Best Practices in Implementation and Upgrade of Oracle e-business Suite

1. Best Practices in Implementation and Upgradeof Oracle e-business Suite Oracle Application User’s Group

2. Agenda • Assess Your Organization’s “Personality” • Budgetary Appetite • Talent and Know How • Ownership vs. Stewardship • Manage the Project • Plan, Plan, Plan • Use Project Management Science • Design Considerations • Know Why and When to Upgrade • Know Impact of not staying current • When an upgrade is really a fresh install • Considerations while doing a point release upgrade • Making down time less painful • Incorporating new functionalities during upgrade • Sharing experience among audience Oracle Application User’s Group

3. Assess Your Organization’s Personality • Budgetary Appetite • Minimizing Costs vs. Maximizing Value • “Building” experience vs. “Renting” experience • Talent supply and demand – times are changing again!!! • Talent and Know How • Experience performing many implementations and upgrades • Experience with specific releases of applications and database • In House; On-Site; Near-Shore; Off-Shore (Global Delivery Model) • Ownership and Stewardship • Are your driving the ship or just along for the ride? • Business owners vs. IT owners Oracle Application User’s Group

4. Actively Manage the Process • Plan, Plan, Plan – Four Basic Dimensions • Scope • Tasks (effort) • Dependencies (critical path) • Resources These dimensions tell you the time and the cost • Apply Good Project Management Science • The project manager is not solely responsible for success • Raise issues and know when to escalate issue to risk • Identify Conflict • Report the Truth – All of the Time • Track tasks and the timeline will take care of itself • Business owners (VP, CFO, CIO, CEO, etc..) have the responsibility to clear hurdles, make decisions, and resolve conflict. Make them involve actively in all the phases of the project • Over Communicate rather under communicate • “Hope” is not a Strategy Oracle Application User’s Group

5. Design Considerations • Global Template • Multi Org Considerations • Customization Vs Extension • Design and Build Standards • Using Oracle Out of the box • CRP – Proof of concept for executing your design • Simplification • Testing strategy • Importance of Training Oracle Application User’s Group

6. Why and when an organization need to Upgrade Why: • To keep up with the technology and being current • To resolve TAR issues Faster • To get fixes for lot of known bugs • To use new functionalities and new products • To get performance improvement When: • Do at least 1 point release upgrade per year. Ideally upgrade after every 2 point releases • Upgrade to the latest point release that has been in the market for at least 3 to 6 months Oracle Application User’s Group

7. Impact of not staying current • Loss of supported upgrade path • Reduction of outside talent pool (i.e. higher costs) • Reduced number of other users that share your issues and concerns • Increased risk of losing in house talent • Loss of support from Oracle • Even if you stay supported from a contractual perspective, you will no longer be at the top of Oracle “to do” list. • When an upgrade is really a fresh install • Upgrade Vs Reinstall • Single Org to Multi-Org environment Oracle Application User’s Group

8. Considerations while doing Upgrade • Clear understanding of architectural changes and technology stack changes during point release upgrade • Impact to 3rd party systems • Impact to customizations • Full fledged System Integration testing • Unit testing of all the existing functionalities • Impact analysis on changes to common modules like FND, AD, Workflow etc to the entire e-business suite Oracle Application User’s Group

9. Making Downtime Less Painful • No Substitute for Careful Planning • Limit Scope • Spread downtime over several periods • Database Upgrade • Technology Stack Upgrade • Applications Upgrade • Use multiple DBA’s and built-in features • Compile objects at end of all patches • Rehearse • Plan downtime during non-peak seasons Oracle Application User’s Group

10. Incorporating new functionalities during Upgrade • Oracle comes out with lot of new functionalities during each point release upgrade • Oracle also introduces few new modules in each of their point releases • Organization can maximize ROI on point release upgrade by identifying and start using the new functionalities that has either business benefit or system benefit • The only work to start using new functionalities is to do proper communication and training • Eliminate some of the customizations by incorporating new functionalities If you just do a plain point release upgrade without incorporating any new functionalities, you will end up in not using those functionalities for a long period time Oracle Application User’s Group

11. Contact Us Arul Murugan, CPIM Sr. Principal Consultant, enrich IT Ph: 404-723-1405 Email: Arul@enrichIT.com Jim Grebe Managing Partner, Value Technology, Inc. Ph: 770-331-5072 Email: jgrebe@value-technology.com Oracle Application User’s Group