During Quest Forum Digital Event: Innovation Week, Robert Monahan and Gary Grieshaber presented a product update and JD Edwards roadmap.
At a high level, the JD Edwards Product Strategy team is focused on three major pillars—simplifying, optimizing, and transforming your JD Edwards ERP. Of the three pillars, simplify & automate focuses on system administration and deployment of JD Edwards in the Cloud. ERP optimization aims to optimize user productivity and enhance ongoing business processes. Digital transformation places focus on extending and enhancing the digital platform for JD Edwards.
As a part of the Oracle organization, JDE customers are able to leverage the strengths of both JDE and the Oracle Cloud portfolio. The image below displays some of the ways customers can take advantage of this synergistic format:
New to JD Edwards and Oracle, Premier Support for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.2 has been extended through at least 2031. Additionally, Tools 9.2.4.3 (released April 9, 2020), has new capabilities and maintenance. These include:
- Digital Transformation
- Orchestration Debugger
- Business Function as an Orchestration Step
- User Experience
- Navigation/Page Composer Improvements
- Form Extensibility Improvements
- Learning path for Mobile Apps
- Platform Certifications
Over 50 customer-driven application enhancements were made in April of 2020. Of the 50, the #1 Financials Special Interest Group (SIG) enhancement request was granted, as well as the #1 and #2 Manufacturing & Distribution (M&D) SIG enhancement requests.
JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.2 has been on the market for over four years. Approximately 70 percent of EnterpriseOne customers are leveraging the value of 9.2. This release will continue to receive support, as indicated below. Note that the blue dots reflect cumulative updates of tools. The cumulative updates make it easy for customers who are updating from prior releases to update to current product offerings.
JD Edwards has much planned for EnterpriseOne 9.2. The image below highlights some of the expected enhancements:
Simplify & Automate with JD Edwards 9.2
As for the tactic of simplification and automation, there are three key components:
- Delivery of a global enterprise-class infrastructure at a lower cost than on-premise
- Staying current to leverage new capabilities to transform business processes
- Automating common activities to deliver the highest quality of service
JDE customers face various infrastructure challenges. These include dated system architecture practices, the need to size for peak workloads, disruptive and costly hurdles to refresh systems, difficulty to implementing HA/DR, and running an outdated or non-mainstream platform that requires specialized skills. In order to address these challenges, JDE is automating best practices in architecture and migration from on-premises to Cloud. JD Edwards is increasing elasticity by allowing you to pay for what you use. This workload and policy-driven scalability is available at all layers of the architecture. Finally, cloud infrastructure is cutting edge, high performance, majority platform, and managed infrastructure to keep your TCO low.
JD Edwards recommends staying current on a regular basis, as it pertains to your business. JDE annual updates occur during the fall, so this is good to keep in mind as you set your calendar.
The challenges that exist revolve around high effort for upgrades, necessary time and effort for retrofitting customizations, ongoing cost to validate changes, and potential impacts to existing business processes. JDE is responding to these concerns with a simplified upgrade which reduces time and effort to get code current and retrofit customizations. They are retiring customizations for better extensibility, and validating changes by undergoing focus testing on impacted business processes.
Efficient runtime and maintenance can be difficult due to time-consuming manual activities, IT resource allocation, and system maintenance interruption to business processes and activities. JDE continues to work toward a simplified system admin with automation of repetitive system upkeep requirements via the reimagined server manager. Second, automated problem detection in DevOps helps troubleshoot. Thirdly, automation and simplified tools for package build and deployment of JDE through patching help avoid business process interruption.
A summary of the Simplification and Automation innovation that recently delivered and is planned to deliver is below:
ERP Optimization with JD Edwards 9.2
As for ERP optimization, there are three main pillars:
- Customer-driven productivity
- Enhanced existing business processes
- Regulatory compliance
JDE works to empower customers to optimize the use of applications through process efficiency. This includes but is not limited to using fewer clicks to achieve a task, adding more controls, and leveraging the digital platform. The next area for optimization involves the visibility of pertinent information. One example of this is enhanced information on a form or report. Finally, leveraging personalization on pages through analytics and watchlists is a part of ERP optimization.
As mentioned earlier, there have been over 50 improvements in customer-driven productivity. The following images show the April 2020 releases at a glance:
JDE customers consistently request further enhancements to business processes as their own processes evolve. In response, JDE has focused on three categories of processes for enhancement.
- Horizontal processes regard areas such as financials or HR.
- Vertical, or industry processes, include manufacturing, distribution, agribusiness, and more.
- Compression processes that could be reimagined for greater efficiency.
Examples of each of these are below.
A horizontal process enhancement made in April 2020 tracks the history of General Ledger transactions. It supports financial and segregation of duties audits and strengthens internal financial controls.
Customers in project-based industries are now able to take a project status inquiry with multiple jobs including budgets, actuals, and forecasts. The level of detail rollup and projected final costs is impressive.
Additionally, activity rules and ledgers for manufacturing companies have been enhanced for more consistent control for work orders for manufacturing companies.
For distribution companies, license plating optimization was requested. The release enhanced pallet picking rules for breakdown logic and partial pallets. Optimized location picking logic to provide additional sequencing options for units of measure and location. It optimizes from the staff or location perspective.
Enabling regulatory compliance on the country or global level are constantly dynamic. JDE works to keep you in compliance no matter your situation. Listed below are April releases at a glance. This includes government response to Coronavirus.
Digital Transformation with JD Edwards 9.2
JD Edwards aims to allow customers to make adjustments in real-time. Digital transformation helps make that possible. Customers have been investing in the JD Edwards digital platform in terms of applications deployed to run business, and in data acquired through JDE. The digital platform intends to make this intellectual property more readily available so that it can be used to drive business. From an out-of-the-box browser-based user interface perspective, all applications natively enabled for the browser-based interface have made it easier for the user.
The other key area is to open up the logic and data to the digital economy. Broader use cases will leverage this asset. This is where the Orchestrator applies. Customers can take a series of actions, create an orchestration flow step-by-step, and achieve all kinds of uses. Some are listed in the image below.
Customers can leverage the low or no code development tool of their choice with orchestrations to connect to JDE in order to achieve rapid application development to enable mobile access, chatbots, IoT, collaboration, and more. New to customers, Learning Patch is available for use of Visual Builder Cloud Service and orchestration when creating mobile apps.
Another area of digital transformation has received a new prototype at Oracle. The Oracle Digital Assistant was trained in the skills of the Accounts Payable Manager. It knows how to handle purchase orders and can communicate with natural language. Chatbots can be embedded in a JDE page, or they can be exposed on the mobile UI.
Orchestrated process automation for the purpose of simplifying or eliminating tedious tasks is another aspect of digital transformation. Customers should leverage Orchestrator to simplify multi-step human processes into a single automated orchestration. Orchestrations can be initiated from RPA tools, schedulers, chatbots, and JDE forms.
One of the key delivered features last fall was the redesigned EnterpriseOne Orchestrator Studio. The studio previously required a web logic server. Now, it has an improved experience with debugging and scheduling features.
A new capability to help with validating processes is planned for release. Called Assertion Framework, this feature will ensure your orchestrations by executing without errors, producing data that the creator expects, and do so at every step in the orchestration.
JD Edwards integration and extensibility allow personalization for use of simplifying the user experience on the glass and through the browser. Moreover, industry-standard tooling and REST services can be used to future proof your business.
Key Takeaways
Take advantage of the capabilities of EnterpriseOne 9.2 to transform your operations. Enable innovation with the latest JDE application and technology features. By staying current, your organization can react rapidly to new business trends, regulatory requirements, and technology trends. Reduce risk with access to the latest updates for infrastructure, security, and compliance updates. Finally, the entire strategy is built on choice and control for a long-term roadmap. These two concepts will provide your organization with the opportunity to fully leverage your Oracle investment.