Upgrading Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) to Release 12.2 is a monumental and oftentimes complex undertaking. There’s a lot of territory to cover, so it’s best practice to hire a consultant with extensive experience with EBS upgrades and customization (also referred to as CEMLIs) remediation.
There are two major workstreams to focus on during the Oracle EBS 12.2 upgrade: the functional and technical workstreams.
The Functional Workstream is sometimes misinterpreted and conflated with the technical upgrade. During the functional workstream effort of the Oracle EBS R12.2.X upgrade process, the functional consultant oversees the following:
- Evaluation of the Functional changes before the project starts to identify and flag any changes that can potentially impact you and the organization.
- Evaluation of Functional changes between your current version of EBS and your target version of EBS.
- As a minimum, providing delta training or coaching to discuss the new features and what they will mean to your organization. This helps ensure your EBS solution continues to operate as intended. This is often done in collaborative workshops with specific business units.
- Evaluation of standard functionality to assess if it can replace customizations. This step requires strong functional support.
- Performing functional assessments in an R12.2 Vision instance or have the DBAs stand up an upgraded 12.2 instance early.
Because the bulk of the operations conducted during the upgrade are technical, with the most prominent technical effort being CEMLI Remediation to meet R12.2 standards, it’s safe to argue that the vast majority of the tasks performed during the upgrade are similarly technical. The CEMLI Remediation endeavor is frequently the crucial path since it dictates the overall project timeline and is frequently the most significant source of budget and timeline risk.
Here are the key aspects of the Technical Workstream effort involved during the EBS upgrade to 12.2 that are carried out and overseen by Technical consultants:
- Early access to CEMLIs before the project starts.
- Modification of CEMLIs before the upgrade project starts to adhere to 12.2 development standards.
- Technical evaluation and assessment of CEMLIs to determine if they can be reused as they are, or if they must be remediated, or if they must be replaced.
- Remediation of CEMLIs to adhere to 12.2 standards before the upgrade takes place can help speed up the process, resulting in less downtime in production cutover and less time required to remediate the CEMLIs in 12.2. Also, develop any new CEMLIs required to replace old CEMLIs that will not function properly in R12.2.
- Evaluation of Oracle’s patch that delivers scripts to identify CEMLIs that require remediation as well as data-driven recommendations on which actions to take to remediate.
Many Oracle EBS 12.1.3 clients are still hesitant about making the upgrade even though the time to remain under Premier Support already came and went. With no Premier Support coverage to offer ongoing delivery of enhancements, features, capabilities, fixes, and security patches, clients are exposing their EBS investments to the unwanted costs and risks of being desupported.
Some are now in Sustaining Support, Oracle’s most meager form of support, while others purchased Market Driven Support (MDS), a very limited and expensive form of support that only covers a handful of EBS necessities on your road to modernization. Think of MDS as a bandaid that only buys you enough time before you either upgrade to EBS R12.2 or upgrade to the cloud.
It’s also important to mention that MDS only covers the years 2022 and 2023, each year with different pricing, so at the end of this year, you will have to pay for MDS at an increased rate. One recommendation is that you reallocate that budget and instead upgrade to Oracle EBS R12.2 to not only save money but also benefit from EBS innovations that will help your business meet modern industry demands.