City of Onkaparinga: The 100 day JD Edwards upgrade

The City of Onkaparinga have been using JD Edwards ERP for over 15 years. Over that time they have performed several application upgrades and had been running 8.12 for several years before making the decision to upgrade to version 9.1.2.

The City’s 30 JD Edwards users fulfil critical roles within the organisation, including finance, accounts payable, asset and fleet management, procurement, payroll and human resources.

The ageing solution needed a major update to support additional payroll functionality. The council could have implemented a baseline Electronic Software Update (ESU) patch, but this would have entailed extensive testing by all users across a range of business-critical roles. And the need for extended support for their mature JD Edwards software already meant the City of Onkaparinga were experiencing significantly increased costs.

At the same time, strategic change within the organisation was driving an urgent need for new hardware and to further integrate JD Edwards into other systems.

Advancing to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.1.2. utilising the 100 Day Upgrade programme - methodology and framework that simplifies the process and guarantees delivery within a hundred working days — was the ideal solution.

Myriad IT (now Fusion5) is one of only two Oracle partners in Australia qualified to deliver the 100 Day Upgrade programme. Given their long-term relationship with the city, they were the logical company to deliver the solution.

Kym Groves, Team Leader Business Systems for City of Onkaparinga, said the company “provided the City of Onkaparinga with quality consulting and support services for a number of years. We had a very tight timeline for the final production phase of project delivery which they were able to accommodate without any fuss.”

Using the 100 Day programme, Myriad IT delivered a project tailored to address the specific needs of the City of Onkaparinga, maximising the benefit they could derive from the solution.

The project was completed in a total of 88 working days.

Myriad IT took a staged approach to the project to accommodate strategic change at the City of Onkaparinga.

"We were delighted with how Fusion5 managed the project. They were accessible, responsive, kept us well informed throughout the process, and made every effort to ensure a smooth transition"

Kym Groves, Team Leader Business Systems for City of Onkaparinga

So that the focus remained on the JD Edwards upgrade, the complementary systems that needed to be upgraded were determined in advance. Relevant data was archived and purged before the start of the project to reduce the downtime associated with go-live.

Myriad IT’s JD Edwards team then installed and configured an upgrade development/test system to facilitate fast implementation. Once testing and training were completed, the upgrade was successfully moved to the production system. The project went live with minimal downtime and interruption to day-to-day activity.

Due to Myriad IT’s timely delivery of the upgrade, City of Onkaparinga was able to meet all the timelines critical to its other projects.

Their users report an enhanced experience. Having greater flexibility and an intuitive interface gives them more efficient data entry and reporting. And the implementation of tax and regulatory fixes means compliance is simpler and easier.

Groves is delighted with the outcomes of the JD Edwards upgrade. For instance, the city no longer needs extended Oracle support, creating an immediate cost saving of around 15%. “The ability to customise the visual interface, enhanced queries and improved grid functionality has improved operational efficiency and freed up IT resources to focus on strategic projects,” Groves says.

And according to the City’s Payroll Team, this was all achieved in the same amount of time and with the same user input as if they’d applied the baseline ESU patch to the old software.

As part of undertaking the upgrade program, Myriad IT’s consultants worked with the City of Onkaparinga to reduce its hardware footprint by replacing physical servers with virtual machines. Older hardware was decommissioned with minimal disruption. In addition, migrating the web tier to Oracle WebLogic Server 11g improved system stability, performance and manageability.

The City of Onkaparinga now has a modern user interface with multiple browser support which offers greater flexibility from an end-user and a standard operating environment perspective.

The upgrade positions the City of Onkaparinga to evolve in the future. It has a clear support framework, can implement Oracle companion products when required, and will receive ongoing regulatory and tax fixes under their support agreement.