As a JD Edwards user, you already know the importance of process automation, but you may wish to take this to the next level with enterprise automation.

You may currently use Orchestrator and other automation tools to optimize financial management, people management, and inventory controls, but have you taken the step to connect these systems across the entire organization?

Where process automation is helpful for one department, enterprise automation is revolutionary for overall business success. Taking a broader perspective on automation, you can create cross-departmental success stories that produce a higher value and garner massive amounts of data. With these pieces in place, you move beyond optimization and into innovation.

3 Major Benefits of Enterprise Automation

With enterprise automation organizations can:

• Expand the focus from individual transactions to your business as a whole.
• Make better use of the data you already have to reveal “blind spots.”
• Easily define the processes and data you need for better visibility.

JD Edwards’s definition of enterprise automation is widespread, interconnected automation that captures metadata analysis.

To understand how it works, picture a flywheel with rotor blades that say Ingest, Model, Analyze, Solve, and Measure. Each blade builds on the last, revealing truth or blind spots to improve enterprise-wide operations through integrated automation and the data it generates.

Deeper data insights can completely transform your business.

For instance, let’s say you’re reviewing your Purchase Order performance for the month of January. Your system tells you that of the 144 POs created, 55 were rejected. Not ideal. Your data informs you that there’s a problem, but you’re not very close to a solution.

However, if your system is set up to reveal deeper data, you discover that 51 of those 55 rejected POs were from the same supplier, and 50 of those 51 were rejected on a Friday. With just a few more data points, you have enough information to confidently address your PO rejections. That’s the power of enterprise automation.

The Enterprise Automation Flywheel

Let’s go back to the enterprise automation flywheel.

1. Ingest is at the top of the wheel. In this step, process metadata implies the flow, and transitional data feeds the metrics. Ingest assets include history, ledger, audit, workflow steps, orchestration steps, and order activity rules.
2. Next is the Model step. Model shows that the scope of enterprise automation is broader than process automation and provides human-defined vs system-generated models.
3. Next, you Analyze. Analyze combines data, arithmetic, and visualization to reveal whether the process is efficient and if the metrics are good.
4. Then, you Solve. This is where human ingenuity comes into play. Do you need more automation, more training, or better contracts? Many times, this step involves quick answers with low-code/no-code solutions.
5. Lastly, you Measure. Review your results, monitor improvements, and circle back around to the Ingest stage to repeat the cycle.

Enterprise Automation Steps

1. INGEST – Get higher value out of transactional data.

If you’ve been using JD Edwards for long, you have mountains of data just waiting to be fed into AI solutions.

This data is in the form of:

• Statuses
• Order activity rules
• Workflow history
• Orchestrator monitor
• Ledgers
• Audit tables
• Object usage tracking

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could interpret existing data for models and metrics, invent metadata (markers) to capture on the fly, and track informal tasks?

JD Edwards can help you accomplish this. To get started, you can automate tedious data entry, connect Internet of Things devices, set up automation processes, and use Scheduler and Workflow.

2. MODEL – Get an accurate picture of real processes based on data.

Once you gather massive amounts of helpful data, you need a way to visualize it.

JD Edwards already offers several modeling assets, including:

• EnterpriseOne pages
• Orchestrator Studio
• Workflow Studio
• Activity rules configuration
• Process models

Additionally, the team is working on solutions that dynamically generate models from data, with valuable information clearly displayed. They envision superimposed metrics on top of a process model, with time-slicing windows to show today’s metrics versus last week, last month, or last year.

The Model step of enterprise automation is essential, and upcoming advances in JDE will help you find success in this stage.

3. ANALYZE – Get clear visibility into opportunities, threats, and anomalies.

As you analyze your performance, you want transparency into several areas of business.

JD Edwards helps you find clarity with assets like:

• One View Watchlists
• One View Reports
• UX One role-based pages “alert-analyze-act”
• Orchestrator Monitor
• Workflow Process Monitor

JDE engineers are currently working on ways to offer a consolidated view of models and metrics, a better workflow monitor, and watchlist metrics from orchestrations.

The new Workflow Monitor is designed to depict workflow status and metrics with a clean, modern look and feel. The goal is to make it easy to scan for health and exceptions and offer continuous assurance with alerts.

In the Analyze step of your process using JD Edwards (JDE), you have several powerful tools at your disposal. To start, data retrieval can encompass a wide range of sources including EnterpriseOne business data, third-party cloud data, and external databases. For data processing, tools include EnterpriseOne’s application logic and business functions. It also includes database aggregations such as sum, average, minimum/maximum values, and counts. For more specialized calculations, custom logic can be implemented using extensions in languages like JRuby, Jython, Groovy, or Java, or by leveraging any functionality available via REST APIs.

Other tools for visualizing and consuming the data are also useful. Data can be visualized through various means such as reports, email or notification messages, and customized forms using Form Extensions or CafeOne. For more dynamic visualizations, JavaScript and JET Charts and apps can be utilized, catering to both UX One within JDE and external forms as needed. These tools collectively empower comprehensive data analysis and visualization within JD Edwards, ensuring informed decision-making and efficient business operations.

4. SOLVE – Use easy, agile, no-code/low-code tools to promote ubiquitous automation.

For most solutions you’re looking to implement, you won’t need an engineering team or JDE support.

JDE already provides several no-code and low-code tools to help you achieve your goals, including:

• Orchestrator
• Workflow
• User-defined objects and the extensibility framework

With enterprise automation a priority for the JDE product team, there are even more solutions in development. These new tools will help you quickly and easily build and deploy automations, use orchestrations more like workflows, and seamlessly tie into Cloud services.

Voucher Match Automation is just one example of the latest improvements. In Release 24, users can see some pages as models, watchlists as metrics, and existing metrics from UX role-based pages. The roadmap includes:

• Text and images
• Notification badges
• Metrics on lines
• Watchlist thresholds going up or down
• Watchlists calculated by orchestrations or logic extension.

5. MEASURE – Rapid results. Continuous improvement.

The final step of the enterprise automation process is to measure your progress. JD Edwards currently quips you for this step with:

• UX One role-based pages
• Orchestrator monitor
• Workflow monitor
• Object usage tracking

Looking ahead, the team hopes to offer out-of-the-box enterprise metrics (KPIs) and metadata (markers) to capture on the fly. App advances and digital platform enhancements are already included in Release 24.

Enterprise Automation Key Takeaways

As you move forward with JD Edwards, you’ll want to shift from targeted process automation to widespread enterprise automation.

Start thinking now about how to connect your separate automations and deliver metadata about how the job was done (timestamps, success rates, etc.), not just the complete/incomplete status. This data is key to continuous improvement.

Enterprise automation is the natural evolution of process automation. As you adopt this new mindset, you will reveal threats, opportunities, and blind spots; spark ingenuity and innovation; and promote rapid, continuous improvement.

For more information on enterprise automation, you can view this presentation from INFOCUS 2023:Making the Shift from Process Automation to Enterprise Automation.

Of course, the best way to stay up to date on enterprise automation and all things JD Edwards is to be a part of INFOCUS 2024, which is October 1st – 3rd, 2024 in Denver, CO.  At this event, look for more Release 24 updates and enhancements from the Oracle product team, JD Edwards partners and customers as well as hear from Oracle about what’s coming in Release 25.  This three-day event will include about 250 JD Edwards education and networking sessions.  Attendees can expect to walk away with the knowledge and meaningful connections to optimize JD Edwards for their organization.  Register for the event by August 19th, 2024, to receive an Early Bird Registration discount!