Enterprise Platform strategy

This blog and options tabled is applicable for organizations on oracle enterprise platform. This is a dilemma which many organizations across globe are facing and we are no different. When I attended oracle innovation and enterprise summit at London I thought that we might get some answers for companies which are Apple’s of the world as I am bit tired of people always mentioning Forbes 100 as their success stories. The reality is there are thousands or probably more organization that need to decide their strategy. As oracle EBS release 11.X is going out of support in next few years organizations need to define their strategies.

This strategy option is valid for mid-market organizations that are growing their foot print across geography.

The everlasting dilemma whether to Upgrade for achieving the new package benefits at a relatively lesser cost versus - to Re-Implement a fully re-engineered R12 based solution bringing in maximum benefits but probably at a relatively higher cost. The typical decision point is based on:-

Upgrade-
 •Lower cost, shorter timeframe option
 •Suited when the ‘latest version’ is the driver
 •Scope to review business processes
 •Key areas like Org Structure, COA generally untouched
 •Organization wide processes, procedures and data unaffected
 •Minimal Change Management
 •Minimal involvement of Users
 •Higher application downtime at cutover
 •Existing business pain points may continue

Re-implementation-
 •Suited for business transformation and instance consolidation
 •Scope to review major decisions and limitations of the past
 •Longer timeframe, relatively more expensive than an upgrade
 •Lower cutover risks – no downtime, easier rollback
 •Higher adoption risks – Impact on Organization structure, Change Management, Data Migration, History of Data
 •Higher amount of ownership (solution) with Client

This makes a simple decision matrix (though final decision is based on number of parameters- you can contact me if you need to know them)

In current economic climate it’s not difficult to assume that many organizations are taking decision to upgrade instead of re-implementation. The situation becomes challenging if organization is also growing because of organic /inorganic growth specially if becoming global operations. This brings 2^nd dimension to overall

Multiple Instances:
 •Suited for local needs , But not directly scalable for growth
 •Simplified Application Change Management , But Duplication of development components
 •Instance Stability and Lower Application downtime due to independent nature, But Changes   affecting multiple  instance take longer to apply
 •Better performance with similar infrastructure, However needs higher overall infrastructure
 •Consolidation and reporting takes more time

Single Global Instance:
 •Suited for Global standardization
 •Global Enterprise Management through best in class processes
 •Enables shared services business processes and support, Productivity Enhancement
 •Global Enterprise Visibility
 •Consolidated reporting across the Enterprise
 •Responsive to business changes and Growth
 •Economies of Scale, Reduced Cost of Maintenance & Infrastructure
 •Application Downtime, batch processing

While the rollout approach can be either Big Bang (not recommended) or rollout with their own pro and cons. As

Big-Bang:
 •All 11.5.x or previous versions instances upgraded or re-implemented to R12 at the same time
 •Quicker achievement of end state but higher risk of failure
 •Higher concurrent requirement of personnel and resources make it prohibitive
 •Intensive change management effort due to simultaneous change across the organization
 •lesser interdependency with other initiatives

Rollout:
 •Staggered implementation/upgrade of all instances
 •Focused execution
 •Impact of change lesser due to staggered change
 •Longer timelines at incremental costs
 •Potential for other organization wide initiatives to impact execution – Freezing change

Concluding, it’s always a challenging decision based on a combination of objective considerations (parameters where decision can be relatively easily made) and subjective considerations (parameters which vary in importance depending upon organization particular business issues and the significance of the factor for any given situation).

The objective of this blog is to present the strategy options for organizations in the 4th Quadrant. Here are few options for organization going for growth/transformation along with going global.

In the architectural options I have taken the base position that organization is a decent Oracle foot print along with other industry leader foot print. So the base position taken is

• Implementation of Human Capital Management
• Implementation of Financial sub ledger modules
• Implementation of ledger and asset
• Implementation of project modules
• Implementation of Supply Chain modules
• Europe based implementation going global with far east to start with

Option 1: This in my view is the best option, as have a combination of pragmatism along with ambition of going global. The approach looks at Oracle 12.X multi instance strategy along with HR fusion on cloud which will give the maximum out of the functionalities available. Also the solution looks into the options of having outsourced managed service and SAAS for geographies which does not justify high spend in enterprise class SW implementation.

Option 2: This approach looks at enterprise class applications in a multi instance setup.

I will be publishing details on my thoughts on both options in my next blog. Meanwhile would be interested to know approach taken by different organizations. Please provide your feedback/comments which would be helpful.

Author

Ashish Shukla

Manager, Transformation and Governance

Colt Technologies services. www.colt.net