11i to R12 - Upgrade and Re-implement - linked in discussion

05/10/2009 by Simon Tomey.

I came across this excellent thread in a Linked in group. There are some great observations and I’ve extracted it here for your reading pleasure. Click on the link and join the group yourself to contribute.

http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=87360&discussionID=7245014&sik=1254740399769&trk=ug_qa_q&goback=%2Eana_87360_1254740399769_3_1

ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY SALES AND MARKETING CONSULTANT

What are your experiences?

At eprentise we’re interested in your experiences upgrading from 11i to R12. How did you scope the effort? Have you tested the upgrade? Have you completed the project and gone live on R12? How did it go?

Have you reimplemented? Defined as a fresh R12 and data migration from one or more 11i instances using public interfaces and custom data loads. Did you estimate scope accurately? What drove that decision? Is the project in process or have you gone live? What are the pros/cons to look out for in the project?

IT DIRECTOR - FINANCE

We have upgraded from 11i to R12… Reimplementations (I have heard) have gone smoother than upgrading - can not substanciate that. Some Advice… watch out for AP - there are huge changes and a lot of “bugs” in the product! I would suggest 12.0.5 or later version where more fixes have been applied. Could write a novel on how the upgrade went!

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS CONSULTANT (ORACLE APPS FUNCTIONAL) ORACLE PARTNER

I’ve heard re-implementations are smoother than upgrades, but also heard of an organisation that did a very big upgrade (and from 11.5.9) and it went OK.

The UKOUG ( http://www.ukoug.org/ ) have had a number of presentations on this and I’ve written about them in my blog (here if you’re interested http://blog.belife.co.uk/category/11i-to-r12-upgrade/ ). I haven’t written up the upgrade presentation yet, but will do soon.

 CONTROLLER BETWEEN JOBS

Unless you really need the SLA functionality in R12, I recommend staying with 11i for as long as possible.

PROJECT MANAGER/SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT AT ORACLE CORPORATION SINGAPORE PTE LTD

I was in an upgrade to R12 project. Nightmarish. Literally hundreds of patches then and still had problem closing the subledgers; AP has the most problem but AR is not bug free either. FA also had some issues. Many related to the change to SLA.

DIRECTOR AT VEDAS CONNECTIONS LTD

Before you upgrage (whichever route) consider very carefully two things:

1 - does r12 provide you with any additional functionality that you need, and

2 - What happens from a corporate governance point of view to you being on the latter stages of the Oracle Support cycle - particularly when sustaining support kicks in and you dont get the statutory patches for HR/Payroll

If you decide to adopt r12 then take the opportunity to eliminate as many customisations as possible, use XML Publisher to replace custom reports, have a very good look at your data - employees, customers, suppliers and banks as the way r12 holds this data is different from 11i. Ask youself if I was to design my erp again would i design the same environment that i already have? and i am sure you have many questions of your own.

Only when you have your own answers can you decide which is better for you. As you can see from other comments each path will have its ups and downs some which will be transient (many patches) whilst others will be permanent (inadequate design). And finally you also have 12.1 available which should be more stable than earlier versions

SNR ORACLE CONSULTANT, FUJITSU

I’ve managed an upgrade from 11.5.8 to R12 (HR/PAY only) which completed March 2008 - it was quite a bumpy ride but we got there in the end, and in time to process the UK End of Year/Start of Year successfully. I have to say that areas we were concerned about in the beginning (customisations) didn’t cause any problems but patching was a headache and ended up in a lot of sleepless nights!

In retrospect, it was easier for us to upgrade so I’m confident we made the right decision, and I also think it would have been too expensive to reimplement for this particular client. I can however see the benefits in reimplementing - especially if the design of your first Oracle solution was based on what you’ve used for years, rather than redesigning business process to get the best out of the functionality.

CONSULTANT/TECH LEAD HRMS

I have done the migration from 11.5.9 to R12 (HR) it was quite smoth with some of exceptions.Need to test thoroughly all the interfaces after applying the patches

to make sure everyting is working as expected.In case there are multiple instance from which you are going to collect the data and conversion then combined with upgrade is going to take much more time than expected .

You may need to watch outr for additional requirement from users and check if the oracle provides the solution for it before giving commitments as some of the additional features as all are not provided by oracle as some features are under development.Watch out for reports migration and any third party softwares you might be using.

ORACLE FINANCIALS SOLUTION ARCHITECT/PM

Due to the changes in the functional structures in Financials you need to weigh up upgrade vs re-implement. Key areas are SLA, Ledgers/Ledger sets/Legal Entity/TCA/Bank Model.

Consider the following

- What new functionality do I want to leverage in R12

- What customisations have I got and what can be replaced with new functionality and how much work is involved in making the new functionality work

- How much business change has there been since my original implementation - and as is would the set up work with R12

Much of the new functionality hangs off the new Legal Entity structures and as such you need to understand how your current set up upgrades into the new structure and how much post upgrade work would be required to ensure R12 use is maximised.

The early R12 release were very buggy, however 12.1.1 does seem much more stable.

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