IT Productivity & E1 8.12

[jdel6654]

Bill,

Thanks for making my case about your knowledge vs. mine.

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dual UOM, some additional AB associations, and cross-docking

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You might consider looking at the app net change guides before you approach your management again. Quite frankly I could think of about 10 other major app enhancements other than these that Finance VPs and plant managers would want above this.


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Developers don't code much faster because of an upgrade, and testers certainly don't test faster

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Your comment is evidence that you are totally clueless when it comes to EnterpriseOne tools. The tools are totally different in 8.12 / 8.97 - side by side development, local web development, multiple tools development session.

 

[Bill Dotson]

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There are so many things that aren't in or working in XE Update X that it would take hours just to go over them in a separate thread.

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Possibly true, but if those things that aren't in it don't affect our business (contract and service management, eRecruit, equipment cost analysis, to name just a few), what's the benefit to us? For those unnamed things you mention that aren't working out-of-the-box, we've already fixed them, if they affect us at all.

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The reality is that the money is there - it's just being wasted on other things. The greatest of which are inefficient office workers banging around on old, buggy, unreliable systems (has nothing to do with IT). But I also see it situations like developers rewriting things like the JDE transportation system (when Oracle/JDE should have and did rewrite it for them in 8.x). It's also in overpriced and poorly performing hardware. You see wasted resources (and time=money) in other areas but every company is different.


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That entire paragraph is so full of nonsense, it's barely worth responding to. The money is there? How could you possibly know that? Have you seen our books? How do you know we wouldn't have to borrow money for an upgrade? And again, even if the money is there, is upgrading worth the expense?

As for our office workers, how would you know if they're inefficient? How would you measure it? Do you really think the web interface is that much more efficient or faster than the Windows interface?

I'd really love to continue having an intelligent discussion about the business value of upgrades, but you've arrived unarmed.

 

[jdel6654]

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That entire paragraph is so full of nonsense, it's barely worth responding to. The money is there? How could you possibly know that? Have you seen our books? How do you know we wouldn't have to borrow money for an upgrade? And again, even if the money is there, is upgrading worth the expense?

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Sorry Bill, I apologize, I should have looked at your sig more carefully. I didn't realize you were in the cardboard box business. I would be curious to see what you were using to estimate your cost for the upgrade. Its just been my experience that most companies investing millions of dollars in ERP systems tend to think its important enough to maintain.

I have seen a lot of companies do very well with the web interface; Citrix is not what I was really referring to. Its all of the other things I've already mentioned and a 1000 other enhancements to Oracle/JDE core and 3rd party products.

 

[DBohner-(db)]

Bill,

I do believe the Web Interface is a significant step up - from the FAT and
Citrix clients.

From a CNC Perspective - you deploy to the Web Server(s) and call it good.
Most sites should have two or more servers (all nearly identical).
Deploying to dozens of personal machines or to Citrix Boxes have always been
in that escalated headache area of complaints from Uses and CNC. Note:
Developer workstations are sill FAT/THICK/WEBDEV clients

The horsepower to run a Web Client (end users) is still SIGNIFICANT - most
clients would / should consider full 'modern' workstations when considering
web.

(db)




--

 

[Bill Dotson]

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Its [sic] just been my experience that most companies investing millions of dollars in ERP systems tend to think its [sic] important enough to maintain.

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This is what's called a glittering generalization. Look it up. On top of that, you just can't seem to resist speaking out of school. Do you really think we made the investment in JDE, and then we don't maintain it? I guess if you conflate "maintain" with "upgrade," then that statement would be true.

For the record, we're not in the cardboard box business -- we're a distributor of industrial packaging supplies, and corrugated boxes (the correct term) represent only a tiny fraction of the 80,000+ products we sell. As if the business we're in somehow makes a difference. What business are you in, besides spouting nonsense about which you clearly know very little?

 

[Bill Dotson]

Daniel,

I agree, the web interface is a step up (personally, I despise the Windows interface), and we'd like to go to it, from an IT perspective. From a business perspective, the company needs more reasons than a new interface to invest in an upgrade. So far, the reasons just aren't there, or management doesn't feel that the benefits outweigh (or even match) the cost.

From a CNC perspective, we deploy to a single Citrix server and call it good. There are procedures in place to automatically replicate to our other terminal servers. We have less than a dozen fat clients, so those aren't a problem either. So, as I stated previously, any gains in CNC activity are minimal. Even if the gains were huge, they still wouldn't generate revenue or significantly decrease costs. We still have to pay our CNC, and we won't pay him less because he's dealing with web servers instead of Citrix boxes.

Maybe upgrading would lead to some increased productivity in sales and/or purchasing, so that we can grow our business without also increasing our headcount, or at least increase it at a slower rate. But that's a pretty hard thing to measure.

 

[Larry_Jones]

All,

just to share our {bitter} experience and another viewpoint.

When Peoplesoft purchased JDE they had set a end-of-life on XE support that is quite different from Oracle's policy today. Seeing that premium support was about to end on XE we initiated an upgrade from XE to 8.9 based primarily on three factors:
1) The active support issue
2) Wanting a better base to begin web client experimentation
3) Not wanting to be more than two major releases behind current release, as its been our general experience with major software packages that upgrades tend to be more difficult and expensive if you let your release level drop too far behind.

We knew that this was primarily an upgrade for these reasons and that there were no major enhancements providing additional business value.

While we were mid-stream on the upgrade Peoplesoft released 8.10 (it happened pretty quickly after 8.9). We deliberated but decided to stay the course with 8.9 - even with all the problems we were encountering.

Then Oracle buys Peoplesoft - and the support window for XE was greatly extended - boy did we feel screwed

We had gone to all this effort to upgrade (up 2 release levels), for no significant applications benefit, and then it turned out that XE would receive support longer than 8.9 anyway!

My point is that upgrading for perceived technical benefits can bite you in the butt and distract both I.T. and the business side of the business from doing ... business. In other words if there are no direct business benefits / application enhancements then think long and hard before upgrading for other reasons.

For what its worth,

 

[altquark]

Hi Larry

I don't want to rub salt into your wounds - but I believe I did make some posts about that time that talked quite clearly about the fact that Oracle was an almost certainty taking over Peoplesoft - and that Xe support was likely to be extended. On the other hand, all 8.x customers should be grateful to those companies that did migrate to 8.9 - after all, you paved the way for the rest of the customer base.

I stated this before - please remember, that ALL products are covered under the "lifetime support" program - and that there is a difference between "maintenance support" and "premier support". In effect, bug fixes and patches occur under "premier support" - its like using Windows NT 4.0, it will still work and if you call Microsoft they'll help as much as they can if you have a configuration issue - but there aren't any more patches to the product since its determined that 5 years of patches is enough to ensure stability.

8.9's premier support is ending - and certainly when that support ends, it provides some amount of justification to move forward - but no company should ever feel "rushed" into an upgrade.

Remember, Fiscal year '09 is when EnterpriseOne 9.0 is released. I'm not sure how comfortable your company will be in upgrading from 8.9 to another "new" version - but if your current EnterpriseOne implementation is stable and provides all the functionality you need, I'd be planning for a 9.1 upgrade sometime in 2010, and trying to get some of the ROI out of your last upgrade until then.

Lastly, ALL ERP systems should be considered a 5 year lifetime. We're lucky that Oracle ensured that Xe customers have a 10 year lifetime, but I believe that will breed a lot of complacency with many customers (and will create panic as premier support for Xe/8.0 comes to an end). Pocket the ROI as much as you can - but always budget for system upgrades every 5 years. All CIO's should know that (!)

 

[brother_of_karamazov]

You raise a good point here that has piqued my curiosity: How does a company measure inefficiency? I have been around a couple of "business case for an upgrade" scenarios and have had difficulty understanding why the everyday inefficiency of working with a difficult interface/slow system is not measured.

While this cost is not glaring in the way that hardware or consultant costs are, it remains a large factor....a slowly multiplying cost that will never show up on a spreadsheet but will have the CFO scratching his head as the company goes under or gets outmaneuvered by a swifter, more agile company with more efficient processes enabled by more recent software.


Has anyone actually bothered to compute the extra cost of user inefficiency, assuming that inefficiency is actually present?


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The reality is that the money is there - it's just being wasted on other things. The greatest of which are inefficient office workers banging around on old, buggy, unreliable systems (has nothing to do with IT). But I also see it situations like developers rewriting things like the JDE transportation system (when Oracle/JDE should have and did rewrite it for them in 8.x). It's also in overpriced and poorly performing hardware. You see wasted resources (and time=money) in other areas but every company is different.

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[gregglarkin]

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You raise a good point here that has piqued my curiosity: How does a company measure inefficiency?

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Jeff,

interesting that you should ask. I just had an experience last week in trying to measure inefficiency and devise a way to improve it. I participated in a "lean event." That's the latest management fad, growing out of the world of six sigma. In this case, we were analyzing the processes of our fixed assets department and trying to come up with ways to make them more efficient. I was one of two IT people, the rest were from the business. Going in, there was some perceptions that JDE was part of their inefficiency. At the end of a three day meeting, it came out that the applications they use are fine, but their processes need adjustment. Processes have developed over time that are suboptimal and that they agreed to fix.

Gregg

 

[WhippingBoy]

Productivity has ALWAYS been measured in 'keystrokes per minute' and every true manager knows this fact.