INFOCUS 20: JD Edwards Strategy and Vision
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Posted by Harry E Fowler
- Last updated 1/06/22
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During INFOCUS 20, the JD Edwards product team presented the JD Edwards strategy and vision that encapsulated industry trends, product innovation, and a call to action for you to leverage JD Edwards’ strengths along with Oracle’s broader portfolio in order to monetize your ERP.
JD Edwards Strategy and Vision
Digital ERP
ERP continues to evolve to meet digital transformation needs. While ERP was once intended for back-office use of programs and spreadsheets, the ERP of today serves as a digital platform, connecting your entire enterprise, and enabling you to embrace new technologies quickly as they come to market. Some of these technologies include the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Blockchain, and digital assistants.
You have the opportunity to reimagine how you do business and how to better engage with customers. Rethink a day in the life of your end-users to determine where the digitalization of information and increased connectivity can reshape and create new business opportunities for you to gain a competitive advantage.
When we look across the technology landscape, a few trends emerge:
- Continuous Innovation: This is a movement toward continuously delivered updates throughout the year in lieu of one major release. Customers have been motivated to adopt continuously as a result of this shift. Staying current allows customers to reap the benefits of innovation while remaining compliant and secure.
- Standards-Based: Platform modernization ensures that you have the most stable, high-performance system at an attractive cost model. This can scale to meet your needs and help you to accelerate your own digital initiatives.
- Cloud: Across the industry, folks are establishing a long-term cloud strategy. This can take many shapes from exiting the data center business to adding the best cloud applications and embedding cutting-edge technologies.
Customer Centricity
There is also an enhanced focus on customer-centricity. In this world of everything as a service, customers have high expectations. They are looking for efficient, convenient, knowledgeable services that they can rely on. Within JD Edwards’ product group, the teams are committed to your ongoing success. They pride themselves on the vast ecosystem of customers, partners, and user groups that have been established over the years. Combined with their continuous learning destination of LearnJDE, JD Edwards has the knowledge and resources necessary to support your digital initiatives as you move forward.
Statistics on JD Edwards’ current state reflect each of these trends:
Furthermore, the JD Edwards culture sets them apart from competitors. The Product Team explained that the organization is not just an ecosystem, but a family. JD Edwards employees and customers engage with one another on a different level, and through those interactions, a more compelling product is delivered. Over the past two years, 80 percent of JDE enhancements brought to market have been the result of customer-driven or partner-submitted enhancement requests. As you speak, JD Edwards listens and reacts.
Product Innovation
The JD Edwards product strategy is centered on the following:
- Application Optimization
- Protect your business
- Improve your business
- Future-proof your business
- Digital Transformation
- Process Automation
- Low/No code UI
- Enterprise Integrations
- System Automation
- Efficient Run and Maintain
- Enterprise-Class Infrastructure
- Continuous Innovation
In the category of application optimization, JD Edwards continues to invest in applications with across the board enhancements to the full suite of products. They aim to eliminate JD Edwards customer pain points by optimizing business processes and simplifying user experiences. Examples might be to eliminate a manual step, to enable customer-defined rules that set the guardrails for a process, or to provide easier access to relevant information when and where it is needed. In other words, the team aims to make JD Edwards applications easier to use, more powerful, and more comprehensive in their support of your business processes.
The application optimization strategy includes three foci. First, protect your business by enabling legislative and regulatory compliance for global, country, local, and industry-specific requirements. Second, improve your business. Address business and user pain points by digitizing business processes and simplifying user experiences. Third, future-proof your business with a commitment to continuous innovation using the latest technology to deliver flexible, fully integrated solutions. These solutions should adapt to tomorrow’s changing business realities.
Specifically, JD Edwards has delivered or plans to deliver the following products which fall into the above categories:
Digital Transformation
In the area of digital transformation, the JD Edwards digital platform will govern how you use and extract more value from your enterprise system. It spans industry and application module. The vision for the JD Edwards digital platform is two-fold. First, the platform should enable you to participate in a digital economy. JD Edwards should interact with IoT, Chatbots, Robotic Process Automation, Mobile, and alternate user interfaces. Second, the platform should be easier and faster to utilize than traditional customizations. Expect no six-month projects or armies of developers. Business experts will be able to solve problems for themselves.
The digital platform will provide a streamlined user experience with access to mobile and chatbots, more efficient process automation, and excellence in enterprise integration. All of this will be available with no code/low code and a rapid response to new requirements and opportunities. Costly customization will be a thing of the past.
Below are examples of the functionality that has been delivered and is planned for delivery regarding the digital platform:
System Automation
From a strategy and investment point of view in the area of system automation, JD Edwards’ key approach is to eliminate manual tasks being performed daily by the IT Department. These mundane tasks will be automated. This will allow IT resources to partner with the business to focus on valuable process automation, better integration, and transformed business processes.
In order to achieve this, consider three major areas of innovation at a lower TCO:
- Enterprise-Class Infrastructure: Enterprise-Class Infrastructure is available at a lower cost than On-premises
- Efficient Run and Maintain: Automation of common IT activities to deliver the highest quality of service
- Continuous Innovation and Deployment: Ease of staying current to leverage new capabilities to transform business processes
Examples of the EnterpriseOne features that have been delivered and are planned to be delivered in system automation are listed below:
Key Takeaways
The product team at JD Edwards highly recommends you maximize Oracle’s investments across the board. Oracle is making investments in Cloud applications. These investments give you the ability to leverage EnterpriseOne 9.2 and the JDE digital platform for rapid innovation. You can modernize your technology infrastructure with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and take on continuous adoption of innovation in JDE and Oracle Cloud applications to rapidly respond to business needs. Furthermore, you will be able to establish a long-term cloud strategy for long-term success.
To learn more, check out the INFOCUS 20 presentation and additional resources below.
Additional Resources
Join us next month for Quest Experience Week (QXW) as Quest celebrates its 25th anniversary with a FREE week of digital learning! QXW offers four jam-packed days of practical Oracle product learning for users of JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Oracle Cloud apps, and Oracle Database solutions. There’s something for everyone: strategic insights, practical product how-to sessions, customer case studies, and best practices.
