MISSION POSSIBLE: UPGRADE FINANCIALS, HRMS, CRM, AND PROJECT TO R12 ON 3 CONTINENTS IN 6 MONTHS

Transcription

1 MISSION POSSIBLE: UPGRADE FINANCIALS, HRMS, CRM, AND PROJECT TO R12 ON 3 CONTINENTS IN 6 MONTHS A White Paper prepared by IT Convergence presented at Collaborate 09, Collaborate 10, and Oracle OpenWorld 2009 Author The IT Convergence Oracle R12/Fusion Early Adopters team Copyright IT Convergence 2011

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Let s Take Our Own Medicine with Oracle R Project Scope... 4 Assumptions and Perceived Project Constraints... 5 Risk Analysis... 6 Critical success factors... 6 Approach for success... 7 Extensions and Customizations... 7 Reporting strategy... 7 Educating Our Users on R Hardware, Network, and Software Concerns... 8 Size...8 Hot Back Ups... 8 System and Network Availability... 8 Results... 9 Lessons Learned Plan Realistically Test, Test, and Test The Inside Scoop on Reporting in R The Transition Plan Making Change Management Manageable Location, Location, Location Timing, Timing, Timing Do it By the Book Plan Proactively, to Avoid Disrupting Essential Business Functions Keep Them in the Loop Quick Guides Start at the Top Put this Experience to Work for You IT Convergence White Paper 2 / 13

3 Let s Take Our Own Medicine with Oracle R12 This document takes you behind the scenes to an R12 Upgrade that spanned 3 continents and included Financials, HRMS, CRM, and Project. You will discover how 17 modules were upgraded and configured to meet local requirements in North America, Latin America, and Asia, including the first R12 upgrade in Argentina. The project also covered 30 customizations migrated during the implementation, fostered further R12 innovations, and laid the foundation for rolling out OBIEE. This white paper tells the story of how that happened and shares the lessons we learned along the way. This white paper also outlines the vision, motive and plan that drove IT Convergence s (ITC) upgrade to Oracle R12. This upgrade was part of ITC s larger commitment to Taking Our Own Medicine, which means that the company uses the same Oracle solutions internally that we provide to clients. ITC adopted this strategy to consolidate its business system onto a central Oracle E-Business Suite platform, establishing One Source of Truth to simplify reporting and improve business processes. Taking Our Own Medicine helps ITC better understand our client s needs and deliver improved service. ITC began implementing the Oracle E-Business Suite in 2004 with core Financials. This was followed by a global rollout of Oracle HRMS and Oracle Portal in Then we added Oracle Project Resource Management in 2006, Oracle Telesales went live in January 2007, and our final implementation during that year was Oracle Project Management. Figure 1: E-Business Suite Implementations Prior to upgrading to R12, ITC s complete footprint included: Oracle Financials, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, General Ledger, iexpense, PO, iprocurement, Cash Management Oracle HRMS: Core, SSHR IT Convergence White Paper 3 / 13

4 Oracle Projects: Costing, Billing, Project Resource Management, Project Management, Project Intelligence Oracle CRM: Telesales 1, Teleservice, isupport Reporting: Oracle Portal/Noetix Geographically, IT Convergence has operations in the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Singapore and China. ITC plans to implement Performance Management, Incentive Compensation, irecruitment, Fixed Assets and Project Collaboration in the near future. Upgrading to Oracle Applications R12 is giving to IT Convergence the tools it needs to better manage our global operations. Specifically, R12 is giving our Finance department improved visibility and control over our revenue streams and payment processes. HRMS R12 functionalities allow us to better manage our global workforce, and Oracle Projects R12 improves our ability to manage projects that encompass multiple countries and/or multiple continents. Finally, Oracle CRM R12 enables us to deploy a dynamic sales and marketing funnel which in turn enhances our ability to project revenues. Figure 2: R12 benefit and advantages Project Scope Given the global nature of ITC s Oracle footprint, keeping the upgrade in scope was essential to the project s success. To keep the project in scope we ensured that each of the following elements was tied to the overall project objectives: Applications Only existing applications & modules were upgraded Sites All ITC offices were included 1 Note, in late 2012 ITC stopped actively using Oracle Telesales to support Sales and Marketing efforts. IT Convergence White Paper 4 / 13

5 Process Re-engineering No processes were to be reengineered during the initial upgrade Customizations Only existing customizations were migrated Interfaces All existing interfaces were migrated Architecture The existing functional and technical architecture remained the same Data Conversion No data conversion was necessary Testing Existing processes and functionalities were tested, recycling test scripts Funding/sourcing The upgrade depended 100% on internal resources Training and end-user Education Training focused on GAPs between and R12 Assumptions and Perceived Project Constraints The Project Team developed the project plan with the understanding that we were going to be working under various constraints which were based on certain assumptions. The most important constraint revolved around the internal staff s limitations. For example, the Web Services team was slated to support the project, but some of their staff members were dedicated to billing for external clients. This was also true of other personnel who would be supporting the upgrade. Too much dedication to billing for external projects could lead to a loss of focus on R12, and this could jeopardize progress. To mitigate this danger, the Project Team analyzed and retained the right to approve the assignment of any R12-dedicated resources to an external project. Loss of key staff dedicated to the R12 project was also a possible limitation. When we began the project, we also identified a lack of skilled personnel who had the ability to contribute to the R12 project. Our answer was to provide this training, which not only strengthened the project, but it also strengthened ITC s ability to offer external clients R12 solutions after completing our own implementation. Another method of minimizing constraints was to freeze new enhancements to the existing Oracle E-Business Suite to fixes for bugs and other types of maintenance activities. Likewise, development of new Noetix reports was frozen, and users were provided with additional Noetix training. IT Convergence White Paper 5 / 13

6 Risk Analysis The Project Team identified a number of risks at the outset and took the steps to mitigate each of these risks. Risks that surfaced as the project was in process were tracked and resolved through a defined Risk and Issue Management process. Risk Probability Impact Mitigation Product not fully tested. Ex. Argentina Taxes. Oracle does not support yet some calculation for Argentina taxes High High Work close with Oracle Support in order to get them working on this. Manual process. Resources Availability High High Internal or external New hires Early communication to managers Lack of In House Oracle Knowledge Medium Medium Build knowledge base with internal consulting and networking Communication process Low Medium Work with Marketing in order to deliver a good communication strategy Process Ownership Medium Medium Encourage a team work spirit and get commitment on each track from Key Users and managers Good number of customizations were needed to be rebuilt and re-evaluated Test scripts would be rebuilt or created from scratch Medium High Include more resources and close communication with Oracle Support Medium High Add more resources in the creation of test scripts Figure 3: Risk and Issues management Since ITC was doing a straight upgrade not a reimplementation -- to Oracle Release 12, neither new interfaces nor data conversion was necessary. However, the upgrade to R12 required integration with our existing Oracle Portal solution, and this meant that we would need to test several integration points. Critical success factors IT Convergence Business Services team identified a number of key factors that were crucial to the success of our R12 upgrade. The Project Team agreed with the sponsors and steering committee to measure progress towards these factors by defining some metrics. The critical success factors were: Strong executive sponsorship and management support IT Convergence White Paper 6 / 13

7 Adequate project staffing Clear definition of roles and responsibilities Committed and well-informed project manager and project team A defined and maintained project infrastructure throughout the project duration Clear understanding of known project risks and assumptions Agreement in overall objectives and acceptance of change Crisp execution on decisions, and teamwork The success metrics for the project were measured by: Description The business process prior to upgrade was not changed and keeps running with Release 12 Duration of the implementation User satisfaction Metric Downtime and service requests Meeting the 6 months target Service Requests Figure 4: Success metrics Approach for success EXTENSIONS AND CUSTOMIZATIONS ITC s existing Oracle footprint features many enhancements, module extensions, and customizations. A total of 11 workflows, 10 forms, 2 interfaces, 8 concurrent request processes and 5 legal report customizations needed to be examined in addition to around 400 Noetix reports. Our strategy was to guarantee that ITC s current business processes were fully functional when R12 went live. To achieve this goal we prioritized the development/migration of these customizations in order to synchronize development and functional efforts. REPORTING STRATEGY The current reporting footprint includes Noetix views, and the Noetix platform (Noetix web query). This tool was implemented in 2007 and has around 400 actively running reports. The approach we took was to get all the reports running on R12 and also to revise the current footprint so that we would be able to migrate it to the latest business intelligence solution from Oracle that included Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. IT Convergence White Paper 7 / 13

8 EDUCATING OUR USERS ON R12 We adopted a train the trainer approach to getting our staff up to speed up on R12. Key users divided into tracks had the responsibility to train other key members of the Project Team. This approach ensured that the exposure of individual members of the Project Team would not be limited to a specific area, such as testing or requirements definition, allowing them to provide full support. Each track corresponded to a business process within IT Convergence such as: Human Resources, Financials, Projects, Recruiting, Sales and Services. Another thing that we did was to involve key business users in each and every phase of the project, which made a difference not only in the testing phase, but also in building a strong team. HARDWARE, NETWORK, AND SOFTWARE CONCERNS There were a number of issues related to ITC s IT infrastructure that had the potential to adversely affect the R12 Upgrade. While no issue posed an imminent threat, there were several risk factors that merited attention. These factors related to the ability of existing hardware to handle the volume created by an R12 environment, its ability to support hot back ups, and other factors that related to systems and network availability. SIZE There was only a moderate danger that ITC s existing hardware could not handle sufficient volume to support an R12 upgrade. If this did come to pass, performance of the application would drop to an unacceptable level and, in that event, additional hardware was going to be needed. To avoid a drop in production, the Project Team constantly conducted a detailed sizing process until the volumetric of the new system became evident. Once ITC made this determination, they were able to design the proper production environment. HOT BACK UPS When the upgrade began, ITC did not have a hot-back up hardware site available to support either the upgrade or the eventual R12 Environment. This meant that any loss of availability in the primary environment would result in a total loss of availability of the R12 environment, until ITC could locate another physical environment. The most effective way to guard against this was to develop comprehensive disaster recovery plans that could be implemented quickly and efficiently in the event of an emergency. SYSTEM AND NETWORK AVAILABILITY Unexpected interruptions in system and/or network availability had the potential to delay the upgrade unnecessarily. The best way to mitigate this risk was to administer the hardware and software environment used for the upgrade as an as-production environment, and to reinforce ITC s high availability requirement with its network. The transition to production started early on this project since the R12 upgrade required several pre-upgrade steps. The first step was moving the concurrent manager from the database server to the application server. Then, an operating system upgrade was necessary and, finally, we upgraded the database upgrade from 9i to 10g. IT Convergence White Paper 8 / 13

9 Figure 5: Technical steps for the upgrade to R12 The decision to set up as the last RUP was important because this would freeze our strategy and would allow us to plan future roll up patches application after the Go Live date. Results The results were excellent. We had a smooth production deployment with a low number of service requests (SR) opened through our helpdesk or via isupport. We resolved the requests that we did receive in an average of one business day. To be proactive, our team was ready to handle a large volume of SR and related-phone calls, but fortunately these preparations were not necessary. During the first month, we resolved approximately 100 SR s, taking an average of 1 business day to close each request. The fiscal year closure was delayed by 2 business days because some AP processes failed and we had to rely on Oracle support to resolve those issues. Thirty days after the implementation, there were only six remaining open issues, all of which were low priority and with a workaround in place. The upgrade to Release 12 upgrade was a success and the company is now able to plan for R12 innovations such as the Multiple Organization Access (MOAC) for our Shared Services Center in Argentina. While we re happy that the upgrade was successful, we learned some important lessons, which we share below. IT Convergence White Paper 9 / 13

10 Lessons Learned PLAN REALISTICALLY Looking back, one of the key elements to success was the realistic project plan that we developed. We did this by considering all the changes to the data model that would impact both customizations and reporting in R12. With this information in focus, we were able to allocate enough time and resources for each phase of the project. JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC Migration Assessment Update and Test Transition Production On time! Figure 6: R12 Project plan TEST, TEST, AND TEST Obviously testing is an important part of any upgrade. Purists will tell you that you can never test enough, and they have a point. But of course time and budgets do not allow for unlimited testing, so how do you formulate a testing plan for an R12 upgrade? You have to test each module thoroughly, but it is important to focus on General Ledger. This is because Oracle has made so many changes to the General Ledger and because General Ledger is one of the most important E-Business Suite modules. Therefore, our advice is for you to test each and every month-end closing at least twice. THE INSIDE SCOOP ON REPORTING IN R12 In an ideal situation, you ll have an automated reporting tool, such as Noetix, which is configured to support an upgrade from 11i to R12. If you re not fortunate enough to have such a tool, then you absolutely need to do an inventory of customizations and reports, and prioritize which ones you re going to rebuild first. During an R12 upgrade there are some issues which you need to pay extra special attention to: Changes to Vendors going to TCA (Trading Community Architecture) Security on Teleservice Set of Books THE TRANSITION PLAN MAKING CHANGE MANAGEMENT MANAGEABLE From the very beginning of the upgrade, our Project Team began preparing the transition plan. This allowed us to get early approval from to the Steering Committee and secure full support from each of the departments involved. IT Convergence White Paper 10 / 13

11 We included our Marketing department in this phase, drawing upon their expertise to communicate the transition to clients that relied on isupport to open tickets with our Support Services division. We also worked with Marketing to communicate with internal users such as consultants and our Shared Services Center who needed to enter and process items such as expense reports. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION TIMING, TIMING, TIMING The timing of our actual upgrade was just as important as everything else. Our assessment plans had led us to conclude that the upgrade would result in five days of downtime. Therefore, we planned during the Christmas-New Year s holiday, when activity would be low. Fortunately, things went better than expected, we were able to have the application up and running within 4 days; one day less than planned. Figure 7: R12 Transition to Production plan DO IT BY THE BOOK Another key piece of advice is to reinforce the knowledge base of your functional team by making sure that all of them have read and understood the pre-upgrade functional steps, which are vital for the success. PLAN PROACTIVELY, TO AVOID DISRUPTING ESSENTIAL BUSINESS FUNCTIONS Since the fiscal year finishes on December 31st, ITC did pre closing for all of 2008 during each week of December, making sure that our definitive 2008 year-end closing was completed before the downtime. KEEP THEM IN THE LOOP Also remember to let Oracle Support know that you ll be doing a R12 upgrade. They will assign a Customer Care Manager or Lead that will support your upgrade and will speed up Service Requests within Oracle Support. As mentioned above, we did have a problem with AP and because we had been working with Oracle support we were able to get the issue resolved quickly. QUICK GUIDES Our communication plan was truly successful, and it included corporate s, remote training and delivering Quick Guides (see Figure 8) for reference created in collaboration with our Marketing department. IT Convergence White Paper 11 / 13

12 Figure 8: User training material Quick guides START AT THE TOP One of the differentiators of this project was the complete involvement of the executive team, not just the IT manager, not just the CIO, not just the CFO, but the entire executive team, including the CEO. This of course isn t a novel piece of advice, but we can vouch for the fact that it is tried and true. The executive support we enjoyed through each phase of the implementation allowed us to make fast decisions and proactively resolve issues that otherwise would have become trouble spots. This top-to-bottom cooperation provides a good example of how a team with great people can tackle big challenges to make an impact and add value to the company. IT Convergence White Paper 12 / 13

13 Put this Experience to Work for You SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT THIS MISSION, YOUR INSTRUCTIONS ARE AS FOLLOWS: Upgrade to Oracle Release 12. Do it for a footprint that spans 3 continents and includes 4 E-Business Suite Applications, 17 modules, 30 customizations, and 400 Noetix reports. Keep in mind that this will be the very first R12 upgrades in a particular country, making it one of the few R12 upgrades in its region. Oh yeah, the upgrade needs to be completed in six months. It might sound like an Oracle professional s twisted version of Mission Impossible. But it is not. As we ve shown here, it is actually Mission Possible. If you re facing a similar situation, you should have confidence that it can be done, because it has been done before and done quite successfully. In addition to our own upgrade to R12, IT Convergence has helped dozens of companies upgrade to R12. If you re involved in or about to start an R12 upgrade and need some advice, then contact us at and we ll be happy to connect you with one of our R12 experts. LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The information contained herein should be deemed reliable but not guaranteed. The author has made every attempt to provide current and accurate information. If you have any comments or suggestions, please contact us: info@itconvergence.com. IT Convergence White Paper: Mission Possible: Upgrade Financials, HRMS, CRM, and Project to R12 on 3 Continents in 6 Months IT Convergence World Headquarters: 805 Veterans Blvd, Suite 216, Redwood City, CA 94063, USA Worldwide Inquiries: Tel: Fax: Copyright 2011 IT Convergence. All rights reserved. IT Convergence White Paper 13 / 13