When to Upgrade Your JD Edwards and How to Apply Best Practices
Nov 12, 20247 mins read
To get the most out of your JD Edwards (JDE) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, it is crucial to be on an updated version. If not, you may not receive the full benefits of JDE, including its financial planning, project management, manufacturing management, and product lifecycle capabilities.
What happens when you do not upgrade your JDE ERP?
When you choose to delay upgrading your JD Edwards solution for more than just a few years, you may face significant risks. Aging software often can only run on older operating systems, older database versions, older integration technologies, and older security. Moreover, crucial third-party software may only interact with your older JD Edwards ERP using their older versions, as well. Problems can compound with all these interdependencies and lead to gridlock, all the way down to older, or even obsolete, hardware. This situation leads to a loss of ERP support services, as well as higher risks for known security vulnerabilities with older technology, many of which can likely be resolved with newer technology.
How can you tell if you are already suffering from the ill effects of an outdated JD Edwards ERP system? If you notice that users are becoming increasingly frustrated, or management complains about not getting quality insight into the business, people not getting good reporting data, people are not using the system but doing workarounds, or you are building applications to circumvent the system, then these are all warning signs that your JD Edwards system is outdated.
Understanding the potential of a JDE system upgrade
When determining the value of your applications upgrade, first assess the enhancements and capabilities available, and determine how they provide improvements for the business and/or for IT. The more you know and understand what’s available, the more you can determine how it will boost value for your enterprise. This understanding will also help you calculate return on investment, something crucial when you need to get executive buy-in because you will have a better sense of precisely how the upgrade benefits your organization.
Here are the initial questions to ask. Whenever possible, quantify your answers, but also consider qualitative benefits to your enterprise:
- What operational costs will be lowered?
- How will business value be increased?
- What new business capabilities are enabled?
- What regulatory, compliance, or tax requirements are met or improved?
- What benefits will you see — both short and long term?
- How much easier will it be for your IT team to operate?
- How are the long-term costs lowered for continued maintenance, compatibility, and upgrades in the future?
No two enterprises will use or benefit from JD Edwards upgrades in exactly the same way, and no two upgrade implementation processes are the same. To get a good overall sense of what is available in an application upgrade, start with the release notes. This will allow you to evaluate features and functionalities, and then you can dig in for more details in areas that particularly affect your enterprise.
Technical considerations when preparing for an upgrade
As an estimate, the technology portion of the upgrade typically involves one-third of the workload. Technical infrastructure elements to consider include overall IT architecture, hardware, operating systems, database options, applications servers, web services, data centers vs. hosting vs. cloud, or hybrids, and more.
The upgrading process for the core of the JD Edwards ERP system includes the upgrading of base applications, upgrade/retrofit of custom apps and data, and data conversions for configuration data, master data, business transactional data, and historical business data. Because the core comprises such a significant and important portion of the process, the foundation steps are crucial. They include:
- Determine the minimum technical requirements (MTRs) for your upgrade
- Inventory your current hardware and software for JD Edwards
- Size your JDE database and servers, with assistance from your hardware vendor
- Analyze your infrastructure gaps and develop a plan for upgrades, retirements, and new hardware
- Inventory your JDE applications used, custom apps and data, and any retirements, or new additions
- Inventory your JDE integrations and third-party systems affected
- Inventory your JDE data usage, plan your final data archivals and purges
No two enterprises have the exact same requirements. If you have kept up with each JD Edwards upgrade and are fairly current, then you can generally upgrade directly to the most current release. For older versions, you may need to perform a multi-step upgrade.
Preparing your teams
It is important to carefully prep your IT team and others in the enterprise who will be involved in the upgrade or who will have their job duties change because of the upgrade. Incorporate change management into your upgrade strategy and be sure to communicate regularly, letting your teams know the benefits of the JD Edwards upgrade, both to the enterprise overall, and to their jobs specifically. Prepare everyone for changes that will take place and get buy-in from all stakeholders. Be sure to communicate and secure executive buy-in, as this must be a company-wide decision and process.
This is also the time to structure your task management approach and have a plan in place ahead of time to determine how you will address challenges. What is the project scope? The scope must be well-defined so you can contain both costs and time spent. The more clearly that is defined and the more effectively the project is managed, the better the upgrade process will likely go and the more quickly you will see benefits from the upgrade.
Besides the expertise needed for leadership roles, it is important to assemble the right steering committee to direct this project. People on the committee must be engaged and active, able to efficiently make smart decisions. Project failures can often be attributed to a lack of an effective governance body. Do you have everyone you need in-house for these roles?
Getting ready for your upgrade
After you have completed all planning and preparation work, you can then proceed into the core body of work for the technology upgrade. The heavy lifting of an upgrade includes various components:
- Initial hardware, system, software installations and setups, loading the latest patches and updates, development environment setup, spec merge, and initial data conversion
- Programming the upgrade/retrofit and unit testing of all custom code for reports, integrations, conversions, extensions (RICE)
- Multiple test rounds beginning with full data conversions from the current production system over into the new upgrade system, and data validations by the business and IT, plus functional testing using documented business scenarios and scripts. These are usually called conference room pilots, integrated system tests, and user acceptance tests. For example, a typical series of 5 would be: CRP1, CRP2, IST1, IST2, and UAT.
- Include security testing within those rounds, including security roles and tasks, segregation of duties, and audits
- Performance testing for heavy interactive and batch workloads, response time, scheduled jobs completion time
- Documentation and training for trainers, end users, and support team
- Go-live cutovers practice, using and improving your cutover task lists
- Readiness assessment of all areas
- Remediation and final preparations
- Actual go-live, support, and the prioritization of ERP support incidents/resolutions
- Post-go-live assessment, and transition to follow-on targeted improvements
Along the way, document issues and risks that you encounter during your upgrade. Include screenshots, reports, log files, and so forth for more detail. After all this testing and the practice go-lives, the actual event should go smoothly. If you conduct thorough testing, history has proven that most issues will be user ID/password requests, security access to programs people missed, and training. There should be additional training provided to ensure successful adoption.
Ensuring post-upgrade success
First, celebrate the victory! The team has worked tirelessly on your upgrade. Recognize the hard work, the sacrifices made, and good leadership. Good people are your most valuable resources, and they need to be appreciated!
Once the initial issues have been resolved, assess your overall upgrade project. Note the areas of great success as well as areas of challenge, and how you could do better in the future. Review your wish list of items, items that were deferred, and features and functions targeted for post-upgrade. Plan these out at a more measured pace and let your teams work on these as smaller projects.
Continue to get even more benefits from your upgrade, as you are already live and well on your newly upgraded system. Finally, consider incorporating a continuous delivery model for updates, upgrades, patches, and, most of all, delivering new features, functions, and technology to your business on a more regular basis, quarterly or even monthly.
Argano for your JD Edwards ERP upgrade
When it is time to upgrade your JD Edwards ERP system, you are addressing one of the most critical components of your technology footprint that supports your daily business, so it is crucial that all goes well. Argano experts help you customize ERP solutions and provide JD Edwards Managed Services. Whether you need a straightforward technical upgrade, some improvements, or a more complex upgrade, or even a re-implementation, make sure you partner with the right experts.
Contact us today to help you prepare for a successful upgrade.