Application Upgrades – Oracle On the road again DOWNLOAD

While major software upgrades are a routine part of doing business, they can’t be taken lightly if IT leaders want to avoid the “so what did we spend that money on?” question. When an upgrade is completed, the benefits to the business should be apparent. And yet there are plenty of stories about big upgrades that didn’t meet expectations – leading to a lot of avoidable angst among the IT team. That’s why a more strategic approach to upgrades may make sense.

Your upgrade is about a lot more than technology. It’s about your business. Organization design. Processes. Data. Long-term business goals. Short-term goals. Proper upgrade planning and implementation account for these issues and more. Deloitte can bring a broad range of skills, capabilities and insights to provide information and resources needed for assisting clients in their Oracle-related upgrade engagements, from technology to business strategy, risk, human capital, tax and beyond. That’s why we’ve received numerous awards for our work related to Oracle upgrades. Our approach was designed to help you accomplish your upgrade-related objectives. Learn more about the offering.

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Related offerings

• Application Design Services
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Take off the blinders
Wearing blinders, a racehorse is able to focus on one thing: the road ahead. While this works well for horseracing, when it comes to technology upgrades it’s an entirely different story. A single-minded focus on upgrade implementation can often come at the expense of significant opportunities to add value, because implementation is only part of the story.

For instance, organizations that are planning to upgrade to the latest version of their Oracle solution should take time to reevaluate their solution footprint. An upgrade can be a prime opportunity to build in new capabilities with new solutions in a streamlined, efficient manner. Instead, many organizations will go through the heavy lifting of an upgrade, only to find out later that they need to add new capabilities to their software portfolio. If you’ve ever considered adding a sunroof after buying a new car, you know the feeling.

Not only is this a less efficient approach in terms of resource management, it can often result in a suboptimal solution. Endeavor to get it right the first time. That’s where we can help.

How we can help

Your upgrade is about a lot more than technology. It’s about your business. Organization design. Processes. Data. Long-term business goals. Short-term goals. Proper upgrade planning and implementation account for these issues and more. Deloitte can bring a broad range of skills, capabilities and insights to provide information and resources needed for assisting clients in their Oracle-related upgrade engagements, from technology to business strategy, risk, human capital, tax and beyond. That’s why we’ve received numerous awards for our work related to Oracle upgrades. Our approach was designed to help you accomplish your upgrade-related objectives.

Here are some of the specific services we can offer as part of our Oracle Application Upgrades solution:

• Upgrade Business Case Evaluation
• Upgrade Toolkit
• Upgrade Accelerators

Bottom-line benefits

• Drive consistent, integrated leading practices
• Reduce the cost of back-office operations
• Accelerate user adoption
• Lower systems management costs
• Decrease days sales outstanding and increase cash flow
• Develop enterprise-wide human capital strategy
• Improve workforce retention
• Discern and manage demand
• Improve order accuracy and logistics efficiency
• Determine whether spend contracts are used properly

Four ways to get more value now

We’ve helped some of the leading companies in the world get more value from their Oracle Application upgrades. Here are a few things we’ve learned along the way:

Start with the business – not the technology. Don’t let technology features and capabilities drive the scope of your upgrade project. Start with clear business objectives and build out from there. It’s an approach that can make otherwise tough technology decisions a lot easier.

Keep adoption in your sights. “But will they use it?” is one of the most important questions to ask at multiple points during an Oracle upgrade. Find out what users are looking for, and lean on powerful new user interface tools to help give them intuitive solutions they’ll actually use.

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Oracle applications come preconfigured with common features and functionality. In some cases, it may make more sense to rework organizational processes to line up with the existing solution rather than the other way around. Not only can such an approach make for a smoother implementation, it can result in more effective ways of doing business.

Take an industry-focused approach. Whatever you want to do, chances are it’s been done before. Consider industry-tailored requirements to help lessen the time required to design and implement new solutions.

Application Upgrades in action

• With more than 4,000 employees and a budget exceeding one billion dollars, this business management division for a large state agency was responsible for everything from procurement, acquisition management and design of state property, to the purchase and maintenance of the state’s vehicle fleet. We helped this organization become one of the first in the public sector to upgrade their existing Oracle system to an Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) R12 upgrade – one that is still recognized as one of the largest and most successful R12 upgrades in the public sector.
• A leading provider of innovative IT solutions to corporate and public-sector customers faced financial reporting challenges related to revenue recognition. We helped develop a processes and technology solution to address this, and helped to support an upgrade and expansion of their Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) footprint. Benefits achieved from the upgrade included improved financial reporting and controls, reduced headcount and cost per transaction, better project management and revenue recognition and support for shared services.
• A large company marketing and distributing energy products such as gasoline, diesel, home heating fuel, jet fuel and lubricants needed an upgrade to support improvements in shared services and reduce its back-office operation costs. We helped the client implement a transformation program to reduce costs and improve its operations. The results achieved from the solution include: simplified processing and general ledger management; data and definitions that could be shared and secured at different levels; multi-organization access control, allowing users to be set up with a single responsibility and still access different operating units and centralized accounting policies and processing; compliance with multiple legislative, industry or geographical requirements concurrently; and the ability to generate high-quality statements offering greater transparency into the company’s operations and performance, while creating common standards across business lines and business functions.

As used in this document, “Deloitte” means Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.