Top 10 R12 Upgrade Best Practices.R12 Upgrade Series - 1

• Determine Your Upgrade Path -  More recent releases have a direct upgrade path to the latest release.

• Treat Your Upgrade Activity as a Formal Company Project - 

• Structured approach for managing the tasks, resolving issues, and measuring progress is critical.  Build a team with broad, comprehensive skills.
• Project team that comprises Functional experts, technical experts and representation from the business.
• Focus on reporting with a direction that is geared towards a BI Publishing solution

• Prepare the Organization
• Proactively engage stakeholders to help prepare for the project and the changes that will be experienced once deployed.
• Emphasis on repeated testing.
• Focus on Pre and Post Upgrade requirements

• Understand and Mitigate Project Risks
• Specific mitigation plans should be developed for high probability, high impact risks
• Keep your team together for the first financial close

• Inventory Your System
• Examine current business requirements and Inventory modifications and determine what is still needed

• Plan for Upgrade Architecture
• Accurate sizing information will help guide decisions to reuse existing hardware and resources.

• Identify Custom Code and Scripting
• Identified customized interfaces, forms, and reports that will require additional testing through the upgrade process

• Optimize Training Processes
• Ensure project and support teams are proficient in the new technology
• Train users at an optimal timeframe will help resolve most issues early.  Most users prefer training proximate to going live on the new system

• Secure User Buy-In
• End users must have good information about how the resulting solution will impact their roles, whether the changes are functional, user interface, or technical in nature .

• Go Live
• Go Live checklist created earlier in the upgrade process should be leveraged to verify that the success criteria have been achieved.
• Set up sufficient support mechanisms to optimize early rollout experience