Considerations for Upgrading QAD!

Posted on: November 4, 2009 | By: SuperUser Account | QAD Financials

Your organization has realized that your QAD ERP system is not just a key part of their IT strategies, but one of their most important and sensitive corporate assets. Your QAD ERP system should have at least a 15- to 20-year useful life, but over that time it will need to be maintained and enhanced to protect its value and serve the changing needs of your business. Perhaps even more important is the role that upgrades play in adding new functionality, improving business processes, and extending the deployment of QAD. Your Company needs to plan for periodic updates to ensure the reliability of your mission-critical applications. To ensure success of an upgrade, here are some areas to consider:
· Be sure to define the strategy and timing for the upgrade.
· Get support, build consensus and communicate your strategy.
· Consider how you will justify the cost and resources required for the upgrade.
· Create a project plan.
· Consider organizational and governance options.
· Outline the resources, services, and tools needed for upgrades.

Below are some specific considerations for your upgrade:
· Insure you project plan includes appropriate time for custom code remediation.
· Insure your code remediation involves removing hard coding of data in favor of variables that can be referenced in the generalized code table.
· Insure your testing plan involves system testing of all available maintenance screens and reports that are typically used within the organization.
· If your company is changing from a version from before 9.0 then many menu numbers have changed. This will require movement of group security.
· Backup often during the QAD and custom conversion process.
· Make sure that your go live check list has all of the tasks required. Regardless of the size of the task, make sure it is on the list, even if it a onetime change to one field on one screen. Missing a step may not be fatal, but it does give the appearance of being sloppy, which can sow doubts in the clients mind.

Logan Consulting has a tremendous amount of experience with assisting companies in their upgrade projects. We apply are strong project methodology, our consistent project plan for a successful upgrade, and project execution tools to insure the upgrade project is completed on time, within scope and on budget. Additionally, if your company is moving from a pre-domain version of the software, Logan can assist the remediation of custom software code into a domain compliant version with the Logan Customer Software Domain Upgrade Tool.
Solid planning and execution of the upgrade project will insure your investment for years to come.

---

---