7 Most Important Questions on Oracle Cloud Implementations Answered!
As more and more customers approach Oracle Cloud implementations, they bring in some relevant questions. Since the right answers begin with the right questions, I thought why not this common forum, where we place all those questions that matter for the benefit of everyone. This blog is not to answer all the questions but to encourage you to ask questions. I’ve addressed some of the critical high-level questions that will help you resolve oracle cloud implementation challenges.
1. No question is a bad question, feel free to go wild? First and foremost — Why Oracle Cloud?
How does a business benefit from Cloud? What kind of business transformation do you want to achieve?
It is critical to align business objectives, business processes, and IT roadmap for successful implementations. What are the choices?
No other cloud platforms have such a comprehensive set of business applications in Cloud-like Oracle. All the core applications HCM, finance, procurement, sales, project, and supply chain are fully integrated into one platform. With the Oracle Cloud platform, there are now a bunch of integration tools that can be used to integrate your other business applications.
2. Legacy systems:
Do you really need to think about it? Yes, legacy systems and legacy processes are about to go obsolete. There are a lot of questions you would need to have good answers to early on. What do you want to bring into your cloud? What do you want to do with the data you don’t bring into the cloud? How will you access this data? How long do you keep this data? How will you validate the data brought in? Do you want to retain the same processes, chart of accounts, calendar, etc., in the cloud? Do you want to redesign any of these? What applications do your legacy systems integrate with? What happens to these integrations? Do they support the new platform?
Even though these Oracle Cloud Apps are redesigned ground up, most of the features and functionalities are taken from on-premise. There is existing robust support to handle almost all kinds of business processes and complexities required for small to very large multinational organizations. Keep in mind even though Oracle is adding a lot of features in every release, there are still some functionalities not available in Release 13, which is the latest version at this point.
Data migration is a big and crucial aspect. On-premise required writing a bunch of data conversion and post validation programs to move the data from legacy to a new system. Oracle provides various ways to convert legacy data — A file-based loader is a great tool for one-time load or some repeated manual loads.
3.Change Management:
Who are the key decision-makers? Are they trained in Oracle Cloud? Are your users distributed in multiple locations? What kind of training do you need to consider? Do you need a tailored and repeatable user training program? What about the administrators and IT team? What is their role in Oracle Cloud?
Of course, different folks have different training needs. Business users, engaged in Cloud implementation should take the pre-implementation training first so that they can ask the right questions and get the implementation customized to their needs. There are tons of materials available both free and paid. A qualified SI can help you and your team identify the right content and make recommendations. IT users need to know how to maintain the application, access controls, patching schedules, integration needs, and architecture, and testing, etc.
It is crucial to establish the fact upfront that the objective of going to Oracle Cloud is to adapt the power of rich functionalities of tier-one systems. There will be occasions where business users need to make difficult decisions and let go of their custom processes. The business champion will need to be given all the authority and will play a pivotal role.
4.Reporting and Analytics:
How do I get my reports in the cloud? Can I build my own reports? Is there any excel-like experience? What are the canned reports available? Who will develop complex reports? Are these reports secure? Can I share some of my reports with my team?
Here is the most powerful Oracle Cloud solution: It has many great reporting capabilities. The trick is to know which one to use when. Of course, Oracle acronyms don’t make it any easier– BI Publisher, Native Reports, OTBI, Smart Views, FR Studio, and Sunburst. Let me decrypt this for you.
· BI Publisher — For Customer facing documents such as Customer Invoice, Purchase order, Check Print, etc.
· Native Reports — Some seeded reports are available outside of the box, such as Open AP, Open AR, Transaction Register, All POs, etc. These are well segregated and organized by module.
· OTBI (Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence) — One of the most powerful features where users can build their own reports on live application data and share with others.
· Smart Views — Excel reporting feature for slice and dice on real application data
· Financial Reporting Studio — Boardroom quality financial reports such as Balance sheets, Income statements, P&L reporting, etc.
· Sunburst — Excellent data visualization tool
5.Cloud Culture:
Most of the companies are running hybrid setups today — cloud and on-premise. So, the cloud may not be entirely new. But, if you don’t have any Oracle enterprise applications in the cloud, then this requires reconsideration. The common questions are — What is architecture? Single Sign-On? Training? Patching cycle? Administration? Ways to Customize?
A lot of implementations fail because they can’t integrate or aren’t powerful enough. It is very important to set up the right expectations.
6.Project Planning and Governance:
Isn’t this a cliché? Maybe. But let me explain — Three key expectations for any tier 1 enterprise applications are best in class, scalability, and security. So, Oracle has built a set of cloud applications with these basic principles.
Now the question is — Do you have an appetite for the big bang or short bursts? What kind of integrations do you need? What kind of methodology do you need to follow? For instance, Oracle OUM Cloud implementation does not have any requirements phase, it starts right from the design phase. How much lead time does Oracle need to refresh? How many test instances do you have? How can you keep all instances at the same patch level? Did Oracle assign Oracle Success manager? What kind of cadence is required?
Over the years, project planning and governance have gone to a different level, lot of SIs like Jade Global completely retool the approach, methodology, team composition, and governance model to map it with their Oracle cloud implementation methodology. You will need to understand this, be ready to run with it. Often, the bottleneck of cloud implementation is customer’s readiness not the SI’s implementation tasks.
7. Post-implementation Support — Who will be responsible for this? What service levels are expected from SI and Oracle? Are you going live with any unresolved critical issues? Do you have workarounds? What is the post-implementation issue resolution process going to be? Who will coordinate with Oracle? What are the communication and issue tracking plans after go-live? Will you bifurcate issues by types such as training, admin, bugs., etc., How can you quickly stabilize the system?
Some seasoned IT and business organizations will think about it, way ahead of go-live. But there are a lot of SMBs, for who, post-implementation support is an afterthought and will struggle unless they clearly address the framework. Business perception and adaption will be formed on how fast you can get the system stabilized and start adding incremental business value.
Summary — Proper due diligence before and during the project will drive success. Please ask questions relentlessly until you get qualified responses and be prepared to benefit from Oracle Cloud. This is REAL and BIG, don’t be too late.
Feel free to share more interesting questions you may have in your mind!
Download datasheet: ERP Practice Overview
More in my next blog….