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RexApps Business Case Builder and ROI Calculator
A community-developed tool that helps determine the benefits of retiring a business process by calculating legacy TCO, TMB, ROI and helps create a Business Case
Go to Step 2-> 
Step 1- Introduction:
Any process supported by the underlying 3rd party, best-of-breed, custom-built or any applications, can be taken down and be composed with the SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment to provide a reverse engineered composite to ensure the retiral of applications that support a business process with ESOA. Reverse Engineered xApps can be defined as composites which are built using ESA and the SAP NetWeaver Composition Platform with the starting point as the Business Processes in existence today. Reverse engineering business processes, making them leaner to enable Organizations improve productivity, enhancing functionality, dropping redundant functionality and most importantly - aligning the Organization's E-SOA Roadmap - will provide a safe passage from legacy, custom and Best-Of-Breed applications.
Reverse Engineered xApps (Composites) will make a compelling business case for Organizations with a landscape cluttered with custom-built, 3rd party, legacy and best of breed applications. Such applications, which enable a business process, can easily be replaced with the SAP NetWeaver Composition Platform. Enabling businesses to leverage the SAP NetWeaver platform as a Business Process Platform (BPP), Reverse Engineered xApps could pave the way for organizations to truly lower TCO rendered by composition.
Organizations either grow in an organic or an inorganic fashion. Each time there is a definitive process of achieving application rationalization by aligning to a single/multi-platform strategy, a merger or an acquisition would force existing application retiral strategies to be changed. This is a reality with which IT organizations need to live with. Changing or adaptive businesses is a reality and any strategy being worked out for the next few years need to consider this as the prime driver for a strategy that aligns with this fact. Therefore, coming up with an application retiral strategy, that addresses reverse engineering business processes to be rolled out across the board, for any organization, is a nightmare. Every new merger, every new acquisition brings with it a multitude of such applications which turn the laundry list into a huge list of unmanageable process applications that support processes across the value-chain.
Context:
In the changing world of web 2.0 and mash-up corporations, there has to be a new approach to solving this perpetual nightmare. Wipro introduces the concept of "Reverse Engineered xApps" or RexApps? to help customers monetize their ESOA initiatives with SAP NetWeaver. RexAppsTM is an ESOA-based application retirement strategy that:
- Provides a long-term approach for retiring applications
- 1/4th the cost of Implementing a new solution
- RexAppsTM provides a safe passage for unique business processes
- Aimed at "white-spaces" or "blind-spaces" from a process stand-point
- Provides quick returns for your ESOA initiatives
- No disruption to day-to-day business
- Industry specific, customer-centric approach
RexApps is aimed at addressing the following, specifically:
- A Global Metamodel strategy: In a multi-platform environment, creating an enterprise-wide services metamodel to accommodate future growth demands a planned initiative with SOA
- Cost Reduction: In terms of 3rd party, custom, and best of breed solutions that demand maintenance, upgrades and support to be done away with, RExApps provides an approach
- Lower Training efforts: An approach that does away with expensive training dollars and effort can be implemented
- Process Re-engineering: A retro-fitted process with ESOA to provide additional features for process re-engineering
- Shorter timelines: An Application retiral strategy that crashes time-lines and provides minimal impact to users of Business applications
- ESOA Adoption and Monetization: To provide compelling business reasons for accelerated ESOA adoption and monetization of IT projects within an organization
Why RexApps? a unique approach and how will the ROI Analysis help?
- Can be used to create a strategy to create
- Value Chain Composites
- Supply Chain Composites with SaaS
- Create Composites as Business exchanges
- Heterogeneous Composites
- Multi-system Composite (SAP + Non-SAP)
- Multi-system Composite (SAP + SAP)
- Business to Enterprise xApp
- Enterprise to Business xApp
- Upgrade scenarios where supporting systems get impacted as well
- Other scenarios as Vertical Solutions in a diverse Application Landscape
If the above is to be adopted as a strategy for Application Retirement, Organizations would need a strategy that monetizes ESOA, a strategy that retrofits and enhances business processes for a specific vertical industry to provide an approach towards an enterprise wide services metamodel in a multi-platform environment which provides a logical alignment to a SOA roadmap that leads to an increase in the logical adoption of new products upgrades resulting in process engineering at minimal cost and effort to address the following:
- Higher operating costs due process conformance with legacy, 3rd party and best of breed applications
- Increased costs of maintenance, outsourcing, upgrades and supporting current application portfolio
- Multi-platform strategy makes Application retiral strategy difficult
- No standard approach existing to realign and standardize processes across the board
Reverse Engineered xApps (RexApps), would provide a strategy to reverse engineer business processes that would improve productivity, enhancing functionality, dropping redundant functionality and most importantly - aligning the Organization's E-SOA Roadmap. RexApps? will provide a safe passage from legacy, custom and Best-Of-Breed applications and will provide a long-term application retiral/rationalization strategy.
RexApps Process Steps:
- Step 1: ABC Calculation of Non-SAP Landscape
- Step 2: Identify Business Scenario
- Step 3: Analyze current cost Imbalance
- Step 4: Analyze Business process re-engineering for process
- Step 5: Run RexAppsTM Business Case Builder and TCO Calculator
- Step 6: Map with IT Scenarios
- Step 7: Identify RexAppsTM to be built based on above results
- Step 8: Create Functional and Technical Specifications
- Step 9: Design and Build Composite
- Step 10: Composite Transition and Go-Live
Step 5: The Need for an ROI Calculator and a Business Case Builder:
There is widespread acceptance among the BPX Community that benefits should be quantified in a financially justifiable process. More important than just the TCO alone, organizations require a cost-benefit analysis and benefit quantification to be completed before a proposed IT investment receives funding. In order to create a calculator that not only calculates the TCO reduction, but also to measure the business benefits accruing from the same, it must have the ability to create a Business Case jutification that could be submitted as a report to the concerned parties, who would then have a logical analysis for funding composites and es-bundles that could in turn be created as Reverse of forward engineered Composites.
Such a calculator, therefore, must be capable of the following:
- Be able to define distinct categories for TCO measurement in terns of tangible benefits to include in the business case. It should have the ability to encompass varoius aspects of the investments in tems of hardware, Software, humanware, training, Infrastructire, Project Management and other related costs.
- Be able to measure benefits in a tangible way, linked to the sunk investements in the existing application to measure, in monetary terms, equated with cost savings, expense avoidance, net present value, discounted or a non-discounted cash basis to measure incremental output, and enhanced revenue that would accrue because of suc a strategy.
- Categorization of costs and benefits to measure incremental benefits of an ESOA based approach in terms of productivcity enhancement, supply chain insight, better decision making and reporting leading to management by exception and legal compliance to policies and procedures.
- Establish monetary linkages to costs incurred with the primary existing application that needs to be retired, or to
have the monetization of ESOA measured in terms of the following:- Improved Information Access
- Investment Effectiveness
- Productivity Enhancement
- Extensibility
- Process Standardization
- Quality
- Reusability
- Complexity Reduction
- Methodology
- Others that delve on technology useage
- Be able to measure and analyze, different perspectives around Total Monetizeable Benefit (TMB) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) to arrive at Year on Year ROI Measurement based on non-discounted cash-flows.
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RexApps Business Case Builder and ROI Calculator:
- A Wizard based intuitive menu driven tool
- Runs through defined steps which :
- Qualifies the retirement opportunity from a ROI and a TCO point of view
- Calculates TCO, TMB, ROI and creates a Business Case
- Defines the next steps defined for SOA Journey with ES-Bundles
- Is a strategy that monetizes ESOA
- Is a strategy that retrofits and enhances business processes for a specific vertical industry
- Provides an approach towards an enterprise wide services metamodel in a multi-platform environment
- Provides a logical alignment to a customer's ESOA roadmap
- Would increase logical adoption of new products and influence upgrades
- Provide scope for process engineering at minimal cost and effort
