EnterpriseOne Upgrade – A Capitulation – Part 2

Last week we discussed upon why to look forward to an upgrade. Now let’s have a brief upon different Upgrade Types or Upgrade Paths

1. Technical Upgrade
   1. Technical Upgrade without Enhancements (As-Is upgrade)
   2. Technical Upgrade with Enhancements (New features)
2. Hybrid Upgrade
   1. Re-Implementation with New features and existing mods
3. Transformational Upgrade
   1. Complete Re-Implementation with New features and processes

Technical Upgrade

Technical upgrade refers to upgrade of JD Edwards without any or minimal changes to business processes. Similarly efforts and cost are on the lower side for tech upgrade. Even the customized processes are brought forward. There are two types of Technical upgrades
As Is Upgrade – Here, upgrade is done without performing any module/processes upgrade. Thus newer features and enhanced processes are not available. The advantages of As-is would be that the down time is less, hence faster, and complete historical data is available.
But, if the business has changed considerably then As Is would be a failure. Similarly junk of objects and customized processes would still remain back.
Technical upgrade with enhancements – Here newer features and processes are implemented. Hence a little slower than As Is upgrade. Only extension to the As Is would be that the organization gets additional modules and processes to work with.

Hybrid Upgrade

In a hybrid upgrade, we re-implement the ERP system with new functionalities and existing customizations alongwith a technical upgrade. New functionalities would replace existing processes as well.
Organizations which have changed a lot since last implemented can utilize these improved processes, and probably replace their customized solutions with new modules are apt cases for a hybrid upgrade. Even as for such organizations, they would be at an advantage to revisit their business processes and enhance them.
In a Hybrid upgrade organizations can identify their inefficiencies, issues, and verify their customizations with respect to new functionality in the new release. Once done, it can be scoped out with the functional upgrade having the modifications list and transformational activities.

Transformational Upgrade

Very much as the name suggests, in a Transformational Upgrade, all the customizations are taken off, and vanilla JD Edwards is re-implemented using newer enhanced business processes. The flip side of a transformational upgrade would be that historical data is unavailable and hence can affect planning systems, as of reports, aging reports, etc.
Transformational upgrade also helps revisit the processes, inefficiencies like that in a hybrid upgrade. This way, an organization gets an opportunity to design their business activities and processes over again. It is a mature approach since, we would already know what is our process, what are our capabilities, where can we improve.
Organizations opting for transformational upgrade would be those who have acquired new businesses viz Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A). Such orgs’ will have a need to standardize their processes across businesses and can utilize this opportunity to take away the best of all.

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For an organization thinking of an upgrade should get an Upgrade Assessment done by any of the Oracle Partners like L&T Infotech, Systime, Deloitte etc. This would give them an upfront visibility into business readiness and the likely issues, both from a functional and technological perspective that may emerge in a planned upgrade.
We would continue our discussion on Upgrade Assessment and what to accomplish through it in further articles.
Continued…