Written by Skip Straus Monday, October 12 2009
The IT leaders who run Oracle E-Business Suite know the objective. R12. It’s the release that will carry them to 2015 or beyond. They will run one instance, it will be global in scope, and all the business users on the planet (well, the ones who logon to their instance) will follow the same business processes. R12 will be the single source of financial truth. Some 11i customers have already made the transition, others are in process, many are planning, and a few are too busy with other priorities and will wait.
Making the transition to a major release of an enterprise system with E-Business Suite’s scope is a huge endeavor, with many people in different roles, and there is a lot of freedom of action on the playing field. On one level, it’s a game – a complicated one – that takes several years to play. IT teams don’t really compete against each other. Most will actually get to R12, but the ones with the lowest costs, best looking R12 environments, and fastest times will be the winners.
There are four distinct strategies for achieving an objective: Direct, Divisional, Delay, and Indirect. The strategist selects the one that best fits the situation profile, the landscape, and available resources. How does the R12 strategist select the transition strategy to get to R12? What will they depend on to win? Let’s look at some examples.
| Strategy | Example 11i to R12 Transition |
| Direct |
This requires a position of strength. The Direct Strategist’s organization has confidence that R12 offers business value, and no one questions how much it will cost to get there. A direct strategy works best when you have plenty of resources and can take the most obvious approach. It’s easy for others to understand. There are two 11i instance landscape profiles where this strategy works.
|
| Divisional |
The Divisional Strategist doesn’t have the resources or the technology assets to go directly to R12. Top management may not fully believe how R12 helps the stock price. Getting part of the business on R12 becomes the short term, intermediate objective. There might be a small, relatively simple business unit that can be the R12 pilot. Implement. A fresh implementation will not be difficult or drain the IT organization. Once they go live in 6 – 12 months, the larger organization can monitor their success, typically for a year. Meanwhile, IT can advertise R12 throughout the business and figure out what to do next. The next objective is now more complex: to get from the mature, core 11i instance and a clean, lean R12 instance to the single global R12 instance. The intermediate situation is not of much value, but it looks like progress. R12 is live. Reimplement. The next phase is to go from division to division and reimplement them into the small R12 instance. There may be a learning curve where the reimplementations and data conversions get easier. The time this takes is in the 12 – 24 month range. |
| Delay |
What’s the hurry? The Delay Strategist waits for more favorable conditions. If there’s no immediate business value in running R12, you can’t afford the transition, the resources are better used for productive projects, the current 11i environment (with one or more instances) is incompatible with an upgrade to R12, or you don’t have the technology assets, then it makes sense to wait. Others can live through the early stability and quality issues inherent in R12. There is hope. Hope that 11i will be stable and supported for another 2 – 3 years. Hope that someone will figure out how to upgrade or reimplement easier and cheaper. |
| Indirect |
The Indirect Strategist is also resource-constrained. But where the Divisional Strategist settles for a partial objective, the Indirect Strategist maneuvers for a single global R12 instance, without compromise, with a go-live date sooner than anyone expects. The Indirect Strategist depends on finding a way to change the rules of the game. The organization should have confidence in the Strategist’s vision and prior track record for doing the impossible. The Indirect Strategist has allies in high places in the business whose success depends on the business capabilities due when R12 goes live. In the case of 11i to R12, the Indirect Strategist can change the rules by eliminating two requirements from the transition path.
The Strategist changes the game, but it’s recognizable. The business still needs to define what must be different in R12 to maximize value, but they don’t waste effort on configurations and setups that need not change. They consolidate all the 11i instances into one instance compatible with Oracle Upgrade to R12, without losing any data or database integrity. Reliance on the organization’s super users and business analysts who understand the business – instead of armies of programmers – leads to schedules of about 6 months to take a single instance to an updated R12 configuration, or 10 – 18 months to take multiple instances to a single R12. Business value sooner + lower transition costs = faster payback. Unlike Direct, Divisional, and Delay, this strategy is not transparent, and it’s not easily believed. Others won’t understand how it can work. The Strategist must discover how to eliminate the two 11i instance profile requirements. Thought leaders in the Oracle EBS community are just now discovering the software technology that enables the indirect strategy. Since the technology is new, the Strategist will also need to overcome natural resistance to change. |
eprentise provides the software technology that changes the 11i to R12 transition game. The Indirect Strategist substitutes software for consultants and programmers, and then captures the full value of the Oracle Upgrade technology asset. They retain more of the investment in the 11i instance, and Time-To-Value is shorter. The R12 instance is configured to go to 2015, and it is a true single global instance.
For the last two years, the thought leaders have counseled E-Business Suite customers to be prepared to reimplement. At the time that made sense. The Direct Strategists prepared for, and some have completed, R12 reimplementation projects. The Divisional Strategists conceded that they would implement and over time load 11i data into a new, small R12 instance, which is a flavor of reimplementation. The Delay Strategists accept the status quo and avoid the resource-intensive reimplementation project as long as they can.
It’s clear that the surprising combination of eprentise Transformation software plus Oracle’s R12 Up-grade software has an impact on all four 11i to R12 transition strategies. A single winner has emerged.
The game has changed, and the thought leaders are asking, “Why reimplement?”
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January Puzzle
A traveler gets lost on a deserted island and finds himself surrounded by a group of n cannibals.
Each cannibal wants to eat the traveler but, as each knows, there is a risk. A cannibal that attacks and eats the traveler would become tired and defenseless. After he eats, he would become an easy target for another cannibal (who would also become tired and defenseless after eating).
The cannibals are all hungry, but they cannot trust each other to cooperate. The cannibals happen to be well versed in game theory, so they will think before making a move.
Does the nearest cannibal, or any cannibal in the group, devour the lost traveler?
Solution
The short answer is the traveler’s fate depends on the parity of the group. If there is an odd number of canibals, the traveler will be eaten, but if there is an even number, the traveler will survive.
To prove this, we will consider small groups and use mathematical induction to explain the solution for larger groups.
Case n = 1: this is an obvious case. If there is one cannibal, the traveler will be eaten. It doesn’t matter that the cannibal will get tired because there are no other cannibals around as a threat.
Case n = 2: this is a more interesting case. Each cannibal wishes to each the traveler, but each knows he cannot. If either cannibal eats the traveler, then he will become defenseless and the other one will eat him. So each cannibal uses backwards induction to realize that the only strategy is to not eat the traveler. The hapless traveler finds a bit of luck, therefore, and actually survives.
Case n = 3: this is where the problem gets interesting. The best strategy is for the closest cannibal to make a move and eat the traveler. The cannibal will be defenseless after eating, but ultimately he will be safe. Why is that? The reasoning is due to induction: once the cannibal eats the traveler, the resulting situation has 2 unfed cannibals and the 1 defenseless cannibal. But as we just showed above, when there are 2 unfed cannibals, neither will make a move for fear of being eaten by the other! Thus the first cannibal to make a move will be safe as the remaining 2 cannibals block each other.
We can prove the higher cases using mathematical induction. If the number n is odd, then the closest cannibal can safely eat the traveler because the remaining number of unfed cannibals is even (and by induction, with an even number of unfed cannibals no one makes a move). If the number n is even, then no cannibal will eat the traveler, for if he did, the remaining number of cannibals would be odd, meaning he will get eaten by the induction hypothesis.
Success Tips for Oracle Project Management
- Create a standard for documentation at the beginning of your project, and hold team members accountable for completing documentation requirements as well as keeping them at and above the standards required.
- Before promulgating user documentation or training, it’s also a good idea to choose a representative from the among the business users base to review materials first.
- If you are not sure about the resources and budget required, obtain several estimates from people that have experience with the same size and scope of your project.
- Be explicit, before beginning the project, what internal resources are required for execution. This includes people, infrastructure, hardware, and software.
- Help the project champion understand the impact your project will have on the organization and how its successful completion will make him or her an internal hero or heroine for supporting it.
- Break up your project into smaller projects (try for projects that can be completed in 4-6 months, especially early on) to get success and demonstrate momentum.
- Make sure that your testing includes reports, upstream and downstream interfaces, customizations, enhancements, and workflows.
- Ensure that comprehensive transition reports and meetings between departing and incoming personnel are completed.
- Instead of spending time and resources implementing third-party reporting, consider consolidating multiple instances, moving to a global chart of accounts (CoA), and/or standardizing on a consistent calendar.
- Include governance, risk, and compliance management as part of the project plan.
- Finally, celebrate the successes. Too many projects focus on defects, failures, or small cost over-runs without looking at the big picture and what was accomplished.
The Analyst Corner
John Van Decker, Research VP of Gartner, states:
"A single chart of accounts allows consistency in financial reporting across the enterprise by standardizing on common metrics and reporting structures, reduces dependencies on a separate financial consolidation system, and significantly reduces the costs incurred with ongoing, complex conversions and translations."
