ALP Group: Class i-ERP IT solutions based on products 1C

2019

Development of an integration framework and control of services in the i-ERP systems

On September 24, 2019 the ALP Group company announced release of an import-independent technology platform for integration and control of services in the enterprise management systems of the class i-ERP based on products 1C, developments of DKIS and software of the third firms.

According to the company, application of this platform considerably simplifies implementation and development of such systems for all their lifecycle and also sharply accelerates entering into them of large changes: different business Poe's adding, use of versatile instruments of improvement of data (including carrying out difficult economic calculations), optimization of integration infrastructure, creation and use of program robots, improvement of business processes of the organization, expense reduction on IT and mn. other. It is a source of competitive advantages for any modern organization — for September, 2019 and in the long term. Besides, development of DKIS does the organization by more adaptive, helps it to pass with smaller difficulties to management on the basis of data (DDM), without serious consequences and effectively to carry out digital transformations and to fit organically into digitalization of all aspects of life of modern society.

The integration framework and control of i-ERP services represents a superstructure over other development of DKIS — the universal integration platform which provides extraction, cross validation, improvement and consolidation of data and also their correct, reliable and effective distribution between systems receivers in scales of all large geographically distributed organization. At the same time all these processes are configured using carefully designed metadata which document the actual integration infrastructure and allow to change easily its work over a wide range, to connect business software third-party developers and different data sources.

The integration framework and control of services already contains all necessary for "seamless" connection to it of a number of the software products and information technologies developed in DKIS. Among them there is a platform of robotization of processes, the Process Mining platform, the platform of carrying out difficult economic calculations, the GRC platform. All of them are integrated with software of 1C for management of large enterprises and are the first import-independent solutions in the categories in the Russian market.

Respectively, for connection and shutdown of the specified elements to the i-ERP system and ensuring their reliable and effective work in any combinations and also for interaction it is not necessary to solve difficult and labor-consuming tasks, normal for integration, with software of other developers: invent an information architecture, create connectors, hold difficult setup and testing, to find a method of connection of these elements to the centralized control system and a monitoring system which is built in the 1C Platform. Now it is enough to place ticks in settings of the platform — and the updated modules will become a part of a complete system. Besides, open specifications for modules of interface of business Poe to the DKIS universal integration platform allow his developers to create these modules independently.

The integration framework and control of services is capable to interact practically with all software products 1C for the large organizations: 1C ERP, 1C Management of holding, 1C Corporation, 1C Trade management, etc. At the same time it complements them with important functions and tools. Among them:

• Components of quality control of data which, in particular, reveal violation of integrity and attempt of substitution of data. Also allow to react differently to them — depending on settings (to prohibit and stop processing, to notify the owner of data source or other official and to continue processing, etc.).
• The module providing origin and transformation of data on the basis of rules (without programming). This module is capable to monitor the movement of data through borders of the interacting enterprises.
• Calculation for the FIFO method online the product cost created as a result of difficult production processes and interaction of a set of the enterprises as a part of holding, vertically integrated company and/or a production cluster. At the same time the expanded set of the indirect conditions affecting cost value is used. There are implementations of libraries for programming languages 1C, language of the T-SQL and C procedures which are built in DBMS ++. It allows to fulfill the requirements to performance and security which at different customers strongly differ.
• The forecast models allowing to solve a set of problems: minimize trade inventories for finished goods, initial materials and component parts and also an exit of intermediate processes and transactions; predict wear of the equipment, etc. At the same time it is possible to combine practically in any combinations different instruments of creation of forecast models (RapidMiner, PSI) and libraries for work with neural networks (DeepLearnToolbox, Theano, Cuda).
• The DKIS own technologies in the field of Process Mining, RPA and GRC (as a part of the respective platforms).

By representatives of the company integration of all DKIS platforms (including an integration framework and control of i-ERP services) with the DevOps components was also mentioned: the built-in quality control of use of a product (by analogy with Yandex. Metrics and Google.Analitics), direct access to formation of addresses in a change management system, connection to monitoring systems of performance and control of integration flows.

The beginning of provision of services on creation of i-ERP-solutions based on products 1C and Open Source

On March 5, 2019 the Department of corporate information systems of ALP Group (ALP-IS LLC, or DKIS) announced the beginning of provision of services on creation of IT solutions of the class i-ERP based on products 1C for large enterprises (1C:ERP, 1C: Holding Management, 1C: Document Flow, etc.), own developments, software of the third firms and the international community of Open Source.

According to the developer, the solutions of the class i-ERP proposed by DKIS is of interest to any large organizations which are building in a trend of digitalization of the Russian economy and to the system of a state administration. Approach of DKIS allows to create and support lifecycle of IT solutions of the class i-ERP in which are collected in a uniform complex of function of classical enterprise management systems and modern information technologies: robotization of processes, continuous improvement of processes, etc. Such consolidation gives a synergy effect and is more complete meets requirements of the Russian enterprises passing to management on the basis of data. At the same time the selection of technologies made by DKIS reduces risks of such projects.

Features of i-ERP of solutions DKIS

According to the statement of the developer, IT solution of the class i-ERP is the integrated complex which includes as classical accounting systems and planning of use of resources of the enterprise (ERP), and the well-known technologies which are responsible for acceptance of management decisions on the basis of data (data-driven management, or DDM); business process automation (BPM), their continuous improvement (process mining) and robotization (robotic process automation, or RPA); analytical data processing and identification of dependences in them (BI, prospecting data analysis, traditional statistical techniques, Big Data). This complex IT infrastructure for extraction supports, consolidations, improvements, storages and providing data for all an i-ERP system component. At the same time all subsystems of the last not only are integrated, but also are controlled on a centralized basis.

DKIS adheres to own approach to creation of solutions of the class i-ERP. It is distinguished:

• Inclusion in structure of solutions of i-ERP only of those technologies which answer the level of readiness of customers / segments of the market for implementation with their help of large-scale digital transformations; gradual expansion of this set — in process of market development in general, the industries, clusters of the interacting enterprises (territorial, project, industry, corporate) and the separate organizations customers.
• Possibility of quantitative assessment of effect of each innovation and creation in the organizations of self-training adaptive system of building and correction of functionality of the solution i-ERP and also developments of the IT infrastructure keeping it.
• Modularity of the i-ERP systems in combination with openness for products of different developers. Observance of a priority of those technologies and software products which the customer selected for long reuse in the information systems.
• Preference to import-independent software products of the Russian companies and the international community of Open Source for the purpose of decrease in sanctions risks — even for the organizations which are not falling under action of the regulatory base about import substitution of IT.
• Compliance to long-term trends of increase in the legal importance of application of IT and gain of requirements to information security.

Approach of DKIS allows to create highly effective solutions of i-ERP evolutionarily, whenever possible protecting last investments of the customer into IT and reducing risks of transition on unfamiliar software and essentially new methods of management. Besides, this approach stimulates market development of the Russian software (for example, platforms of robotization of processes), claim in DKIS.

Selection of technologies

DKIS consider that not all technologies which advance the international IT companies really ripened before practical application. And not all of them are relevant for the Russian customers. To prevent a wave of unsuccessful projects in such important area as enterprise management, DKIS executed a number of the projects which allowed to select the technologies demanded and ready to application as a part of solutions of i-ERP, to estimate the expected effects, to reveal the main risks and to formulate requirements which observance allows to reduce risks of implementation and use of i-ERP to acceptable level. These projects belong to the most important aspects of work of any enterprise: to sales, management of finance, personnel management, acceptance of management decisions, etc.

According to information for March, 2019 DKIS selected for the solutions i-ERP the following technologies:

1. RPA — complete replacement of people with program robots within separate business processes. In some cases use in algorithms of data processing of the program robot of so-called "weak AI" (recognition of these or those images using specially trained neural networks) can be effective.
2. Combination of BPM and Process Mining. Algorithmization of processes and transfer to the automatic machine of responsibility for exact observance of regulations, a priority and timeliness of their accomplishment of separate transactions for each copy of process. Identification of deviations from regulations, differences of the actual effect from expected, the undesirable ghost effects creating business risks (for example, decrease in a customer loyalty or employees). Elimination of these problems and setting of process optimization on a flow. Selection of processes for robotization.
3. DDM. Here different tools of the analysis and data visualization, "live" reports of data (dashboards), predictive analytical models, machine learning, etc. are used. In a paradigm of DDM management decisions not only are based on the data, but also leave a mark — information allowing to analyze both efficiency of solutions, and process of their acceptance. A feedback allows is iterative to improve technology of decision making, more and more full to automate it, and to robotize some chains of actions. Transition to DDM creates not only opportunities, but also the burning issues connected with quality of data (for example, incompleteness of reports because of untimely receipt of information or loss of control of what data are already available at the enterprise; difficulties of reduction of information obtained from different sources and at different times to a uniform scale, etc.). For elimination of these problems of i-ERP the solution should contain a special management subsystem data.
4. DataLake – all this those data which are necessary for the company for acceptance of management and operational decisions in the management based on data (DDM) and also the infrastructure supporting them. It not only internal data of the organization, but also different information on its environment which often appears a key to the correct interpretation of data.
5. Enterprise content management (ECM) is a single system of corporate content management which creation and consumption accompanies all processes of the enterprise.
6. Agile and DevOps — tool kit and the practician, providing high adaptivity as separate algorithms (for example, robotizations of business processes or data analysis), and all process of implementation and development of the solution i-ERP. At the same time, at the request of the customer, during creation of such solutions also classical control techniques can be applied by projects.

As noted in DKIS, the company locates a full range of competences on these technologies, in 2018 many of them are selected in certain practicians. But along with them during creation of solutions of i-ERP both traditional competences and practicians are fully used: management accounting, accounting, personnel management, etc.