Project Summary

A leading $22.5B Diversified Manufacturing Conglomerate grew through the years by acquiring companies. They needed help consolidating their global footprint into a single enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. In order to simplify and standardize back-office processes and leverage resources across the global enterprise, a major project was initiated to consolidate ten disparate legacy systems into a single instance of Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) R12. This case study represents one phase of the implementation, though the requirements and challenges pertained to every phase of the implementation.

“…using Premier was 4 to 5 times more productive than our traditional approach.”
– Director, ERP Data Conversion

Requirements

The overall data migration requirements for this phase of the implementation were as follows:

  • The data from ten legacy ERP systems needed to be extracted, analyzed, enriched, and transformed before it could be loaded into a single instance of Oracle EBS. De-duplicated records needed traceability for auditors.
  • Complex data transformation programs needed to be ran consistently to support various test cycles. Enhancements and changes needed to be easily identifiable, and metrics between cycles were expected to be tracked and improved upon.
  • Due to the nature of the client’s businesses, strict auditing requirements needed to be met. Records needed to be traceable through conversion programs, and complex transformations needed to be fully documented for approval.

Client Challenges

There were many obstacles to making this data migration successful. Some of the most notable challenges included:

  • The database technology running many of the legacy systems was old and outdated, including a 30-year-old mainframe and an Oracle 8i database that was nearly 20-years old.
  • Significant data quality issues existed across the data landscape, including missing, invalid, inconstant, and large amounts of duplicated data.
  • Data structures were incredibly different--both between legacy systems and from each legacy system to the target Oracle EBS solution. Complex data transformations were required.
  • Project timelines were tight and specification changes were frequent. With no slack in the time line, each new specification needed to be implemented quickly by the data team and easily validated by the testers.
  • Due to large data volumes, complex data transformations, and rigid timelines, invalid data sets needed to be preemptively identified prior to loading data into Oracle EBS.

Applaud® for the Data Migration

Key Activities

  • Despite the lack of client resources with knowledge of the mainframe or Oracle 8i systems, data was extracted from ten different legacy sources into a single data repository within Applaud.
  • Built-in profiling tools allowed the team to proactively review the existing data landscape, which helped drive requirement discussions based on facts instead of data assumptions.
  • The combination of Applaud’s data migration hub and automated data analysis capabilities identified duplicated and other data quality issues across the disparate systems.
  • An extensive data quality strategy that was facilitated through a combination of dashboards, detailed reports, and Applaud’s comprehensive quality tools enabled the business to focus their energy on making decisions rather than cleansing individual records in the legacy systems.
  • Data transformations built in Applaud enabled the team to quickly react to requirements changes and ensured that the entire process was predictable, repeatable, and highly automated.
  • Data transformations built in Applaud enabled the team to quickly react to requirements changes and ensured that the entire process was predictable, repeatable, and highly automated.
  • The migrated data was reconciled against the legacy data, providing both an audit trail and a method to quickly validate large portions of the converted data.
  • Data migration activities across all divisions and phases flowed through a centralized team, ensuring all requirements and processes were consistent across the entire organization.

The Bottom Line

To help overcome these challenges, the client seriously considered several alternatives, including internal resources and Informatica. After a “bake-off” with a global consulting firm using the Informatica software, the client chose Premier International’s Applaud® data migration services as their data migration solution.

Three key components of Premier International’s Applaud solution helped the client navigate their data migration:

  1. Premier’s data migration consultants: Premier’s services group averages more than six years of experience working with Applaud, exclusively on data migration projects.
  2. Premier’s methodology: Premier’s EPACTL approach to data migration projects is different than traditional ETL approaches and helps ensure the project stays on track. This methodology decreases overall implementation time and reduces the risk of the migration.
  3. Premier’s data migration software, Applaud®: Applaud has been optimized to address the challenges that occur on data migration projects, allowing the team to accomplish all data needs using one integrated product.

All three aspects of the Applaud solution were needed in order to resolve the challenges of this project.

The Results and Future Plans

The end result of using Premier’s Applaud data migration services was a successful implementation. The Premier team was able to exceed expectations not only in delivering the migration on time and on budget, but through several other measurable metrics. In addition to the successful cutover, Premier was able to reduce critical path timeline by 1.5 months, enable the client to re-allocate 4 to 5 internal resources, and improve the KPIs of the entire project team by 50%. Without Premier, it would have been unlikely that the client would have been able to accomplish everything that was needed in the required timeframe. Bringing Applaud into the project drastically reduced the risk of failure.

Since the completion of the initial phase of the implementation, the client has continued to leverage the Premier team for all subsequent phases of their overall implementation as they continue to successfully and seamlessly deploy across the globe. While the implementation is still ongoing, to date, the team has migrated data from 58 legacy sources across 39 sites in 17 countries.