Enterprise Automation: A Quantum Leap for JD Edwards ERP

Is Enterprise Automation the next big thing in the ERP market? As Process Automation has become an essential tool in ERP systems for managing business flows, data and resources effectively – the answer is Yes! – Enterprise Automation will be a fascinating leap forward. In this blog post we will dive into the concept and how it’s set to revolutionize business using JD Edwards EnterpriseOne!

You have probably already heard the buzz; Enterprise Automation is predicted to be the next big thing in the ERP world and the fact is that it is already well under way. Oracle has been working towards this exciting new direction for some time and as we look forward to the next few years, Enterprise Automation is set to become a core part of xperitus strategic direction.

Before we dive deeper into the implications and potential of Enterprise Automation, let's take a moment to celebrate the journey so far. 

Process Automation – Celebrating the Achievements

Many companies have taken significant steps in process automation in recent years. And among our JD Edwards customers, the success stories are many and inspiring. From reducing the manual steps when maintaining master data to fully automating sales order processes or integrating your Accounts Payables to external voucher scanning systems.

On the developer side significant effort has been made in simplifying the creation of process automations. From integrating JD Edwards Workflows into the Orchestrator Studio, adding more and more powerful tools to the extension framework for optimizing JD Edwards applications to expanding the features of Logic Extensions into a fully-fledged development tool.

Understanding Enterprise Automation

Ok so we have a pretty good idea of what Process Automation is and what it can do so what about Enterprise Automation? 

Enterprise Automation seeks to expand on Process Automation by stretching it beyond single business processes to pan-enterprise processes across the entire organization. The main goal is to streamline, give insight into how the enterprise is doing and allow for decision-making and data analysis and in the end optimization across different departments.

The primary components of Enterprise Automation include Robotic Process Automation, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and integration tools that connect various modules in JD Edwards as well as external systems and data sources. By integrating these components, Enterprise Automation aims to optimize the entire range of business operations.

Enterprise Automation vs. Process Automation: Sorting out the Differences

Here are some of the main differences between Enterprise Automation and Process Automation:

• Scope: Enterprise Automation addresses an organization's entire operations such as measuring the performance of the Procure to Pay processes; from creating forecasts to receiving gods to paying suppliers or from when a customer enters a sales order all the way to picking, shipping, invoicing and receiving customer payment. Process Automation is more focused on automating the individual processes themselves, such as data entry, invoicing, sales- and dispatch processing. 

• Complexity: Enterprise Automation involves complex integrations of different technologies to manage various aspects of a business, whereas Process Automation usually focuses on improving specific processes e.g., to save time and reduce errors.

• Goals: Enterprise Automation aims to optimize and improve the overall performance and efficiency of an organization, for example measuring actual lead times from receiving a sales order to the shipping of the order, identifying bottlenecks in the processes, analyzing the situation and even automatically try to correct it. In other words an Intelligent ERP whereas Process Automation aims at streamlining specific processes.

• Technologies involved: Enterprise Automation involves a range of advanced tools and technologies, whereas Process Automation normally combines one or two.

Tapping into the wealth of data

A central part of Enterprise Automation is to leverage the transactional data that an enterprise generates. Like A.J. Schifano stated in his presentation about Enterprise Automation at the JD Edwards Conference in May 2023:

• Transactional data is the lifeblood of every enterprise. It holds a wealth of unseen information — blind spots just waiting to be discovered. But beyond that, it's a goldmine of opportunity for continuous improvement, innovation, and transformation.

While caught up in daily operations, it's easy to overlook the potential of this omnipresent data, and thus the hidden treasures within transactional data remain unexplored. 

Consider, for example, that we for some items run into a mid-week shortage. After investigation it is found that a supplier is rejecting our purchase orders exclusively on Fridays. With a superficial glance, this issue might remain undiscovered, relegated to the status of a mere operational hiccup. 

However, by digging deeper into aggregated data we can automatically uncover such anomalies, allowing us to address the issues directly and improve overall business performance.

Automation, an integral part of the data life cycle

Automation plays a crucial role in this data-driven journey. By automating tasks, we do more than streamline operations and improve efficiency. When automation spans across the entire enterprise, it leads to generation of massive data, which, when analyzed, can give accurate insight into the true health of the business. Suboptimization look out – Enterprise Automation is here to get you! 

Automation is thus an integral part of the data life cycle, facilitating data ingestion, model generation, problem-solving, and measurement of results.

But, it's not just about automating tasks; it's also about capturing the subtleties of human interactions. By introducing light touch automation into human-driven tasks we will be able to document these actions, enriching our data pool for further analysis.

The Business Impact of Enterprise Automation

Enterprise Automation enhances the capabilities of an ERP-system and is poised to revolutionize the ERP market. Sure, while the adoption will come with its set of challenges, the concept offers numerous benefits to enterprises that embark on the journey: 

• improved data processing speeds

• smarter decision-making abilities

• more efficient resource allocation

• cost reduction

• advanced real-time analytics that provide insights that were previously hard to acquire

By embracing this wave, your business can enhance efficiency, become more adaptable to changes and maintain your competitive edge!

What about Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence is another concept that emphasizes the leveraging of data. It is as you know the process of collecting, analyzing and visualizing information to make informed decisions based on facts. 

Sounds a lot like Enterprise Automation, right? However, the two disciplines have different strengths and are ideally used together in optimizing a business. While BI focuses on insights and analysis, Enterprise Automation helps by automating and optimizing the processes for improved efficiency and accuracy.

Enterprise Automation can for example automate the process of collecting and transforming data from different sources as well as presenting it using automated report tools – something that is usually very time-consuming within Business Intelligence.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there's huge potential for business improvement and innovation through insightful data analysis and automation.

Enterprise Automation is the future of JD Edwards and even if it is still a vision, it is on Oracle’s roadmap and as you know; EnterpriseOne is not starting from scratch! There’s an arsenal of resources already at your disposal: already defined KPIs, Orchestrations, Watchlists, UxOne Pages, complex analytics capabilities in Logic Extensions and most important – your digital goldmine – your data.

Blog Post Embracing Innovation

To summarize, Enterprise Automation represents a long-term strategic plan for JD Edwards. It’s a journey of transformation that we at xperitus look forward to embarking on together with you.

You are sitting on a goldmine of information – Enterprise Automation is the key to unlock it’s secrets!