Enterprise applications

Technology Forecast: Winter 2009 Technology Forecast: Winter 2009
Do more with less. Be more innovative. Manage continuous change. Anticipate market shifts. Deliver value from acquisitions. Make information a strategic weapon. Be more agile. In scores of conversations with business and technology executives, it has become evident that many apparently unrelated initiatives share a common challenge: to manage them in an era of continuous change without tearing the organization apart by lurching from one initiative or crisis to the next.

How to work smarter and extend the value of enterprise applications


Organizations today face a rapidly-changing strategic landscape that forces organizational change and stresses the fabric of enterprise applications that enable so many critical business processes. Increased merger and acquisition activity, challenges associated with global networks and markets, continued pressure associated with regulatory compliance, and the need for more customer intimacy are driving new investment in IT as parts of large-scale enterprise transformations.

At the same time, technology trends such as service-oriented architecture, IT security challenges, and the emergence of Web 2.0 are forcing organizations to reassess their existing systems and look at new investments in a different light. Meanwhile, users' expectations are on the rise due to more flexible systems, ad hoc reporting, dashboards, and mobile computing, to name a few. The prospect of embarking on enterprise transformation initiatives can be quite daunting given the complexity of today's business environment and technological systems.

If this is your situation

  • Your IT environment is overly complex with too many disparate applications and multiple instances of the same software
  • You need to create more synergies from mergers and acquisitions by adopting standard industry practices backed by application standardization
  • You need a strategy for adopting standards for enterprise applications
  • You need to improve your vendor selection process when selecting new systems
  • You seek Oracle® or SAP® implementation, upgrade or enhancement assistance that targets specific business benefits and maximizes return on investment
  • You seek better orchestration of vendors, other partners, sub-contractors and off-shore service providers to upgrade or implement
  • You need to create more value from the reporting and analysis capabilities to provide management information from the data captured by your systems
  • You want to improve the usefulness of key systems without going back to "square one"

How PrwC can help you

PwC's advisory services practice helps organizations to run their businesses the way they want to, leveraging IT as a critical enabler. Applying our industry knowledge around business models, processes, security, controls, and enterprise software, we help our clients achieve a more effective and efficient use of their technology.

PwC understands the fundamentals of execution: why, where, how, and in what sequence critical elements such as strategy, structure, people, process and technology must be addressed and, even more importantly, integrated to create value. From this perspective, this strategic point of insight and advantage, we offer a range of enterprise application solutions that meet the needs of organizations embarking on enterprise transformation initiatives.

Our enterprise application services include:

  • Architecture: Rationalize your portfolio of applications from integrated systems, best-of-breed solutions, and other software implemented over the years or inherited with mergers and acquisitions
  • Selection: Facilitate an objective, fact-based process to weigh the most viable options for integrated systems (e.g. ERP) and/or best-of-breed, point solutions
  • Implementation: Assess, design, develop, test, deploy, and support Oracle and SAP system components to meet business requirements
  • Optimization: Utilize leading industry practices to assess and redesign processes in Oracle, SAP, or other leading ERP systems - leverage enterprise data and reporting functionality to reduce the number of reports and increase the value of information