IFS Upgrade

IFS Upgrade – Scoping Document

Introduction

This document documents the upgrade considerations that will form the IFS Upgrade project plan. In order to create a project plan and budget various questions and assumptions and decisions will need to be made to be arrived at to determine what is and is out of scope and what can be achieved with what resources, in what timescale using which people. IFS is recommending that WNA invest in a fixed cost Project Definition phase where they will work with WNA to accurately size the software and hardware infrastructure and provide the budgetary cost for the technical effort required to install and implement the upgraded Application plus the cost of uplifting the customizations

Objectives, aims and justification

The objectives, aims and justification of the project need to be clearly defined. They should be defined in terms of:

• Additional functionality that WNA currently does not use but will be of added value to the organization.
• Enhancements to the currently implemented functionality that improve the productivity of the users. I.e. ease of use, more short cuts, and quicker response of application.
• Improved process. It gives WNA a rare opportunity to revisit current processes and improve in the light of inefficiencies, changing business needs and new functionality.
• Cost savings. This could be in IT through reduced operating costs or to the operation through process improvements. Also can we utilize Training Grants to reduce implementation costs?
• Improved integration with third party products. Advantages could accrue through interfaces with EDI and Bar-Coding applications as well as UPS, Production Process PMC, VMI, Internet, Email, Mobile devices or other applications yet to be identified.
• The risks of upgrading and not upgrading. For instance the risk increased obsolescence, withdraw of application, operating system and database support should be weighed against the risk of cost / time overruns, lack of IT/User knowledge, increased complexity, other competing projects, business climate and software and hardware failure.
• Benchmarks. Benchmarks should be created to measure the success of the project against:
  • Project Milestones
  • Project Completion date
  • Project budget
  • Aims and objectives
• Stakeholders. Stakeholders need to be identified and the impact of the project scope on them should be evaluated.
• WNA Executive team in terms of Project authorization, alignment to business strategy and setting of budget.
• WNA Users in terms of the functionality they want included in the application.
  • WNA IT in terms of their ability to execute the management of the project and the technical implementation of the application,
  • IFS in terms of their ownership of the application and their expertise in providing the know-how to do the upgrade.
  • Trade Offs. Deciding between differing and conflicting requirements betweens sites and or departments and deciding what should and should not be implemented given the time and cost constraints.
  • Social Networking. WNA should use its contacts with other companies who have upgraded to App 7 to discover what benefits and pitfalls they encountered during the process.

Project Management

The Project Management phase will use the knowledge gained from the Aims, Objectives and justification to determine:

• Resources: What resources are needed to implement the upgrade? Who will they be, what will they do and how much time will they devote to the project? These resources will include IT, the Users at the sites and IFS. In addition thought will be given to co-opting users on to the project, employing full-time or temporary employees in IT or other departments.
• Project Coordination. Determining the correct sequences of events of the project and ensure that they are undertaken in the most effective way at the lowest cost in the quickest time. Conflict resolution, emergence of new issues and changes in scope, and the status reporting on progress will also be part of the coordination function.
• The creation and location of the Project Documentation. This requires the generation, cross-categorization and storage of Project Documentation, This is includes training, technical, presentation, implementation and status documentation that is easily retrievable depending on need.
• Methodology of the implementation. How will the upgrade be implemented?
  • By site, By department, Big bang?
  • Users come to one site or trainers go to the site?
  • Which sites are included and in what order?
  • Parallel running or single cut over?

Hardware

Additional hardware requirements will need to be determined.

• Application, Print Extended, Database, Citrix, Demand Planner Test and Development servers at the Data Center or at the Sites.
• PC’s printers and peripheral equipment.
• Upgrade or replace hardware decisions.
• Compatibility of hardware with software and operating systems.

Software and Operating Systems

Additional software licensing might be required. Some of the questions to be asked are

• What changes to Oracle licensing is required and what version is supported?
• What version or Crystal reports is required and how many licenses are required? (see Reporting below)
• Do we stay with Windows Server or change to Red Hat and on what servers, with what implications for cost and support?
• Which version of MS Office or other integrated application is required?
• What version of Citrix is required? Who will use Citrix and how will be configured for optimized use?
• Do we need more IFS licenses? Does the licensing change?
• Will the backup strategy change? How will this be tested?

IFS Administration

Application 7 Administration is significantly different from the current version. The changes are beneficial but mean that many of the administrative functions that are done today will be redundant. We must consider:

• Who, when and by whom training will take place
• Identify current administrative functions and ensure we map these to the new features
• Identify gaps in the current administrative function and ensure solutions to these gaps are implemented as part of the conversion process.

Network

How will users connect to the application? What users will use Citrix or Application servers? What about remote users? We need to determined how the network will interact with the application and ensure that the sites get the best possible performance when running IFS and Crystal Reports at all times of the day and all times if the month. The performance should be benchmarked against our targets

Business Process Improvement (BPI)

We will need to determine how to identify BPI, who gets involved and how we determine if the BPI is viable. There will be specific sub-categories of questions that WNA will ask itself.

• Where do we want the BPI to implemented? Are their BPI’s that are site specific?
• What processes do we want to automate, change, obsolete or do better?
• What processes do we want to standardize? Which are too simplistic and need to be more detailed?
• How relevant will these processes be in 5 years?
• What is the cost of the BPI’s? Whose roles will change and how long will it take to implement?
• Have we got good documentation or understanding of the current processes?
• What are the impacts on the configuration of IFS: Parameter settings, mandatory or option field entry etc?

Modules and Customizations

The re-evaluation of the business processes will determine what modules, sub-modules and customizations are required. It is important the process documentation and customization documentation is up to date so that changes to process and customizations can be done efficiently. WNA should challenge all of the existing customizations to ascertain whether they are still needed or whether new functionality renders the customization redundant. If new customizations are identified a process by which these can be quickly specified, assessed, costed and coded is vital to keeping the upgrade process on track. The upgrade process should also keep intact and customized menus, custom events, queries or other changes that all or some of the users have created as well as site specific customizations such as the Check format at Polar Plastic. The potential changes to Polar Plastic should be scrutinized further to make sure menus, help screens and other French Canadian elements of the application are identified. Reporting WNA has over 500 crystal reports and queries created in IFS. These will need to be rewritten in a newer version of Crystal and must be validated against the new tables, fields and other coding changes in IFS. This will be a large undertaking and priority should be given to the most operationally important and frequently printed reports. IT will need the help of the users to prioritize the recreation of the reports as well as help in eliminating obsolete reports.

• How many new crystal licenses will be required and in what version?
• Who will do this conversion work and when?
• Will we need to hire outside resources to help the conversion process?
• What additional training requirements are needed to effect the changes and where can we get additional support from third parties?

Interfaces

IFS have adopted the approach like many ERP vendors that investment is made to the core product as well as making it as easier to interface to ‘best of breed’ third party applications. The interfaces that WNA require vary according to their importance to the operation. EDI is the most important of the interfaces and development of EDI translator application and mapping fields between the customer’s and our ERP application. The EDI project will need to be defined as a project within the main project with a high degree of project planning, risk analysis, budgeting and technical work required etc. Other interfaces to other potential applications to included for consideration include:

• Bar-Code application
• Production Process PMC
• UPS/Fed-Ex
• ADP
• Web-based Physical Inventory program
• VMI with Customers (e.g. Smart and Final)

Implementation

WNA needs to follow a structured implementation methodology as it would do when implementing IFS at a site. All the normal implementation steps will be undertaken at the sites:

• Process evaluation
• Training and E-learning
• Testing
• Migration
• Cut over and Go Live
• Post Implementation support
• Periodic reporting on project status

Migration of Data

As part of the migration of the IFS data we should determine what information will be mapped to what fields in IFS. Will there be data that is stored in the system that cannot be mapped to the new application? Are there mandatory data requirements in the new application that we do not have today? Is there an opportunity to archive or delete unwanted historical data? Post Implementation Planning Before the implementation upgrade is complete, The IT department will need to be-restructured to support the new processes, customizations and modules. We should determine who takes primary responsibility for

• General support of the users
• Manufacturing
• Finance
• Customer Service and Distribution
• EDI and other interfaces
• Administration, bug fixes and other deployments

Thought should also be given to on-going training, and process documentation creation. The Users will also need to be organized in such a way to be better consumers of the application. Instead of being at the end of the software chain requesting changes they should be part of the process that ‘develops’ the processes they require. Formal IFS Super User Groups and meetings would be one way to shorten the development process and increase understanding of the technical and process issues of each change requested.

Next Steps

The answer to the questions posed above will be resolved through the completion of the following steps in October.

• Work with IFS on the App 7 Project Definition Phase. This is a week-long fixed cost consultancy engagement with IFS (approximately $6,000)
• Align the implementation upgrade with future changes to organizational structure and new initiatives with reference to the Exec Team
• Consult and request from the users enhancements to the process that they would like to see in the view versionProduce a costed and justified proposal and project plan to upgrade to Application 7 and present to the Exec Team