Welcome to Cloud Chronicles: Real-World Global Transformations. In our final episode of this podcast series, experts from AtkinsRéalis and PRODINGER answer live questions from the audience as they share their experiences with migrating to the cloud. They answered live questions regarding the transition of on-premises applications to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or Oracle Cloud Applications. The discussion included strategies for fully adopting Cloud ERP versus a best-of-breed approach, as well as considerations for EBS financials in future planning, chart of accounts strategies, and more.
Megan Testani, Project Partners: The first question we have is for Jochen Rahm, the CTO for PROMATIS (an ITG Company) and the Program Manager for PRODINGER. Jochen, organizations have similar needs for HCM and financials. How would you determine if you should go with a one-ERP approach or a best-of-breed technology approach?
Jochen Rahm, PROMATIS: I think what we are looking at first is, for me, important; the processes behind you are what processes you want to implement. This is why I mentioned that we have a very, very strong partner with Oracle that has a lot of application functionalities. We need to look at your business process requirements, and then we can map the application.
As I mentioned, sometimes ERP Fusion is sufficient for some customers. But sometimes, you need to have the ERP Fusion Cloud plus the EPM on top because you also have some additional requirements, and this normally should drive out your business process requirements and not start with the application, and then we look at how we work and do it and vice versa. It helps extremely.
Megan Testani, Project Partners: Thank you. For our next question, we will start with you again, Jochen. Similar to you, we are going to go with the cloud for some of our product lines, and the rest of our business will remain on-prem. We are trying to plan for the future, but with our financials and EBS, we are running into a situation with our chart of accounts. It currently accommodates up to four digits, which will eventually run out. The functional team proposed we move to eight digits so we never run out. But the EBS team said absolutely not. Have you run into a similar problem? How could this be solved?
Jochen Rahm, PROMATIS: In this project, we had the benefit of some hidden segments that we can enable, so we also have the EBS we could enable. We can also easily match that to the EPM Cloud because you also need to use that. But we had also some other customer where we extend that. So that’s a possibility also in the EBS to extend your chart of accounts. Some partner solutions that are also provided by Oracle can help you with that. So think about it because this is a core element of your chart of accounts. If you want to change it, you’d normally need a reimplementation, but there are also some other options.
Megan Testani, Project Partners: Thank you, Jochen. Randy Martin, Director of Financial Applications Strategy and Innovation for AtkinsRéalis, could you share your perspective?
Randy Martin, AtkinsRéalis: Just to add a piece, one of the things we did was we implemented EPM, and there was a chart of accounts designed for that. We took the opportunity in EBS to redo our chart of accounts completely. So there’s a company out there that, Eprentise, will allow you to do that, and it was very successful. It worked, you know, pretty seamlessly to completely redo your chart of accounts. We simplified it and aligned it to EPM. So now we’re set up for a good future.
Megan Testani, Project Partners: Thank you, Randy. I think Bruce Maghan, Vice President of ERP Services for Project Partners, has a potential solution for this problem. Bruce?
Bruce Maghan, Project Partners: Eprentise offers a solution for EBS customers to restructure their chart of accounts without having to go through the effort of re-implementing your EBS solution. Basically, this service provides a way to map the current chart of accounts to a new chart of account structure and then programmatically drive the revision to your new CoA.
The solution doesn’t drive accounting changes that need to be made at the sub-ledger level. This effort has to be done as part of your overall effort through your normal configuration steps. Another service that Eprentise offers is the ability to collapse or merge operating units automatically in the general ledger. You can find more information on their capabilities on their website at www.eprentise.com.
Megan Testani, Project Partners: Our next question is for Randy. The scope of your migrations is impressive. Would you say testing was a very important part of your migration strategy? Did you consider a testing automation tool?
Randy Martin, AtkinsRéalis: We are in the process of building out a testing automation. We weren’t there, and that’s unfortunate they weren’t there earlier because, clearly, regression testing pays its benefits not just for this migration but even patching and other things like that. And so it’s an area that we ideally would have had that in place before we did this migration. That would have certainly helped and sped the process even more. So, yeah. Good point. It’s it’s an area where we’re building out.
Megan Testani, Project Partners: Thank you, Randy. This concludes our podcast series Cloud Chronicles: Real-World Global Transformations. To catch up on all episodes, visit the Project Partners’ page on SoundCloud or check out our blog.
