If you are considering upgrading critical IT systems - take the time upfront to plan for it methodically. This is particularly true when embarking on an ERP upgrade. ERP systems these days are very customisable, and often have additional interfaces written to interact with other systems in the organisation. Be sure to involve all the relevant people in the upgrade planning stage.
A major South African mining company recently upgraded their ERP system. The planning was done impeccably, and the project manager ensured that all stakeholders were involved from the word go.
Anametrix was tasked with ensuring that the interfaces to the data warehouse would all still work when they switched over to the new version.
This was no small feat, considering that the ETL jobs ran over 300 individual scripts to extract information from the ERP database. These scripts extracted information from most areas of business including project accounting, general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, procurement and inventory. Once all the effected scripts were identified, they were modified on a fully functioning test environment. Rigorous testing was done over a few months, with full weekend dry-runs on the entire upgrade process.
In October 2013 the final switch over was successfully done on the production environment, with not one issue or fault. This was due to the diligence of the entire upgrade team - both in-house and the external consultants who assisted.
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