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TSI Services

Strategic Technology Optimization

A new installation of SAP for Order Management in Business Unit A, an existing Oracle-based warehousing application in Business Unit B, a legacy accounting system sits at Corporate HQ, and a company acquisition from overseas involving software that few have worked with. How does an organization bring all these applications together in an organized and optimal manner? Defining your organization’s technology optimization strategy, determining how to get information and develop a solid technical foundation from an assortment of systems and databases that have evolved over the years are among the services provided by TSI.

TSI’s Role

TSI takes a unique approach by understanding an organization's business strategy and business context as a precursor to determining how to establish an improved technology foundation upon which the organization can grow. TSI takes a vendor agnostic approach to projects that will ultimately enable an organization to extract information from volumes of data, often reducing their costs of maintenance and support.

TSI has worked with most major software packages in a wide range of technical environments and hence can quickly assess:

  • How to create a common operating platform?
  • What strategy should we deploy to develop a single source of truth?
  • Is there is an application within the portfolio that will meet our needs going forward?

TSI's Experience

TSI’s consultants have experience implementing large projects involving both SQL Server and Oracle. This experience includes:

  • Designing optimal DDL (Data Definition Language) and DML (Data Modeling/Manipulation Language) through tools like C/A ERwin and Embarcadero ER/Studio.
  • Efficiently coding ETL (Extract/Transform/Load) stored procedures.
  • Extracting data from the various data partners and homogenizing the results (e.g. standardize product coding across data partners, aligning periodicity, and creating product and geographic hierarchies).

TSI’s specialty is optimizing the integration of data from a variety of sources including POS feeds, warehouse data, and item and customer masters. This includes creating cross-coding schemas, data quality checks, data hierarchy rollups, and data projections (if needed). We have experience in a variety of EDI (Electronic Data Interface) formats including: 110, 204, 210, 214, 820, 846, 856, 888, 940, 943, 944, 945, 947. TSI also has experience in WMS (Warehouse Management Software - e.g. RedPrairie) and TMS (Transportation Management Software - e.g. Manugistics) with a special emphasis on loading data into and extracting data out of these applications.

In the past 5 years, TSI’s consultants have been involved with lengthy SAP engagements including large Foods and Pharmaceutical companies. These SAP engagements have been related to Supply-Chain applications involving the collection, cleansing, and integration of data from various sources, transformation via ETL tools to/from various SAP modules especially related to Material Management (MM), Vendor (LFA/LFB), AP/GL, and FICO related transactions. TSI’s consultants have also been involved in creating SAP ABAP program specifications for specific customized transformations and worked with off-shore SAP programming staff.

From our experience listed above, TSI is also well qualified to assist in report optimization especially across different platforms. Deployment examples include Crystal Reports Server, MicroStrategy, and Microsoft Reporting Services via Sharepoint Services.

Examples

Client: Mid-sized Fitness Equipment Manufacturer and Distributor

Project Challenge: This organization needed help implementing Oracle 11i Financials, Order Management modules. They needed assistance developing efficient process from which to use as the basis for the configuration of the module.

TSI’s Role: TSI helped design and facilitate the design of many key processes. TSI also played a co-project management role for this implementation and helped drive resolving complex flaws caused by Oracle’s release of software that was not fully tested.

Client: Mid-sized Durable Goods Manufacturer and Distributor

Project Challenge: This organization needed help adapting to two important changes: significant growth and inefficient processes caused by a poor Oracle implementation. As a result, the organization had trouble with innovation, profitability, quality and customer service.

TSI’s Role: We worked with the Executive team to understand and clarify the organization's direction. Then, with an operational team, we analyzed and improved its current processes, defined operational and technology recommendations, and implemented the recommendations with the highest ROI. We recommended a mid-tier ERP/Financial system implementation, and assisted with the requirements evaluation, vendor selection, contract negotiation and project management of the implementation. We also created a data warehouse and assisted with the data extraction and cleanup to make this warehouse useful.