Gaurav Jain sat down with Srinath Alamela, CEO at Triniti Corporation, to retrace the genesis of Application Data Management (ADM) at Triniti. Triniti is a pioneer in ADM. Through its Consulting and Product offerings, Triniti has been helping businesses achieve significant value from their IT investments for the last 18 years.
Tell us a little bit about how Triniti embarked on this journey of Application Data Management
It all really started at Lucent Microelectronics in 1995 when Issa and I were involved in the global Oracle ERP implementation. Lucent had multiple legacy systems – ‘Class A’ for Bills of Materials (BOM), URB for Routings, TOM for Planning, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) Workstream and Process Controls for transactions. They did not have an ERP system to bring all of this together. Joe Fornadel and David Wilson managed the Supply Chain, Planning, and Manufacturing functions. They understood and practiced the assignment of Ownership, Accountability and Responsibility for data in their Legacy systems.
It would certainly not have been an easy feat in 1990s. How did you do it?
We integrated all their systems with Oracle making it the system of record. We developed GPS (Global Product Structure) to integrate their Item Master, BOMs and Routings into Oracle ERP. GPS did not have a visual representation and was very specific to Lucent’s requirements. We later built it by building a framework and called it TPM (Triniti Product Modeler). It is our flagship product in ADM space. Initially, TPM did not have workflow. They were added later to make it a comprehensive ADM tool. Other clients such as Silterra, Sony and Qualcomm helped us refine the product further. The turning point was really when Sony semiconductor decided to use Triniti’s Workflow over Oracle Workflow and TPM as their MDM over Oracle PDH.
Now, we are leveraging the same capabilities to be able to manage Customer, Supplier, Employee, and GL data for Oracle users.
Being a pioneer, you had to start from scratch. What guiding principles did you set for yourself?
Good question.
We started with a few simple guiding principles only; the acronyms and the tools came later.
a. There are no shortcuts.
b. Maintain quality data at the atomic level.
c. Worry about the details and you do not need to worry about the summary.
d. Data Governance (Ownership, Accountability and Responsibility) should be in-built.
I am sure there were many challenges along the way. Could you talk about the major ones?
The biggest challenge, as always, continues to be Change Management - Getting people to believe in the idea and agree to adhere to the process discipline. We have been fortunate enough to find some great partners/clients along the way who are visionaries and realize the need.
Internally, the biggest challenge for us was to resist the temptation to take the easier way by compromising on the guiding principles. In a few instances, it also meant leaving money on the table.
How do you feel now that you see the market realizing a need for Application Data Management a decade after you built the product?
I couldn’t be happier. My happiness stems not by seeing it as an ‘I said so’ moment; rather it is from the satisfaction of knowing that businesses are realizing the importance of quality data in their business applications. And more importantly they are looking for the right solutions.
The need for this has never before been this pronounced. Data has been rightly placed front and center with Big Data, xaaS and the like.
We will still have challenges as the big vendors once they sense the demand will ‘claim’ they have an ADM offering. So we are very aware and are working aggressively to educate on the lessons learnt by customers on poor offerings in the past by the large vendors. In fact Gartner recommends specifically that prospective ADM customers are served better by Triniti and similar vendors.
In context of application data, you use the term TRAC. What does it actually mean?
TRAC is an acronym that we coined to define what quality data means. We wanted to make sure that all aspects are covered and are well understood.
It stands for Timely, Reliable, Accurate and Complete.
T(imely) – No latency. Transaction is created in the system at the time of the business event.
A(ccurate) - Data elements are correct. And if the elements are driven by business rules or policies, then the components of business rules or policies should be captured. These should in turn derive the correct value for data element.
C(omplete) - It has 3 dimensions: All underlying details should be captured, Eliminate aggregations in modeling; Enforce discipline in capturing all elements
R(eliable) - Timely, Accurate and Complete data over a period of time makes it Reliable
Arranging them to spell TRAC - as in your data is on TRAC(K) - was intended for easy recall.
What lies ahead for Triniti?
Exciting times! Specifically relating to ADM, Gartner’s IT Market Clock shows that ADM is in the Advantage stage and the next Market Phase (Choice) is ~5 years out. With established products up and running for more than a decade, we are positioned well. We will continue to focus on our strengths and will continue to seek visionaries who want to keep their data front and center of their strategy.
We have been working on new offerings for a while now including EBS lifecycle management, Regression testing as a service, and business process analytics – all with the singular focus of giving businesses using Oracle eBusiness suite an easier, efficient and effective way to manage their application data. We have had good success with the same and if ADM is an indication then we will be ahead in the other areas as well.
Tell us a little bit about how Triniti embarked on this journey of Application Data ManagementIt all really started at Lucent Microelectronics in 1995 when Issa and I were involved in the global Oracle ERP implementation. Lucent had multiple legacy systems – ‘Class A’ for Bills of Materials (BOM), URB for Routings, TOM for Planning, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) Workstream and Process Controls for transactions. They did not have an ERP system to bring all of this together. Joe Fornadel and David Wilson managed the Supply Chain, Planning, and Manufacturing functions. They understood and practiced the assignment of Ownership, Accountability and Responsibility for data in their Legacy systems. When Lucent decided to implement Oracle ERP, they found that the notion of Ownership, Accountability and Responsibility for data was missing in Oracle.
Triniti took on the challenge to bridge this gap.
It would certainly not have been an easy feat in 1990s. How did you do it?We integrated all their systems with Oracle making it the system of record. We developed GPS (Global Product Structure) to integrate their Item Master, BOMs and Routings into Oracle ERP. GPS did not have a visual representation and was very specific to Lucent’s requirements. We later built it by building a framework and called it TPM (Triniti Product Modeler). It is our flagship product in ADM space. Initially, TPM did not have workflow. They were added later to make it a comprehensive ADM tool. Other clients such as Silterra, Sony and Qualcomm helped us refine the product further. The turning point was really when Sony semiconductor decided to use Triniti’s Workflow over Oracle Workflow and TPM as their MDM over Oracle PDH.Now, we are leveraging the same capabilities to be able to manage Customer, Supplier, Employee, and GL data for Oracle users.
Being a pioneer, you had to start from scratch. What guiding principles did you set for yourself?Good question.We started with a few simple guiding principles only; the acronyms and the tools came later.
a. There are no shortcuts.
b. Maintain quality data at the atomic level.
c. Worry about the details and you do not need to worry about the summary.
d. Data Governance (Ownership, Accountability and Responsibility) should be in-built.
I am sure there were many challenges along the way. Could you talk about the major ones?The biggest challenge, as always, continues to be Change Management - Getting people to believe in the idea and agree to adhere to the process discipline. We have been fortunate enough to find some great partners/clients along the way who are visionaries and realize the need. Internally, the biggest challenge for us was to resist the temptation to take the easier way by compromising on the guiding principles. In a few instances, it also meant leaving money on the table.
How do you feel now that you see the market realizing a need for Application Data Management a decade after you built the product?I couldn’t be happier. My happiness stems not by seeing it as an ‘I said so’ moment; rather it is from the satisfaction of knowing that businesses are realizing the importance of quality data in their business applications. And more importantly they are looking for the right solutions.The need for this has never before been this pronounced. Data has been rightly placed front and center with Big Data, xaaS and the like.
We will still have challenges as the big vendors once they sense the demand will ‘claim’ they have an ADM offering. So we are very aware and are working aggressively to educate on the lessons learnt by customers on poor offerings in the past by the large vendors. In fact Gartner recommends specifically that prospective ADM customers are served better by Triniti and similar vendors.
In context of application data, you use the term TRAC. What does it actually mean?TRAC is an acronym that we coined to define what quality data means. We wanted to make sure that all aspects are covered and are well understood.It stands for Timely, Reliable, Accurate and Complete.
T(imely) – No latency. Transaction is created in the system at the time of the business event.
A(ccurate) - Data elements are correct. And if the elements are driven by business rules or policies, then the components of business rules or policies should be captured. These should in turn derive the correct value for data element.
C(omplete) - It has 3 dimensions: All underlying details should be captured, Eliminate aggregations in modeling; Enforce discipline in capturing all elements
R(eliable) - Timely, Accurate and Complete data over a period of time makes it Reliable
Arranging them to spell TRAC - as in your data is on TRAC(K) - was intended for easy recall.
What lies ahead for Triniti?Exciting times! Specifically relating to ADM, Gartner’s IT Market Clock shows that ADM is in the Advantage stage and the next Market Phase (Choice) is ~5 years out. With established products up and running for more than a decade, we are positioned well. We will continue to focus on our strengths and will continue to seek visionaries who want to keep their data front and center of their strategy.We have been working on new offerings for a while now including EBS lifecycle management, Regression testing as a service, and business process analytics – all with the singular focus of giving businesses using Oracle eBusiness suite an easier, efficient and effective way to manage their application data. We have had good success with the same and if ADM is an indication then we will be ahead in the other areas as well.