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Managed Services Today Means Strategic Partnership and Continuous Delivery

In today’s unique environment, remote support is more critical than ever. Over the past 18 months, business growth slowed as the world shut down. How you can accelerate your business safely by leveraging JD Edwards managed services in tandem with new methodologies like continuous delivery from Oracle?

Today’s ERP systems need to be more than operational. They need to be a source of competitive advantage. That means faster access to new functionality to optimize processes and capture more market share.

Managed Services needs to provide innovation to support the pace of Continuous Delivery. Organizations need to hire managed services providers that not only know how to fix the system, but fully leverage the power of the solution for competitive advantage.

There are many managed services providers for JD Edwards but few who offer proactive innovation alongside support for more common daily tasks and help desk inquiries. A managed service provider can and should provide business process improvement that impacts the bottom line, and client and employee satisfaction.

So how does it happen? Here are four ways you can use a managed services provider to help your business.

1. Improve Business Functions

JD Edwards Managed services providers are solely focused on the solution suite—including World and EnterpriseOne—and they’ve worked with the system in multiple environments so have exposure to unique scenarios and problem-solving efforts that your full time hire likely can’t offer. They have deep expertise working with the system to support different business functions—across departments, such as finance; and across industries, like manufacturing, engineering, and construction.

This combination means they can provide recommendations that will help your company more effectively leverage the tools and processes, improve functionality, save time and money.

2. Streamline Processes

This concentration is also a key component to their ability to uncover under-utilized existing functionality, built into the system.  JD Edwards managed service providers can identify more efficient and effective use of existing functionality and workaround processes that free up employee time and improves morale so they can get better business results out of their efforts.

The best managed services providers will do this proactively, evaluating your system, identifying opportunities to better use the system and streamline; comparing how your competition is using technology and managing the use to provide measurable business improvement.

3. Continuous Upgrades, Enhancements, and New Features

Pace is important, especially after the months we’ve all faced. Businesses are in a hurry to recover and an ERP system like JD Edwards should evolve to meet business needs. This means fast access to ERP upgrades, enhancements, and new feature development. Managed services providers can help JD Edwards users migrate to EnterpriseOne 9.2 to take advantage of Oracle’s continuous delivery model.

New features and enhancements can be customized by your own in-house development team, or can also be part of an enhancement strategy as part of an upgrade. For each of these options, JDE managed service providers can help develop functionality—if needed—and provide strategic guidance on which features might reduce time to market and produce better business results.

4. Extend In-House Expertise

Third-party JD Edwards managed service providers give company IT departments a critical extension to their own in-house talent. Not only can they deploy additional resources during busier periods, they also have access to a network of experts for specific needs around your processes, whether that be manufacturing and supply chain, distribution, or other. Collectively, this expands your in-house expertise across business functions and gives you the ability to be more agile.

Instead of having full-time experts for each business function (e.g., finance or procurement) on staff, you can pull resources as needed, cutting costs and ensuring efficient results.

Choose a Provider For Proactive Partnership and Expert Delivery

In the wake of a global pandemic, today’s market leaves little – if any – room for reactive, managed services that act as band-aid “break-fix” solutions. Proactive providers who want to engage on a strategic level on all services, whether it be help desk, or full project implementation, will be the best choice.  Build a productive partnership with a managed services provider that will contribute to long-term and continuous success. Couple JD Edwards expertise with Oracle’s Continuous Delivery model for best results and measurable improvement.

For more information on Kenai’s managed services offerings, visit us online at www.kenai-us.com .

Seamlessly integrating technology into your business is a challenge, particularly for companies with limited resources and capital to invest in expensive infrastructure and specialized staff. And when the world is recovering from a pandemic, businesses and employees are still hesitant to re-enter the workplace full force.

That’s why remote managed services creates an even bigger benefit to organizations. Remote services allows for expert support with no risk. And relieves business owners of the day-to-day burden of managing internal network tasks by substituting an outsourced IT company that provides round-the-clock monitoring of their internal network. Here are a few of the key benefits of having a team of dedicated remote professionals oversee your Oracle solutions—whether that’s JD Edwards, E-Business Suite, Cloud ERP or Oracle NetSuite.

AVOID COSTLY DOWNTIME

When and if your solutions system goes down, your business can suffer big losses. Supply chain interruption –even for a short time—is costly and frustration. Suppliers, distributors and customers become frustrated and lose their faith in your company. Your employees can’t access the data and software they need to do their jobs, disrupting their workflow and leaving your business stuck paying operating costs for hours with no productivity. As dedicated specialists who monitor your systems 24/7, remote managed service professionals minimize or prevent costly downtime and provide quick and proactive support in the event of an incident.

IMPROVED SECURITY

A managed service provider has the expertise to monitor your ERP system for threats, preventing loss or theft of your sensitive data. Dedicated remote support means there are eyes on the system 24/7 so your employees don’t have to take on additional roles, such as system security. They can stay focused and you can be confident your system is secure. Compromised systems hinders productivity, can lead to a damaged reputation, decreased customer trust, and possible exposure to legal activity.

SIMPLIFY YOUR BUSINESS

Remote IT reduces financial and logistical burdens on your company. Hiring in-house IT staff and maintaining your systems requires further investment of time and finances. A managed service provider takes care of that and typically has options/packages from which to chose, taking the guesswork out of IT costs and allowing you to budget those costs. A remote managed service provider tackles the technical challenges, leaving you to focus on delivering a quality product or service to your customers, clients, or patients. Managing your ERP solutions is one less thing you as a business leader has to worry about with remote support.

At Kenai, we work with mid and large-sized organizations running Oracle solutions to provide exceptional service and proven results using remote managed services. In today’s often volatile environment where remote working is becoming the norm, remote support minimizes risk and maximizes efficiency. Our tenured consultants provide expertise on Oracle solutions, in a secure remote environment so that you can focus on your business, not your IT. Visit us at www.kenai-us.com and complete the contact form for more information.

So we know that migrating your ERP and other workloads to any cloud infrastructure service will reduce your capital expenditures, lower operational expenses, provide scalability, and reduce your company’s energy costs. It also frees up key IT employees to focus on core business initiatives and strategic projects vs. “keeping the lights on” activities.

But what else? You need some more ammunition about the benefits you’ll get from choosing Oracle Cloud compared to the other IaaS solutions. Let’s drill down on a few things that will make the case.

1. 1. LOWER COSTS

You already know that subscription costs are a money saver, because your first monthly payment gets you instant, vastly improved infrastructure capabilities, which would have taken a hefty up-front investment in the past. Oracle Cloud gets you more than subscription pricing, it also provides hardware cost savings, increased business flexibility, and greater efficiencies in the short- and long term.

In addition, since Oracle Cloud IaaS empowers you to migrate all your applications to the cloud, including your ERP and additional business software, you’ll also save on training costs and the associated disruption and downtime that typically occurs with system upgrades or software changes.

2. BETTER PERFORMANCE

Lots of companies say their solutions “streamline business performance,” but what they’re really saying is that they help you click fewer buttons and perform fewer manual processes at work. Oracle not only helps you click less and automate more, it also provides true streamlined performance through a shared infrastructure that empowers your entire business to run faster and scale up (or down) to meet peak compute demands with ease.

3. FUTURE-PROOFED

Oracle is known for reinvesting back into their company’s offerings for greater strength and innovation, which is why they’ve become one of the leading choices for businesses of all sizes that want reliable, ultra-modern systems that work.

Oracle Cloud is easy and hassle-free to work with, and provides a future-proofed solution that enables you to move your legacy workload to one of the most up-to-date platforms in the world.

 

This supports your long-term business strategies and objectives with ease by ensuring you have the necessary power to develop new apps, increase or decrease server capacity, allow high-intensity compute processes such as in-depth analytics without lag time, and pivot quickly to meet changing market conditions – effortlessly.

4. KEEPING IT SIMPLE

Ask your IT department and they’ll tell you that simplification is the name of the game when it comes to saving costs and time. They’ll also agree that migrating your existing workloads to an IaaS solution is the easiest way you can ensure better cost and performance efficiency without migration over-complexity.

Since Oracle Cloud IaaS is one of the leading cloud infrastructure options for global enterprises, Oracle also offers a streamlined process that helps companies like yours migrate applications such as your ERP, analytics software, and even your existing architecture to the cloud in as little as a few days.

5. CONTINUED INNOVATION

Let’s be honest here. Though the term “agility” is thrown around a lot, what it really means is that your business can respond quickly to changing market conditions so you can best engage with emerging opportunities. With the cloud, your nimble response arises from your ability to scale up quickly to handle extra locations, analytics projects, developer processes, and more and also to scale down when business slows or projects complete.

Oracle Cloud solutions include PaaS, which enables your company to create new, disruptive technology for IoT applications in lightning-fast time by leveraging highly skilled teams throughout the globe, as well as IaaS, which helps you add virtual servers at will to meet increased demand on your computing power as you create those highly original apps or modify your business processes and Big Data capabilities. Looking for SaaS applications? Oracle Cloud can help with that too.

In essence, the flexibility of Oracle cloud provides the scalable infrastructure, development capabilities, hardware, and software options that support your business as you create and utilize the agile innovation you need to keep your company competitive for years to come.

GET THE MOST FROM ORACLE CLOUD WITH THE RIGHT PARTNER

With full-stack options such as IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service), PaaS (platform-as-a-service), and SaaS (software-as-a-service), Oracle Cloud solutions enable your company to run your business the way you want, at the cost and performance you prefer. But to access the full benefits of Oracle Cloud, you need a partner who can help you along the way.

Kenai’s team of experts delivers exceptional service and proven results. With a diverse group of consultants around the world, we have the leading skills to help you tackle every option in the Oracle Cloud stack, including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Let’s get started today.