Consolidating 11 ERPs into Oracle Cloud

Project Summary

After being bought by a private equity firm, a $4.4B data center equipment and service provider embarked on a complex system modernization initiative.

As part of this initiative, the organization decided to move onto Oracle’s Cloud application ecosystem. To successfully carry out this initiative, data from 11 disparate ERP systems needed to be simultaneously migrated into Oracle ERP Cloud, Oracle PLM Cloud, Oracle CPQ Cloud, Oracle HCM Cloud, and Microsoft Dynamics. Recognizing the inherent risks of data migration, as well as the importance and complexity of the data, the organization partnered with Premier International to eliminate their data migration risk.

Project Risks

The data migration risk on this implementation was amplified due to internal complexity and external factors.

These factors fit into three main risk areas: Legacy Data Complexity and Quality, Client Resource Stability, and Future State Complexity.

Legacy Data Complexity and Quality

• Significant amounts of duplicated Sales Prospect, Customer, and Supplier data within and across the legacy systems
• Global MDM strategy that called for D&B enrichment to customer and supplier name, which was not accepted by business users
• Legacy customer data models, particularly from SAP, did not clearly fit Oracle’s TCA structure, and needed significant restructuring

Client Resource Stability

• Lack of legacy technical resources
• Lack of client experience with target Oracle ERP Cloud system requirements
• Constant functional, technical, and OSA resource turnover, with inadequate knowledge transfer
• Lack of client data validation effort or understanding
• Global Resourcing, requiring communication across US, EMEA, and APAC regions

Future State Complexity

• Client needed to adapt to the new paradigm of the Cloud from their decades old on premise solutions
• Multiple concurrent projects (Oracle ERP Cloud, PLM Cloud, CPQ Cloud, HCM Cloud, Sales Cloud, and Microsoft Dynamics 365) with inter-dependencies
• Constantly changing business requirements, requiring changes to the conversion programs until days before go live
• Constantly changing configuration in Oracle Cloud, meant not finalizing the Production Pod until days before go live
• Non-existent data load functionality for certain modules and extensive bugs within Oracle ERP Cloud
• Overlapping Project timelines for Wave 1 and Wave 2 due to shifting Client priorities
• Planned and unplanned Oracle Cloud downtime
• Complex Chart of Accounts mapping required detailed reconciliation reports to help the business ensure that the mapping did not unwittingly move money into incorrect Oracle Cloud accounts via AR, AP, and FA conversions

“ I wanted to one more time say thanks for the professionalism, commitment to excellence, and extraordinarily hard work demonstrated by every member of the Premier team. Premier provided an exceptional value … and I personally enjoyed working with your team. Every single person assigned demonstrated the traits mentioned above—and that is rare. ”
– Program Manager

Mitigating Risks

In order to mitigate all the risk factors identified, Premier leveraged risk elimination techniques to ensure that each of the FBDI and ADFdi datasets were ready for cutover. Additionally, Premier ensured that everyone in the project was educated, informed and ready for each aspect of the data migration, even as the Client experienced continual resource turnover.

• Created meaningful reports to help the client better understand their legacy data landscape in order to define requirements and identify legacy data issues.
• Worked with the client to develop a data quality strategy to address legacy data issues, through both legacy data cleanup and translation rules within Premier’s data conversion programs.
• Collaborated with Oracle engineers to troubleshoot Oracle Cloud bugs and help develop brand new load processes where none existed before.
• Premier’s Oracle Cloud CTQ (Critical to Quality) validations predicted conversion results and identified records that fail Oracle Cloud system and client’s functional business requirements, enabling the entire project team to address issues before the actual loads were processed.
• Created and managed the data migration project plan to navigate the implementation team through the project’s critical path and ensure all relevant project team members were aligned.
• Worked with the Global MDM team to define the matching criteria for identifying duplicate customer and supplier data – including combinations and non-exact of name, tax number, D-U-N-S number, and Parent D-U-N-S number.
• Generated an audit trail that tracked all data throughout the migration including the automatically de-duplicated Customers, Suppliers, and Sales Cloud Prospects.
• Delivered and managed readiness dashboards that tracked everything on the conversion cycle from the creation of mapping specifications to final load statistics, which was regularly shared with PMO.
• Created actionable reports to help with data enrichment, including a D&B name override report allowing business users a chance to retain legacy name over D&B enriched name.

Key Activities

In order to deliver on these risk mitigation techniques, the data migration team needed to fully leverage Premier’s EPACTL framework, “One Team, One Tool” approach, and Applaud® data migration software by performing the following activities:

• Extracted the raw data from each of the 11 legacy systems into Applaud’s data repository.
• Automatically profiled each relevant column in each legacy system to assist with the creation of the data conversion requirements.
• Supported the Client in creation of detailed data conversion mapping requirements and specifications
• Deployed integrated analytics/reporting tools to perform deeper analysis on the legacy data set to identify numerous legacy data issues.
• Developed and executed Oracle Cloud specific pre-load validations, identifying missing or invalid configuration prior to each load cycle – allowing the business to address problems prior to each conversion cycle.
• Created custom reconciliation reports for the Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Fixed Assets, and General Ledger modules. Each reconciliation tracked all records from the legacy aging report, though the conversion selection and transformation process, and into Oracle Cloud, ensuring the Client was comfortable and empowered to quickly and easily identify and pinpoint any penny throughout the conversion and loading process.
• Utilized Applaud’s dynamic de-duplication process to merge Suppliers, Customers, and Sales Cloud prospects in the various Oracle Cloud applications.
• Used Applaud’s data transformation capabilities to quickly build stable and repeatable data migration programs which could quickly react to every specification change.
• Provided data migration specialists versed in best practices and techniques to identify prevent, and resolve problems before they became issues.

The Results

The legacy data complexity and quality, client resource stability, and future state complexity increased the risk and made for a challenging project. However, the end result was a resounding success. The team successfully migrated the data from 11 legacy systems into Oracle ERP Cloud, Oracle PLM Cloud, Oracle CPQ Cloud, Oracle HCM Cloud, and Microsoft Dynamics within the specified, 4 day cutover period. Prior to the final production cutover, the team was able to provide the project team with detailed metrics, including the expected load success rate, to support the final “Go/No-Go” decision. With the predicted success rate known ahead of schedule, the team was able to make sure there was a plan in place to address the minimal fallout and PMO was able to confidently make the “Go” decision.

To fully bring the application live, 67 distinct conversion objects were loaded during a 4 day cutover window needed to be loaded. When the final results were tallied, the predicted success rate proved accurate and all reconciliation and data audit criteria passed with flying colors.