- Empire Merchants upgraded their JD Edwards system from version Xe to 9.1 over a 13 month period between 2012-2014. They crammed 6 months of implementation work into the project timeline. - Thorough testing, training, executive support, and involvement of business users were key to the success of the upgrade. Over 1600 test scripts were developed and multiple "mock go-lives" were conducted. - The go-live occurred in July 2014 during Empire's regular monthly shutdown period. While some performance issues occurred, the upgraded system has provided Empire with new capabilities and extended support.

1. QuestDirect.org
LessonsLearned for Upgrading
JD Edwards
(Xe ->9.1)
Don’t bite off more than you can chew,
walk before you run and other clichés.
Find out why we crammed 6 months of
implementation into a 13 month project

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Who We Are
• Empire Merchants LLC is Metro New
York's Leading distributor of fine wines and
spirits.
• Empire Merchants’ vision is to be the
distributor of choice to our suppliers,
customers, associates and the community.

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Who We Are
• We have 1200 associates.
• We ship 8.5MM cases per year.
• We are privately held.
• JD Edwards users since 2002.
• Approximately 200 JD Edwards users.
• Successfully running JDE Xe 7.334 financials
and distribution modules.
• We operate 24 X 5. Orders placed by 5pm
are delivered the next day.
• Relatively high number of transactions.

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Why Empire Upgraded
• JD Edwards Xe coming to end of support.
• Upgrade to supported version to mitigate
business risk.
• Ability to leverage new functionality.
• Ability to leverage new technology.

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Upgrade Tenants
• Empire will go to the latest version of JD Edwards
– Enterprise One 9.1.2.
– JD Edwards Financial and Distribution Modules
– Includes all third-party applications, custom programs and
interfaces.
• Go live July 21, 2014
– Second Monday of July 2014 shutdown.
• This is primarily a system upgrade, we will implement limited
business process changes, we will not be reengineering all
business processes.
– Enhancement requests – all items will be captured in the
Parking Lot and be reviewed, classified and prioritized.

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Culture descends from the top down
• Involvement of the company leaders
– Senior executives supported the project
• Cleared ITs’ decks so we could focus on the project
• Prioritized project for team members
• Actively involved in key milestones (kick offs, weekly
status…)
• Led by example, dedicated time to the project
• Approved budget and timeline
– Department Heads
• Took ownership, led by example
• Actively Involved
• Assigned Super Users and Subject Matter Experts

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Know Thy Self, We’ve all been around the block
• Why did we cram 6 months of implementation
into a 13 month project?
– We mapped out the timeline to fit:
• Our business environment
– Busy period – OND (October, November, December)
– Industry Shutdowns in Jan and July
• Resources
– Availability - Take into account how much time they can give
and when
– Experience Level - Most people do not do this type of work
often, give them time to get up to speed
– This extended timeline added challenges to resource
continuity with the consultants

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Our Empire Team
Steering Committee &
Executive Committee (7)
Process Owners/
Business Leads
(12)
Subject Mater
Experts
(14)
Super Users
(18)

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Our Empire IT Team
Ed Lederer
(CIO)
Armando Valerio
JDE
Application
Manager
Al Ferrante
Operations &
Systems Manager
CNC & I Series
Operations
(2)
Business Analysts
(5)
Developers
(4)
Documentation
(2)

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Our MCG Team
Engagement
Manager
Distribution
Lead
CNC
Developer
Technical
Lead
Finance Lead
/PM
Documentation
/UPK

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Share-share that’s fair
• Setup an organizational structure for
heavy user involvement
– Shared responsibilities for
• Requirements definition
• Scripting
• Testing
• Documentation
– Business users took lead and ownership with
IT and MCG providing support

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You get what you inspect, not what you
expect
• Testing
– Thorough and structured “IT” testing
• Developer testing - ensure retrofits work
• Unit testing by Business Analysts – ensure output
is what is expected
– Track and monitor what is tested
• Better to fix and retest now then to clean up in
production

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Practice Makes Perfect
• Training
– Have the business teams take ownership to develop
a method that works for their team. One size does not
fit all
• Our goal was to train the trainer and support as needed
• Approaches we actually used
– Train the trainer and conduct formal classroom training
– Train the trainer and conduct small group/one on one training
– Implementation team conducted training directly
– Take the opportunity to make your organization
stronger
• Give the users a better understanding of what they do and
why they do their day to day activities
• Take a deeper dive into what they do (i.e. Order Active rules
and status)
• Expand the breadth of what they do

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Genius is 1% inspiration and 99%
perspiration
• More on Training
– Set up facilities and structure that enable the training
• We set up dedicated training rooms and practice areas that
were accessible.
• Scheduled the training and published a calendar.
• Added sessions based on feedback.
• Supported trainer and trainee.
– Types of sessions
• Foundation – basic training on new version for everyone
• Trainer readiness – to ensure the trainers knew what to do,
met expectations and rehearsed as needed
• Instructor led for the specific business functions
• Scheduled practice sessions for specific business functions
– UPK used as a training tool

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Fool me once shame on you, Fool me twice shame on me
• More Testing - Thorough and structured user testing
– User acceptance testing (UAT)
• Process owners must own the scripts
• Schedule attainable goals and milestones (5 Due by 10/1, 10 by 11/1..)
• Scheduled monthly check-in meetings, most associates had limited
experience in scripting.
• Give yourself enough time, Empire scheduled 10 weeks
– 5 for prescheduled functional testing
– 1 week for integration testing
– 4 weeks to retest as needed
• Schedule testing to:
– Build on itself (i.e. use items created in a previous test to create POs or SOs)
– Use “canned” data, just in case there were issues with earlier tests
• Have a testing room, some place away from their normal work area
• Bring in lunch for the team
– Track and monitor what is tested
• Create a method to organize and track scripts. We used spreadsheets
• Create a method to track objects that need to be reworked. We
developed an application in JD Edwards

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Are we there yet??
• More Testing
– Cycle Testing
• Integrated tests conducted by IT
• Testing of interfaces into and out of JD Edwards
• Volume testing
– Stress Testing
• We used users.
– Coordinated timing for users across locations.
• Added batch jobs to increase load.
• Looked into software tools

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Cut Over
• Data Conversion
– Conducted 6 Mock GoLives
• Reduced conversion time form 70 hours to 38 Hours
• Planned steps out in detail
• Cut Over during the weekend of 18 July 2014
• System not available to users on Monday
• Began to turn over to users on Tuesday and Wednesday.
– GoLive took place during Empires’ July Shutdown, limited users
on the system
• Normal operations began on 28 July 2014
• Deployed support resources to all locations to directly support
the users
• Tracked issues as they came in
• Daily Status calls for first 2 weeks
– Provided visibility and transparency

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Our New JDE Environment
• JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.1.2
• Tools release 9.1.3
• IBM iSeries 740 – Production Server
• IBM iSeries 720 – Disaster Recovery
Server
– Mimix for replication
• Upgraded all desktops to Windows 7

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Some Facts and Figures
• 3097 Custom Objects – is this heavily
modified?
– 2490 - Retro fitted
– 607 - Obsoleted
• 1624 Test Scripts developed
• Documentation
– 255 Main Topics
– 215 Duplicate Topics

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Lessons Learned
• Server sizing and tuning
– We had some interactive performance issues that
impacted the user experience. Involving WebSphere and
memory utilization.
– Worked with IBM Labs and Oracle to tune server
configuration.
• When sizing servers ask for cost sensitivity for more
capability. (i.e. relativity small $ to double memory)
• Test on same desktop configuration as will be used in
production, including monitors.
– It took some effort to configure display sizing
– Impacted initial user experience
• We needed more CNC resources than initially scoped

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April – June 2012 June-Sept 2012 Sept 2012 Jan - April 2013
 Developed Budgetary
Estimates
 Analyzed JD Edward
upgrade verses
conversion to SAP
 Presented upgrade
recommendation to
board
 Received Proposals:
 Implementation
Partner
 Hardware
 March – ordered
hardware
May 2013 June 25, 2013 July – Sept 2013 Sept 2013 – Feb 2014
 Selected Minardi
Consulting Group As
Implementation
Partner
 Kick Off Meeting
- Invited all team
members and EM
management and
MCG presented
objectives, high level
plan
 Business
Requirements
Sessions
 Retro Fits and testing
of objects
Feb – April 2014 May – Aug 2014 July 22 2014
 User Acceptance
Testing
 Rework of retrofits as
needed
 Training
 Cut over planning
 Mock Go Lives
 GO LIVE
JDE Upgrade
Implementation Plan

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Questions ?

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Contacts
Joanne Ferrier
Director of Consulting
jferrier@minardigroup.com
Office (973) 227-1998
Cell (201) 401-1254
Armando J. Valerio
Application Manager
avalerio@empiremerchants.com
Office (718) 383-5500 x9266
Edward B. Lederer
Chief Information Officer
elederer@empiremerchants.com
Office (718) 383-5500 x 9455

24. QuestDirect.org
Join more than 500 other
JD Edwards users at
April 12-16, 2015
Mandalay Bay- Las Vegas, NV
• Keynote from Lyle Ekdahl,
Vice President of JD Edwards
• JD Edwards’ Roadmap and Strategy
(Including Big Announcements)
• Education around JD Edwards with Edge
products, macro-level content and high-level
strategy
• More than 230 Solution Providers across
several Oracle Products
QuestDirect.org/COLLABORATE