Navigating Oracle ERP Implementation: A Comprehensive Guide

Contributing Expert: Scott Seligson

Implementing Oracle ERP Cloud isn’t just an IT upgrade; it’s a business transformation. Known for its unmatched flexibility in the ERP cloud space, Oracle ERP Cloud empowers organizations to tailor systems to their unique needs and outpace competitors. But with that flexibility comes complexity.

While Oracle ERP Cloud offers greater flexibility compared to competing software, it also introduces more implementation challenges. Unlike Oracle’s competing products that require users to conform or assimilate to more rigid processes, Oracle ERP Cloud offers a wide range of options in design and configuration that can significantly impact the success of your implementation.

This blog will help guide you in planning your implementation journey to mitigate potential risks and ensure success in this flexible, yet crucial process.

Planning Your Oracle ERP Cloud Journey

When planning for a successful Oracle ERP implementation, it is important that you understand the critical first steps in the process:

Define Project Scope and Objectives

Once the project is confirmed, begin working on scope and objective efforts as soon as possible, utilizing key stakeholders. Leveraging support and insight from industry experts is crucial when planning how to best define these scopes and objectives and translate that to any RFPs related to the project. These efforts must be detailed and defined as they are essential in project direction and assisting with any requests for proposals (RFP) from potential System Implementation (SI) partners. ALKU has leading experts who can be engaged to help define the specific scope and goals related to your project.

Key Defining Scope Tasks to Address:

• Key processes in your scope that will be moved to Oracle ERP Cloud, defining them by Suite (e.g., Oracle HCM Cloud, Oracle Financials Cloud, Oracle Supply Chain Management, etc.)
• Impacted populations of users, workers, third parties, and persons of interest

Key Defining Objective Tasks to Address:

• Optimization
  • May relate to the company’s need to replace expiring or expired support for legacy applications
  • May relate to the consolidation of disparate applications due to past acquisitions or mergers that retained legacy applications
• Return-on-Investment (ROI)
  • May relate to the costs associated with a legacy “on premise” application in comparison to the cloud offerings
• Objectives for each suite if goals differ between them
  • Objectives that drive project goals and deliverables

Assemble Your Implementation Team

A successful implementation team requires expertise and clearly defined roles and responsibilities.

• Expertise: It is important to build your project team in a way that provides the highest opportunity for success. Your team must consist of internal experts, including Oracle ERP Cloud experts per suite, who may be internal or external to your current organization, with skills and experience.
• Internal Expertise: It is essential to have a cross-functional team from within your organization. You must plan to have your subject matter experts on existing processes and technology to help define requirements and build into the anticipated design.
• External Expertise: You must have expertise with Oracle ERP Cloud for each suite in your scope. Typically, these skills are not available internally within your organization on Day 1, so it may be necessary to seek expertise externally.

ALKU specializes in providing Oracle ERP Cloud expertise, providing both advisory support and complete implementation teams. The critical expertise needed may include Project/Project Management, Module Leadership/Expertise, and Application Implementation Lifecycle to manage the design, building, testing, and deployment of Oracle ERP Cloud most efficiently. Overall, ALKU’s team will provide across-the-board expertise for your unique mix of in-scope suites and modules.

Roles and Responsibilities

Communicating clearly defined roles and responsibilities is a critical aspect of implementing your project. This ensures that all organizations and team members are informed of their unique responsibilities and defined roles. Key areas to define include:

• RACI Matrix: define the Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed roles for each organization involved
• Roles: define each team member’s role, both internal and external, by their specific responsibilities and scope of work

Implementing Oracle ERP Cloud Solutions

Key strategies for the effective execution of Oracle ERP cloud projects:

1. Configuration, Workflows, and Personalization

Configuration design is critical to the success and efficiency of your implementation since Oracle ERP Cloud allows for flexibility. It must include project leaders and subject matter experts with the right level of Oracle ERP Cloud implementation experience. Additionally, functionality is critical to defining the technical work needed, and engagement with the right resources is needed to do so. The configuration design will start with the most common setup based on scope, objectives, critical processes, and critical populations, and adjust accordingly based on your specific situation and needs.

2. Data Migration and Integration

Data Migration (Conversion)

Regardless of which suite you are implementing, conversion will make or break the overall success of the project. Therefore, it is important to start conversion design and data mapping immediately. Oracle and its SI partners come prepared with templates that serve as data mapping targets to help speed up design efforts. Depending on the size and complexity of the project team, and based on experienced consultant advice, they will determine which templates should be directly loaded, and which can be loaded through automated processes.

The success of conversion is highly based on the ability to extract and translate your legacy data. If your legacy system is a prior generation package, there is a good chance one of the SI partners has the skills to execute the extraction and translation.

The most critical step of Data Migration is the practice of migrations during the project life cycle. Commonly referred to as Mock Conversions, you must plan for at least three of them to fine-tune and improve the Extract, Translate, and Load efforts. Typically, Mock Conversions provide test data to key testing cycles of the project, and the feedback is used to improve future mock conversions. Over time, the design and quality of the conversion will improve and factor into the final go/no-go decision for the conversion that supports the go-live.

Integration

Defining the overall scope is necessary in determining where integration points exist. Typically, reviewing remaining legacy vendors and non-Oracle applications helps identify which integrations to build or expect from Oracle or vendors. To ensure that integration design sessions will succeed, the design must align with vendor and upstream/downstream application requirements to ensure correct mapping and file formats.

Experienced consultants, and your IT team’s niche expertise in your unique environment, will contribute to the technical solution that best fits your needs. This will include the use of delivered Oracle integrations, Oracle Integration Cloud, Rest APIs, and methods that include extracting and sharing data.

Verification and Validation of the ERP System

Testing for Success

Successful projects include some form of the following test efforts:

Requirements Traceability: Test scenarios should be traced to design requirements, and testing outcomes must reflect which requirements have passed, have issues, or require a workaround due to unresolved defects.

Defect Tracking: Each testing cycle must include a well-defined process for defect reporting, resolution, and retesting, with prioritized focus on critical issues affecting go-live
Unit Testing: After configuration or development, the team should test the item in isolation and confirm its functionality. In doing so, they should leverage the extended project team to ensure that they have the right scenarios to test. Once an item passes Unit Testing, it is then ready for System Integration Testing.

System Integration Testing: Known as “SIT,” this phase extends beyond integration testing to include process and scenario validation. SIT should use the latest application configuration and conversion data whenever possible, as actual data reduces issues with vendor and application validation. If actual data is unavailable, mock data may be used, but coordination with vendors is required. Successful SIT moves items to Parallel Testing or directly to UAT if Parallel is not needed.

Payroll Parallel Testing: For Oracle HCM Cloud projects that include the Payroll Model, it is standard to simulate and reconcile pay periods, comparing Oracle HCM Cloud Payroll results to your legacy application’s pay results. It is critical to define criteria for acceptable variances in advance. Passing Parallel Testing enables progression to User Acceptance Testing.

Cloud Update Validation: One of the typical benefits of Oracle is that it provides bug fixes, improved functionality, and improved user experience on a quarterly basis. The project team must plan to evaluate, test, and confirm the impact of each update on design and configuration, both during the project and after go-live, ensuring that established processes remain intact and issues are resolved.

Stakeholder Approval and User Acceptance

Securing stakeholder sign-off and conducting user acceptance testing to validate the implementation is critical to the success of the project. You must obtain stakeholder buy-in on scope, objectives, and requirements at the start of the project. From there, you must conduct check-ins and committee meetings with stakeholders to ensure that the overall direction is consistent with the objectives of the project.

User Acceptance Testing (UAT): the final test cycle where users define scenarios to validate the application’s readiness to go-live. The results will support sign-off or further defect work to fix any issues, leading to a confirmation towards go-live.

Prepare for Go-Live and Operational Transition

Ensure System and User Readiness:

Once UAT has been successful, you must confirm a “Go” decision with the stakeholders in a work session based on the considered criteria.

Criteria to be considered include:

• Successful sign-off from all test phases
• Conversion is deemed ready for final conversion
• No outstanding defects deemed required for go-live
• Plans for any solutions necessary post go-live

Change Management &Training

Project Communications: Ongoing communication with user populations and stakeholders is key for user awareness and adoption of the application.
User Readiness/Training: Should be clearly defined early on with the previously mentioned roles and responsibilities, including who is responsible for designing and delivering training.

Typical Training for Successful Projects Includes:

• Project Team Core Training
• Train the Trainer
• User Training

Post Implementation: Ensuring Long-Term Success

Activities that support successful system operation and continuous improvement after go-live include:

• Monitoring and Optimization: Use dashboarding to monitor metrics and leverage any SI hyper care periods
• Planning for Future Enhancements: Consider future enhancements and expansions to maximize the value of the Oracle ERP investment

Your relationship with Oracle has the opportunity to consistently grow and add to your footprint, optimizing further across key processes and business areas. Consistent communication with your Oracle account representative will ensure that you are accurately leveraging your growth in the right places across footprints.

Maximize Your ERP Investment with Expert Guidance from ALKU

Implementing Oracle ERP Cloud is a transformative step that opens the door to enhanced efficiency and streamlined operations. By focusing on ROI goals and making sure your essential business processes are optimized, you’ll be well-supported by Oracle and your SI partner every step of the way. What’s more, you’ll enjoy the steady advantages that come from Oracle’s continual updates, improvements in functionality, and evolving user experience. While the path to successful implementation can be complex, partnering with ALKU gives you access to specialized consultants and expert SI support, ensuring you have the guidance and partnership you need to achieve your goals and drive future innovation.

By leveraging ALKU’s deep domain knowledge and experienced consultants, organizations can reduce risk, accelerate timelines, and unlock the full value of their ERP investment. With continuous updates from Oracle and evolving functionality, the right strategic guidance can make the difference between a system that functions and one that drives innovation. Let ALKU help you turn complexity into opportunity.

About Scott Seligson

Scott Seligson has been working in the Human Capital Management Application space for over 28 years. He has been focused on Oracle HCM Cloud since the early 2000’s. Scott has held roles over the years as a project/program leader as well as a hands-on module lead across the suite. His expertise is built from hands on experience inside Oracle HCM Cloud specifically designing, configuring and testing Oracle Recruiting Cloud, Journeys, Core HR, Benefits, Payroll, Absence Management and Time and Labor. He is Oracle HCM Cloud Payroll certified and is also a Certified Public Accountant who found his way to being an expert with HCM Cloud. Due to this unique experience, he is not only a key driver of critical areas inside HCM Cloud but is commonly the liaison/leader from Oracle HCM Cloud projects to Financials teams and systems. Scott has also built an expertise helping clients reassess their inflight implementation projects to address critical issues in order to mitigate or address go-live risk, as well as improve post go-live projects and optimizations.