DWS Partnered With CSS to Lead Appvion in a Successful Upgrade to the Big 9s
London, UK (PRWEB UK) 11 November 2013 -- DWS partnered with CSS to manage this JDE upgrade for Appvion, delivering its Dimension Analyze™ and Dimension Professional™ services to scope their system and help deliver the result.
Appvion Inc is a manufacturer of specialty coated products such as thermal, carbonless and security paper, who are based in the USA. Their JD Edwards system was originally implemented in 2002 and was highly automated, involving multiple third-party interfaces and customized objects.
DWS was selected to assist in the Discovery phase of the JD Edwards Upgrade Project, delivering its Dimension Analyze™ service to scope the client’s modified system. During this process, DWS uncovered 4,849 objects flagged as modified but were able to reduce this to an Optimum List of 3,470 objects. This meant that the estimated project time was reduced by ca.195 days, which was important to Appvion who wanted to complete the upgrade within a relatively short timeframe.
Appvion engaged CSS to upgrade their JDE system, who then partnered with DWS to complete the technical development component of the retrofit. DWS then used its proprietary Dimension Professional™ tools throughout the project to help plan, manage and deliver the entire uplift effort. Using those tools DWS was able to break down the workload of the final 3,570 objects into manageable ‘bundles’ of work according to a functional stream or sub-stream, which enabled the project manager to create a plan to deliver ‘bundles’ of work to the client every two weeks. DWS worked closely with the Business Analysts at Appvion and CSS to deliver an upgraded solution that provided the functionality of their Xe solution, but that would integrate and work with the new and changed tables and functions created by Oracle.
DWS delivered in excess of 875 man days of effort upgrading 3,500 objects, but still managed to deliver the retrofit ahead of schedule. This uplift effort was delivered entirely remotely with only one planned site visit from the DWS project manager at the beginning of the project. This helped to reduce cost and complexity of the project. Following the development work there was an intense period of testing. The defect turnaround performance by DWS was very quick and the low number of defects certainly helped to keep the go-live date on track.
The client went live on the 9.1 release in May 2013 as planned and have since completed several successful month-ends on the new release. The aim of the project, to deliver an ‘as is’ solution preserving the key elements of the existing enhancements to their JDE system, was successfully met.
Srini Dadi, Enterprise Systems Manager at Appvion Inc, said: “...by leveraging the Dimension tool our implementation partners were able to provide very accurate estimates on the development efforts for the retrofit objects. DWS is very skilled in JDE development work and are very process driven, efficient and flexible in the approach to the development work and have been delivered on scheduled timelines and on budget.”
Dadi went on to say: “DWS have done a very good job delivering the technical work and I can highly recommend for JDE upgrade development and technical work without any hesitation.”
JDE users interested in finding out more about this upgrade project can visit http://www.dwsconsultants.com/showcase to download the free Appvion Case Study. Users interested in arranging a reference call with Srini Dadi, Enterprise Systems Manager at Appvion Inc, can do so by contacting Barry Burke on +44 (0) 1494 896600.
Barry Burke - Managing Director, DWS, http://www.dwsconsultants.com, +44 1494896601, [email protected]
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