Month: June 2021

All that you need to Know about Oracle ASCP (Advanced Supply Chain Planning)!

Posted on by stridely

Oracle ASCP is an internet-based and comprehensive planning solution for enterprises. It decides the work orders, purchase orders, and inventory, which must be deployed within an expansive supply chain. In short, it is the supply planning function.

A part of Oracle E-business suite, it is a web-based application that conducts planning and handles business issues. Oracle ASCP provides a transparent picture of your Supply Chain with supreme ease of decision-making ability. It also helps balance the supply and demand.

Also Read: Market welcomes Supply Chain 4.0 – Is it going to revolutionize the industry?

With multiple advantages, Advanced Supply Chain Planning could be a right thing for your business. Read the article to learn more about Oracle ASCP and figure out if your venture needs it. Let’s get started.

What problem set does Oracle ASCP address?

Oracle ASCP addresses the following significant supply planning challenges, which are shown below:

  • How do you involve your trading partners?
  • How can you keep optimizing your plans?
  • How can you access your plan from anywhere?
  • How can you plan all the required manufacturing methods and standards?
  • How do you plan the supply chain in the shortest time span?
  • How can you plan your entire supply chain?
  • How do you reduce the number of executions and iterations?

What are the competencies of Oracle ASCP?

The key capabilities are shown below:

Source: myneworacleapps.blogspot.com

● Limited Capacity Planning and Scheduling

Oracle ASCP produces feasible supply chain plans, which consider both material and resource constraints.

● Holistic Planning, Optimizations, and Scheduling

Oracle ASCP can fruitfully plan all the supply chain amenities. Long-term and short-term aggregate and precise scheduling are supported within a single plan.

Therefore, such plans also uphold numerous multiple manufacturing methods. These include flow, discrete, process, and project manufacturing.

● Worldwide Accessibility

The database-oriented architecture of Oracle ASCP preserves plan data in a central planning server database. Such data could be accessible from anywhere through a simple browser. Numerous planners can access data from a single plan quickly.

● Workflow-oriented Exception Messaging

The exception messages feature of Oracle ASCP alerts planners to crucial challenges throughout the extended supply chain.

Workflows, which propel such exceptions, route data to and feedback from trading partners as mandated. Therefore, it efficiently involves them in the supply chain planning procedure.

● Optimization

Businesses can rapidly configure Oracle ASCP to improve particular organizational criteria. No programming is that much necessary to access the robust mathematical optimization competencies of the Oracle ASCP.

● Combined Planning and Execution

The advanced planner workbench user interface of Oracle ASCP both showcases display plan results and enables planners to conduct planning recommendations. The planners don’t have to shift to the transaction system to operate plan execution.

● Backward Compatibility

The component architecture of Oracle ASCP allows it to be exploited against any version of the Oracle transaction systems.

● Simulation Capability

Oracle ASCP enables ongoing changes to demand, supply, resource profiles, and plan options to imitate changing business conditions. You can produce a top-notch plan in terms of all the changes that have been entered through the planner’s workbench.

Countless scenarios could be imitated and compared, harnessing copy plans, online planning, and exceptions. Some of the crucial changes are:

  • Changing sources
  • Firming
  • Modifying priorities
  • Rectifying resource availability, objective weights, and varying sources.

Oracle ASCP Process

The process of Oracle ASCP starts when we accumulate the transactional data from the Oracle E-business Suite. Therefore, it accomplishes specific changes according to the planning recommendations.

Collections

The collection procedure in Oracle ASCP is identified as the process of shifting data from the transaction instance to the planning instance. Therefore, the transaction source could be an Oracle E-business Suite/JD Edwards/SAP or any ERP system. However, some primary target and collection standards are the following:

  • Target refresh
  • Complete refresh
  • Net-transformation refresh

Plans

In Oracle ASCP, businesses can produce distinct plans. These are constrained and unconstrained plans. Hence, these enforce demand due dates, competency constraints, decision rules, and a developed plan. Diverse options of ASCP planning are shown below:

  • Master Production Scheduling (MPS)
  • Master Requirement Planning (MRP)
  • Master Production Planning (MPP)

What are the major functionalities of Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning?

Oracle ASCP is the best-in-class planning engine that empowers you in making effective decisions. It carefully plans your end-to-end supply chain management procedure utilizing a single plan.

The procedure initiates when users can feel the demand, and then they mold it while comparing the planned demand to the actual one. Therefore, in order to plan something using ASCP, it can incorporate all the distribution and production enterprises. That’s why it is hassle-free to prepare all the mandated organizations.

The crucial functionalities, which Oracle ASCP provides are following:

  • Using ASCP, enterprises can feel the requirement, which their customers and users produce. This is how they may respond to the provision by differentiating the planned demand from the real one.
  • Oracle ASCP possesses an extraordinary and propagated workbench. It provides planners with a hassle-free way to prepare, evaluate, change, launch, and edit the plans simultaneously.
  • Enterprises can receive workflow-produced exception alerts and messages in a notification summary.
  • Integration with other ERP systems offers the optimal level of planning. Therefore, it eventually provides superiority in the supply chain management process.
  • Using Oracle ASCP, organizations can acquire demand-oriented planning and curtail the potential risks and threats, which may emerge during planning.
  • It works on analytical processing. Therefore, it offers real-time feedings of demand. Hence, they can respond to the demand within zero time due to the availability of holistic supply planning.

Architecture and Design of Oracle ASCP

The Oracle ASCP is precisely structured and designed to fulfill intricate demands in real-time. Therefore, it provides an elevated performance deployment because of the below-mentioned features:

  • Multi-thread snapshot
  • Combination with legacy systems
  • Process-oriented memory allocation
  • Supreme ease of integration with this Oracle E-Business Suite
  • Centralized database for seamless and rapid access from anywhere
  • Hot backup and recuperation available
  • Materialized view

Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning effectively combines with the Oracle E-business Suite/JD Edwards so that data is seamlessly transferred to Oracle ASCP using XML.

Source: Oracle

In addition, Oracle ASCP provides features such as KPIs, workflows, wherein plans are developed, all of which provide enhanced planning capabilities. So, customers, users, and suppliers can interact by harnessing their respective logins.

Oracle ASCP’s Processing Flow

This process begins with the new plan generation and finishes at implantation on the source instance. However, it is recommended to first build a brand-new plan in Oracle ASCP, which consists of the details that suit the business. This new plan is then launched so as to make it available for the planner to execute planning. In the subsequent phase, planning engines are evaluated and applied to the source instance.

Innovation of a Plan

Oracle ASCP helps enterprises to create a plan in this phase. In terms of your business requirements, it may select a plan that corresponds to your work ambiance.

However, the plan may contain vast numbers of safety stocks in the inventory, delivery, and inventory scheduled on accurate time and date.

Launching that Plan

In this phase, Oracle ASCP will launch this brand-new plan to ensure availability in the planner’s workbench. Therefore, it can conduct evaluation and adjustment on a plan basis. Thus, the existing supply and requirements are available during the launching of the plan.

However, all these needs are available from the source instance and adjustments, which could be accomplished using the result-driven approach.

Evaluation and Adjustments

Plan assessment is mainly done in terms of the KPIs. In this step, Oracle helps make the adjustments while getting the plan recommendation.

This is how the supply and demand procedure will change accordingly. In order to acquire the most out of the proposal, Oracle runs the plan in a simulation mode.

Implementation of the Analysis

In this key phase, Oracle ASCP makes the fundamental changes in the transactional data to explain a precise and optimal process.

Planning with Oracle ASCP in diversified organizational environment

Utilizing Oracle ASCP, distinct sorts of planning can be accomplished for diverse business types. If you are in a manufacturing company, which produces end products using its superior manufacturing procedure, or you are in a distribution organization, which distributes merchandise.

Therefore, it can be manufactured within the company or end products bought from other enterprises for distribution. So, in Oracle ASCP, users can acquire uniquely crafted plans for both types of companies in an isolated way. Therefore, in case you are both in a distribution and manufacturing organization, you can execute planning for your enterprise using this Oracle ASCP. The major types of usable plans are following:

Master Production Scheduling (MPS) and Material Requirements Planning (MRP) are used for manufacturing purposes. Here, anyone can schedule and streamline the production process. Next, Distribution Plans (DRP) are used for only distribution purposes. These plans are propelled by the material requirement plan and production scheduling plans.

Concluding words

The above article elaborates the objectives of Oracle ASCP and its advantageous for enterprises. The article demonstrates how supply and demand are managed, and how it can balance the production, purchase, and sales using the Oracle ASCP suite. If you are looking for professional help in deploying Oracle ASCP for your company, our Stridely Oracle experts are readily available.

 

 

All about SAP Digital Boardroom: Changing the way you utilize Information in decision-making for your Enterprise

Posted on by stridely

Almost all industry verticals are going through digitization at present, changing every aspect of the core business landscape. One major reason behind such a big change is excessive change in the customer expectations.

To better address the changing needs of the customer, getting high-tech is essential after all. When not done, businesses feel challenged on how to make the best use of additional overflow of data being generated from the multiple systems.

To detect new consumer trends such vast information must be analyzed fast, and in real-time. That’s the only way to acquire competitive advantages that ultimately leads to the growth of an organization.

Enterprises can now utilize the potential of SAP Digital Boardroom to do well and overcome the above troubles.

Wondering how?

Glimpse of Digital Boardroom

SAP Digital Boardroom is a next generation SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solution, which in turn is based on the SAP Cloud Platform. It is built on SAP BusinessObjects Cloud and facilitates better decision making by providing real-time analytical and transactional business context.

Digital Boardroom comes with powerful analytical capabilities along with the Business Intelligence, Predictive Analytics and planning capabilities. The solution helps you to align executive decisions on a single source of truth across all business areas. It also provides a complete, real-time view of company situations and KPIs across departments to foster trust among leaders and drive change in the digital economy.

With this public and private cloud offering based on SAP BusinessObjects Cloud, business leaders benefit from total transparency, quick insight, and quality boardroom process.

Source: SAP

The business intelligence embedded SAP Digital boardroom aims to provide 360-degree view on company’s performance in the market with the help of following three screens,

  • Overview Screen
  • Context Screen
  • Exploration screen

Why use Digital Boardroom?

When it is required to make highly informed business decisions, C-executives, board members and decision-makers often use different reporting solutions and make decisions based on incomplete, unreliable and redundant information based on heterogeneous technologies that do not speak with each other.

SAP Digital Boardroom harmonizes the view of company operations across all verticals in one easy-to-consume, highly visual three large interconnected screens with touch technology setup for more effective and collaborative decision-making.

Current and planned capabilities of SAP Business Object Cloud

Source: SAPInsider

Key Capabilities:

Hold interactive & fact-driven meetings with truthful information from one source;

  • Lead meetings with unique user experience that supports real-time insights;
  • Make collaborative decisions with real-time interactive data & responsive layouts;
  • Use freeform presentations as per your organizational structure in meetings.

Easy planning and simulation

  • Do what-if and ad-hoc analysis.
  • Imparts context details of essential KPIs to let you do precise business planning;
  • Assess the business-critical information quickly and accurately.

Instant Data-driven insights

  • Use its powerful analytical capabilities to answer ad-hoc questions on-the-fly in board meetings;
  • Discover hidden patterns in business-critical data through automated machine learning techniques.

Best practice business content

  • Expedite development process with the help of predefined queries, data models, visualizations, and best practices;
  • Integrate with SAP S/4HANA and BW/4HANA
  • Works well with SAP Concur solutions, SAP Ariba, SAP Hybris, and SAP SuccessFactors

Conclusion

SAP Digital Boardroom is an amazing tool for busy entrepreneurs as well as c-suite members of enterprises. This data presentation tool can help you utilize real-time data in your meetings, presentations and discussions. This means, you can make precise decisions and handle industry analytics well on your own.

When used with SAP Analytics cloud stories, Digital Boardroom can provide next-level meeting experience. With it, you can create and show interactive stories in your presentations. In comparison to the tools letting you give static presentations; this tool is super-advanced. Calling it a game-changer for information flow and interaction on data for your organization won’t be an over-statement.

Before you go…

Have you made up your mind to transform your board meeting experience? We, at  Stridely Solutions, will be more than happy to assist you with our significant years of expertise, We can provide custom-fit solutions to organizations and industries throughout the world. Establish your personal roadmap with our veteran, SAP Digital Boardroom professionals.

 

Utilizing the Power of Big Data Analytics for Oil and Gas Industry

Posted on by stridely

Data is gold for industries and the oil & gas industry is no exception. In this domain as well, there is a huge pile of crude data about the presence of the reservoirs, seismic data, and the like. You will be shocked to know that about 50% of the working hours of oil & gas industry engineers are spent on capturing the data.

The prevalence of data in the oil & gas industry is so high that a leading US oil group doubles up its database in almost 12-18 months.

Also Read: Future of oil and gas companies — Areas of Extreme Profit and Loss

Handling such an enormous data pool has always remained a headache for leaders of the oil & gas industry.  The intervention of big data analytics has proved a blessing for this industry. Let’s explore more about this topic.

  • Data Management Challenges That Oil & Gas Industry Faces
  • The giant dataset of the oil & gas industry is challenged with issues like:
  • Lack of visibility into tedious operational processes
  • Not churning out the proper results
  • Losing data in the process of migration and handling
  • Consuming a lot of time in data handling and processing

This industry is already bombarded with challenges like performance optimization, logistic complexity, ensuring the regulations at each level, and ensuring the equipment life cycle through and through. Above this, the complexities of the dataset are increased the operational burden on businesses operating in the oil & gas industry.

Also Read: Data Analytics and Business Intelligence: How to Make their Best Combinational Use?

Big Data Analytics – The Real Saviour for Oil & Gas Industry

Bringing big data analytics is the easiest way to deal with the complexities existing in geophysics, stimulation, production process, and cutting down the expenses of the oil production industry. Already, big data have entered this domain and a high tech-driven oil field is likely to handle 125 billion oil & gas barrels.

  • Data analysis is in real-time and pocket-friendly

We have already made it clear that the data volume in the oil & gas industry is colossal and is growing at a rapid speed. Handling such a huge amount of data, efficiently & effectively, is essential and imperative even if it is tedious and expensive. The high demand for perfection and real-time insights, derived from this dataset, increases the burden a little more.

The intervention of big data has helped oil & gas companies to achieve these operational goals without any compromise. The advanced AI of big data is competent enough to churn out real-time insights. As most of the tasks are automated, handling the data with fewer workforces is possible. Big data analytics can help oil & gas industries can pump up the production by 6-8%.

  • Better risk management and decision-making ability

Risks are endless for the oil & gas industry. For instance, the layers of rock, at the sea bottom, vary a lot in a region. It is not necessary that the strategy that applies to one region will hold similar significance for another. Therefore, a separate analysis of highly recommended.

Also Read: How can Big Data Boost the Revenue for Businesses?

Big data analytics is capable to perform as many analyses in a blink of an eye. Analysis of the same dataset from different prospective is also doable. Data scientists can derive multiple conclusions about a geographic area and spot the potential dangers beforehand. This helps keep the risks on the lower side and accuracy in decision-making on the higher side.

  • The highly managed upstream sector

The upstream sector of the oil & gas industry holds great significance as this is that area from where most of the information is gathered.  The usages of big data analytics have managed to attain perfection and seamless operations in this sector.

For instance, managing seismic data is now easy with big data analytics. Acquisitions of seismic data, it is processing, and locating the ideal area for drilling can now be performed with full accuracy. Companies can now have an accurate guess about the presence of oil reservoirs.

The use of big data analytics has helped the oil & gas industry to optimize the drilling processes by customizing the predictive models. Such highly customized predictive models can help businesses to predict probable equipment failures.

Improved reservoir engineering is also one promising benefit of using big data analytics in the upstream sector of the oil & gas industry. With its help, it is easier to design reservoir management applications that will deliver timely and actionable information regarding the change of temperature, pressure, and flow in the reservoir. These applications will provide real-time insights into the performance of the reservoirs and allow companies to assess their worth.

  • Properly managed logistic front

Managing the logistic front in the oil & gas industry is no less than a migraine as transporting petroleum safe & sound is a highly risky task. To accomplish this job safely, sensors and predictive maintenance are used. The use of these technologies makes early detection of pipeline & tanker faults is possible. One can figure out the cracks and corrosion present in the pipelines & tankers beforehand and can know about the seismic ground movements. Upon spotting a loophole in any of these, transportation can be avoided.

Also Read: Data is the real currency: Big data

  • Reduce the downtimes and maintenance

Using big data predictive analytics, the oil & gas industry can easily trim down the maintenance costs, demanded by refining equipment. Asset management becomes easier than ever. One can perform the analysis of historical & current operating data of the equipment and carry out the estimated performance of the equipment.

Use Case Scenarios: How to Leverage Big Data Analytics in the Oil & Gas Industry?

While Oil and Gas Sector still hesitates (to an extent) from utilizing the Big Data Analytics and its potential, there are several use cases that such businesses must pay attention to:

  • Surveying and Monitoring the desired Areas for Exploration

Businesses generally collect data manually and predict the presence of oil in several areas to begin exploration. However, the precision of such data is not very high.

On the other date, organizations in the Oil and Gas sector may perform seismic analysis to survey various areas. With the help of careful analysis of collected data, it becomes easier to predict whether or not the desired region has gas and oil deposits worth exploration. So, with the use of Big Data Analytics, you can determine if your chosen area is worth drilling or not.

While you utilize this practice, the precision of decisions is very high. This means, your efforts, resources and time, alongside the geographical regions, can be saved through it.

  • Increasing the life of your equipment

It is obvious that most of the equipment are damaged due to their unnecessary use, or overuse, or deployment in tough conditions. Most of the time, it leads to expenditure without any good profit. However, by collecting and making use of the sensor data, you can save your resources and money significantly.

Analyzing the drilling sites through advanced sensors can increase your machines’ life and reduce maintenance or re-purchasing costs big time. Alongside this, it enables you to drill for a longer time period and gain more profits. It is an established fact that big ventures could save more than $1 Million in a single project in a single location through the implementation of the sensor analytics alone.

  • Pre-estimation of Production

When a venture has to perform Big Data Analytics through Seismic data, it collects various datasets before digging a particular region.

For example, you will be using the optical fibers to measure certain values by inserting it into the well/land. Similarly, you will be creating 3D as well as 4D maps of oil and gas reservoirs. After all needed processes, Big Data Analytics is performed using artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies.

In the end, you will be able to determine the approximate value of oil and/or gas production from your marked region. With such details in hand, you will be able to understand if the production data is big enough to invest time and resources in your selected region, or is it better to search for another reservoir instead.

  • Improving the Business and Logistics Capacity

With the right tools for forecasting the demand and production probability, your business can optimize its logistics capability for growing faster when Big Data and other cutting-edge technologies are being used optimally.

  • Go a bit environment-friendly

Every business wants to make progress in their field. However, it should not be at the cost of Mother Nature. You must focus on feasibly opting for sustainable business model and cut the carbon footprint wherever possible.

With the use of big data analytics in the oil & gas industry, it can be done to a great extent without compromising the convenience of working for your team. Isn’t it great?

Enjoy the Perks of Big Data Analytics

By involving big data analytics in the oil & gas industry, companies can make most of the capture datasets and take erudite decisions. Early detection of risks, better performance management, reduced operational costs, and lower loss of resources are some other notable takeaways.

Achieving success at all these fronts will have a huge positive impact on the revenue. Hence, if your oil & gas industry-related business is still deprived of the rewards of big data analytics till now then start now.

Having a tough time figuring out where to start? Take the help of a seasoned big data analytics team and get best-of-breed solutions.

 

RPA: A Blessing in Disguise for Accounting & Finance Industry

Posted on by stridely

Can you imagine having a skilled accounting & finance workforce which don’t need a coffee break, meet all the deadlines, never miss out on a single detail, automatically double-check the information, and is never late during the taxation season?

Also Read: RPA is like the Band-aid Feature for the Future

We’re not daydreaming. It is real and is happening around us. All thanks go to the RPA. Since the launch of this technology, accounting is no longer a migraine and financial decisions are not backed by data.

Is It Really a Game Changer?

RPA… Does this term sound unfamiliar to you?

If it does then let us tell you that it stands for Robotic Process Automation and is the process of using technology, administered by business logic and streamlined inputs. Using RPA tools and technologies, one can easily automate the business process from ground zero and earn operational excellence.

Taking its help, a company can configure a need-based robot for various tasks. These digital workers will be able to execute the business processes by aping the human interaction with computer applications using a user interface.

Also Read: How Robotic Process Automation Improves Efficiency of Manufacturing Sector?

Slowly & gradually, RPA is turning out as an essential operational mean for all kinds of industries. The latest one to be at the vanguard of the RPA adoption is the finance & accounting. Accounting firms are adopting RPA to drive changes at multiple fronts.

  • A big relief during the crazy tax season

Taxation is one area that leaves no scope for any kind of goof-ups. You can’t miss out on a deadline, leave an entry, or make any mistake in the tax forms.

Ensuring all of this and many more things, before the invention of RPA, was a tough task as the human workforce has its own limitation.

RPA Implementation made a significant change as the digital workforce can keep notes of deadlines, never get tired from the drudgery paperwork, and perform every task will full perfection. It is shocking but true that most of the human workforce maintains a safe distance from taxation-related tasks because of the repetitiveness involved.

For instance, the process & tracking of Form 8879 is very boring. In a single day, a hundred times processing of the same document is enough to kill the zeal to work. RPA is born for such kind of boring work.

Without feeling a pinch of boredom, RPA tools will perform tracking, processing, and printing of Form 8879 and 18000+ other kinds of annual forms with full perfection & accuracy.

Success Case: Automating Business-Critical Processes Via Next-Gen RPA Solutions

Timely processing of tax forms is possible as RPA tools have an in-built time tracking feature. They can set the reminders & notifications for the upcoming tax season and inform the team way ahead of time. Just as impressive as it sounds, it is equally thrilling to see all of this happening.

Let’s us explain it with a real-time example. Kaufman Rossin, a leading firm, is an ardent use of RPA technology. This Florida-based firm has deployed bots for both its local and international patrons. After the launch of RPA, the firm is experiencing seamless tax returns. In the early implementation phase, 100s of tax returns were processing. But, after six months of usage, the firm was able to process the 1000s tax returns easily in every tax season.

During the peak of tax season, the use of RPA helped the firm to trim down the workload on the administrative team. The costly overtime was not burdening the firm any longer.

  • Save big time at operational fronts

There is no need to mention the tediousness involved in the accounting & finance industry. In an enterprise, a whole bunch of seasoned professionals is required to accomplish the organizational goals. And, not to forget; offering basic amenities and welfare benefits also swell up the financial burdens.

All of this will no longer to a matter of concern if RPA is handling the accounting front. Accounting bots are not that much demanding and come with a low-cost maintenance scheme. As they work wonderfully without asking for any custom software or specific integration, they allow organizations to achieve growth milestones without bearing the added expenditure burden.

  • Enjoy high-tech features & facilities

Most of the accounting firms are using billing & accounting software and feel that they are enjoying the best technical assistance available. Needless to say that a feature-rich billing & accounting software is indeed a great addition to perk up operational excellence, remove the redundancy of jobs, and leverage the power of automation.

But, it still lacks when integration with cognitive technologies is concerned. RPA tools can be easily injected with top-notch cognitive technologies such as ML, natural language processing, and speech recognition. Such a high-end integration makes upper-order task automation possible and can infuse the human perceptual & judgemental capabilities in the automation.

  • RPA is what makes you future-ready

The bolt of COVID-19 was huge and has and left no industry unscathed. The world was sick and under lockdown. This situation was playing a crucial role. Without taking a break RPA processed millions of insurance claims, generated the reports, and even fill out the taxing forms. It kept the world going when humanity was on rest.

  • Effective data management

Data management has to be effective, timely, and as per the quality standards, regardless of the operational area of a business. The implementation of RPA has eliminated various caveats of this process and has made it smooth enough to handle without any errors. For instance, bots can sort out the data from the beginning, sort it out as per the pre-defined selection criteria, and process it as per the department’s needs.

Watch Webinar: RPA – The Next big thing in Digital Transformation

Are There Any Pitfalls of RPA?

No technology is 100% effective and has some pitfalls for sure. RPA is not an exception. Here are some of the major hassles that one will face during the RPA implementation:

  1. RPA implementation can be a tedious job, considering the high-end technicalities it demands. More than success, failure happens at this front, as configuring a robot is not a cakewalk. Enterprises either have to own a skilled in-house technical team or outsource one for the job.
  2. Another hindrance that one will face while using RPA is operational complexity. The team needs time to have hands-on experience on it. In the absence of adequate technical competency, no accounting team will be able to make most of the available RPA technology.
  1. Accounting and tax compliances are likely to change too frequently. Even if it is a minor change, it means a lot on the RPA front as a lot needs to be changed in the bot configuration. Considering this, it is a lot of back-end work.

Key to Successful RPA

Despite the pitfall, one can easily ensure the successful implementation of RPA and make the most of it. To make this happen, one has to keep the below-mentioned points in mind:

  • Figure out your expectations

Before moving any further, try to analyze your expectations and keep them as realistic as possible. Poor expectation management leads to many RPA implementation hiccups.

  • Keep the technical expertise of the team in the mind 

Ultimately, your team is the one that will use the RPA tool & technologies. So, when you’re planning to implement RPA in your ecosystem. Not only their technical expertise level should be taken into consideration but also their inputs should be taken into account. It is wise to talk about them and listen to what they want in an RPA tool. RPA implementation done in this manner is going to be very effective.

Also, it is highly suggested to arrange training sessions for the team.

Having a supporting document is an added advantage. With proper training, the team will be able to make the most of implemented RPA tool and you will devise the best ROI.

  • Take the help of the in-house IT team 

Even if you’re outsourcing the RPA development team, it is highly suggested to involve the in-house IT team. Your in-house IT team understands your organizational needs and competency in a detailed manner and their inputs are going to be proved highly valuable.

  • Keep the interface simple 

Poor design and the complex interface is the key reason behind the failed RPA implementation. Not always, high-tech and complex things work. Bots with poor design and the tedious interface can break, rather than make, the business process.

The simple will be the configuration the easier would be the team to make the changes when there is a change in the policies. This is must needed step that one should take to avoid business disruptions and enjoy the RPA technologies in the best way.

The Final Say

RPA, when done in the right manner, has all the powers to leverage the operational capabilities, reduce the drudgery, and attain perfection even in the most tedious operational area. Firms like Walmart, AT&T, Ernst& Young, and American express have already used this technology and enjoying countless perks. You could be next on the list, provided you’re ensuring having an effective RPA implementation, providing enough training to the team, and having an RPA excellence center.

RPA implementation, performed under these strict guidelines, is definitely, a game-changer for the firm and will help them achieve excellence. Do it under the guidance of experts, or better, hire RPA experts from reliable companies like Stridely Solutions. Our RPA Services are top-notch in quality and suitable for your business.

 

 

 

All About Power Apps Ideas, Microsoft’s latest AI-powered assistant to let people code using natural language!

Posted on by stridely

From assembly-level programming to the high-level programming languages like C++ and Java, improving the coding experience for developers has always been the top priority for the tech world. This zeal of letting coders have ultimately low-code app building experience is taken to a different level of reality by Microsoft.

The company has announced its new solution, namely – Power Apps Ideas.

It will let you describe things in plain i.e. natural language for app creation and will build a solution as per your inputs. Interesting? Let’s dive in to know more about the Power Apps Ideas.

Introduction to Power Apps Ideas

Microsoft launched its latest Artificial Intelligence enabled assistant for coders during its Build 2021 developers conference. Satya Nadella, the CEO of the organization, himself confirmed that this new efficiency is being integrated in the PowerApps Studio for the users.

Also Read: Power Platform Utilization for Business Processes

Trained with more than 175 million parameters, Power Apps Ideas is currently promoted as one of the most advanced natural language AI models by Microsoft (and rightly so!). The company has developed it in partnership with OpenAI and appears like a productive result of the strategic collaboration that started between these 2 organizations previous year only.

For your information, ‘Ideas’ utilizes OpenAI’s GPT-3 AI model (GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer here). However, multiple AI technologies work together to make it as efficient as it is projected to be.

Coming to the functionality part about the Power Apps Ideas, here is how it will work for the community and users:

  • Creation of Power Fx Formulas

GPT-3, as we explained above, is the top AI model that has deep learning deployments and 175 million parameters to help it comprehend as well as create text in the natural language. Microsoft developers used GPT-3 by OpenAI in their product PowerApps to build this new solution.

To use the new implementation right, you must understand the concept of Power Fx formulas and how they are prepared. Let’s take an example of SQL queries.

If you want to see 15 latest orders with one product being ‘Lumia 650’, you will have to run a query like this:

FirstN(Sort(Search(‘Store Orders’, “Lumia650”, “ms_products”), ‘Purchase Date’, Descending)

Right?

However, in natural language, you can explain the creation of this formula as:

Show 15 orders that list “Lumia 650” among the products purchased and sort the result in descending order of purchase dates.

For PowerApps Ideas, this latter input in plain English will work fine.

Taking your input and comprehending the context of your input through tables and controls, PowerApps will render one or multiple Power Fx formulas in front of you. You may apply syntax-check filters to discard unnecessary suggestions. To move forward, you will have to choose a formula that is correct.

Also Read: Streamline processes & tasks to boost your business productivity, with Microsoft Power Automate!

  • PBE (Programming by Examples)

When we want to explain something to humans, examples work the best. Similarly, there is a new practice that AI creators are utilizing these days. It is – PBE, i.e. Programming by Examples.

PBE enables users to prepare input-output examples for their applications. Using this AI-powered aid, users can better modify or manage their data tables and galleries through the application of filters/patterns/formulas on their data sets.

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This means, you don’t need to create complex formulas or logics for applying various conditions but use example models. As per your need, you may create one or more examples for your applications using PowerApps Ideas.

Let us explain the same through an example:

For your eCommerce store, you want to generate the usernames for your customers automatically. For this, you want to use the first 2 characters of their name, last two characters of their birth year, and the count (+1) number of this username’s occurrence.

So, for the user John Doe with birth year as 1970, the username could be Jo701.

Provide this example input to PowerApps Ideas and the tool will render a few code outputs in front of you.

Here is another example provided by the developers themselves (for changing John Smith’s name to John S. in data table):

It’s it an amazing way to save your time?! It surely is.

Is It Safe?

It might sound tempting for developers at first glance, but the tool surely will raise code security concerns the very next minute in your mind. Well, here is the good news for you:

PowerApps leverages the efficiencies of the PROSE SDK and GPT-3. While PROSE is Microsoft’s research team’s part, Open AI is the strategic partner to them. Together, they comply with Microsoft’s AI principles and ensure trustworthy and inclusive and fair security as well as privacy measures for all.

PowerApps Ideas is tested thoroughly and trained well to generate reliable outputs in order to avoid any harm for users. Also, it’s you who controls the final implementation of created formulas.

Overall, it is totally safe and extremely convenient to use PowerApps Ideas. With time, this tool will improve more and help you more, we hope. Even currently, it can save your efforts and time significantly.

When will the Power Apps Ideas be available for me?

For the formulas using functions like Search(), Sort(), Filter(), FirstN(), SortByColumns() and LastN(), the capabilities of Power Apps Ideas are available for users (in North America) from June 2021 itself. This feature supports the language English at present. Microsoft wants to see users’ reaction and feature’s utility to improve it.

The company expects to make Power Apps Ideas available for other regions soon. Most probably, all regions will have the said feature by the end of the year 2021.

The Final Word

PowerApps Ideas enables developers to automate the creation of Excel-like Formulas using its Power Fx formula creation capability. Using it, coders can save their time and skip the tedious process of syntax-checking and formula-building. However, simplifying the whole code writing process using plain language is still a far-fetched goal.

Microsoft has detailed its users thoroughly about PowerApps Ideas too – You may visit this link to know more.

For now, we can consider it as the first step in the AI powered app development domain. One day, we might see people using plain natural language to create fantastic applications, but it’s not very soon. So, if you want robust enterprise apps or Microsoft PowerApps related services, rely on experts at Stridely without hesitating.