JDE World to E1 conversion - how inexpensively can it be done?

I work for a small family-owned company of less than 25 employees that converted to JDE World in 2001. We are looking into the possibility of converting to E1. The budget for doing this is extremely limited. I have been told by various consultants that it would take upwards of $100k to $200k to get this done. I don't have an approved budget number, but under $20k sounds much, much better.

Is it possible? I am a one-man IT shop, but am not afraid to learn the skills required.

Are there any *very* small E1 customers that converted from World? How long did it take, how much did it cost? I would love to talk with you.

Thanks

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Bob Cagle
IT Manager
Lynk, Inc.
System i5 520 v7.1; A9.3.1

I doubt it could be done for <$20k.
Have you considered going to the latest release of World?

Under $100K is not realistic.
At Collaborate several years ago I did meet the IT guy for a small company the size of yours. However their projected growth rates were over 100% a year (basically a startup) and they picked E1 as something they would need in two - three years - not immediately. They also used consultants.

You gotta understand - this is a enormous application with a complicated architecture sized for companies $50 million and up (target is probably $250M + in revenue).

Give up your AS/400 and look at some of the small business packages out there like Microsoft Dynamics.

We are already on the latest release of World =96 A9.3.1. I have looked at implementing the browser-based interface, but it=92s essentially a =93scre en-scraper=94, not a real GUI. My users have seen the latest E1 GUI and ha ve been salivating=85

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Beh alf Of Frosty the Coder
Sent: Tuesday, April 8, 2014 11:50 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: JDE World to E1 conversion - how inexpensively can it be done?

I doubt it could be done for <$20k.
Have you considered going to the latest release of World?

Frosty * Currently migrating XE to 9.0, iSeries, TR 9.1.3.1

The idea of converting to E1 is that the migration would be simpler since t he database is extremely similar. But like you said the architecture is va stly more complicated.

I have considered looking into some other ERP packages, but I myself am ext remely hesitant as my background is steeped in AS/400/iSeries/System i, and RPG development.

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Beh alf Of Larry_Jones
Sent: Tuesday, April 8, 2014 12:50 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: JDE World to E1 conversion - how inexpensively can it be done?

Under $100K is not realistic.
At Collaborate several years ago I did meet the IT guy for a small company the size of yours. However their projected growth rates were over 100% a ye ar (basically a startup) and they picked E1 as something they would need in two - three years - not immediately. They also used consultants.

You gotta understand - this is a enormous application with a complicated ar chitecture sized for companies $50 million and up (target is probably $250M + in revenue).

Give up your AS/400 and look at some of the small business packages out the re like Microsoft Dynamics.

Larry Jones E1 9.0 - TR 9.1 on Win 2008 64. Oracle DB 11gR2 WebLogic 11g, W intel BI Publisher

You will never do this for what you're saying. I will guarantee it.

$20,000 is 125 hours of a well-qualified US consultant, or 250 hours of a crappy consultant - or, to put it in another, more blunt way, 500 hours of a pretty low-end IT employee.

Maybe E1 isn't the direction your company needs to go.

E1 is not the product for the company you have described. Honestly, stay on World or move to another product.

Malcolm

It all depends on how much you want to move, and what the $20k is to cover. If you decide to treat World as a legacy system, and effectively set up a new E1 system in parallel, pulling balances etc. across, then it would be far cheaper than a full migration (you start from scratch again with customization anyway). If $20k is to cover your internal costs as well then I figure you are all working for stock options rather than salaries! If it's only to cover external costs then if you get on a few courses and are prepared to make a few mistakes you might do it (will take a while, and not sure I would want to do a review on it afterwards!). It would probably be far cheaper to move to a VM platform on commodity hardware than staying iSeries, but if there is only you on the technical front then that might be too much of a hurdle! First up would be to see if your current server has capacity to install E1 alongside World - if not then your budget is pretty much blown just getting the hardware up to scratch! For a full data migration I would be anticipating a total cost to the business of around $0.5M - $1M total. This would include internal business costs (users out to do configuration/testing/retraining), hardware replacement/upgrades and consultancy fees. If you throw in some business process changes then there can be costs associated with lost productivity until those are fully bedded in as well. It's best to factor out the full cost of such a change before you figure out what you can spend on getting someone in to help - the actual technical effort is usually only a small percentage of the overall costs.