Managing Oracle EBS implementation better.

Over the years, ERP product modules foot prints have grown and so is the complexity associated with product.  In about a decade time with increased complexities, the implementation need to take care business requirement vs module fitment for solution, shorter implementation time frame, and quick turnaround testing the solution, performance issue due to volume of transactions and accessing transaction on wide area network needs to be taken in to account.

If application is available to access though internet, it also increasingly difficult to perform load test or predict volume growth of users. It is increasing common these days, witness certain systems like Banking, Railways getting into performance issues at the peak hours as due importance might not have been given to loading of application during implementation stage. 

Appropriate product fitment to business requirement and product license of modules alone would not make an implementation successful. Implementation needs to be managed effectively right from conceptualization stage to beyond post implementation to be successful. Had earlier written about factors ( part1, part2, part3) which influence success of ERP implementation in a phased approach.

Apart from ERP product & managing implementation project, there are products available to enhance / support & manage the implementation at pre & post implementation stage better.  It’s critical the project stakeholder analyses the feasibility of using these tools. 

Brief overviews about the products, which can support Oracle EBS implementation, are, 

Oracle EBS Business accelerators: Every effort is made these days to reduce implementation time of Oracle EBS without compromising on business requirement. Hence one would find OBA quite useful during the requirement gathering & thereby automate functional set up during CRP stage (iterative process) of the implementation and thereby shorten the discovery start phase of the project.  Additionally, It provides information about flow based functionality of implementation, which is also quite critical in understanding the overall business process end to end, right at start of the project.. 

Oracle application testing suite: Oracle Application testing suite can used automate functional regression testing, Oracle Load testing. Process of manual testing can be a time consuming and hence OATS place a critical role in faster testing process and enhance productivity.

Oracle application management suite: The task of managing Applications is complex, time-consuming, and costly.   The Application Management Suites for E-Business Suite can reduce this complexity, and dramatically improve the availability, reliability, and predictability for E-Business Suite. The Suite leverages Oracle Enterprise Manager to provide enhanced system and user monitoring, configuration monitoring and change management capabilities.

Oracle Enterprise manager: Enterprise manager is quite useful to manage the entire technology stack of Database, middleware application. OEM is useful right from start to post implementation support.

Oracle Infrastructure: During implementation or post implementation, the infrastructure plays a crucial role in success of implementation. There could be a situation where, the ERP implementation from business solution perspective is said to be very effective. However, infrastructure challenges might prevent the effective implementation.  For example, tasks might take a long time to be executed, this issue may be related to network bandwidth, multiple time I/O operation, resources busy due to peak hour or resource intensive. Its critical, infrastructure is given right focus at right point of time.  Exadata machine, RAC, Data guard can be thought about and explored to overcome the infrastructure issues. Also, Saas (software-as-service) concept related to cloud computing is catching up. One of the characteristic of cloud service is Rapid elastic scalability, which means the ability to add computing capacity on demand. This feature would be useful to allocate resource for computing during peak time. 

With positioning of global single instance for multi-org operation, the application needs to be available for access 24x7 towards global operation. An application scalability suiting ever evolving business requirement is one part of it. Cost optimization in form of shorter implementation, effective testing, managing application post implementation, reliability and scalability of hardware infrastructure also plays critical part in success of implementation. Hence, naturally, one needs to look at various software tools which would enhance productivity of Oracle ERP implementation.

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Agile project methodology , PMBOK - PMP... Why & Where?

These days, one find’s more and more discussion and comparison in social forum between

• The water fall model with that of agile project methodology (iterative).
• Agile project certification /Scrum with that of PMP.

The another common question, one would find is about, which one of the project management methodology is better?.

To me, Project management has to cover all aspects and processes of project from project initiation to close, including all the commercials and if needed, one has to take care of legal aspect. Once, we get into the legal aspect or towards conflict resolution, the proof could be the documented agreement for any third party arbitration, PMBOK fairly covers these aspect to a greater extend.

Project execution method can vary it can a water fall model or iterative model. The approach towards iterative model of project execution is well defined in ‘Agile’ project methodology. To me, choosing a particular project execution methodology whether its water fall or iterative (Agile) depends on many factors.

Some of the critical ones being,
• Industry.
• Product.
• Size and complexity of the project.
• Customer or project Owner.

Industry: PMBOK is not industry specific and can suit all industry. Agile methodology is mostly applicable to IT industry and it could extend to some other industries as well, particularly in design of prototype. Also, sometimes, the solution or the product release to market might be time bound, which would call for quick turnaround time in development, hence ‘agile’ methodology can be opted.

Product: In my viewpoint, ‘Agile’ type of project management methodology suits IT products development. For example, software packaged solution or electronic product which uses micro controller or Embedded application. These products have shelf life. One has to keep up with competition and product release has to happen at right point of time, one cannot release a product version ahead OR late. Releasing a product ahead or late can be a potential risk in absorption of product by market and hence the success of product and thereby to the project itself. In such products life (months or even years depending on product), there need to be release of product versions from time to time and improvement or enhancement happen throughout the potential life of the product. This being the case, naturally Agile methodology would be a clear winner.

Size and Complexity of the project: If size of the project effort is small and if there is scope clarity, then a water fall model on Fixed price basis can be a better option as it would involve cost saving. In any case, even in small sized projects, improvements do happen post production. However, a complex project like ERP with greater degree of effort would require some form of iteration, not only for user to adopt and understand ERP functionality and wherever there are gap in the proposed business functionality, some form of customization OR integration requirement and hence agile type iterative approach would be useful. As a matter of fact, there are iteration in ERP implementation which are known as CRPs (common room pilot) but only difference may be that it might not precisely match Agile methodology like – product backlogs, sprint run, burn down charts etc.

Customer OR product owner: In an agile type of project, customer’s testing team should available to test the product output repeatedly and hence their effort is also critical. In a vendor – customer relationship, its normal in IT project environment, customer testing team (which likely to be business process team members) may not have time bandwidth to perform repeated testing. However within a company, if R and D team is coming out with iterative product output and with product owner controlling testing and producing teams the agile methodology will better suit. The fact is that scoping, commercials or even if any conflict happens - it can be resolved by the product owners.

Each project can be unique, bound by constraints and the challenges could be situational time to time, adopting a particular project management methodology alone might not bring success to a project. However, methodology would be effective tool towards success of project, if acknowledged, adopted and supported by key stakeholders. The above points could play a critical role in choosing a particular project methodology.

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Oracle EBS - To Upgrade OR Re-implement?

If its time to upgrade to next release of Oracle EBS, then depending upon the EBS footprint and complexity, the most likely question which comes up in one's mind is whether to upgrade or Re - implement.

Before, I try to put my answers, lets look at, what is Upgrade Vs Re-implement.

Upgrade : If you are earlier release of Oracle EBS like 11i and wish to move to new release of R12, you have an option of upgrading you application system / data base to higher version.
Apart from sequence of technical, functional steps that include DB and application upgrade, it might require upgrade or redevelopment of custom code unit.

The advantage is upgrade - planning and execution, can be performed at comparatively lesser time.

Re-implement: It is just like implementation of new version of ERP software, the only difference is the earlier version of ERP application is onsidered as a Legacy application.

So now, if you in older version of ERP system, the below listed details, could be the likely factors, which would favour re-implementation instead of upgrade,

• If quality of master data in current Oracle EBS system is not upto expected standards, this means, data cleansing has to be carried out. The master data could be customers, vendors, items, COA etc.



• Due to change in business, you wish to have your COA structure redefined.



• Do away with customization and adopt standard modules / new features of R12.



• There is a business process change / add more modules and you do not wish to add new modules to the existing business application due to above defined points.



• If one is considering consolidation of two or more ERP instance, which may be a business decision due to business merger or acquisition.

Decision for upgrade or Re-implement might be significant, particularly if you are moving for major release. Normally from, Oracle EBS release 11 to 11i or 11i to R12, are considered as 'major release'.

The above list may not be exhaustive, there could be other inter dependent factors and hence it calls for a detailed study involving key stake holders of the business and based on the finding of the study, a decision could be taken towards upgrade or re-implementation of Oracle EBS.

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Master data management - An overview.

From mobile telephony to web, counter sales to call centre, you find application & system to support customer & sales. However, this might keep creating discrete system, if there is no one source for master data. The new buzzword in IT industry is MDM, Let's briefly look as why MDM (Master data management) have become significant these days.

An enterprise normally tend to use many IT solution & application, to maximize its product reach & access to the market.

All transactions revolves around master data. The master data mean the operation data like customer, product, account head. Any business entity have to manage this master data effieciently without any redundancy to be effectively planning,execution & reporting.

First place, if one looks at possible causes of redundancy of data.

i. Mergers & acquisition: Quite a common cause, two similar companies in a specific industry vertical could be merged or one acquire the other. Naturally, they might have multiple system, where same customer is are available or a product might be called X in one system and the product with same attributes might be called as 'Y", which results in duplication and confusion.

ii. For orderbooking a company could use self serviceweb application or order entry through manual intervention or through mobile application, hence in this case, customer base name could vary if the two system uses different Database / master data.

iii. Though these days single instance ERP are used by multinational companies. There could be a situation when multiple instance are required due to some statutory needs of the country or due to time zone.

Fragmented inconsistent data on product, customers slows time-to-market, creates supply chain inefficiencies, results in weaker than expected market penetration, and drives up the cost of compliance. Fragmented inconsistent Customer data hides revenue recognition due for the customer, introduces risk, creates sales inefficiencies, and results in misguided marketing campaigns and lost customer loyalty. Fragmented and inconsistent Supplier data reduces supply chain efficiencies, negatively impacts spend control initiatives, and increases the risk of supplier exceptions. This might also cause failure in usage of business intelligence or data warehouse reporting system.

“Product”, “Customer” , “Supplier” and even "account head" are key business entities which are refered as Master Data.

Due to all the above, there is an increase need felt towards maintaining the master data across the organization. Hence, in the last few years, software vendors have come out with tools and techniques to maintain the master data across organization.

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ERP - Market maturity.

In about a decade's time, the ERP market has become more mature. The major players in these market have consolidated their position. Though, its pretty difficult to compare what one had in ERP market about a decade back and what is now available, however, some feature worth noting are,

Application availability over web.

Singe instance, meaning a company having operation across geographies have single application and consolidate resource usage.

ERP in cloud computing is slowly catching up, this mean company need not own /licence for the application, hardware or IT support team anymore.

ERP products and increasing becoming "plug and play" type. Earlier, ERP product had very few module revolving around finance or manufacturing domain, but these days entire business process including sales, service and Business intelligence are covered. Due to this, customization or extension of form based application would reduce OR has reduced. In a way its better to avoid customization due to maintainance cost and cost incurred due upgrade when the standard product is due for upgrade.

Instead of customization, one would definetely find a standard product to plug the gap perhaps you may not find from the same product developer but from a third party product developer. So natuarally integration would play an important role. 'Customization' is something like you own it and its your responsibility to take care of the 'baby', whereas once you have choosen the standard product through licencing route you have outsourced support.

I also feel, we would be slowly moving to time when a ERP expert will be in position to support multiple customer and provide his service and support from even a remote location due to high speed internet availability.

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Six Sigma : A PM's prespective

Some time back, I had a opportunity to present to my peers in the organization about Six - Sigma, based on my knowledge.






Many of you might be aware that large manufacturing companies do follow the six sigma methodologies towards continuous improvement of their operation. These companies use six sigma methodologies for executing their project.

If you are hearing about Six sigma quality initiative for the first time, then probably my presentation might useful to know what is six-sigma in brief from a project manager's prespective, I have also made an attempt to compare Six sigma with PMBOK (Project Management body of knowledge). Hope its interesting...

I found a business week article published some time back that interested me. I always thought that one cannot follow six sigma blindly, statistical methods are important, so is creativity and making judgment based on a situation after quicly analysing the facts.

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Factors which influence the success of ERP project implementation - Part 3

The post is continuation of my earlier post (Part 1) and (Part 2) on the same subject. We will now look at other few factors.

Phase 3:

Business Process Engineering or Re-engineering: An ERP system has to be configured to work as per expectation. The business processes have to be mapped to ERP product and set up have to be configured. The process of requirement gathering towards set up requires coordinated effort between functional consultant and the business process area owners through workshops. An iterative approach needs to be followed, meaning the system has to be set up 2 to 3 times to map the requirement and refined if needed, before actually performing the set up in production system. Such iterative approaches of mapping business to systems are referred as ‘Conference room pilots’ (CRP). Data migration from legacy system and their strategy, Interfaces to feeder system needs to defined and agreed up and tested.

Training: At times, training to end user is overlooked. Inadequate training is the one of the cause for bottleneck in training. If possible it’s better to work out a strategy for measuring the training effectiveness. There are some thoughts that training can be done towards production move. But, its better training is provided from the stage of defining business process, so that even if there is a change in business process user can appreciate the changes.

Support team & cut over planning: It equally critical, plan is also worked out for the support team to be in place post go-live. Normally Implementation team would be handing over to the support team. The support team is either in-house or out sourced. Cut over planning means the activities that would be carried out by the time users stops entering into the legacy system and the time by which user starts using new ERP system. Effort also need to put towards cut over planning particularly, the activities as how reconciliation of legacy and new ERP system would be performed post Go-Live and as what are the activities, which would be performed during the cut over period with assigned owner to each task.

Go-Live and beyond: Beyond go – live, there is a certain period, which is required towards stabilization of the system. It’s also easier said than done. Though these can be guidelines for a general scenario, each of the ERP project are unique has its own challenges and situation changes based on various factors, this is where project managers and PMO can play a vital role in steering the project to safety and thereby achieve the end objective of a successful implementation.

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