TORONTO, ON, CA: Definian International proudly announces the successful completion of a JDE E1 data quality and synchronization initiative for a $1B human resources services and technology company. During this project, Definian partnered with a long term client to perform a data synchronization audit between the data of an acquired company, running on a custom ERP platform, and the organization’s global instance of JDE E1.

Definian first partnered with this organization in 2012, performing more than five separate implementations and deployments for them over the years. After acquiring another company several years ago, the organization maintained an ongoing interface and manual processes to keep the acquired companies custom ERP in sync with the global instance of JDE E1. Earlier this year, they determined that their interface procedure was not keeping the two systems fully synchronized.

Leveraging the powerful reporting capabilities of Applaud®, Definian quickly identified thousands of discrepancies which had been introduced over the years since the acquisition.  Once identified, Definian proceeded to cleanse the impacted data, bringing the two systems back into sync and allowing the organization to move forward with the confidence that their data is accurate.

Definian looks forward to continuing to help companies ensure their data quality remains held to a high standard.

Project Summary

A $14B Surgical Equipment Company was in the midst of consolidating a recent acquisition into their existing JD Edwards EnterpriseOne (E1) application. Prior to Definian joining the project, the majority of the data migration work was being performed by the client.

As the go live date approached, migration development had already fallen significantly behind target, to the point that proceeding on the projected track would have put the entire implementation at risk.

If an automated solution could not be developed and tested in the next 38 days, the client faced a painful contingency plan that required manual dual-maintenance across JDE E1 and the legacy system while waiting for thousands of transactions to bleed out. During this time, the entire team would have worked longer than usual hours to support multiple systems, inconsistencies introduced across the systems would lead to frustration and confusion with customers and suppliers, and the IT Department would continue paying for legacy software and hardware.

The client’s System Integrator (SI) brought in Definian to rescue the original timeline by building automated conversions for Sales Orders and Purchase Orders, thus allowing the legacy system, MFG/PRO, to be completely shut down immediately after go-live.

Requirements

• Document, develop, and build automated conversion processes that will extract Purchase Orders and Sales Orders from the legacy systems and load them to JDE E1.
• Identify and resolve all major issues with sales Orders and Purchase Orders, including those related to client-specific customizations and special order types.
• Minimize downtime and business impact to the company by supporting cutover during a holiday weekend.
• Guarantee a complete and accurate cutover by reconciling transactions converted into JDE E1 against the legacy system.
• Accomplish all the above things within 38 calendar days.

“Frankly, I think we’re screwed,” announced the project lead during our introductory call. They had no plan for transactional conversions and needed our help. Immediately our team instilled confidence that the the transactional data would be migrated programmatically, data would be reconciled, and go live would occur on time.

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Client Challenges & Solutions

The rescue effort was made possible through the combination of Definian’s approach, experience, and software.

The business requirements for the Sales Order and Purchase Order conversions were not complete.

• Applaud’s automated profiling capabilities immediately provided an overview of the legacy data landscape and identified missing data migration specifications.
• Applaud’s robust library of conversion code and pre-built validation tools provided a head start developing a conversion solution for the client.
• Definian consultants’ extensive experience on data migration projects and knowledge of JDE E1, made it possible to identify data issues and technical gaps even before the client finished the papers for granting access to the target applications.

In addition to understanding how legacy data structures map to JDE E1, there were data exceptions and configurations that needed to be understood prior to transformation and load.

• Both technical and functional validations were incorporated into the conversion programs, providing clear and actionable error messages for the team to address legacy data issues, incomplete migration specifications, and missing configuration.
• Applaud’s integrated platform made it possible to extend data profiling and analysis reports to automate many data cleansing activities, further reducing the amount of manual work needed for cutover.`

Prior to Definian joining the project, the client’s project management was highly doubtful that the migration programs would be ready for go live.

• Definian’s experienced consultants created a detailed data migration strategy and incorporated this into the project plan to ensure that the project would be ready for go-live.
• Applaud’s rapid application development platform made it possible for data conversions to be built in mere days, allowing ample time to identify and correct for issues in the initial requirements.
• Our specialization in data migration gave us the confidence to reassure project leadership that while their situation is unique, Definian has the skills and tools necessary to take on the challenge, understand their data landscape, and make go-live successful.

The Bottom Line

The Results

One week prior to go live, the Sales Order and Purchase Order conversion development was complete, fully tested, and highly automated. Definian’s approach made it possible to identify and requisition legacy and target data issues ahead of time, avoiding issues at go-live. Detailed validation and reconciliation reports streamlined approvals and signoffs during cutover and enabled the client team to gain full confidence in the converted data. Through a combination of our EPACTL approach, Applaud’s technical capabilities, and our decades of consulting experience in data migration, we were able to define a data conversion approach and guide the client to success.

With only 100 hours of work over the course of 38 calendar days, Definian

was able to turn the project from certain failure to an uneventful go live, with no major issues encountered at cutover. Whereas data migration was once the biggest cause of concern for the project team, by go-live it was a reason for celebration.

The Applaud® Advantage

In order to rescue the project, the Client decided to use Definian’s Applaud® data migration Services to ensure the transactional migrations would be ready for Go

Live without impacting the project timeline. Three key components of Definian’s Applaud solution helped the client navigate their data migration:

1. Definian’s data migration consultants: Definian’s services group averages more than six years of experience working with Applaud, exclusively on data migration projects.
2. Definian’s methodology: Definian’s EPACTL approach to data migration projects is different than traditional ETL approaches and helps ensure the project stays on track. This methodology decreases overall implementation time and reduces the risk of the migration.
3. Definian’s data migration software, Applaud®: Applaud was built from the ground up to address the challenges that occur on data migration projects, allowing the team to accomplish all data needs using one integrated product.

All three aspects of the solution were critical factors in meeting the tight time frames required to rescue this project.

Project Summary

After years of expanding and diversifying their portfolio of products and services, one of North America’s largest manufacturers of consumer packaged goods initiated a plan to convert its various acquisitions into a single instance of JDE EnterpriseOne (E1).

Project leadership established an aggressive plan to go live with JDE E1 one year from the project start date. But after 5 months of struggling with data conversion processes developed by their internal IT department, there were serious doubts about go-live readiness. Faced with hundreds of open data issues and no systematic way to solve them, the Systems Integrator (SI) partner called in Definian International to rescue the project.

This case study represents the conversion of manufacturing data from SAP ECC 6.0 to JDE E1 for all North American sites.

Requirements

The overall data migration requirements for the initial phase of the Global Manufacturing Acquisition project included:

• The SAP and supplemental data needed to be extracted, consolidated, harmonized, cleansed, and transformed before it could be loaded into a single instance of JDE E1.
• Major data cleanup and complicated selection criteria was being performed manually by the client. Spreadsheets associated with these efforts needed to be incorporated into the automated conversion process.
• To guarantee that in-scope data was correctly divested from the parent SAP system, selection criteria needed to be validated against the results of queries provided by internal auditors. After the migration, the legacy data had to be fully reconciled against what was loaded into JDE E1.
• Reports needed to be built to assist the business in identifying and applying changes to both SAP and JDE E1 during an extended dual maintenance window.

“Thanks so much for the efforts and the sacrifice. You guys rock.”
– CFO and EVP

Challenges

There were many challenges to making the Data Migration successful.  Some of the largest challenges faced and overcome were:

• SAP source data structures were vastly different from the target JDE E1 data structures. Numerous supplemental cross-references and supporting data extracts were needed.
• Since one of the recent acquisitions was not yet off their former parent company’s system, the conversions needed to execute complex selection logic and had to be built and tested without direct access to the legacy system.
• The data conversion had been previously attempted through the use of SQL scripts, so these scripts became the basis of the selection criteria and requirements for the Applaud-based conversion routines.
• Project leadership had little confidence in the existing conversion solution. The internal team’s initial attempt for conversion development relied on SQL scripts, included almost no error reporting, and proved to be unsustainable as requirements evolved and changes were needed.
• The client organization intentionally shielded their end users from conversion requirement gathering and test cycles. This caused numerous gaps between the conversion results and the users’ expectations.
• The conversion schedule was extremely tight. Test runs were scheduled every two weeks, which did not allow for thorough and complete testing, nor for the testers to request changes based on analyzed test results.
• Numerous last-minute requirements forced changes to be made to transactional conversions during the final week before go-live, leaving virtually no time for business users to validate changes.

Applaud® for Data Migration

Key Activities

• The team began by using Applaud’s integrated analytics and reporting tools to perform a deep analysis on the legacy data and proactively identify legacy data issues.
• Data ran through Applaud standardization, consolidation, correction, and enrichment processes both before and as problem areas were identified, improving the overall quality of the data prior to go-live.
• Instead of basic “lift and shift” SQL queries, 51 fully integrated transformation and migration processes were created and executed within Applaud.
• The project timeline was maintained as additional requirement changes were identified and incorporated using Applaud’s rapid development capabilities.
• The team replicated in-scope portions of the data landscape in a centralized data repository. Combining previously disparate data sources made data harmonization and validation efforts more efficient.
• Robust and thorough error reporting was handled via the built-in cleansing tools; this allowed the team to proactively identify and rectify failures before loading data to the target JDE E1 tables.
• Developed extensive financial validation reports, and reconciled business SQL queries to the converted data out of Applaud.
• The error and validation reports served as platforms for comparing the target JDE E1 production data with the source SAP production data, which became especially helpful during the dual maintenance activities.
• Definian’s RapidTrak methodology was used to manage the various conversion interdependencies, decreasing the overall data migration effort and reducing project risk.

The Bottom Line

The Results

Applaud’s integrated platform immediately provided insights into the data landscape, drove creation of reports and KPI’s, enabled rapid development of complex conversion programs, and ultimately made it possible to load, validate, and reconcile data for 51 different conversions.

Even though Definian consultants entered the project mid-flight, they were able to pick up complex yet untested SQL conversion where internal resources left off, without sacrificing progress already made. This allowed for a more holistic data migration approach that included legacy data cleansing and post conversion reconciliation.

By taking over conversion responsibility, Definian enabled a previously overwhelmed internal team to focus on deliverables that will have lasting impact, like reporting, integrations, and training. 7 months after Premier began work, the entire team celebrated a successful JDE EnterpriseOne go-live for all North American sites, on time and on budget.

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The Applaud® Advantage

To help overcome the expected data migration challenges,the organization engaged Definian International’s Applaud® data migration services to eliminate the risk from their data migration and ensure the overall success of their consolidation project.

Three key components of Definian International’s Applaud solution helped the client navigate their data migration:

1. Definian’s data migration consultants: Definian’s services group averages more than six years of experience working with Applaud, exclusively on data migration projects.
2. Definian’s methodology: Definian’s EPACTL approach to data migration projects is different than traditional ETL approaches and helps ensure the project stays on track. This methodology decreases overall implementation time and reduces the risk of the migration.
3. Definian’s data migration software, Applaud: Applaud has been optimized to address the challenges that occur on data migration projects, allowing the team to accomplish all data needs using one integrated product.

All three aspects of the solution were critical factors in meeting the tight time frames required to rescue this project.