When James McBride, Financial Systems Manager at Voya Financial and Oracle Cloud ERP user, took the stage at Blueprint 4D 2023, he took a creative approach to educating the crowd.  Instead of describing what users should do to succeed, he focused on mistakes to avoid during an Oracle Cloud migration and after go-live.

According to James, there are six major ways to set yourself up failure on a Cloud project. Avoid the following:

1. Treating your cloud project like a lift and shift

If you try to simply move your system from PeopleSoft, EBS, etc. and make it work in the cloud, you’ve already failed—and your mistake may be unfixable.

2. Forgetting to emphasize executive engagement

Executive engagement doesn’t stop at go-live day. For a successful project, leaders must consistently reinforce the importance of this direction, even when you’re several years into the project. Otherwise, you risk losing groups and wasting years’ worth of resources.

3. Failing to emphasize user engagement

Your support team can’t go this journey alone. Identify subject matter experts on each business team early on and invest in their participation with ongoing management and testing of the application. Most users WILL NOT understand the system when they start (or even years down the road). They will make minor mistakes, and these subject matter experts can solve these mistakes in their respective departments so your support team can focus on the big picture.

4. Supporting Cloud just like on-premise

You can’t support Cloud like you did your on-premise system.  Don’t simply ask Oracle to fix everything that’s reported by a user. Empower users to ask themselves what led to the issue and to troubleshoot on their own. Remind them that they own their business processes in the cloud.

5. Implementing in silos

It’s important to remember that the system is one system and understand that there are so many things across all modules that effect each other.  Small actions can make ripples across other modules, so communication with other departments is essential to ensure that one action doesn’t derail other systems that are in place. If department leaders share updates, this allows others know how to anticipate and adjust their own systems appropriately.

6. Ignoring available resources

Many users have already faced and solved the same issues that will crop up for you. Keep these resources in mind when you need support:

• • • Customer Connect
    • Release Documentation
    • Oracle Help Center
    • User Groups, like the Quest Oracle Community
    • YouTube
    • Online Learning
    • Oracle Support

For more information about James’s Oracle Cloud migration mistakes, check out part three (starts at 23:03) of this BLUPRINT 4D 2023 session recording: Oracle Cloud Apps – Ignite & FailFest Sessions.

To connect with Oracle Cloud ERP users like James, consider joining Quest’s Cloud ERP and SCM Community.