Commitment

Our client was engaged in a multi-year, global rollout of an ERP solution while changing their business model from distributed by company/country to a centralised standardised model for Finance, HR and Logistics.

Redtail was engaged to implement a QA and testing strategy for the programme as well as creating a testing centre of excellence to support the BAU operations.

This project involved the implementation of a change and release process design to protect the integrity of the live environment and meet the often conflicting, requirements of BAU operational needs against significant programme implementations. The solution was complex, integrating of up to four, third-party modules into releases along with patching and upgrade releases coming from the ERP vendor.

The complexity of the requirements necessitated the creation and maintenance of up to 35 environments supporting the Production instance

Substance

Due to schedule constraints, it was decided to stop implementing ERP solution updates, excluding critical patches. This decision had the knock-on effect of leaving the ERP 3rd party modules out of release phase with the ERP solution:

The initial step was to analyse the impact of the decision on the ongoing work associated with the third-party releases and review known the impact to current and confirmed future functionality, comparing this with changes in the scope of delivery for the project.

The analysis identified several critical functional requirements associated with one of the third-party providers.

A process of negotiation was then entered into, by RedTail, with the 3rd party supplier to agree on timescales for critical functional delivery against a separate development branch of their solution.

Environments to support the revised code along with data and test resource was procured & scheduled.

Internal expectation setting then followed by the users to ensure clear timelines for requested functionality was understood and accepted.

Outcomes

The client was now in a position where they had an agreed process with the third-party supplier which allowed them to continue on a separate code branch and receive ongoing support for any issues. This solution provided not only for a successful implementation of the ERP delivery programme but also a sustainable BAU process to protect the business long term.

Enhancements to the release process and environments to support this approach have served to provide further support and protection to the Production environment of the ERP solution