FAQ - JIRA as a candidate for the next generation ERP-System
Written by Business Processes, Dennis Byron, analyst with ebizQ Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:30
July 24th, 2010
As one of the possible candidates for the Next Generation ERP I see Altassian JIRA.
Do i speak seriously? Well, only in content of how far the trend of BPMS vs ERP can go. By that time JIRA may change name, or more universal BPMS comes out.
But I can really consider it as a canditate for universal BPMS. How can an issue tracker become a BPMS? That is the right question that I cover with my research and implementation practice.
I would position JIRA as task-, project- and workflow management software and the integratoin platform, as EAI Federation system, that can make work together all spaghetti of enterprise infrustructure.
JIRA is a well-developed issue tracker, because its developers use it for themselves using Agile business procecses. It is the reason why Atlassian positioned it as the tool software development. They sell the same wine that drink :)
As an issue tracker, it has
- rich features for workflow development
- collection of good tools for managing virtually any type of issue (projects, tasks, orders, changes, complains, contracts, etc)
- integration interfaces (JIRA RPC and a library of 3d-party JIRA pluin modules)
- customisable forms, views, fields, etc.
- customizable integration with email (through email-notification schemes and tools for parsing incomming emails)
- open developer community
- consulting community of parnters
- smart marketing tactics of Atlassian (open to customers, parterns, developers and social networking)
There are implementations of JIRA for project management, CRM, Help Desk and Customer services, time tracking and billing, and even for document and knowledge management.
JIRA EAI connectors
JIRA can be integrated with SAP, Sales Force, MS Project and any other system that is already in place, in order to expand their functionality due to flexible workflow engine and rich features for issue classification and customization. JIRA is featured with most common application programming interfaces such as SOAP, XML-RPC and J2EE.
JIRA is based on Java and may run with the major database engines (MS SQL, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL) and virtually on any hardware.
These technologies have proved their value and stability through the last decades.
System Aviability
The solution based on JIRA can be deployed by a Windows´ user with Windows Installer onto her desktop for private use. Any system administrator can deploy in into corporate intranet in one or two hours. Most of customisation could be done using web interface for administrators.
The system has mordern web interface, that is close to Web 2.0. I would say it is Web 1.5, somewhere in between, but user experience is the main concern of Atlassian now, and each new release moves JIRA more into real Web 2.0.
The starter license price is as low as 10$ for a small team up to 10 people. It open for JIRA a niche that was closed for enterprise-level systems before, due to high prices of such systems. The unlimited license is 8.000 USD, that is also very low for companies with more than 100 employers.
User interface is translated virtually on all languages. There are still however still issues with translations, esp for by 3D-party pluigns. But they can be easily bypassed, worked-about, or resolved in future issues.
Atlassian has wide partner network and open partnership policy, making any JAVA developers able to create solutions for specific customer needs and opening the doors to their development and marketing lines.
Configurable types if issues (where issue is virtually any sort of stuff to be handled in the company), good workflow engine, web interface designed for team collaboration, low license costs and flexible deployment options enable JIRA to automate almost any business process. From the other hand, JIRA applications don´t require strict and formal forms of communication, and communication may be done in a free way (comments and descriptions rather that strict multi-field forms). Heavy formalized processes in modern ERPs make the systems very hard to learn and fully implement. Therefore JIRA will easily full the niche, where too many details in processes are not required or known at the beginning.
Implementing JIRA for the most demanded business purposes will provides an open, flexible, reliable technology base for the future.
JIRA is not an ERP as it is, and cannot be treated as such. In theory, it could might be configured to replace some ERP functionality in one its future versions.
If you are not sure whether you need to start implementing an ERP in your company and if you are not a big multinational production corporation, then you would better consider to use a BPM System, that may still meet most of your needs, will be less expensive and could be implemented few times faster.
- ERP provides very good embedded workflow, but poor enterprise workflow. BPM supports both functional and enterprise workflow scenarios.
- BPM is far more agile than ERP systems, where BPM requires on average 3 months to implement, ERP takes 20 months. Change management is also faster with BPM.
- ERP often needs BPM to help realize its full value.
If you are a big production corporation that already use an ERP solution, you may still consider to implement a BPMS as shortcut and an interface for some sophisticated ERP workflows, in order to reduce the number of users to train for ERP, decrease time to perform operations within the software, etc. A good example of this is TEMPO plugin for JIRA. The plugin synchronizes JIRA time tracking with SAP database, and the users are able to log their work hours much faster and easier with JIRA, than through slow SAP interface (fat client) with extra user licenses.
Another examples around are Soreco AG , BPM&O GmbH, ATOSS Software AG and a couple dozens of other BPMS providers, who develop their own modern systems (mostly in JAVA and with web interface) and implement them also in oder to bypass awkward workflow schemes in ERPs of their customers.
But again, I don´t advice to fully replace any existing ERP implementation now or later, it is not feasible. Just make them more user friendly by integrating with web-based BPM solutions.
