-memory intensive workloads. Furthermore, Pdom3 and Pdom 4 are deployed using the Oracle Solaris Zones virtualization technology. In this case, Oracle VM Server for SPARC was not deployed in this architecture. An application tier is populated with Oracle in-memory applications while the database tier has Oracle Database 11gR2 RAC deployed. To support high availability requirements Oracle Solaris 11.1 can be configured with Oracle Solaris Cluster and in this case as already shown, Oracle Database 11gR2 RAC is deployed. Storage Architecture for In-Memory Applications Included with the Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 are two storage technologies with high performance Infiniband interconnectivity. First, Oracle's Exadata Storage Server with its ability to rapidly respond to Oracle Database query workloads. The Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 includes nine (9) Exadata Storage Servers. Three of these are dedicated to each of the in-memory applications deployed in this reference architecture. The Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 also includes the Oracle ZFS Storage ZS3-ES Appliance. The ZS3-ES provides file based storage workloads for applications running on the Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 and features Hybrid Storage Pool technology which can accelerate storage performance and storage analytics empowered by DTrace Analytics which provides in depth observability into storage workloads. The Objective: Drive Sales Revenue For organizations in the consumer goods, high-tech, and manufacturing industries, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor coupled with the Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 engineered system provides real, demonstrable business advantages that traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems don t deliver. While JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor provides these key business advantages, Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 is the platform in this solution that delivers performance, large-memory functionality, and the flexibility. This is because Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 delivers the advantages of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor in near-real time, enabling an organization to move forward aggressively, enabling sales, and improving revenue expectations. 11

13 Suggest Additional Sales in Real-Time Pricing is an effective way to encourage customers to purchase in higher volumes. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Advanced Pricing enables a company to set quantity breaks for prices or discounts based on transaction quantity. CSRs can help increase top-line revenue by recommending quantity levels to help the customer get the best pricing deal (up-selling). Providing real-time product suggestions not only drives additional revenue; it helps reduce the need to set up and maintain pricing discounts and promotions by dynamically evaluating quantity-level discounts. Recommend Purchase Quantities JD Edwards EnterpriseOne currently provides the flexibility to set up and apply discounts for a customer based on the quantity of a product purchased. A CSR can view the discounts that apply to each product during order capture. Depending on the complexity of the discount schedules and the number of discounts that apply to a product, it can be difficult to determine what additional discounts could apply if the customer purchased additional quantities. Many companies have multiple price lists that a CSR must sort through to determine the discounts that apply and calculate a new price. Performing this process while on the phone with a customer is time consuming and error-prone. The JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor solution builds on the robust functionality in existing JD Edwards EnterpriseOne modules and takes it to another level by enabling CSRs to view up-sell opportunities and make quantity recommendations to customers during order capture. The system builds the up-sell opportunities by reading all discounts that apply to the product on the sales order and displays the information in real time. Based on the setup of pricing rules, the system could be evaluating hundreds of records to determine the up-sell opportunities. In addition to the up-sell quantities, the system uses a visual notification if a free good is associated with the higher purchase quantity, which gives additional incentive for customers to increase their order quantity. If CSRs do not want to use the up-sell opportunity, the information does not interfere with the existing order-capture process. When CSRs makes an up-sell recommendation to a customer, they can update the sales-order line with the new quantity in only two clicks. This real-time view of the quantity of up-sell opportunities reduces the task of manually determining the quantities to recommend to viewing the opportunities within seconds. Using JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor with Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 to view the quantity discounts for products, CSRs will receive results in subseconds, which is substantially faster than getting the data manually from JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Sales Order Management and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Advanced Pricing. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor dramatically decreases the time to recommend up-sell quantities to customers while reducing the administrative task of locating the opportunities. Figure 7 shows an example of dynamic quantity recommendations for a product on a sales order. CSRs can quickly scan this information; determine which quantities to recommend, communicate to the customer, and then select the quantity to update the sales order line. 12

14 Figure 7. Example of up-sell opportunities during sales-order entry. Reduce System Setup and Maintenance JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Advanced Pricing is a flexible system that enables a variety of pricing rules and structures. Price breaks or discounts can be set up based on quantity, which allow customers to receive lower prices based on their purchase quantity. To recommend that customers purchase a larger quantity to receive a lower price, volume adjustments and a percentage tolerance must be predefined in the system. This determines when the system issues a notification that a product qualifies for an up-sell notification. CSRs have limited visibility into how close the customer is to a quantity-level break. With JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor, the system dynamically reviews the entire pricing schedule for quantity-level discounts and displays the up-sell opportunities for CSRs in real time. This solution takes advantage of existing functionality in the system, requires no additional setup, and can reduce the number of volume-price adjustments. If quantity-level breaks exist for a product, the system displays the information regardless of the specified threshold value. This not only notifies the CSRs, but it also eliminates the need to set up and maintain volume up-sell adjustments potentially hundreds of records. Generate Higher Customer Satisfaction Customers want reliable information about products from salespeople and CSRs that are familiar with their business. Providing real-time product suggestions not only drives additional revenue; it also builds customer relationships. Improve Customer Relationships Customers feel an extra sense of security when their business and buying patterns are understood. This is best illustrated if CSRs are making recommendations based on the context of the current order, quickly referencing previous orders, and addressing needs while on the phone with the customer. Proactive communication with customers builds the relationship and leaves a better impression than repeated follow-up discussions. These relationships create customer loyalty and keep customers returning to purchase products, which drives additional future revenue. 13

15 The Objective: Improving Profit Visibility Knowing the profitability for products and customers can help determine how much time is spent with specific customers. CSRs need to have information at their fingertips when taking sales orders to ensure they give each customer the appropriate level of attention. Monitor Order and Customer Profit Margins JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Sales Order Management calculates and displays the profit margin for each product on the sales order. This is good information, but it is time consuming for CSRs to scroll through hundreds of lines on the sales order to determine whether the whole order is profitable. Optionally, CSRs could export the entire sales order to a spreadsheet and calculate the overall profit margin, or they could ask IT to create a report to view profit information for sales orders and customers. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor leverages the existing profit-margin information and visually displays the data in charts during order capture. Viewing this information during order entry improves the bottom line by giving CSRs the ability to determine whether target margins are being met and, if they aren t, recommend high-margin products to the customer or larger quantities of products based on margin. Display Order Profit Margin With JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor, CSRs can view the total order amount, the total order cost, and the order profit margin in real time while capturing the sales order. The profit-margin value is calculated using the total amount and total cost. The information can be updated as additional products are entered on the order to ensure the entire order is making a profit for the company. Compare Historical Profit Margin for a Customer Viewing the profit margin for a customer enables CSRs to compare the historical sales orders to the current sales order. The system analyzes the customer s previous sales orders and displays the profit margin information in real time during order capture. Depending on the timeframe for which the profit margin is viewed, evaluating large volumes of sales orders during order capture might be necessary. Without the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor, dynamically evaluating large volumes of data possibly hundreds of records while entering a sales order could slow down the order-capture process. The system retrieves data and displays the order profit chart within seconds, which shows CSRs how the current order compares to a customer s previous orders. Charting the data can display trends in the customer s profit margins indicating that prices, discounts, or costs are too high or low enabling a proactive response to ensure profitability. Figure 4 shows an example of a customer profit-margin chart on a sales order. CSRs can quickly scan this chart for trends in the customer s profit margin. 14

16 Figure 2: Example of Profit History Chart in Sales Order Entry Figure 8. Example of profit history displayed during sales-order entry. View Product Profit Margins Graphing the profit margins for products on the sales order eliminates the time required to scroll through multiple lines on an order. The system evaluates the existing profit margin for each product on the sales order and dynamically creates the graph. Viewing the information in real time allows CSRs to quickly react to poor profit margins while building order transactions. Sales orders can include hundreds of products; JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor enables the system to rapidly display the graph as each line is entered. Figure 8 shows an example of the product profit margin chart on a sales order. CSRs can use this information to determine if target profit margins are met. Planned Roadmap for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor The following are additional roadmap plans for the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor solution. Note: While the following information represents the product roadmap as of this writing, plans are subject to change. Product promotions are an effective way to encourage customers to purchase additional related products. CSRs can help increase top-line revenue by suggesting related products that are tied to a customer s buying history (cross-selling). 15

17 Figure 3: Example of Current Order Profit Margin Chart in Sales Order Entry Figure 9. Example of current-order profit margin chart generated during sales-order entry. Suggest Additional Products and Discounts in Real Time Suggest Additional Products JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Sales Order Management enables the set up of related or associated products that could be sold with the product that is being purchased. These associated products are displayed for each individual product on the sales order. In order for CSRs to suggest products that are not already on the sales order, they need to inquire about each individual line, view the associated products, and then determine whether the product has already been purchased. Associated products are preconfigured in the system and maintained on a frequent basis to ensure they are up to date. Depending on how customer purchases change during the year, the maintenance of the associated products can be a time-consuming task. Every sales situation presents the opportunity to increase revenues. There are several ways to determine which products should be suggested to customers: based on an individual customer, on a group of customers, or on all customer purchases. One roadmap item for the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor solution is to build product suggestions using real-time processing of large volumes of current and historical sales-order records. These suggestions will be viewable during order capture and available to add to the sales order. Viewing the information will not impact the process of capturing the order and will not require a CSR to take any action. Providing real-time product suggestions not only drives additional revenue; it helps reduce the set up and maintenance of pricing discounts and promotions. 16

18 Display Order Up-Sells JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Advanced Pricing allows discounts for product bundles (basket and order groups). The system applies the discounts based on these bundles after the entire order is captured. The roadmap calls for the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor solution to provide order up-sell recommendations during order capture. Order up-selling will allow CSRs to view and recommend potential order additions that would enable the customer to receive greater discounts. For example, purchasing a specific dollar amount or weight amount might enable the customer to receive free shipping or an additional discount off the entire order. Visual indicators for order up-sell opportunities will aid the CSR to engage with the customer or ignore the opportunity, if desired. The ability to view potential sales for basket- and order-level adjustments during order entry enables CSRs to drive additional revenue. CSRs can review the information to see what is required to receive the additional order- or basket-level adjustment. Insight into discounts and promotions during the final step of the sales order leaves customers with a pleasant feeling when they complete their purchase and it builds customer loyalty. Reduce System Setup and Maintenance The roadmap for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor includes the ability for the system to dynamically review the entire pricing schedule for basket and order discounts and display the up-sell opportunities for CSRs in real time. This will take advantage of existing functionality in the system, require no additional setup, and reduce the number of pricing discounts that are maintained. By analyzing sales history to suggest products, companies will be able to drastically reduce the system setup requirements reducing thousands of pricing rules to a few dozen records that define the relationships between products and customers. Displaying the information will improve the efficiency and productivity of CSRs, which drives down the cost of sales-order capture. Generate Higher Customer Satisfaction Showing availability information during order entry gives CSRs visibility into the likelihood of the order being filled. Real-time insight into product availability and the priority ranking of the sales-order lines with respect to other sales demand can help CSRs discuss the probability of the product being shipped on time to the customer. Gain Insight into the Probability of Fulfillment Allocating inventory based on priority rank ensures that highest-priority orders are filled first, thus improving customer satisfaction. One roadmap item for the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor solution is to take advantage of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Fulfillment Management module to rank the product demand for each sales order. The ability to view the priority ranking while capturing the order will enable proactive communication with the customer. A chart view will be available for each product on the sales order, because each one has its own demand and priority rank. 17

19 Improve Revenue and Profit Visibility Insight into revenue and profit drivers improves executive decision-making for product pricing and reduces the risk of incorrect pricing. When sales executives can look at what if scenarios, they have better visibility into the factors that drive revenue and profit, and they can make more-informed decisions about future pricing and sales. As shown in Figure 10, the variability of cost, price, and forecasts impacts both profit and revenue. To analyze the impact of changes in these factors, executives need to run multiple scenarios or simulations. Cost Price Profit & Revenue Forecast Figure 4 Figure 10. Profit and revenue equation. Simulate Future Profit The roadmap calls for the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor solution to provide real-time what if profit simulations. Executives will be able to simulate changing cost and price conditions along with forecasted demand and sales history to immediately view the impacts. Analysis of what if scenarios using large volumes of data will enable management to make faster, more-informed decisions. They will have the ability to run and analyze simulations for a variety of changing conditions quickly, without the need to get administration involved to create batch applications or custom reports. This can eliminate the need to inquire about cost, price, and forecasts; export the data to a spreadsheet; and then create scenarios within the spreadsheet to determine how changes to these factors impact revenue and profit. Roadmap plans also include the ability to save the what if simulations to for use at a later date and for use as a reference for decisions that were made. These saved simulations could also be rerun to compare planned results to actual results. 18

20 Access to Actionable Tasks One additional roadmap item is to provide proactive control over pricing for the entire product catalog. Executives will be able to quickly update prices with a percentage increase, a percentage decrease, or an absolute value based on the scenario that was analyzed. Conclusion The complex order-entry processes and revenue opportunities that are present for most large enterprises are unlikely to go away; in fact, they continue to get more complex. Traditional methods of having multiple price lists, promotions, and bundled deals are difficult to manage and access during order capture. As a result, enterprises run the risk of inefficient order-entry processes, missed up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, error-prone manual tasks, and dissatisfied customers. Oracle s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor deployed on Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 is a transformational solution that has been developed to address these specific business problems within large, complex organizations. It works with existing JD Edwards EnterpriseOne modules from Oracle to take advantage of historical sales information and configured information to display revenue opportunities dynamically during order capture. It enables CSRs to guide customers to the right product purchases quickly and easily to capture the perfect order for the customer. By using Oracle engineered systems such as this JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor solution, executives can analyze scenarios that affect their bottom line and take action to ensure profits are met for their organization, while administration tasks are dramatically reduced. This new solution from Oracle represents a major opportunity for organizations to streamline manual processes to increase top-line revenue, improve revenue and profit margins, generate higher customer satisfaction, and reduce system setup and maintenance. Oracle engineered systems offer unequaled performance gains and time reductions for up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, fulfillment probability, and profit analysis. Companies can re-think their internal expectations and improve their processes from taking minutes or even hours to subseconds. This results in less disruption to the business, so planning and decision-making can be done quickly with up-to-date and accurate information. Hardware and software designed to work together provides optimization to key processes. 19

21 For More Information TABLE 3. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES WEBSITES Oracle Database Oracle Optimized Solutions Oracle SuperCluster Oracle Solaris Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance oracle.com/optimizedsolutions oracle.com/supercluster oracle.com/solaris oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/unified-storage/ WHITE PAPERS SPARC M6-32 Server Architecture oracle.com/us/products/database/enterpriseedition/overview/index.html oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/sun-sparc- enterprise/documentation/o m5-32-architecture pdf?ssSourceSiteId=ocomen 20

22 JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor on Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 August 2013, Version 1.0 Authors: Chris Martin and Maureen Chew Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA U.S.A. Worldwide Inquiries: Phone: Fax: Copyright 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document, and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Intel and Intel Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. AMD, Opteron, the AMD logo, and the AMD Opteron logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group oracle.com