Database Reference
In-Depth Information
3.
Increased productivity and ease of maintenance
: A major advantage of BBD is its ease of
configuration for changes and maintenance. Nontechnical users can build business pro-
cesses using visual modeling tools and web services.
14.7.3 Private ASPs
It has been well established that the largest cost component in an application's life cycle is the
effort expended on maintenance and upgrades; and this is valid even in the cases of packaged soft-
ware implementations by reason of the customizations that are indispensable. The key idea under-
lying the Private ASP is this:
the high cost of maintenance and upgrades (and operations) is spread
across the boundary of the enterprise to include the associated ecosystem of at least the exclusive suppli-
ers
. The viability of this business model can be illustrated from the fact that the customization
requirements for implementing enterprise systems (ERP, SCM, CRM, etc.) at General Motors's
partner/subsidiary Delphi Electronics are going to be similar to or would be heavily influenced by
the customization requirements of General Motors itself. From there, it is not very far to see that
there will be a major advantage in combining the implementation projects and teams, training
programs, testing centers, rollout projects, IT centers, disaster recovery centers, and so on.
We will describe this concept by taking Ford as the hypothetical example. A Private ASP
is an extended ASP service, managed and operated by a major player like Ford for itself and its
partners—both customers and vendors. All Customization and upgrade issues are dictated mainly
by Ford, unlike in the case of a traditional ASP, where they may have to customize for each one of
its customers independently—
which basically makes the traditional ASP model unviable
:
Private ASP = (SCM + CRM like SAP CRMs + Net Markets) on ASP basis for Ford and
its participating Partners
None of the partners need to be compelled to join the Private ASP. Ford, however,
should mandate that such partners need to integrate and be compatible with its
Private ASP at their own cost. Licensing issues are simplified in that all software
licenses are owned via the Private ASP instituted jointly by Ford and/or its Partners.
The composite value proposition for Ford and its partners involves the following:
1. Easy to add/integrate new Vendor Partner.
2. Value Proposition of a NetMarket: Ford can service an enlarged base of Vendors for more
competitive bidding but within the class of these Preferred Partners/Vendors.
3. Value Proposition of an ASP for reduced application management, operations, and mainte-
nance costs.
4. Value Proposition of implementation, management, and maintenance of a CRM for indi-
vidual partners who do not have a CRM, which also is the same CRM as used by Ford (at
much reduced cost than outside of the Private ASP).
5. Value Proposition of an EAI provider, especially for integrating internal and proprietary
applications of Ford and its individual partners (at much reduced cost than outside of the
Private ASP).
6. Value Proposition of profitable IT services via the Private ASP for Ford and/or its Partners.
