What are effective strategies to minimize downtime during an ERP upgrade?

Planning appropriately and execution as mentioned below 1. Planning the existing projects / optimisations being carried out and reducing the system changes as much as possible ( except the business critical changes) 2.Multiple iterations for upgrade & testing 3. Ensuring the issues observed in each iteration are updated in the cookbook so that it can be leveraged and the further iterations are smooth. 4. Involvement of third party vendors as part of the project any integrated issues are addressed as per the plan 5. Executing the last iteration before production with all infra, application and other parameters exactly similar to production

Plan properly phase wise , along with mock drills, Do activity in parts. Always make ready, plan B & Plan C, Do activity and check, Keep gap between two activities

Neste primeiro etapa, além do planejamento tanto das software houses, quanto do cliente final, o importante é documentar toda a mudan?a da atualiza??o e deixar um canal de suporte específico para estas atualiza??es, N?o apenas com PDFs e vídeos, e sim pessoas capacitadas para este atendimento. Muitas atualiza??es s?o automáticas e de baixo impacto, onde n?o afetará em nada o dia a dia, mas outras o impacto pode ser gigantesco. Minha dica... analise, estude, pergunte, tire todas as dúvidas e saiba os pontos exatos de impacto das atualiza??es.

Como é de costume, as atualiza??es do ERP s?o realizadas fora do horário comercial para evitar interrup??es nas opera??es. Se sua empresa opera 24 horas por dia, 7 dias por semana, é vital direcionar as tarefas manuais para o período de atualiza??o do ERP.

Need to identify must have features to incorporate module wise upgradatuon ,phase wise if possible. And also need to identify most critical features list to be reviewed with special care. And trial run requires with practical Data at least a one two months.

Backup is must. I will also suggest divide migration script 3/4 functional and logical segment wise. And keeping backup after every segment completion. So if needed it may not required to start from beginning during migration final run.

Testing and backup will help you reduce the risk of data loss, downtime, and rework during the upgrade. Have a set of example transactions that you can perform repeatedly and evaluate the results. Oracle has a product/method of playing back all of the transactions

Developing test cases based on real scenarios can provide priceless insights. Encouraging end-users to participate in testing can also identify user-specific issues. In the unfortunate event that things go away from the expected results, having a well-documented and tested rollback plan ensures business continuity.

O backup do banco de dados envolve o fechamento de todas as conex?es e a cria??o de um snapshot do servidor de aplica??o, sendo essencial para o caso de precisarmos voltar ao estado anterior à atualiza??o.

Em grandes projetos, os testes mais difíceis de executar s?o os que envolvem integra??es e customiza??es. Os usuários chave precisam ser empoderados para ajudarem a definir os critérios de sucesso.

The "dry run" should give you good estimate for the time required. Double that for the real upgrade. Treat the people involved in doing the upgrade with respect; they are not machines.

If you're in retail, it might not be wise to schedule an upgrade close to Black Friday sales, even if it's during off-peak hours. Furthermore, it's beneficial to have a contingency buffer. If you estimate the upgrade will take 10 hours, it's wise to communicate a slightly extended period to the stakeholders to manage expectations for unexpected delays.

Once you have a "Run-Book" you should "Dry-Run" the overall processes and get a good estimate of time to deploy. As my peers say, you should then DOUBLE it for the real deployment or upgrade. You have to schedule wisely to minimise impact to the operational business, so you must choose the time to do this wisely. Pick downtimes for the business, quieter periods of, for example, manufacturing, slower sales periods, annual leave or shutdowns, and alas for us, all of the holidays. Whether we like it or not Easter, Christmas, New Year, are relevant holidays globally for each region and country, are the easiest times and mean you can drive through this with minimal impact. Take care of your team, they will need extra support for certain.

Performance optimization starts way before the actual upgrade. It’s also an excellent time to assess if there are any orphaned processes or redundant plugins/extensions that might be blocking the system. Upgrading on a leaner system not only speeds up the process but reduces potential points of failure.

What is the Upgrade doing? Software, Hardware? Parameter changes which can only be applied after the upgrade? -- if not then why are the parameter changes applied to the current system?

Start by training the trainers or department heads before the upgrade. After the upgrade, these individuals can then support their teams. As users become familiar with the new system, follow-up training sessions can help them understand advanced features. Utilizing multiple types of training, such as videos, manuals, and webinars, helps ensure faster adoption.

Pense na possibilidade de usar simuladores. Crie ambientes de treinamento onde o usuários poderá executar sua atividade do dia a dia, mas sem alterar dados da área de produ??o. Adote o conceito de certifica??o de usuários chave, mesclando conteúdo do seu fornecedor de tecnologia com os conteúdos a respeito de seus próprios processos.

Is this not a part of test run? Why else would you do a test upgrade? Also are you doing an upgrade of the mini-UAT system or the real production system? Go for the production system because everything works great when you have a 100 records

First it would be planning and then preparations, preparations, preparations would be my top choice. Nothing will prepare you unless you do the work. My second strategy is the contingency plan. You should always have plan B if things aren't moving forward and/or did not work out the way it was planned for. My third strategy would be to set aside twice as much funds. If you don't use it, it can go back to the bank account. Believe me, you will need it.

Boa parte dos ERPs fornecem atualiza??es frequentes em pacotes menores. Essas atualiza??es geralmente tem impacto menor e também geram esfor?o menor para aplica??o. N?o deixar acumular esses pacotes contribui para que quando houver atualiza??o de vers?o, somente os grandes updates devam ser testados e validados.

During the planning stage for the upgrade, it must be clearly outlined what the goals for the upgrade are and what would be critical for the upgrade to be considered a success. Then a Go/No Go meeting must be held with the stakeholders after the upgrade validation to decide if the upgrade was in fact a success. If not, then there must be a No Go plan to restore the system back to the previous version.