There are many reasons for having to upgrade your Oracle EPM enterprise software, including:
No matter your reason for upgrading, documentation should be a priority. Good documentation paves the way for a smooth transition and successful migration.
Obviously, changes come with the territory. The key to making your upgrade successful is expecting and understanding those changes. Each version of Oracle’s EPM suite will have major changes you’ll need to take note of and prepare for:
Fortunately, Oracle allows you to compare your versions through a Defects Fixed Finder tool. This Excel-based tool will show you the functional and technical differences, as well as a list of fixes, between your current version and the latest version.
With each version, you’ll find new software components, services, and requirements. You must complete a full IT analysis on your new system to ensure that you have the appropriate hardware. With an upgrade, you might find entire operating systems and architectures are now supported or no longer supported.
You’ll need to understand all the pre-installation requirements, like hostnames, databases, security access, and special operating systems. Additionally, you need to document how the upgrade will impact the following:
You’ll be introducing awesome new features that your users will want to see, so start preparing now for training. Take note of how features have changed from version to version. For example, upgrading FDMEE to 11.1.2.4 allows HFM to act as both a source and a destination. With this feature, you’ll be able to streamline and optimize data flows, allowing you to get rid of time-consuming manual extract and importing processes.
Before upgrading, you should make sure your security and user settings are up to date. First, you need to ensure that your processes to validate data are in place and understand how/if those processes need to change due to your upgrade.
This is also a good time for you to look at your users, their roles, and the groups they’re in. You should make sure all your users are in groups that correspond with their roles. This will help you maintain the security settings when someone leaves your company and their replacement comes in.
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