The Value of Integration for PeopleSoft Customers in Asset-Intensive Industries

I know it’s a holiday week, but I’d like to take a little time to talk about PeopleSoft’s secret weapon when it comes to Enterprise Asset Management (EAM). That weapon? Integration.

Look at the past to predict the future.

When ERP systems first became available in the early 1990s, the functionality offered typically consisted of:

• A Financial system (GL, AR, AP and Fixed Assets)
• A Distribution/Order Management system (Sales Order Management, Inventory, Purchasing, Basic Warehouse Management)
• A Manufacturing system (MRP, Capacity Requirements Planning, Work Orders)

This created a market opportunity for the Best of Breed vendors, and many of them flourished. Companies such as I2, Manugistics and Numetrix grew rapidly by exploiting functional gaps in the Supply Chain Planning capabilities offered by the ERP vendors.  Siebel, Vantive and many others did the same thing in the CRM market.

When it came to Asset Management, the ERP vendors provided only basic Fixed Asset capabilities and tended to view assets as something to simply be managed on a balance sheet.  Naturally, this created yet another opportunity for Best of Breed EAM and Maintenance Management vendors. Companies such Indus and MRO took advantage of this opening and offered compelling functionality to the PeopleSoft, Oracle and SAP customer bases.

As the 1990s drew to a close, the boundaries of an ERP system expanded. The reason is twofold: 1) Adding extra functionality beyond a base ERP system allowed the ERP vendors to differentiate themselves, and 2) the ERP vendors realized they were leaving money on the table that the Best of Breed vendors were happy to take.

So ERP began to grow up in response to competitive market forces.

PeopleSoft, Oracle, JDEdwards and SAP added Supply Chain, CRM, and Advanced Warehouse functionality to their ERP systems at a rapid pace. While in most cases the early versions of these applications were still not competitive with the Best of Breed vendors, the tide was beginning to turn.

From 2000-2005, new versions of these offerings quickly began closing the functional gaps with the Best of Breed solutions. After 2006, the gaps had narrowed to the point where only those companies with extremely complex requirements had no alternative but the Best of Breed vendors. The Best of Breed companies that had flourished in the 1990s were seeing their value proposition go away. As a result, almost all of the pure-play Supply Chain, CRM, and Asset Management vendors are now either gone or have been acquired.

Which brings us to PeopleSoft.

When PeopleSoft acquired JDEdwards in 2003, one of the hidden gems was JDEdwards’s Asset Management capabilities. PeopleSoft quickly realized this and announced plans to take the Asset Management capabilities of JDEdwards, rewrite it in PeopleTools, and offer it to the traditional PeopleSoft customer base. When Oracle acquired PeopleSoft, they reaffirmed this decision and accelerated the process. Release 8.9 first introduced Asset Lifecycle Management to PeopleSoft customers. This was quickly followed up with Release 9.0 which provided additional functional enhancements — and while Oracle isn’t talking, PeopleSoft Release 9.1 promises to deliver even more Asset Management functionality to its customers.

So just like the legacy CRM and Supply Chain vendors, the value proposition offered by the Best of Breed Asset Management vendors has eroded. Why? PeopleSoft now delivers Asset Management functionality that is very close or equals that of the few remaining Best of Breed vendors. And the need to build, support and maintain interfaces to third-party Asset Management systems has been eliminated.

In other words, PeopleSoft customers in asset-intensive industries can (finally) enjoy the tremendous benefits of integration without sacrificing functionality. Integration means enterprise-wide visibility of a company’s assets. Integration means no islands of automation. And integration means saving them money — lots of money.

The market has spoken with their dollars. ERP customers like integration, as fragmented patchwork systems have become synonymous with cost and complexity.  If you are a PeopleSoft customer and you manage assets, whether it’s a fleet of trucks, production equipment, multiple facilities, or laptops, consider the integration benefits offered by the PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management suite.

For more information on the PeopleSoft MM product, please email me or give us a call at 800-774-5187.  In addition, you can check out Oracle’s website and download some of the collateral related to the product.  If you’d like more of a in-depth primer on PeopleSoft MM’s and a deeper explanation of its benefits (especially compared to point solutions), download our free whitepaper entitled PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: An Introduction and Overview of Benefits.

Previously:

PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: A Deeper Look
PeopleSoft Real Estate Management: A Deeper Look
An Introduction to PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management
Sneak Peek: PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal 9.1
PeopleTools 8.5: A Look Inside

Related whitepapers (PDF):

PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: An Introduction and Overview of Benefits

Related web content:

MiPro Consulting: PeopleSoft Services
MiPro Consulting: Resources