How SAP’s Edison Ideation Program Could Help with Economic Offset Programs
What is an Economic Offset Program?
It is a program whereby the the government of, say, the UAE requires, as part of a defense deal, say, when the U.S. sells F-16 Fighter Jets to the UAE Armed Forces, the vendor, in this case, Lockheed Martin, would have to set up a manufacturing facility in the UAE to produce some part of the F-16.
Why Would The UAE Want This?
This brings technical expertise to the UAE economy, and recovers some of the money spent on the F-16 program. This is the most common type of Economic Offset Program, however, there can also be civilian programs that also have an Economic Offset requirement as part of doing the deal. These types of deals are very common throughout the world, not just the Middle East. However, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have a long established program.
How Do You Decide What Type of Facility to Set Up
It turns out that deciding what sort of facility to set up as part of the Offset Program is not so straight forward. Basically, you have to somehow decide what the economy needs from a strategic standpoint, with the idea being to export the products or services from these offset companies in the future.
Ideation, a formalized idea generation, selection and evaluation process, becomes a very key part of making the right decisions.
How Do Ideate?
SAP’s Edison program, a brainstorming tool buried within the PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) suite of products, could provide significant value in this process. It allows you to record ideas, evaluate them in a formalized manner, and to assign funding to accepted ideas. Being integrated within the SAP ERP suite, it allows you to track your idea on through to execution, and to determine the ROI (Return On Investment). This is critical, as there are many proposals submitted by both civilian and military entities to the Economic Offset Program offices.
What are top requirements of an Economic Offset Brainstorming Tool?
- Ability to collect, via the Web, Mail, and direct input, ideas.
- Financial modeling of the ideas.
- Integration to Project & Portfolio Management system
- Ability to link ideas to a stated national strategy
Need some help implementing such a system?
