ERP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM): 10 reasons why ...

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E NTERPRISE C HANGE M ANAGEMENT ERP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM): 10 reasons why ERP change management has outgrown helpdesk software. Advances in ERP applications combined with complex implementations are challenging ERP specialists to manage change faster with fewer errors. As business-driven changes come faster, many ERP managers are struggling to break the ROI barrier for their ERP applications. Helpdesk-centric CM strategies do little to address the needs of complex ERP support and upgrade tasks, and increase the organization’s exposure to unmanaged and unauthorized ERP changes. Now, process-based CM/ALM capabilities are providing the ability to bridge an ERP from the implementation project to Level 2 production support with much less risk, while reducing ERP ownership costs (TCO). Introduction The best Enterprise Software for your company, the best consulting effort to help configure workflows to match your needs, and a serious investment in the future. Every business has its own way of dealing with change. How you respond can mean the critical difference between paying for it - or profiting from it. ERP Applications are driving Enterprise Architecture Change Companies using Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications are making large investments in the future. It is said that implementing an ERP application can be compared to “re-wiring the Enterprise Central Nervous System”. These Enterprise Applications carry a hefty price tag and require months of preparation prior to final testing and rollout. Enterprise IT architects plan the enterprise data architectures using key ERP data stores, including Oracle’s Trade Community Architecture (TCA). Next generation ERP apps will introduce new technology-- Web services, integrated analytics, business-activity monitoring, portals, data hubs, and repositories--all of which must be mastered to be used effectively. At the heart of the primary ERP vendors’ redevelopment efforts is the adoption of service-oriented architectures, Web services standards, and business process management technology. SOA and BPM, the vendors say, are critical to making their applications more modular and easier to adapt as needed. Why do so Many ERP Implementations Fall Short of Expectations? Since ERP projects were monitored to evaluate their success rate and resultant business impact, the majority of these implementations since 1995 (65%-75%) missed original expectations, coming in late and over the initial budget. Most companies simply underestimate the amount of change associated with deploying and operating Enterprise Applications. Once in operation, there is a constant stream of changes driven by the business, numerous patches from the application vendor, and literally hundreds of minor and maintenance changes each year. The cost for this underestimate can be significant, and can often exceed the cost of the Enterprise/ERP Application software. Change Management (CM) errors cost time and money, result in miscommunication, and erode user confidence.

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E N T E R P R I S E C H A N G E M A N A G E M E N T

ERP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM): 10 reasons why ERP change management has outgrown helpdesk software.

Advances in ERP applications combined with complex implementations are challenging ERP specialists to manage change faster with fewer errors. As business-driven changes come faster, many ERP managers are struggling to break the ROI barrier for their ERP applications. Helpdesk-centric CM strategies do little to address the needs of complex ERP support and upgrade tasks, and increase the organization’s exposure to unmanaged and unauthorized ERP changes. Now, process-based CM/ALM capabilities are providing the ability to bridge an ERP from the implementation project to Level 2 production support with much less risk, while reducing ERP ownership costs (TCO).

Introduction

The best Enterprise Software for your company, the best consulting effort to help configure workflows to match your needs, and a serious investment in the future. Every business has its own way of dealing with change. How you respond can mean the critical difference between paying for it - or profiting from it.

ERP Applications are driving Enterprise Architecture Change Companies using Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications are making

large investments in the future. It is said that implementing an ERP application

can be compared to “re-wiring the Enterprise Central Nervous System”. These

Enterprise Applications carry a hefty price tag and require months of preparation

prior to final testing and rollout. Enterprise IT architects plan the enterprise data

architectures using key ERP data stores, including Oracle’s Trade Community

Architecture (TCA). Next generation ERP apps will introduce new technology--

Web services, integrated analytics, business-activity monitoring, portals, data

hubs, and repositories--all of which must be mastered to be used effectively.

At the heart of the primary ERP vendors’ redevelopment efforts is the adoption of

service-oriented architectures, Web services standards, and business process

management technology. SOA and BPM, the vendors say, are critical to making

their applications more modular and easier to adapt as needed.

Why do so Many ERP Implementations Fall Short of Expectations? Since ERP projects were monitored to evaluate their success rate and resultant

business impact, the majority of these implementations since 1995 (65%-75%)

missed original expectations, coming in late and over the initial budget. Most

companies simply underestimate the amount of change associated with deploying

and operating Enterprise Applications. Once in operation, there is a constant

stream of changes driven by the business, numerous patches from the application

vendor, and literally hundreds of minor and maintenance changes each year.

The cost for this underestimate can be significant, and can often exceed the cost

of the Enterprise/ERP Application software. Change Management (CM) errors

cost time and money, result in miscommunication, and erode user confidence.

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Redefining IT Change Management to Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

This article explores CM/ALM (Change Management/Application Lifecycle Management) for

Enterprise Applications throughout the Application Lifecycle, highlights common mistakes made,

provides an understanding of the magnitude of the challenge, and shares some lessons learned. It is

surprising that the complexity of the average applications environment does not compare favorably

with the typical level of CM/ALM automation used to manage changes in these environments.

Companies invest heavily in Enterprise Applications, employ experts for several months to configure

the application, and then typically use inadequate software that is not Sarbanes-Oxley compliant for

Change Management. This is often an expensive mistake that can easily be avoided.

Business-oriented Change Management has become the preferred approach for ERP projects to

address the widespread business process impact. As such, there has been a certain amount of

confusion between Organizational Change Management and that in the IT lexicon, where Change

Management is discipline associated Application Software and Configuration Changes (along with

software configuration management, issue & defect management, release management, etc.). Rather

than approach application change as separate events, these events are in fact part of a series of

processes. To address the full scope of IT change management activities and IT Governance,

Enterprise Software Management vendors are delivering the next wave of process-based solutions for

managing change to Enterprise Applications, now referred to as Application Lifecycle Management

(or simply ALM).

The ALM Mandate: Application Management & Change infrastructure should mirror processes defined not simply to monitor change, but to facilitate change.

ALM solutions target embedded productivity and compliance through change governance for Oracle

E-Business Suite (EBS). As such, integrating the Source Version Control with Issue/SCR

Management and Release management are key distinguishing characteristics to more traditional CM

solutions. These solutions are aimed at easing compliance and change governance challenges,

including change auditing and security, and application enhancements. ALM delivers the simple,

powerful and persuasive answer for change theorists: foundational controls. That is, enforceable

processes that clearly governed how change would be defined, monitored and thus implemented.

Top-tier performers are not merely change embracers or early adopters; they identified and enforced

“process commandments” that constrained wasteful behaviors while reinforcing productive

discipline.

Identifying Core CM/ALM Disciplines

One example of a core process discipline in the organizations that consistently outperform when it

comes to change is effective integration of the Issue/SCR Management, Version Management and

Release Management processes. Maintaining version control for all custom objects in the production

database, or implementing version control software is an example of a high-impact control—call

them process enforcement controls—that gives IT leaders greater leverage over their process

investments. The bottom line is that these process tools make good developers better and faster at

doing what they do best. For example, when developers have ready access to earlier versions of

custom objects, using intelligent compare utilities to identify changes across revisions, they are much

more likely to perform more accurate impact analysis. When you provide these process enforcement

tools across development teams, you then create a more fluid transition process that significantly

reduces the propagation of errors.

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Understand the Objective of ERP Applications

For a large percentage of ERP customers, an ERP implementation has been the most complicated and

costly software project they have undertaken. Companies have made big investments in ERP

software, and leading CEO’s now want to see IT contributing more to the bottom line – producing

higher value at lower cost. Notwithstanding, patches and new releases create ongoing support and

business adaptation challenges that can chip away from the returns on ERP investments. Unmanaged

changes to ERP applications have generated some of the most recounted project horror stories.

Consequently, ERP Change Management is becoming the focus of attention in many IT

organizations.

Enterprise applications are intended to:

• Standardize individual, workgroup, and corporate

Business Processes throughout the enterprise.

• Leverage corporate data from “End-to-end”.

• Make changes in Business Processes easier and give the

company a “competitive edge”.

• Increase employee interaction and reduce duplication of

effort

A key variable in

determining the Total

Cost of Ownership (TCO)

for your ERP application

is to manage and control

the cost of incremental

changes.

Changes are inevitable. Most companies adapt their business processes for their ERP, but initially

find it easier to reduce the impact of the organizational change by customizing and extending the

ERP functionality to provide legacy system capabilities that are considered to be business critical.

The magnitude of these collective changes is more than most companies can effectively manage.

Staffing levels required for steady-state support operations quickly become overwhelmed because the

roles they have traditionally played must take on significantly more responsibilities, and the roles in

the ERP environment are very different from legacy system administration functions.

ERP Application Lifecycle Management: Level 2 vs. Level 1 Support

Until recently, IT Change Management had traditionally fallen within the domain of a helpdesk or

service desk-based operation. Largely due to the widespread install base of helpdesk software, it

became a de facto standard for Level 2 ERP support specialists. Unfortunately, most helpdesk

software does not address the wide variety of issues that are encountered, nor does it facilitate the

interaction between the business user and Application support specialists. Experience shows that this

issue would pose a critical shortcoming to implementing workflow-based processes with the key

decision-makers and subject matter experts in the business community.

Level 2 Support: Processes defined for ERP Application Specialists

ERP specialists, including business analysts, application administrators and technical application

specialists manage and perform the various level 2 Functional and Technical ERP support functions.

Many of these level 2 support processes, issue and defect tracking, actually begin during the ERP

implementation project when the ERP application is being configured, customized, etc., and must be

rigorously tested before it can deployed into production. In order to fully understand the difference

between the typical Level 1 service desk and Level 2 Application support, it is necessary to

understand the functional and technical scope of the various Level 2 ERP Support and Application

Management activities.

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There are a number of CM-related challenges that can present obstacles to realizing the full business

value of a company’s ERP Application investment. Unless you anticipate and prepare for change,

the impact of change and related services issues is often more painful than expected:

• The underlying benefit of the ERP architecture, a common data and application architecture,

also presents one of the biggest challenges. Since the various modules are tightly integrated,

patches can affect modules which were not the original target of the patch.

• Involvement and the level of commitment required of key business personnel during all

aspects of business process and application functionality discussions. CM errors will result

in miscommunication, delays, and more time required from your key business personnel.

• The number of patches, revisions to the ERP applications, and the modifications needed to

the basic ERP software to accommodate the newly revised business process.

• For hosted ERP users, the responsibility for defining change requirements, authorizing,

testing, scheduling, coordinating user notifications and procedural updates for ERP changes,

as well as developing detailed installation scripts and cutover/release plans are the

responsibility of the ERP user, and their Level 2 support staff.

• Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and significant changes in audit methodology.

• The impact to the organization and the related stress for company personnel during the high

rate of change during the implementation.

• Expert consultants are frequently used to perform the discovery of key business processes

and to estimate the magnitude of modifications to the ERP applications necessary to

implement them. Many of these consultants usually end up staying well beyond their

original project end date.

Typical ERP Level 2 Support & Implementation Project Activities

ERP Application specialists are the

frontline forces that facilitate

enterprise change via ERP

Applications. These ERP specialists

must continue to simultaneously

provide expert support for power

users under existing business and

ERP apps, while preparing for newly

deployed ERP updates. Both Level

2 (L2) support personnel and the

power users in the business are

crucial to ERP project success, as

well as the transition to steady-state

support operations.

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ERP Support and Project Activities/Controls:

1. Resolving Complex Application Issues and Defects/bugs that require evidencing of approval & testing.

2. Software change & enhancement requests.

3. Project Controls for both Issue Management and Project Change Coordination & Approval.

4. Changing application setups (Organization, GL Account Codes, Cross Validation rules, etc.).

5. Creating or changing custom code/application extensions.

6. Application Configuration Management across multi-tiered architectures.

7. Applying Vendor patches and upgrades.

8. Application Testing Activities.

9. Database and Application Performance issues.

10. Release Management-planning and coordinating complex changes/ releases.

Reason 1: Resolving Complex Application Issues and Defects/bugs that require SOX evidencing of Approval and Testing.

This is one of the most common functions performed by ERP specialists

and typically requires a very fast response in order to meet service level

expectations. The key to success is providing ability to capture adequate

information about the issue to determine if it needs to be addressed by a

functional or technical resource, or a combination thereof. Moreover, the

issue resolution process requires close coordination between the technical

and functional users that can verify the resolution. In many cases, these

ERP issues require research be done with the Application Vendor. At the

same time, the more you understand about the various application issues,

by capturing them in a centralized knowledge base, the easier it becomes

to perform root cause analysis.

ERP managers are required to spend a large percentage of their time verifying with developers that

pending changes and patches have been tested by the appropriate users, have been approved by both

IT and business management, and are included on a planned release schedule. In addition, there is

an ongoing need to research the status of individual Change Requests (SCR’s), and report back to the

IT management and business representatives, who will then provide the individual update to the

requesting stakeholder. For many ERP managers, these activities will consume a large portion of

their time and energy. In most organizations, this area proves to be the acid test for how effectively

IT and the Business are aligned when it comes to managing their ERP investment.

Reason 2: Software Change & Enhancement Requests

The process for capturing and tracking software change requests is an

integral part of managing a support and development team’s workload.

Software change requests can in fact become mini-projects within a support

and development organization, which need to follow a defined development

and testing process. They can be managed with the other work backlog and

tracked for progress, traceability and subsequent change control/release

management purposes.

Without exception the best way to reduce

cycle times of CM requests and facilitate

user and approver acceptance is to ensure

that communications are structured,

predictable, and efficient. Simplifying the

challenge further, automated notifications

are needed between the IT management

and business stakeholders who are key to

the approval process for implementing

application changes.

Approval

to Proceed

CM Request

Impact & Budget

AssessmentProject

Planning Resource Assignments

Testing Complete

Approval to

Promote

to Production

CM

Request Closed

Source Code Management

Cross Cross –– FunctionalFunctional

CommunicationCommunication

Reduced Cycle Time Reduced Cycle Time

with Compliant Audit with Compliant Audit

TrailTrail

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A common solution to issue management is a combination of email and spreadsheets. On ERP

projects, this approach rarely does justice to the magnitude of the coordination problems, and the

importance of tracking and managing issues & defects during the pre-production phases.

Unmanaged change and miscommunication can cause the even the best project plans to unravel. The

best defense against this project variable is an effective CM strategy.

Common mistakes made in Enterprise CM/ALM

• CM functions implemented only around source code promotion processes;

• Overloading Spreadsheets & email-based processes;

• Not providing/including the ability to manage change across multiple environments;

• Building out a CM strategy around “home-grown” utilities (Level 1).

• Level 2 application specialists using Level 1 toolkits

• Problems associated with release inconsistencies across development, testing and production

environments.

Reason 3: Project Controls for both Issue Management and Project Change Coordination and Approvals

Both new implementation and ERP upgrade projects require a high

level of interaction between the functional experts configuring the

application, technical users developing extensions and new reports,

and business testers. Issue management is a critical project control

function, especially in conjunction with testing activities, to ensure

that issues are addressed prior to production releases.

Linking issues directly to related source code revisions (for both

fixes and enhancements) is a fundamental capability supporting the

release management process.

Managing Project Change during Peak Project Spending

Another common misconception about

ERP Change Management controls

center around when these controls

should be introduced in the Application

Lifecycle. As you can see from the

opposite image, peak spending occurs

well before the production release or

cutover. Thus, managing change

effectively during peak project spending

ensures that the right resources are

focused on issues that need to be addressed before releasing an ERP application to the business

community. A customized Oracle Financials 11.5.10 upgrade project can expect to encounter in

excess of 300 issues that need to be resolved by a combination of the business, and ERP functional &

technical specialists. A new Oracle 11i Financials and HRMS implementation can encounter 600-700

issues, or more, of varying complexity. Allowing these issues to go unresolved until after production

release may result in a loss, or limited use, of key business functionality.

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An Organizational View of an ERP project in Distress.

As the rate of change

accelerates during an ERP

implementation or upgrade,

traditional communication

channels can quickly break

down from the volume demands

and delays on issues that require

business involvement. Ad hoc

communications invariably

result in key stakeholders being

left out of the loop.

Miscommunications and

inadvertent omissions lead to

misunderstandings, missed

expectations, and prolonged

change and issue resolutions.

Shifting priorities and scope

creep become unmanageable

when business process owners,

functional leads, and super users

are not “in-sync” with technical

teams and testing groups.

Implement ERP Application Change Governance using Process-based ALM

Understanding the CM/ALM Challenge of ERP/Enterprise Applications

According to the Yankee Group, “75 percent of application downtime is caused by ‘self inflicted’

errors”. In today's world, IT spending is under the value microscope as never before, 80 percent of

IT budgets are used just to maintain the status quo. CEOs and CFOs want to see more return on their

ERP investments. In addition to spending wisely on self-funding, higher performance IT

investments, IT executives must provide Enterprise application change controls on business critical

applications that support collaboration, visibility, speed and audit-ability.

Dev DBA Sys Admin

IT Project Mgrs

IT Ops Mgr

IT Senior Mgmt

CXO/ Finance/ Controller

Business Area Owners

SME / Super Users

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Change and adaptability have become the central tenets to surviving in a new and unforgiving business landscape. IT strategies must mirror these new adaptive demands on the business or risk becoming another victim to outsourcing. As ERP applications reach further out into the organization and impact the operations across so many departmental boundaries, the ability to implement ERP Application change efficiently with minimal errors has become a key IT performance measurement.

ERP Applications have established their place as the enterprise cornerstone

for future enterprise architectures (which is also underscored by Oracle’s

new Fusion architecture). What we have learned from countless studies and

hard won experience is that implementing an ERP is highly demanding for

both the business and IT. The ERP project statistics have reflected this

challenge, and interestingly enough one of the common complaints is

missed expectations. Controlling change, whether from application setup

activity or custom development, is one of the biggest factors in determining

whether your ERP project will become another statistic. A successful

organizational change strategy will not overcome the problems you can

encounter by missed expectations and Application service issues caused by

inadequate Application Change Management processes.

Increasing the Stakes for Aligning the Business & IT

In almost all cases, ERP implementations stretch the organization by

imposing a greater level of collaboration between the Business community

and the IT community, beyond the level of business involvement in earlier

IT projects. Without exception, the ERP Application Change Management

processes that effectively include the business stakeholders and decision

makers in the process result in consistently higher levels of satisfaction.

An effective Enterprise Application Change Management strategy

simplifies and automates the processes that support and development teams

use to manage and migrate Application changes.

The ALM Objective: Business-oriented Change Governance

As Change Governance becomes an imperative, the ITIL foundation is a significant underlying

factor. Managing ERP issues resolution, ensuring Change and Release processes are strictly

followed, and fully understanding complete Configuration information and impact prior to approving

and implementing changes is key to ensure that critical systems are not negatively impacted. The

way to reduce cycle times of CM requests and facilitate user and approver acceptance is to ensure

that communications are structured, predictable, and efficient. Simplifying the challenge further,

interactive communications between the stakeholders is the key to solving the most common failures

of CM.

In many cases, Enterprise Application support organizations rely on inadequate Level 1 helpdesk

products, overloaded spreadsheets, or homegrown solutions that result in unstructured

communications. At the same time, complex ERP implementations and SOX audit demands require

a process-based approach that can enforce mandated approval requirements and engage approvers

from the business community.

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Reason 4: Changing ERP Application Setups Reason 5: Creating and changing custom code/application extensions

ERP Application Setup values control the behavior of the ERP application,

and personalize the Application for each business. Business Analysts and

System Administrators can take painstaking efforts to correctly configure

an ERP for transaction processing via controls such as check formatting

and programs, receiving options and cross-validation rules. Setups, initially

entered during implementation, are modified and maintained during

upgrades and on-going maintenance. Changes impact business operations

and must be tightly managed and controlled, and meet SOX audit

requirements.

An ERP Application technology stack is extremely complex with extensive

interdependencies. Any RICE development (Reports, Interfaces,

Conversions, and Extensions), patches or upgrade can have far-reaching

impact and must be tightly managed and controlled to ensure there are no

undesirable effects on other ERP modules. Impact Analysis and Source

Code Version Control tools provide critical versioning and impact analysis

capabilities that can dramatically reduce the time and effort needed to

process source code changes.

Reason 4 and Reason 5 highlight specific examples of how ERP applications require a combination

of Technical and Business Analyst (or Application Functional) skills to understand that business

impact of a given issue or change. This collaboration also means that Application Support

Specialists are more likely to focus on ERP changes and enhancements that return value to the

business.

Building a Framework for Aligning the Business & IT

As the earlier image of

unstructured/informal change

channels depicts, the process

of coordinating ERP changes

across multiple departmental

boundaries can quickly break

down into separate functional

and organizational silos.

By implementing a structured

CM/ALM infrastructure, IT

applications support

specialists have the foundation

for implementing SDLC

processes, ITIL, CMMI, as

well as internal IT controls.

Managing the ERP Application Change Lifecycle

Inadequate Enterprise Application Change Management poses the greatest risk for errors and

miscommunication in an Enterprise Application environment. Each error and miscommunication

costs money to resolve. CM/ALM tools provide the centralized infrastructure for stakeholders to

communicate and interact during the implementation and steady-state support operations of

Application Change Management Layer

Dev DBA Sys Admin

IT Project Mgrs

IT Ops Mgr

IT Senior Mgmt

Audit Compliance

CXO/ Finance/ Controller

Business Area Owners

SME / Super Users

Issue Management Defect Tracking

Release Management Change Tracking

Process Management

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Enterprise Applications. Using a closed-loop workflow approach enables Business and IT to

collaborate in a meaningful to solve problems, and provide a SOX-compliant audit trail for each

change processed.

Reason 6: Application Configuration Management across multi-tiered architectures. Reason 7: Applying Vendor patches and upgrades

Making changes to the applications that are the business’ lifeblood has

always been a high stakes game, but never more than now, when those

changes have to comply with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel

II. The concept of Configuration Management for ERP applications in

particular represents the future in systems management, enabling

organizations to baseline configurations, audit user activity, institute

change management processes, institute security controls, and automate

validation.

One of the most important and time-consuming Oracle Applications DBA

job is applying patches to the E-Business Suite. Patches may be required to

resolve problems with the application code, to fix production issues, to

install new features, or to upgrade components of the technology stack.

Patching is not a simple one-step process, but rather requires careful

research in order to determine all of the prerequisite steps, patching steps,

and post-patching steps required. Many times, testing is required to

determine any unintended changes that may be included with larger

patches.

Preparing for the changes involved in migrating to Oracle Release 11.5.10, and beyond…

For Oracle ERP users, the migration from release

11.5.8 to 11.5.10 can represent daunting release

management challenge. Close coordination is

required across the functional, technical and

DBA teams. The cutover process must be

planned in painstaking detail to ensure no steps

are missed.

Even without upgrading database releases, this

Apps upgrade requires up to 90,000 processes to

execute, and can take 4 days to complete

(depending on the size of your ERP database).

Reason 8: Application Testing Activities.

Regression Testing can strike fear into the hearts of any seasoned ERP

specialists. Testing activities can absorb an excessive amount of time from

some of the key business users and subject matter experts (SME’s). Their

valuable time must be used judiciously. The last thing they want to do is

retest an application function only to encounter problems that have been

identified and reported already. Many people do not realize that this is both

an area where tremendous savings can be realized (by reducing unnecessary

retesting activity), and where the confidence of key business users can be

either won or lost.

Application and Database performance have become a key factor in

ERP

Environments

* Apps Upgrade

Test Environment.

Dev

Test Prod

Upgd*New

Release

/ Patch

Dev

Test Prod

Upgd*New

Release

/ PatchNew Release /

Patch implementation

New Release /

Patch implementation

New Release /VersionNew Release /VersionLocal

Application

Customizations

Local

Application

Customizations

Vendor

Software

Updates

Vendor

Software

Updates

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Reason 9: Database and Application Performance Issues.

measuring overall user satisfaction. A poorly performing ERP application

is commonly viewed as a broken application by most application users.

ERP customizations and extensions can be prone to performance issues,

especially when user loads and data volumes/database size increase. More

often than not, performance issues are not easy to predict until the system

reaches a threshold load factor. These performance issues require close

coordination between the Level 2 technical and DBA staff to analyze

performance statistics to determine the root cause.

Reason 10: Release Management-planning and coordinating complex changes/ releases.

In general, release management is about controlling the flow of changes

into a production environment. In order to control, one needs to know what

is being controlled and how it is being controlled, so a plan is a requisite

part of the release process. ERP Release Management can involve a

complex series of orchestrated activities, both functional and technical, that

leaves very little room for error.

As depicted in the diagram below, Change Management is fundamentally a

sequence of interconnected processes. Release Management represents the

final stage of the change cycle. For ERP applications especially, the

Release Management discipline through consistent execution release plans

minimizes the risk that changes in the system will disrupt a company's

business.

Managing the Transition from ERP Implementation to Level 2 Support

If your organization has outsourced your ERP implementation project (or even a significant new

release or upgrade), then you probably have encountered the challenge of transitioning ERP support

tasks to an in-house support organization. Implementing an ERP support structure poses a key

challenge for all new ERP users. Support processes must be well defined to quickly triage issues that

need to be routed to functional analysts, technical analysts or referred to Oracle to identify corrective

patches that may be required. Overloaded spreadsheets and ad-hoc email communications are

the single largest contributor to the inadvertent creation of both functional and organizational

silos in an IT organization. Homegrown solutions are quickly overwhelmed by the sheer number of

changes in a typical ERP environment. ERP managers must have control, insight and predictability

into the Enterprise Software Development Lifecycle, and effectively manage the Level 2 Support

Processes performed by ERP specialists.

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In order to fully understand the business value of effective CM/ALM practices, you need to consider

how your ERP application management and change processes directly impact the TCO (Total Cost of

Ownership) for ERP Applications. The general consensus from those that have adopted CM/ALM

are tangible improvements in quality, service levels and financial metrics, directly resulting from:

• Higher Software Quality

• Improved time to market

• Less rework required

• Improvements in financial metrics (ROI & TCO)

• More predictability and better understanding of Project Status

• Better Compliance with IT and SOX controls

Companies make serious investments in ERP and infrastructure to run their business, and employ the

services of expensive ERP consulting experts to assist with the ERP implementation. The best

approach to manage these business critical applications throughout their lifecycle is to use workflow-

driven applications to both enforce process controls and manage the many changes, scope expansion

requests, and stakeholder approvals.

Summary

IT's accelerated innovation rate has generated an enormous body of

change management material for CIO’s. Almost all of it addresses how to

turn change management into a reliable, robust and cost-effective process.

Change is not an event. Change management—like Application Lifecycle

Management—is really process management, and change leadership is

really process leadership. That's true for organizations, systems and ERP

applications. At the same time, that is where the business can finally

realize the promised Return on Investment (ROI) from their ERP

investment, by reducing CM cycle times, and getting changes driven by

the business into production faster and more reliably.

Visualize, Orchestrate and Enforce

Top performers really don’t view these controls as behavioral constraints,

rather as infrastructure for innovation. Controls aren't shackles; they can

be change cycle accelerators. By embracing controls, developers have

greater flexibility in process management because disciplined design and

testing has proven more agile, robust and predictable than unauthorized

change, with much less risk. Most recognized high-performance

organizations are high-controls cultures, where Best Practices are

synonymous with best controls.

ERP applications are being put to the test in the harshest business climate that most have witnessed in their careers. IT managers are now looking to ALM to solve change-related problems, and also prepare for Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance.

Allan B Hooks

[email protected]

832.814.8100

InterNext Group, LLC 12777 Jones Rd, Ste. 297 Houston, TX 77070