The easy answer to “What is CNC?” is that the acronym “CNC” stands for Configurable Network Computing. Over the years, CNC has come to define a role or responsibility that typically revolves around the system or technical aspects of the EnterpriseOne software. However, after understanding the true definition of CNC and what it means to an EnterpriseOne environment, it is clear that CNC means so much more.

If you search the old Knowledge Garden for an answer, all you’ll come up with is a listing for training classes – not a definitive answer on what CNC really is. There is actually logic to this non-answer.

The first thing to understand is that the term Configurable Network Computing or CNC is not a role description, but, rather a concept used to describe EnterpriseOne’s mixed-mode model. What is meant by this is that Oracle EnterpriseOne was built on a standard language (C) that allows the software to be run across heterogeneous operating systems, databases, and end-clients. This allows a great number of variables in setting up a company’s ERP system and while the advantages of the vast number of variables are lauded, the challenges are also legendary. Taking the elements of the acronym “CNC” literally provides a clue. One correct answer is that CNC is fundamentally the knowledge of how the hardware and software (Oracle EnterpriseOne) are configured over a network in order to accomplish recording and reporting (computing) the transactions of a company.

What this means is that a true artisan of the CNC arts is not only skilled across multiple platforms and databases, but all the ancillary products and components that tie it all together. Here’s a sampling of the menu of possibilities:

How all of the variables are combined into your company’s ERP system defies a standard answer. The only way to state a standard answer is to say that CNC is your firm’s selection of system components that support your chosen version of Oracle EnterpriseOne. Therefore, CNC support becomes:

Examples of changes to the system are:

• Application of ESUs
• Software upgrades and fixes
• Package Builds
• Deployment of new code
• OMW (Object Management Workbench) Configuration
• Server Installation
• Environment management
• End User ID set-up and maintenance
• …and many, many more tasks.

Continuing down the path to understanding, CNC Support is defined rather simply as making the system continue to work after a change to any of the components of the system is made. Another way to say the same thing is that CNC Support makes sure that the system components still all “talk” to each other – and understand what is being “said” – after the application is customized, code is fixed, servers are added or any of the other potential changes have occurred.

How important is CNC?

The question “How important is CNC?” can be answered most simply with another question, “How critical is it that your ERP is running well?” CNC is the heart of the system.

Consider that at least three influencing forces are at work that requires your EnterpriseOne system to be available and accurate:

• Your company’s Business Objectives (Examples: How much revenue is being generated and how much cost is being incurred to generate that revenue. Determination and record of how many employees are needed to support the strategic plan and what benefits each is entitled to. What types of suppliers are necessary/desirable and how to interact with them, etc.)
• Your IT Departmental Objectives (How to support the Business Objectives with accurate and timely transactions, data, and analysis of that data. How to provide an End-User friendly system that is reliable. How to save costs while accomplishing all of the above.)
• Your company’s choice of ERP – EnterpriseOne™ now known as Oracle EnterpriseOne.

As with so many business influences and processes, it is the interplay between these influences that creates success or challenges. How the interplay relates to your Oracle EnterpriseOne CNC support is explained in the following Venn diagram.

Working clockwise around the diagram…

• IT Objectives in alignment with overall business objectives create a partnership between the IT professionals and the other departments.
• The IT department objectives are met by choosing the most appropriate systems to support the company’s business processes. In this case, we have chosen a product that was J.D. Edwards and is now Oracle EnterpriseOne.
• The choice of a centralized system, an ERP system, is normally a company-wide effort involving numerous departments, but still led by the IT Department’s knowledge of what will work given the business parameters supplied.
• The chosen ERP enables the company to track transactions, collect and analyze data and, most importantly, make informed decisions on how best to sustain the company within the chaos of external influences.

What happens when the system of choice does not work? Transactions stop being recorded and could be lost completely or recorded incorrectly when the system is functional again. That evolves to bad data, which translates to incorrect analysis, which would most likely be followed by poor business decisions. Put it all together and ERP system glitches have the potential to affect the sustainability of the company. That’s profound. We call it “The Enterprise Effect”. If the ERP system is down for any length of time, the entire enterprise is affected. CNC Support keeps the system alive.

That is why, for Oracle EnterpriseOne users, the heart of the system is CNC support – ensuring that the software is talking to the hardware and that all the hardware is talking to each other in the most efficient manner and at the highest speed possible.

What is good CNC support?

I have the privilege of working with fabulous people that often seem to be speaking a foreign language even when I recognize some of the words to be my native English. I hear phrases such as “The Ethernet adapter setting should be full-duplex 100 MB…” and my eyes glaze over. It’s not that I’m not interested. It is solely the fact that the level of detailed knowledge necessary to be a CNC specialist amazes even me, a very detailed person.

Naturally, what the CNC specialists are talking about is how to configure a client’s Oracle EnterpriseOne installation. There are variables on each piece of hardware, as well as within the software, that must be optimally configured in order to ensure that everything works well together.

It’s like the lines of dominos that are set up to create intricate patterns by pushing the first domino. If set up correctly, you can press the first domino and all the rest will fall into the intended beautiful pattern without a hitch. If one domino is missing or misplaced, a huge part of the pattern (in ERP terms, the flow of information) is cut off. The pattern does not complete (the information does not arrive or goes somewhere unintended). That’s what CNC specialists do. They set up the domino patterns so that the End Users can start the flow of information by pressing the keys on their keyboard – the first domino.

When it works, it’s beautiful… and invisible. End Users can forget about trying to understand CNC Support when it’s done correctly. And that is the key to a successful heterogeneous environment; the underlying technology is secondary to the end-user experience.

Then, another variable is added to the mix and the dominos transform into a Rubik’s cube. Suddenly the CNC specialist is again in the limelight and everyone is watching and waiting for the Rubik’s cube to be solved and the beautiful domino strings to be set up once again.

New variables come in a variety of forms. Some of them are:

• Adding new servers to handle volume
• Adding bandwidth to increase data throughput
• Increased volume of anything – transactions, data, analysis, End Users
• Adding 3rd party software of any type – End User oriented (report writers, analytical tools); Technical (job schedulers, security)
• Changing any of the elements noted above: hardware, software version, database, work station types

An interesting statistic offered in one of the Quest West sessions recently was that there are 146 variables to be chosen per End User. That means every time a person joins your company or changes their position, the variables attached to that person must be reviewed and potentially changed.

Now you are getting the idea of the details necessary to be a really good CNC support person. A CNC support specialist must have critical thinking skills and creative problem solving abilities. They must be able to take the entire system into consideration and choose the settings and variables that work for the whole of the system, not just the individual parts. CNC complexity requires a specialist with a dedicated interest in making it all work together to the company’s advantage.

What makes CNC so complex?

Complexity arises from the different requirements for transaction recording, different ways of looking at their market, and; therefore, different decision making criteria. This is generally why we all have ERP systems; the same data is used in different ways by different departments to make different decisions. This creates what I call the “duality” of the ERP experience. When it works, the ERP system is fabulous because it reduces duplicate effort, provides timely information and all the other advantages we heard in those marketing pitches we all sat through when choosing our ERP. The other side of the coin is that as soon as a business process changes, it sets the domino effect into reverse; i.e., when one thing goes wrong, most likely many others will follow. That’s what makes CNC so complex.

My employer, Allari Solutions, Inc., sponsored a survey in 2003 on how J.D. Edwards EnterpriseOne™ customers handle their CNC support. As part of that survey, a question was asked about how likely the customer was to change their EnterpriseOne™ application once they got it running. Almost 73% of the answers to the question were weighted to the “We’ll wait!” side of the scale.

How Likely EnterpriseOne™ Customers are to Apply Changes to their Systems

In open discussion after the rated survey question, the survey participants listed the following elements in their systems that created the complexity keeping them from changing their business processes (and, therefore, their system):

• Customizations
• Quality of code in ESU’s
• Multiple tiers within their base infrastructure
• Multiple environments with multiple pathcodes
• Diversity of skills needed to support change
• Lack of team work

What are the best CNC support solutions?

Now that we know what CNC is, what good CNC support requires and what makes it all so complex, how do we address our CNC needs?

The 2003 Allari CNC survey asked what customers were doing to meet their CNC challenges. The first solution offered was always centered on finding good CNC specialists, which, yet again, proves that we humans are still vital components of all our technology systems. However, when asked about finding existing CNC specialists, a significant majority of the answers rated finding good CNC people as very hard.

How Hard is it to Find Qualified CNC Personnel?

Most firms surveyed stated that their CNC support was assigned to someone internally as an additional responsibility to other work usually because they could not find experienced CNC personnel. Examples of internal sources of CNC personnel were Network Administrators, Database Administrators and System Administrators. Most often, internal personnel learned best by both attending formal training and working with an experienced CNC external partner for two years or more.

The majority of firms with CNC responsibilities relegated to a portion of an employee’s time also stated they depended on an external partner for up-to-date information and expertise if they ran into problems their employee(s) could not handle.

Let’s back up a moment and check the logic of part time CNC responsibility. In the beginning of this article we determined that CNC is vital to the health of the entire organization, not just the Oracle EnterpriseOne system. With CNC being the heart of the ERP system and the system being what enables the business objectives to be achieved, is it truly logical that CNC responsibility should be a part-time responsibility of someone hired for their expertise in another area? Probably not.

Again, each company is different with different needs. Maybe your system is simplistic and you didn’t customize the software. In that case, a part time CNC employee with a good external partner is probably all that is needed.

Now let’s talk about the larger, more complicated systems. Knowledge plus experience is the winning combination for large, complex systems. And, here we go again… there are multiple answers to how best to achieve quality CNC support for large complicated systems. Here are the most likely scenarios:

• Dedicated employee(s) tasked with keeping up their knowledge of new technology, changes to the system that Oracle recommends, how that relates to the company’s business objectives, and how the Oracle EnterpriseOne application is used to meet them.
• A combination of employee time and external expertise with an emphasis on the external expertise bringing the most up-to-date information and ideas to the table. The internal/external team can then explore the appropriate changes to the system together.
• Outsourcing the “routine” CNC processes so that the internal expertise can concentrate on strategic change decisions.
• Completely outsourcing the CNC support to a qualified company.
• Completely outsourcing the application, including the CNC support.
• Any combination of the above that makes sense for your company.

The options beg more questions. Is it logical to outsource the heart of the ERP system? It can be. If you can find a firm that will learn your business processes and how the ERP works to support them, plus has senior-level CNC expertise in-house and a good system to track what is being done to your system, then yes, it is logical. The “yes” answer is strengthened if the outsourcing company is willing to bring new ideas for efficiency and cost effectiveness to your company through their experiences with other companies.

Another question to ask yourself would be, “Is it logical to outsource the entire application?” Again, it could be depending on factors such as size of your company in relationship to size and budget for your IT department; availability of appropriate expertise in your geographic area; and/or available service level agreements in contrast to what is possible with employees. (For example, 24/7 x 365 coverage is hard to achieve in some companies even though it may be necessary for the type of business.)

The following chart provides a few available external options for CNC support.