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.
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| 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?”
eprentise is in the business of helping organizations that run Oracle E-Business Suite by providing transformation software. These customers have particular Oracle-related challenges when they “upgrade” their business at a macro level and want their Oracle instance or instances to follow and support the new “release” of the business. EBS’s strength is in running the business. The implementation of EBS is a model of the business’ organization and processes. EBS was not engi-neered to make it easy to change certain key aspects of the implementation — the model of the business — for a business “upgrade”.
The complexity of EBS meant that customers had few options other than reimplementing if they wanted to keep their systems aligned with the business changes. A series of reimplementations is not only costly, it is unnecessary.
eprentise Transformation software was architected from the ground up with the purpose of providing enterprise agility to organizations that rely on OEBS for their financials and day-to-day operations.
eprentise also works with System Integrators, Consultants, and Professional Service firms who help EBS customers.
