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Creoal is prepared to staff and execute a full life cycle implementation of any Oracle Application footprint; or to support an implementation, and/or post production environment, through the provision of skilled project management, and functional and technical resources. In the latter role, we are much more than a staff augmentation company. Our leadership and professional staff possess the “scars” of many implementations and on-going Oracle operational support environments – both good and bad. We can provide seasoned implementation and support veterans to augment a partner’s team, but we can also provide valuable insight to client and project management as well as technical and |
| functional leadership. Our experience, gained through the participation (in some capacity) of nearly every Federal Civilian Oracle Federal Financials implementation suggests that success is tied to things that are controllable, and those that are not. Those elements that are controllable include the implementation experience and product knowledge of the project leadership and team, a well proven approach and a driving focus toward production. What is out of direct control is the readiness of the client, their project and executive leadership, organizational commitment and contention for key resources, loyalty to the benefit of COTS solutions and the need to rely on the imbedded business functionality and corresponding processes. Proven teams will falter if the client related success factors and corresponding client expectations are not well managed. As such, our implementation, transition and support philosophies are sustained by industry best practices to include prominence on client relationship and expectation management.
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Implementation Philosophy – build on the successes of others
Creoal acknowledges the fact that we are in the second generation of Oracle implementations and encourages clients to employ industry best practices. As such, we embrace a modified Oracle AIM approach to implementation relying on Conference Room Pilots (CRPs) with pre-configured applications and/or Oracle Accelerators as the point of departure in an iterative deployment approach. Business Process Analysis is always conducted “inside-out” – the default is what is supported by the application, then moving to alternatives. Process analysis performed, absent detailed understanding of the Oracle Application processing, will result in unreasonable expectations and false starts. All functional “Gaps” are vetted through the CRPs, prioritized, approved, developed and deployed and tested “down-stream” as part of future CRP’s. Extensions are recommended and designed to meet mission critical requirements only, thus minimizing complexity and focusing on operational capability, and are developed in accordance with established standard methods.
Transition Philosophy – acceptance not usually a technology problem
Creoal encourages acceptance that successful adoption of Oracle applications requires an integrated but parallel effort centered on leadership, commitment, awareness, and preparation. Success demands executive sponsorship and direct engagement. It also dictates regular communication with the entire organization as to the value, timing and benefit of the initiative. Most importantly success requires preparation of all users as to how their business lives will change with the deployment of the new application. This soft side of the implementation is often neglected and can lead to operational deployment delays, difficulty in user acceptance and a sense of buyer’s remorse. The limitation of what was familiar seems far better than the frustration of that which is new.
Support Philosophy – repeatable support processes should lead to reduced cost of operation
We again acknowledge the fact that we are in the second generation of COTS, this time from a support perspective, and encourage clients to seek and employ industry best practices. Unlike implementation, our experience is that there are fewer examples of structured methods for handling Oracle application support. History suggests that most organizations retained the implementation partner for initial transition and support, then were motivated by rate arbitrage to reduce overall cost. It is perfectly rational that the mix or resources and support tools would be different from those employed in the implementation, with a correspondingly lower cost. However, the Federal market experience suggests the result was perhaps lower rates, but not necessarily lower costs. As such, Creoal embraces a conceptual framework for Oracle operations and support that focuses on standardizing processes and practices, removes redundancies, and leverages efficiencies. The singular goal is to improve productivity and force labor reduction and cost or redistribute labor to higher value activities, e.g. new development. |