Seven Years and Counting...

I look back at the calendar, I almost can not believe the year is closing. It’s true that time flies when you’re having fun. This week marks my seventh anniversary with CheckPoint Consulting and it has been an immeasurably rewarding experience in too many ways to count. Since 2008 I’ve had the pleasure of working with a phenomenal team of colleagues and friends, working in exciting and challenging client environments and experiencing the cutting edge of technology. Since joining Checkpoint I have been a part of over 20 projects that included upgrading.

Upgrade; to advance, improve, promote and/or to progress

Seven years is a long time in our high-tech, fast moving world. Here are my seven nuggets of wisdom to consider when performing an upgrade to any EPM version. What follows is in no particular order, and it is certainly not meant to be exhaustive, but hopefully it can get us thinking about charting our paths and provide some healthy food for thought:

1. Advisory: Are you making the proper use of your strategic investment in EPM? Is the product and its data and analysis reaching the proper audience? An upgrade can be a great time to look at how the product is being used, who is consuming the data, and if the proper tool is being used for the proper job. This is also an opportunity to look at new products and features. Make sure your corporate strategy is aligned with your product usage, or make the requisite changes to align them.
2. Hardware:Making a decision on hardware is a decision that accompanies most upgrades. As hardware reaches the end-of-lease or as underlying systems fall out of support, the hardware decision can be a large cost-decision in any EPM upgrade. It used to be an easier decision since it was essentially a capital expense for new servers. Yet these days, things are much more complex. Hardware can range from commodity systems (some flavor of on-premise servers) with physical or virtual options, engineered systems like Exalytics from Oracle, or any of a wide range of hosted or cloud solutions: some utilizing SaaS and some PaaS models. Whichever solution you select can make or break a project, so make your selection based on your company’s expertise, the skills and record of your partner vendors, and the strategic direction of your corporate IT organization.
3. Software: The Oracle EPM suite offers many software decisions as well. Do you select the latest software version with any accompanying risks that the product suite may have issues?  Do you go with a slightly older version that may be more stable, but have a slightly shorter shelf-life? Do all of your divisions share one central system or application, or should that be diversified by business units or geography? Upgrades can be a great time to revisit design questions and previously held assumptions about how to approach your business.   
4. Training: Do you have the right skills in-house to perform an upgrade? Do those resources know the changes in new versions? Do they need additional training to get up to speed, and to be able to properly administer the systems? The Oracle EPM suite of products is complex and always changing. Clients who are more than a couple versions behind could have issues acclimating to the new look and feel of products and even understanding how to best exploit the power of the Oracle EPM suite within the organization. All of the above items for consideration may require training at strategic and tactical levels to get the most out of a new software upgrade and make a project successful.
5. Testing: What level of testing is necessary to move an upgrade into production? Is it enough to run a few objects or does a full round of UAT need to be performed? Is it enough to see a few reports run quickly, or an Essbase aggregation to be comparable or faster?  Perhaps you need end-to-end performance testing to be convinced. Testing is a frequently overlooked aspect of upgrades, and failure to account for both the time and resource needs can cripple an upgrade project. In-depth testing becomes even more crucial when newer code-lines are part of the upgrade.
6. Go-Live: What does go-live entail? Is there some sort of end-user changes made before they can hit the new system? Will their old URLs work? Are parallel data entry or close processes required between a legacy system and the new upgraded system and if so, how are data entries being synchronized? What sort of criteria will represent a pass/fail for the new system? All of the above are some of the questions that need to be addressed for any upgraded system to move into full production mode.
7. Support:Who is on the line for supporting a new system? What hours will constitute support? Is there an IT staff prepared to manage the infrastructure, and is that staff versed in EPM? Many IT resources are tasked with too many systems to support, and only a cursory knowledge of EPM. As a general rule you do not want your corporate consolidation system (your system of record) to be under supported, especially not in the midst of major changes like an upgrade.  Support staff and paths should be clearly delineated and any skill gaps identified and acknowledged (if not resourced) prior to any major upgrade.

In 2008, many significant world events happened, one I recall are the China Olympic Games. The games were magnificent, and so well organized that is was hard to believe it was China’s first time hosting. This brings me to a concluding point, if this is your first upgrade or hundredth upgrade set your organization for a course of solidarity and optimal performance by asking the right questions upfront. These last seven years taught me that time is the ultimate teacher. Technology is only a part of an upgrade, the questions you ask are the most intricate part of the success. This list has its own set of concerns and debatable points. This should be just enough to help you begin thinking through all the special challenges that upgrades involve. If there is anyway CheckPoint can assist your upgrade journey, please let us know. We’re always happy to help.