Revision as of 19:33, 22 August 2012

Note: DISCLAIMER - This is an implementation guide written by Kittiu, from ecosoft Bangkok, Thailand. It is not an official guide nor meant to be comprehensive yet. The knowledge from this article is based on other knowledge, other contributors are welcome to discuss on improving it.

Status: In Progress

Why Integrate ECM and ERP?

A little bit about ECM first.

• ECM is the best software for managing unstructured content like, documents, videos, web pages, etc.
• ECM (like Alfresco) is not just a software to store the documents, ECM provides hell lots of service, such as better security, version control, audit history, transformation, publishing, collaboration, record management, business rules for content, workflow, and many more.
• In other words, ECM can manage entire life cycle of a document, from Capture -> Manage -> Deliver -> Retain -> Archive.
• In the real world scenarios, we can't really separate these two, each of the application processes in ERP, there are often textual documents supporting the purely transactional data. Product data sheets, customer correspondence, quality reports, invoices, etc.

In software like SAP, just to make the software be able to save files into an ECM system (i.e., Documentum, FileNet), as they are closed system, business have to pay a lot of money for the stupid plugin license.

Here, we see how to achieve the same, openly.

How this it works?

Adempiere already have 2 options for saving attachment files. 1) Save as binary in database 2) Save in file server. This plugin will provide the third option 3) Save to ECM

The usage of attachment will be mostly identical to the existing. But when saving the document, it be saving as an DocType "Adempiere Attachment" in a dropping point folder in Alfresco, and link back with the ObjectID. This make it a loosely couple integration.

But as Alfresco ECM is smart, we can set any business rule to automate document as we like. In this simple example, we have create a rule in dropping point folder, so that it automate the organization of folder structure.

1. In ADempeire, i.e., Sales Order, user attache files
2. Files saved into the dropping point folder in Alfresco
3. It auto create new folders Table Name and Record_ID
4. Move the document into new folder Record_ID

Note: The plugin is created and test with Alfresco. But as it is using CMIS protocol, which is and open standard for all big name ECM, I assume it would work with others too, (i.e., Alfresco, Documentum, Filenet, OpenText, etc.)

Video Presentation

Setup

Download

Install Steps

1. Install Alfresco Community
   1. Download and install instruction from [Alfresco Download]
   2. Better to install using the Advanced mode. You can go with the default and install everything. But do make sure ports do not conflict.
   3. After successfully installed, you should see 2 Alfresco Web Application running on http://127.0.0.1:8080/alfresco and http://127.0.0.1:8080/share/. (Also note that the CMIS services will be provided through http://127.0.0.1:8080/alfresco/cmisatom)

Note: <Enter the note text here>

Use Case

What next?

Suggestions?

Appendix

Key findings (AIIM's Report - Connecting ERP and ERM, Measuring the Benefit)

• 27% of respondents who ranked themselves at a mature Level 4 or 5 for the completeness of their ERP installation only reached maturity Level 1 or 2 for their ECM practices.
• The biggest business benefit given by our respondents for linking ERP and ECM is the productivity gained by linking document and process workflows, followed by improved customer service and then knowledge sharing.
• Accounts payable is the best performing integration, followed by HR, Project Management and CRM. Invoice Number, Customer Number and Purchase Order Number are the most popular process integration links between ERP and ECM, with Contract Number as an important document integration link.
• 68% considered that linking ERP and ECM gave a better or much better return on investment than other IT integration projects.
• The biggest issue encountered by users was deciding which systems or portals to consolidate around, followed by the difficulty of convincing process owners. Mismatch of metadata standards came next.
• Amongst non-users, technical complexity and maintenance of links were the biggest concerns, followed by the political issue that ERP and ECM do not have the same project managers or sponsors. Increased licensing cost for wider client rollout was also an issue, as was divergence of ECM systems across the enterprise.
• 31% of respondents are using standard, vendor-supplied connectors to integrate ERP and ECM systems, but a total of 38% are using custom developed links - 24% in-house developed and 14% custom-developed by the vendor.
• 53% have a portal to provide single point of access to ERP and ECM content or plan to have one in the next 12 months.
• An ERP portal linking to ECM content (27%) is much more popular than an ECM portal picking up ERP content (7%), although 24% have chosen SharePoint as their portal, and may consider it to also be their ECM system.
• Within our sample, 47% have business process links and 34% have document access links, but only 12% can declare a record within ERP for migration to, or management by, a dedicated records management system and only 5% are able to implement a single-point legal hold across records in both ERP and ECM.
• SAP is the primary ERP supplier for 48% of our respondents, with 24% Oracle and 12% Microsoft.
• As regards ECM supplier, 23% are using SharePoint, with EMC/Documentum, Open Text, IBM/Filenet and Oracle/Stellent all taking around a 10-12% share.
• Asked "How would you feel about sourcing your ERP and ECM from the same supplier?" 13% already source from the same supplier and 42% agree that it could have benefits and they might consider it. 20% are committed to their existing supplier and 24% prefer the flexibility of different suppliers.
• In terms of more specific content management elements, ECM suppliers are preferred in most cases, although BPM is the most likely to be sourced from the ERP supplier, and email management from a best-of-breed supplier.