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