Project Summary

A $14B Surgical Equipment Company was in the midst of consolidating a recent acquisition into their existing JD Edwards EnterpriseOne (E1) application. Prior to Premier joining the project, the majority of the data migration work was being performed by the client.

As the go live date approached, migration development had already fallen significantly behind target, to the point that proceeding on the projected track would have put the entire implementation at risk.

If an automated solution could not be developed and tested in the next 38 days, the client faced a painful contingency plan that required manual dual-maintenance across JDE E1 and the legacy system while waiting for thousands of transactions to bleed out. During this time, the entire team would have worked longer than usual hours to support multiple systems, inconsistencies introduced across the systems would lead to frustration and confusion with customers and suppliers, and the IT Department would continue paying for legacy software and hardware.

The client’s System Integrator (SI) brought in Premier International to rescue the original timeline by building automated conversions for Sales Orders and Purchase Orders, thus allowing the legacy system, MFG/PRO, to be completely shut down immediately after go-live.

Requirements

  • Document, develop, and build automated conversion processes that will extract Purchase Orders and Sales Orders from the legacy systems and load them to JDE E1.
  • Identify and resolve all major issues with sales Orders and Purchase Orders, including those related to client-specific customizations and special order types.
  • Minimize downtime and business impact to the company by supporting cutover during a holiday weekend.
  • Guarantee a complete and accurate cutover by reconciling transactions converted into JDE E1 against the legacy system.
  • Accomplish all the above things within 38 calendar days.
“Frankly, I think we’re screwed,” announced the project lead during our introductory call. They had no plan for transactional conversions and needed our help. Immediately our team instilled confidence that the the transactional data would be migrated programmatically, data would be reconciled, and go live would occur on time.

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Client Challenges & Solutions

The rescue effort was made possible through the combination of Premier’s approach, experience, and software.

The business requirements for the Sales Order and Purchase Order conversions were not complete.

  • Applaud’s automated profiling capabilities immediately provided an overview of the legacy data landscape and identified missing data migration specifications.
  • Applaud’s robust library of conversion code and pre-built validation tools provided a head start developing a conversion solution for the client.
  • Premier consultants’ extensive experience on data migration projects and knowledge of JDE E1, made it possible to identify data issues and technical gaps even before the client finished the papers for granting access to the target applications.

In addition to understanding how legacy data structures map to JDE E1, there were data exceptions and configurations that needed to be understood prior to transformation and load.

  • Both technical and functional validations were incorporated into the conversion programs, providing clear and actionable error messages for the team to address legacy data issues, incomplete migration specifications, and missing configuration.
  • Applaud’s integrated platform made it possible to extend data profiling and analysis reports to automate many data cleansing activities, further reducing the amount of manual work needed for cutover.`

Prior to Premier joining the project, the client’s project management was highly doubtful that the migration programs would be ready for go live.

  • Premier’s experienced consultants created a detailed data migration strategy and incorporated this into the project plan to ensure that the project would be ready for go-live.
  • Applaud’s rapid application development platform made it possible for data conversions to be built in mere days, allowing ample time to identify and correct for issues in the initial requirements.
  • Our specialization in data migration gave us the confidence to reassure project leadership that while their situation is unique, Premier has the skills and tools necessary to take on the challenge, understand their data landscape, and make go-live successful.

The Bottom Line

The Results

One week prior to go live, the Sales Order and Purchase Order conversion development was complete, fully tested, and highly automated. Premier’s approach made it possible to identify and requisition legacy and target data issues ahead of time, avoiding issues at go-live. Detailed validation and reconciliation reports streamlined approvals and signoffs during cutover and enabled the client team to gain full confidence in the converted data. Through a combination of our EPACTL approach, Applaud’s technical capabilities, and our decades of consulting experience in data migration, we were able to define a data conversion approach and guide the client to success.

With only 100 hours of work over the course of 38 calendar days, Premier International was able to turn the project from certain failure to an uneventful go live, with no major issues encountered at cutover. Whereas data migration was once the biggest cause of concern for the project team, by go-live it was a reason for celebration.

The Applaud® Advantage

In order to rescue the project, the Client decided to use Premier International’s Applaud® data migration Services to ensure the transactional migrations would be ready for Go

Live without impacting the project timeline. 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 was built from the ground up 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 solution were critical factors in meeting the tight time frames required to rescue this project.