OnPlan Consulting started the New Year right, helping a preeminent metals solution company in Oregon with CRP1 of an R12.2 upgrade from 11i. CRP0 (as it was called) had been around for months but had only been partially tested; having users working in a new architecture with limited outside assistance had resulted in a slow start. But the second week of January, it was all hands on deck to test the upgrade.
Project Overview
I had the privilege of joining two other OnPlan Consultants in being a part of this testing round. Though I only had one week to get the instance prepared, I considered it a privilege because this company, and their users, are “super users”: Individuals who know their jobs and have a very good understanding of Oracle through years of 11i experience.
This instance was R12.2.4, however, so we had to set up Advance Collections and fix dates for the upgraded E-Business Tax and OPM Manufacturing (the biggest area of work). The 11i warehouse-oriented OPM/Inventory structure won’t work in R12.2.4. A revision of the Inventory Organization, Sub-Inventory structure is needed. Leads training is required. And of course, there’s the question of how to map OPM SLA in their new instance.
That sounds like a big challenge, but for those contemplating an upgrade from 11i to R12, the process is the smoothest Oracle has created yet. I started life as a user way back in Oracle 10 GUI, and as a consultant, I’ve been through many implementations and upgrades — Oracle has definitely improved the process over the past 20 years.
Oracle R12 Upgrade Testing
After one week of testing, we passed two-thirds of the client’s test scenarios. Another 20% deferred due to technical development required for reports, and some custom front end processes. Most of the failures were related to custom reports that simply need mapping to new tables (Sales Tax Report needs to point to the correct field in ZX_LINES instead of the old RA_LINES.) The remaining failures and deferrals relate to the client’s desire to have automated integration of the front-end tools into Oracle instead of the current manual integration.
Taking that into account, the first real round of testing resulted in only about a 7% failure rate — an impressively low number for a first full testing! And in all, we logged fewer than 10 SRs to help resolve issues. (One example: the upgraded Location Based Taxes have beginning dates of 01-JAN-1900 but the associated Global Configuration Owned Tax Regime, Tax, Status and Jurisdiction have Oracle’s standard date of 01-JAN-1952.)
It’s great to start the year with a success. In this case, it was a combination of working with talented users, and the experience that OnPlan Consulting brings to a project.
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