GSI Announces Active Seminar Line-up at Upcoming Collaborate 12 Conference

ATLANTA, April 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Collaborate 12, the annual technology and applications forum for the Oracle community, gets underway later this month in Las Vegas and GSI, Inc. (www.gsi-solutions.com), a customer service-centric ERP software integration specialist focused on JD Edwards products, has announced it is actively involved in four different panels/sessions this year.

GSI, which will be co-exhibiting with AllOut Security in booth 636, will be featuring its Upgrade to the 9s in 100 Days or Less service. It will also be raffling off a Caribbean dream vacation for two.

On the education front, GSI will help present four important sessions to help support the JD Edwards user community (complete details are available online from the Collaborate 12 website):

-"I Bleed Red, Oracle Red Stack that is…" featuring GSI's Mark Andrzejewski and Shawn Scanlon on Sunday, April 22 at 3:20PM;

-"Media Objects for the Masses" with Mr. Andrzejewski on Monday, April 23 at 3:45PM;

-"The 9.1 Tools Release Customer Experience" with GSI's John Bassett and a corporate client on Wednesday, April 25 at 4:15PM; and

-"The Case for Linux" hosted by Mr. Bassett and Mr. Scanlon on Thursday, April 26 at 9:45AM.

"GSI believes in giving back to the JD Edwards community so we are very active in the Quest International Users Group and spend a great deal of company resources to help educate the broader marketplace," said Shawn Scanlon, executive vice president, GSI.

GSI, which has helped hundreds of clients manage their JD Edwards upgrades, and has observed thousands more upgrade – sometimes with mixed results – has created its top 10 list of common JD Edwards upgrade mistakes. JD Edwards Upgrade Mistakes #6 - #10 appear below; a printed version that includes the Top 5 mistakes will be available for free pick-up at GSI's Collaborate 12 booth or by sending a note to [email protected]. GSI is also soliciting industry input on other mistakes and will compile and share them via its social media networks.

Top 10 JD Edwards Upgrade Mistakes

JDE Upgrade Mistake #10: Assuming your internal tech people can pick up 15 years of experience in a couple of weeks

Upgrades don't happen every day or every year.  It's important to utilize the most experienced technology consultants to keep your system running optimally during the upgrade.  If you are like most companies, you probably have several consultants and internal people working on the project.  If it is down all the time, no work is getting done but money is still being spent.  An experienced consultant knows the hundreds of INI settings, 1000s of conversions, multiple OS/network settings, protocols, load balancers, etc. like the back of their hand and will keep the system performing during the upgrade.  The technology part of the upgrade project is the foundation of your "house."   If the foundation is cracked, the "house" will come down.

JDE Upgrade Mistake #9: Not addressing security and archiving before upgrading

This one is very simple.  If you archive before you upgrade, you will save time and money because the table conversions will run faster.  As an added benefit, archiving will speed up queries on large tables which will improve the end-user experience (a very important ingredient to a successful project).  As for security, every attempt should be made to follow the "all doors closed" model.  We understand this is not always practical, but you should at least make it a serious topic of conversation every time you upgrade.  The more a system grows, the more vulnerable it will become.  The last thing any company wants is a competitor or terminated employee with confidential information.

JDE Upgrade Mistake #8: Not moving proprietary components to open business standards

Moving proprietary components to open business standards will speed up future upgrades.  In addition, components that follow open business standards are by definition, more prevalent.  The two proprietary areas to really focus on moving to open business standards are reports and interfaces.  If you can move one or both, you next upgrade will be a lot less time intensive.

JDE Upgrade Mistake #7: Using Training 1.0 in a Training 2.0 World

Today, companies are doing more business with less people.  This means employees have to wear more "hats" than ever before.  More responsibilities = more training = more work = less time to spend with their families.  This is why classroom training (Training 1.0) by itself does not stick.  With Training 2.0, you augment the classroom training by creating a Knowledge Vault of recorded videos detailing the most critical business processes for on-demand retrieval.  This on-demand training reinforces what was taught in the classroom and it also allows the users to "get help" 24/7/365.

JDE Upgrade Mistake #6: Not communicating changes to the system before they happen

We have been working with ERP systems since the early 90s and one thing has always rung true…end users don't like change because it causes them additional work.  They would rather deal with the old system's quirks and inefficiencies than do this and test a new system.  The only way to make them happy is to provide a consistent user experience, and to do this, you must communicate, communicate, and communicate some more.

"Upgrading a JD Edwards system is slightly more involved than running setup.exe.   The upgrade consists of many moving parts that must be properly coordinated and some project-delaying pitfalls that must be avoided," said Kevin Herrig, president and CEO, GSI.  "If you want to guarantee the highest probability of project success, as well as having the project come in on-time and on-budget, experience matters."

About GSI

GSI, Inc. (www.gsi-solutions.com), founded in 2004 as Global Systems Integration, is a customer-service focused ERP software integration specialist with a primary focus on Oracle's JD Edwards (JDE) products. The company has more than 300 years of JDE experience and offers a comprehensive suite of project services, support services and staffing solutions – all backed by a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee. Headquartered in Atlanta and with satellite offices and consultants nationwide, GSI is one of the fastest growing service providers in the market.

SOURCE GSI, Inc.