CERN an e-Business?
We
are bombarded by stories about e-Commerce, e-Procurement,
e-MarketPlaces, e-anything, and here
you are already
reading the second issue
of an e-Newsletter.
In
order to keep up with the trend I would like to share
this question with you: 'Can we be an e-Business?'
I
think the answer is YES, we will be an e-Business one
day, but the real question is WHEN.....? And what
is an e-Business in the first place?
It
seems that an e-Business
is an organisation that does everything 'online', preferably
using the web. An e-Business has implemented all information
flow in electronic form. This also implies that the
contacts with the business partners are handled electronically
whenever possible. That means no paper purchase orders,
no invoices, no salary slips, no paper procedure handbook,
no paper catalogues, no anything on paper. There are
few e-Businesses in the world yet, there are rumours
saying today there may exist four in total.
So
where is CERN with 'e-stuff'? Will we be an e-Business
soon? Some of us still remember the COBOL applications
like GESTOCK, written in the 60s. These batch programs
had no 'end user interface'. Input was done with punched
cards, output was an updated file, or a paper list.
These first (home made) administrative applications
were introduced at CERN many decades ago. The last one
was phased out in 1995 and ran for approximately 30
years. The punched cards disappeared when we wrote data
entry applications (like K7 and 16i) in the early 80s.
These precursors of the client/server architecture enabled
the replacement of the card punching machines with (if
you were rich, 24 lines times 80 character) video terminals.
These 'front-end' applications were hiding the fact
that deep down below (in our 'corporate applications')
nothing had changed much. The mouse was invented, the
Macintosh and later the PC became credible alternatives
for the dedicated word processors, the 8Inch Floppy's
became 5Inch, then 3.5Inch; BUT the way we are doing
our business (for instance the orders we send to the
suppliers, the invoices we send to the institutes for
expenses made by teams), and the supporting 'back office'
application software, has not fundamentally changed.
The
birth of the WEB is supposed to have enabled a 'disruptive
change' in this evolving application software world.
This time we are told everything will be turned upside
down, and if we don't surf on this e-Wave, we'll soon
drown in the e-Ocean. What are we doing to increase
the 'e' in the business? Do we need to be scared?
I
don't think so, since all together we have lots of e-Wave
surfing experience on which many organizations are jealous.
The web versions of EDH,
BHT, HRT,
CFU, PIE,
CTA, etc...
are all using real state of the art technology (very
sophisticated workflow in EDH and soon CFU, common logon
for identification, encryption and secured transactions,
etc..).
In
fact we have been on our way to becoming an e-Business
for a long time. We have been doing internal e-Procurement
for over 5 years. We have a WEB Stores catalogue, and
users have been buying Stores articles over the past
years by simply clicking an item in the catalogue. So
we have the technology, and we are becoming more and
more 'e'. Furthermore we are in the process of moving
all our applications to the WEB.
We
are testing ORACLE*HR 11i which is a web enabled version
of our human resources package.
We are working hard to introduce a new web enabled version
of our financial and purchasing packages in Autumn 2001.
(We hope to give a demo of this new version end of this
year).
So 'internally' we will be technically ready in a couple
of years to become a 'certified e-Business'. Remains
our contacts with the outside world, which brings us
to the subject of 'e-Commerce'. Lets define e-Commerce
as buying and selling over the web, including all information
exchange (product specifications, orders, confirmations,
invoices, etc..).
Since
one year e-MarketPlaces are emerging. On an e-MarketPlace
instead of a going to the WEB catalogues of individual
vendors, you can get in contact with a multitude of
suppliers through a single entry point. e-MarketPlaces
allow multiple customers and suppliers to meet and come
to an agreement on price, quantities, lead times, and
other commercial conditions. The e-MarketPlaces can
be fully integrated with the 'back-office' Enterprise
Resource Planning or ERP systems: the heavy batch programs
that do for instance the scheduling of the production
lines. This has the potential of greatly streamlining,
integrating, and speeding up not only the selling and
buying processes between companies, but the entire 'supply
chain'. This process is called 'Supply Chain Integration'
or SCI*. It is the recent emergence of XML (Extensible
Markup Language) which has facilitated this electronic
exchange of information between different application
packages. However this technology is still very young,
and standards have not settled yet.
Our
attitude at this moment, is 'wait and see'. We are not
in a strong enough position to impose our business partners
to adopt the electronic exchange of information (as
is the case in certain industries like the automotive
industry).
We
will keep an eye on what is happening in the outside
world, and are ready to react quickly if we can gain
benefits from the technology when it matures. With the
products we have installed or are installing, we are
well prepared to surf the e-Wave whenever it will hit
us.
*
SCI is another Three Letter Acronym or 'TLA', which
is nothing new either, since it is being done since
over a decade using EDI which is the TLA for Electronic
Document Interchange. The difference is that EDI was
never widely adopted, the WEB and the e-Stuff are supposed
to enable the global supply chain integration).
Reinoud
Martens
Group Leader
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