InfoPath: Improving
Your Business With Desktop XML Solutions
June 2003
22 Crescent Road
Westport, CT 06880
http://www.rfgonline.com/
Table of Contents
1. Executive Summary
This summer, Microsoft Corp. will release a revolutionary addition
to its Office productivity family. The new program, Microsoft® Office
InfoPath™ 2003, can revolutionize the processes by which users collect
and manage business data, and enable reuse of that data across business
processes and organizations.
InfoPath has
the potential to become the "next big app" on corporate desktops,
picking up where electronic forms products left off to provide easier
and more efficient mechanisms for gathering business data. This white
paper will outline the product's benefits, giving IT executives a head
start in planning where and how to deploy and use the product to address
current and future business needs in their organizations.
2.
Introducing InfoPath
InfoPath solves
a core problem in data collection and integration needs in the enterprise
via eXtensible Markup Language (XML). Despite XML's potential to enable
application integration, its use typically requires a development background,
and thus it is primarily employed in back-office and data center applications.
InfoPath brings XML functionality to the desktop by allowing users to
gather and manage business data in XML without requiring those users
to know the language themselves.
Microsoft's
broad vision for XML encompasses both server- and client-side products.
This was one of the driving factors that led to the development of InfoPath,
as well as the addition of XML capabilities in Excel, Word, and other
Office applications. These advances will allow customers to more readily
reuse the information stored in these business document formats.
InfoPath is
a horizontal solution – many applications that involve the gathering
and management of business data can benefit from its deployment. For
line of business (LOB) applications, InfoPath can bring the power of
back-end systems and applications, including Customer Relationship Management
(CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Supply Chain Management
(SCM), to every desktop. End-users receive a streamlined interface to
supply data to these enterprise systems, and IT departments receive
a presentation layer development environment that allows the rapid and
easy deployment and modification of the applications.
On a team level,
InfoPath may be used to address such tasks as weekly status reports
and sales call tracking. Integration with other Office family products
means team members can readily share business data via Excel, Outlook,
and Windows SharePoint Services.
3.
Product Features
InfoPath is
a dynamic form development environment that allows business data to
be collected and managed in XML without requiring end-user knowledge
of XML. InfoPath also incorporates document model characteristics in
this process, including offline editing, rich formatting features, and
spell checking. Data validation facilities ensure the accuracy and consistency
of the data gathered.
For forms that
do not require access to back-end systems, InfoPath may be used either
online or disconnected. This feature is unique in that data collection
requirements in a variety of target environments may be addressed with
a single client interface, reducing both development and training costs
for these interfaces. And since InfoPath includes built-in versioning
facilities, new form versions will be downloaded automatically when
a user opens the form. This can reduce or eliminate costs associated
with distributing product updates to end-users.
InfoPath's
form design interface includes familiar controls, such as check boxes,
date pickers, and text boxes. Developers create forms by dragging these
elements into a document editor that provides a "What You See Is
What You Get" (WYSIWYG) view of the form, and traditional text
editing and layout facilities are available to arrange and format the
form elements. No code is required to incorporate many commonly used
business rules, although a script editor is available should developers
wish to add more complex functionality.
Microsoft has
also included over 20 sample templates for common tasks, such as asset
tracking, expense reports, project plans, and sales reports. These templates
are fully functional, and can be used directly, or they can be customized
to meet the needs of the user.
Data entered
by users in InfoPath forms is stored in XML. InfoPath also provides
out-of-the-box support for Web services protocols, including Simple
Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Universal Description, Discovery, and
Integration (UDDI), and Web Services Description Language (WSDL), making
it an ideal client for Web services. Customers have full control over
the XML schemas used in this process, and form data controls are bound
to XML data elements by simply selecting them from a list.
4.
Front-Ending Business Applications
One common
pain point in enterprise development projects is the cost and difficulty
associated with creating custom interfaces to enterprise verticals,
such as CRM, ERP, and SCM products. Development environments often vary
between manufacturers of these products, and product upgrades can lead
to expensive redevelopment efforts. Further, integration with other
products or leveraging the vertical's business data for new applications
is often a time-consuming process.
InfoPath can
provide significant cost and time savings for these development processes
by allowing developers to rapidly create XML-based data entry forms,
and eliminating the hassles associated with keeping user deployments
up to date as modifications are made. Data entered by users may be submitted
to an XML transaction processor, which can handle any translation tasks
required. The processor can then store the data in the appropriate database,
or submit it to other Web services that move the data along to its final
destination, the business application.
This process
is especially seamless when working with enterprise verticals whose
vendors have already moved to embrace Web services hooks into their
products, which now includes most of the market. In these cases, developers
rarely need to do more than provide data routing and transformation
services, a task which XML makes straightforward.
This concept
can also be used to address development requirements for legacy applications.
Instead of rewriting an entire application, developers can simply develop
Web services "hooks" that allow data to be submitted to and
retrieved from that application. Developers can then use InfoPath to
quickly create new, feature-rich user interfaces to those legacy applications.
This process is both much faster and less expensive than the task of
reengineering the legacy application, and it allows IT executives to
leverage existing assets and still meet LOB application requirements.
Finally, because
of the flexibility of XML, InfoPath can be used to front-end multiple
business applications in a single interface. For example, many companies
use accounting and inventory control systems from different vendors,
especially where mergers or acquisitions have occurred. InfoPath may
be used in these cases to create a consolidated data entry interface
for these products, eliminating double-entry tasks that can lead to
costly mistakes. This usage can yield similar productivity increases
at a much lower cost than would be produced by replacing one of the
products.
5.
Example 1 – ERP and SCM Front-End
John is an
IT executive at a Global 2000 company, and has been in discussions with
various LOB executives that want to add user interface functionality
to the company's ERP and SCM deployments. Unfortunately, these products
are custom-developed legacy applications that run in a mainframe environment,
and user access is currently provided via terminals and custom host
connectivity software that essentially "screen scrapes" the
data to present it to users. The current implementation has reached
the limits of the functionality this method can provide.
John has had
his developers evaluate the possibility of re-engineering these applications
in a three- or four-tier environment. They estimate the task will take
approximately two years and cost approximately $4M to accomplish, or
$2M if the work could be outsourced. John has also explored packaged
solutions, but with similar results. Since the current products were
written specifically for John's company, a packaged product would require
heavy customization before it could be considered a suitable replacement.
To avoid this
process, John created a development team of five developers and one
team leader, and assigned them the project of using InfoPath and Web
services to create a new presentation layer for the existing legacy
application. In four months, the team created Web services hooks for
the ERP and SCM applications. In another two months, the team created
front-end interfaces to those applications using InfoPath. Finally,
end-users were trained for one month to use the new environment. Help
desk workloads remained approximately the same – although the new
interface provides more functionality, and thus leads to more questions
from end-users, they also experience fewer problems with the new interface.
Costs were
estimated at the same charge-back rate the IT department would normally
assign to such work – $50 per hour for developers, and $30 per hour
for help desk support and training staff. This yielded development costs
of $40,000 to Web-services enable the legacy applications, and $20,000
to develop the new front-end interfaces. Training costs were estimated
at $4,800. Productivity loss during this period was not measured, because
it was expected to be similar to the loss for the alternative cases
(redevelopment or packaged solution).
The bottom
line:
The new functionality
was provided in six months, a fraction of the time estimate for redeveloping
the applications or customizing packaged solutions.
Total development
costs were $60,000, and training costs were $4,800, a small percentage
of the cost estimates for the alternatives.
The two legacy applications
were reused, eliminating the need for a forklift upgrade.
The two legacy
applications are now Web-services enabled, which will allow the IT department
to meet future integration requirements. Total cost savings were nearly
$2M over an outsourced redevelopment effort, and nearly $4M to handle
internally. Productivity improvements were estimated at roughly $1M
per year, for a total savings of $5M to $7M over a three-year period.
6.
Example 2 – Team Collaboration
Mary manages
a team of seven product engineers at an industrial products manufacturer.
Team meetings occur for two hours on a weekly basis, during which team
members provide status updates on their projects. Also, while team members
can share documents and schematics, very little management of this process
is available. Mary would like to streamline the process to reduce the
number and length of meetings required, allowing her engineers to remain
focused on their projects.
Mary consults
the IT department for assistance, and receives two hours of training
in using InfoPath, for which her department was billed a charge-back
of $50. The IT department also provides Mary with access to the engineering
department's Intranet servers, which run Internet Information Service
(IIS), SQL Server, and Windows SharePoint Services. Mary's team is not
billed for this work, because the servers were previously deployed.
Mary creates
a form to track project status reports, and distributes it to her engineers.
The data produced is submitted to a SQL Server database natively via
XML. Mary then uses FrontPage to create a simple Web-based interface
to view status summaries at a glance. Mary is also able to identify
projects that may be in trouble, and prepare progress reports for her
own meetings with upper management.
Mary estimates
that she spent two hours learning InfoPath, two hours developing the
form, and three hours developing the Web-based summary interface. Mary
values her time at $80 per hour, and thus estimates her personal costs
at $560.
The engineers
now enter their status updates in an InfoPath form that integrates with
a SharePoint server. They are thus able to more easily collaborate on
documents and schematics in a consolidated portal environment. More
importantly, regular meetings are reduced to two per month, saving an
average of 50 hours per engineer, per year.
The bottom
line:
Mary's costs totaled
$610.
The engineers now
meet twice monthly, saving an average of 50 hours per engineer, per
year. The company values an engineer's time at $120 per hour, yielding
a savings of $6,000 per engineer per year. Mary manages seven engineers,
so her efforts save her department $42,000 per year.
Mary estimates that
streamlined collaboration efforts save her engineers an additional 12
hours per year, per engineer, for an additional $10,080.
Mary also saves
50 hours per year in meetings no longer required, and an additional
12 hours preparing reports for upper management that are now produced
automatically, for a savings of $4,960.
Total savings were
$57,040 per year. Moreover, upper management was pleased by Mary's efforts,
and applies her solution to other engineering workgroups in the company,
multiplying the cost savings.
InfoPath is
obviously an innovative product not only in design, but also in function.
Where XML's benefits were previously only available to developers, InfoPath
brings XML to the desktop end-users without requiring end-user knowledge
of the language. This makes possible a broader vision of XML as the
data format of choice for all data elements in the enterprise.
7.
Deployment Strategy
Microsoft has
announced plans to include InfoPath as a component of Office Professional
Enterprise Edition 2003, which is slated for release later this summer.
The suite also includes XML-enabled versions of other Office components,
such as Word and Excel, allowing InfoPath information to be shared with
those applications.
IT executives
should plan their deployments ahead of time, to identify training requirements
and expected uses. There are three classes of InfoPath users – those
that create forms, those that enter business data into those forms,
and those who do both. Because InfoPath provides a familiar document
model for data entry tasks, end-users will require little to no training.
However, IT executives should consider providing developers with training
options, to ensure they are prepared to fully capitalize on the value
InfoPath provides.
Most importantly,
IT executives should begin exploring opportunities for leveraging InfoPath
to solve team collaboration and enterprise business process problems.
IT executives should work with other LOB executives and managers to
identify these areas, and communicate InfoPath's value to them. By obtaining
early interest in InfoPath's functionality, IT executives can help ensure
a more seamless enterprise-wide deployment of the product.
8.
Conclusion
InfoPath has
the ability to become the next ubiquitous productivity application,
because of the breadth of previously unaddressed business applications
it can touch. Products such as InfoPath are keys to leveraging the value
of XML throughout the enterprise without requiring users to know XML
or possess development skills.
To ensure that
the most value is gained from the product, IT executives should therefore
begin planning where and how to deploy InfoPath to employees, as well
as how to communicate the product's capabilities to developers and LOB
executives. Moreover, because InfoPath can allow the IT department to
continue to meet LOB requirements while leveraging existing assets,
IT executives should consider championing the deployment of the product
in the enterprise.
Copyright © 2003, Robert Frances
Group, Inc.