JD Edwards Upgrade RFI Vendor Questions and Responses

Transcription

1 JD Edwards Upgrade RFI Vendor Questions and Responses Please find below a consolidated list of vendor questions and LASERS response. 1. What is the current Internal Payroll process (number & frequency of pay cycles, number of checks produced by each cycle)? a. We run bi-weekly payroll for about 150 employees. About 1 paper check per payroll and the remainder generated via ACH EFT. 2. How is payroll time entry currently done? a. Via Speed Time Entry for the exceptions (holiday, sick, annual, training, LWOP, etc.)to a straight 80 hour pay-cycle for our full-time staff and all hours are keyed for our part-time staff. 3. Across how many different locations are JDE users located? a. We are all located in the same building 4. Will LASERS play an active role in the project with LASERS employees helping lead the functional areas? a. We assume you mean transitioning and answering questions concerning the conversion of data and setup-then yes our staff will assist. b. Information Technology staff will lead the hardware and O/S implementation based upon proposer recommendations. 5. What 3 rd party systems are currently being used by LASERS, and for what function? Are they integrated with JDE? Are they native to the AS/400 platform? a. Spreadsheet Server (Not native to the AS/400) b. Budget Manager (Not native to the AS/400) c. Reports Now (Not native to the AS/400) d. I-Broadcast (Not native to the AS/400) e. Vertex (Native to the AS/400) 6. Are there custom programs (other than JDE programs) native to the AS/400 platform (RPG/CL based)? 7. Will LASERS provide a list of existing customizations and modifications?, one customization in the HR module, Supplemental Data (employee training data) 8. Please clarify if LASERS will be migrating completely from the AS/400 platform to a Windows/SQL Server platform.

2 b. The proposed solution must utilize the most current version of Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server at the time of implementation. 9. Please clarify if technology infrastructure options are flexible if Cloud based deployment is used. a. Open to Cloud based deployment. 10. Please clarify the phrase The system is being maintained in a co-existence state for training purposes. a. We no longer use JDE World software. 11. Is there any JDE functionality that is implemented exclusively in World and not deployed in OneWorld? 12. Please characterize the level of existing, updated process documentation in the following areas: We have documented desk procedures. a. GL b. AR c. AP d. Job Cost e. Fixed Assets f. HR/Payroll g. Procurement 13. Will LASERS provide a list of licensed JDE modules? 14. Is LASERS currently on Oracle Support for JDE?, but with support ending on December 31, 2013 a 3 rd party provider has been engaged for maintenance support. 15. Please categorize the user counts by module (do not double count, choose the PRIMARY application for each user): (we are licensed for 20 concurrent users) a. Finance (GL, AR, AP, Job Cost, Fixed Assets): 20 (remainder of Fiscal staff) b. HR/Payroll: 11 (HR, PR and timekeepers) c. Procurement: 1 (Purchasing) d. Reports-we also have about 8-10 staff members who just run reports e. If we decide to utilize the time-entry module that allows each staff person to key in their own time this will add another 100 or so people who would need this capability, so we will need to know how the licensing works for this. 16. Is Inventory used to support Procurement? 17. Describe the Technical Support team (number of staff and length of experience): a. JDE Programmers: E1 Report writer One year of experience b. JDE System Administrators: 10 years of experience 18. What is the expected start date of the project? a. February 2014

3 19. Is your organization current on your Oracle Annual Maintenance/Support Agreement for JD Edwards (for all of the modules to be upgraded)? 20. Do you currently own the JDE HR Employee Self-Service Licenses? Can you tell us how many employees would access HR Self-Service?, 137 employees 21. One of the new functionalities desired by LASERS is the automation of internal payroll, can you provide more specifics related to this initiative? a. Implement HR Employee Time Entry and Employee Self-Service 22. How many employees does LASERS pay using the JD Edwards' payroll module today? a How many users do you currently have that access and run the JDE Financial Modules and the JDE Procurement Module? a. We have 20 concurrent licenses. Financial Modules are accessed by about 30 users, HRM/Payroll by 11 users and Procurement by up to 3 users. 24. Can you provide more details on what you are looking for related to costs of maintenance and support? Are you referring to software, services or both? a. Maintenance in-house; Oracle support 25. Is the Accounts Receivable being used in World or EnterpriseOne as it is not co-existent as a module. (03 versus 03B)? a. Only EnterpriseOne 26. Is Websphere being used as a web engine anywhere outside of EnterpriseOne in today's IT environment? 27. What other critical projects or business events/activities will occur in the 2014 calendar year that would need to be considered when planning this project? a. Enterprise Content Management (ECM) upgrade 28. Would LASERS consider a technical only upgrade, then doing module enhancements as part of a secondary project in order to manage risk? 29. When is the LASERS fiscal year end? a. 6/30/ Please confirm the World A7.3 co-existence applications are planned to be upgraded to To the OneWorld Xe environment and how many? a. DV, PY, and PD 32. To the World A7.3 environment and how many? a. One; we stopped using World A7.3, when we installed E1 XE 33. What are the number of sites, and how many users per site? a. One site, 137 users

4 34. Is Payroll currently used as a management tool only, or is Payroll run in-house for all employees? a. We run Payroll in-house for all employees 35. Will training services be required? 36. Does LASERS use any Testing Tools? 37. On page 2. you state: The system is being maintained in a co-existence state for training purposes. What is meant by for training purposes? a. Co-existence is no longer in use. 38. On page 3 you list Human Resource and Payroll Management as system modules. What functionality is implemented, i.e. Payroll, Compensation Management, Performance Management, Base HR, Leave Management,Benefits, etc.? a. Payroll, Base HR,Leave Management, and Benefits. Only one change to HR - Supplemental Data (employee training data) 39. On page 4 you list virtualized Windows servers as your future environment. Why are you moving off the iseries hardware? a. LASERS policy. 40. How many instances of JD Edwards? a. One 41. What is the TOTAL Database size across all OneWorld/EntepriseOne or World Databases (Space USED and not ALLOCATED) a. One database(12 GB) 42. What is the size of the PRODUCTION data alone on OneWorld/EnterpriseOne or World (Space USED and not ALLOCATED) a. 12 GB 43. Please confirm that the desired infrastructure will reside on all new servers(vm's) a. VMware 5.1 and Windows Server Can the list of E1/World licenses from the maintenance contract be provided?, upon selection of vendor 45. A number of technology components are required which affect the solution pricing. Would Lasers be interested in attending an education session pertaining to these options and provide guidance on desired options afterwards? 46. In terms of employee self-service is secure access required outside of the local area network? 47. Is tablets access required either internally or externally? Which? t at this time. 48. Is Smart Phone access required either internally or externally? Which? t at this time. 49. On page 4, New JD Edwards Functionality Time Entry and Self Service a. Automating Internal Payroll What is meant by this? Time Entry via self-service which will route to supervisors using work flow for approval and once approved move to payroll workbench for processing

5 b. Security improvements role based security Do you want to re-implement security? How many roles? Do you own any security software to facilitate the implementation and maintenance of security? 30 roles; No. c. Implementing Workflow where it would improve efficiency - /where do you want to implement workflow? How many workflows? How complex? As described in #56a 50. What applications are currently running at LASERS? a. World Vs One World (see RFI) 51. Co-existence is no longer supported. We would like to confirm that LASERS recognizes that World functionality will not be available after an upgrade. a. LASERS agrees. 52. How much free space is available on the production and development partition? a. We are moving to a new platform please make a space recommendation. 53. Do you have the need for a professional portal, such as Web Center Spaces, or the IBM WebSphere Portal for the self-service solutions or would E1 Pages included with JD Edwards 9.1 be adequate?, E1 Pages included with JD Edwards 9.1 would be adequate. 54. You are currently on an iseries platform. The top of page 4 of the RFI mentions that the database environment will utilize the most current version of Microsoft SQL Server. We would like to confirm your desire for a database migration from iseries to SQL Server., is there a concern regarding the migration? 55. Your current environment has iseries for the Enterprise Server, and an Application Server. What is the platform of the Application Server and what is it used for? a. Windows 2008 R2, we use it to run scheduled batch jobs. 56. What services do you require for support services? ne 57. How many support calls do you get per month in each category of support? 58. If CNC support is required, what is your package build volume (and type)? 59. Do you require us to provide data refreshes to the lower level environments as a part of support? 60. Do you want Tools Releases (formerly Service Packs for XE) and ASU's to be included in the support contract? 61. How many employees and retirees will need access to Employee self-service should you decide to implement this new module? Is the assumption all 92,000 employees + retirees? a. 137 employees

6 62. Estimate how many users are in each of the following areas: Users are duplicated in the counts below. GL 25 AR 4 AP 7 Job Cost 5 Fixed Assets 5 HR/Payroll 14 Procurement How many companies are currently setup in JDE? a. One 64. How many Business units are currently setup in JDE? a. Around 300, however many are no longer active 65. How many years of detailed transaction history do you plan on retaining post upgrade in JDE? a. 10 plus current fiscal year 66. How many years of financial balance history do you plan on retaining in JDE post upgrade? a. 10 plus current fiscal year 67. Currently are there any third party reporting tools such as BI being used and integrated with JDE? (Spreadsheet Server, Reports Now, Budget Manager) 68. Is your system set up with anything other than a Calendar year fiscal date pattern? a. We only use our fiscal year of July 1 to June 30 for financial reporting and there are calendars set up for bi-weekly internal payroll within the payroll module. 69. Do you use Flex Accounting in JDE? 70. Do you have any FASTR or World Writer reports that will need to be retrofitted to the new system? If so how many? 71. Would you be open to a new reporting tool or BI implementation during this upgrade instead of retrofitting existing reports? 72. Would you explain how you are using co-existence for your training purpose? ne 73. Do you currently own the JD Edwards licenses for HR and Payroll self-service? 74. How many people will be using the HR/Payroll and/or benefits? Is it 150 people that work there? or every retiree? a. 137 employees

7 75. Since LASERS has 401(a) information, potential pay out / pay roll where federal tax will likely be applied, among other state employee benefit information, that may have FISMA rules or FTI rules that would need to be applied. We need to understand if there are any federal rules that require this to be a 100% dedicated environment? 76. Are there any budgetary restrictions that would shelve this project? For instance a not to exceed $ amount? a. Unknown 77. How many JD Edwards users do you currently have? a How many employees do they have? If employee self-service was implemented is the goal to deploy it to the entire organization? a. 137, Yes 79. Do they plan on customizing the JD Edwards Portal? 80. Is a new chart of accounts part of the scope? 81. Are you using JD Edwards budgeting? 82. Are you using encumbrance accounting? 83. Are they using intercompany in JD Edwards? 84. Do you use requisitions? 85. Are they conducting two and three way matching of invoices? 86. Is a third party A/P scanning software currently in place? 87. Are they using cash receipts in JD Edwards? 88. Are they using credit and collection management in JD Edwards? 89. Are there any workflow/approval routes currently in place in JD Edwards? 90. Do they have interfaces attached to JD Edwards? If so, how many?, How many customizations are in the system? a. One object 92. How many custom reports are in the system? a. 300

8 93. Do you currently report out of JD Edwards or is there a third party tool being utilized? a. We currently utilize reports from JDE as well as reports designed to extract data using Reports Now and Spreadsheet Server software. 94. Is the Application upgrade from Co-ex entirely to E1 9.1 latest release? Specifically for GA and AP. 95. What are the custom mods that we have done to their system, can we have documentation for the same? a. Only one object in HR\ Supplemental Data (employee training data) 96. Audit requirements (any CFRs etc) and integrities requirements from Government perspective like reporting requirements. What are other mandatory reports that we use from JDE side? Any external reporting system that we are using? 97. What is the % of full time vs. contractors? a. Some contractors 98. Do they run payroll weekly or bi-weekly? a. Bi-weekly 99. Where is the current Time-Keeping system, is that handled in JDE or outside? ne used-time is keyed using Speed Time Entry 100. What interface do we have? a. For payroll, none 101. How do we handle variances in time? 102. Do they currently have processes like ACH, POS Pay and how many banks do they work with, those banks do they have the automation facilities?, one bank and Yes 103. For Workflow which systems they are specifically looking for automation? Payroll a. AP document flows from Vendor directly to JDE or any automation to be built in between? No b. Payroll How do you see an employee hiring automated from applicant step till employee hired, paid steps. Employee to enter time via speed time entry/web portal which will transfer to Payroll workbench c. GL Automation of capturing revenue and expenses, I would like to know what is their current capture mechanism and how do they foresee in future? Nothing will change d. Procurement this relates to vendors how do they plan to do it? Nothing will change e. Fixed Asset is there any requirement around creation of assets through GL etc? Nothing will change 104. Procurement what exact modules does this include? Non stock based a. Inventory? if yes what processes do they include like how is their cycle counting, inventory valuation, costing? N/A

9 105. Purchasing how do they purchase items, receive them (any special receiving software), how do they calculate freight, any advanced transportation, routing, how do they calculate variances in receipts, any advance pricing, how do they cost items, how do they manage vendors, any special document managing system for AP automation 106. What interfaces do they have? a. Bank interface, AP, and GL using the Z files 107. Are there any special RPG programs/customizations 108. Do they have any custom security third party applications 109. What can we expect from their team on commitment level? 110. Can we phase some of the new items? a. Only new item was for the employee self-service/workflow. We asked for a separate price for this to determine if/when we would implement Is the current system configuration / setup properly documented from a setup perspective? 112. Are the reports thoroughly documented? 113. Are all of the system integrity reports being run on a regular basis of at least one a month? 114. Are all of the system integrity reports in balance or showing as blank, meaning no errors? 115. Will a data conversion be required of the legacy system? 116. Who will perform the data conversion? a. Selected vendor 117. Who will do the sizing and procurement of the new machines? a. LASERS based upon vendor recommendation Can you further elaborate of you Cloud Hosting requirements? There are many options and they vary in cost and complexity. a. Give us options 119. Will you use managed services with the new solution if cloud based or will you manage everything yourselves? a. Will need to see options 120. Are there currently any performance issues with the existing solution? 121. How many full-time users will be assigned to work on the project from Laser? a. As needed

10 122. It is extremely difficult to plan for new functionality without a scoping session. Outside of the module names, what functionality were you looking to implement? a. Employee self-service for time entry and associated work flow General questions 1. Is LASERS current on the JD Edwards maintenance with Oracle? Yes 2. What is the name and contact information for the Oracle sales representative that LASERS is working with on the JD Edwards licensing? Dustyn B. Deal Technology Account Manager Phone: Are you getting your Oracle license costs from Oracle directly? Or are you expecting the vendors to work with Oracle for these costs? Oracle directly 4. You indicated implementing workflow ; are you referring to standard JDE workflow logic or something more robust like SharePoint. Standard JDE Workflow 5. What are you requesting to be included in the upgrade assessment report? To be determined 6. You indicated General Accounting and Accounts Payable are coexistence; what are the other modules located in? World or OneWorld? All are in OneWorld. 7. How do you currently access JDE remotely? Through a Portal, VPN, etc. Not using web-based-so if accessed remotely it is via VPN. General Ledger and Company 1. How many companies do you have? 1 2. If more than on do you do intercompany accounting? N/A 3. Do you maintain multi-currencies? no 4. Do you do encumbrance accounting? Yes 5. Do you have more than one document ledger? Yes 6. How many records do you have in your address book? 10,021, but will be significantly reduced after data purge. 7. What security model do you use? JDE E1 8. Are your financial statements custom? No Job Costing 1. What do you use job costing for? To track expenses associated with particular events or projects. Numbers are used within Payroll, GL and A/P. Accounts Payable 1. How do you match invoice documents for payment, 2-way or 3-way? 2-way 2. How many checks do you generate per month? Paper checks Do you do ACH or EDI? ACH 4. Do you have multiple tax authorities; if so how many? N/A 5. Do you disburse multiple currencies? No 6. Do you use JDE expense reporting? No 7. How many expense reports do you process per month? N/A 8. Do you do automatic bank recollection? No-due to volume it is done manually

11 Accounts Receivables 1. Do you generate customer invoices; if so how many per month? At most 5/month 2. Are your invoices custom? No 3. Do you have debit memos, credit memos, etc.? No 4. Do you create any contracts? No Fixed Assets 1. How many assets do you have? Roughly How many depreciation methods? One 3. Do you have book and tax calculations? No 4. Do you generate any revenue from Assets? No Purchasing 1. Estimate of the number of suppliers? Varies by year-we do not have inventory 2. How many PO s do you generate per month? Define your purchasing process, services, contracts, material purchases, etc. Most PO s are associated with either annual service type contracts or large IT one-time purchases 4. Define your purchasing approval process. Not done through JDE 5. Do you utilize purchase requisitions? Yes 6. Do you have an inventory location that you track stock; if so define attributes? N/A 7. Are your Purchase Orders custom? No Payroll and HR 1. Do you have time and attendance processing; is it JDE? Yes 2. Are there any Unions? If so explain. No 3. Do you have accruals, disbursements; vacation, sick leave, holiday, etc.? Yes 4. Do you have benefits, life, medical, list? All 5. Do you have Labor Cost and distribution? Yes 6. Number of employees? Number of checks written, pay cycle? Paper checks 1/bi-weekly payroll, ACH 230 items 8. Number of Payrolls run, salaried, hourly, bonus, etc. 26 per year 9. Number of states disbursed? One 10. Do you have garnishments, deductions, etc? Yes 11. Do you perform direct deposits? Yes 12. Are there any public sector requirements? If so explain? No 13. Is the HR System for the purposes of payroll, talent management, recruiting? Payroll 14. Are the 44,000 active Louisiana State employees and 48,000 retiree s benefits being managed in JDE? Are the disbursements made from JDE? If not, what system is used to do this? Is JDE integrated with this system? JDE is only used for 137 employees and for financial reporting purposes utilizing the modules stated in the RFI Reporting 1. Any analytics or business intelligence? If so define. No 2. Any custom reports? If so, can we get a list, or count for complexity? Around 300 reports 3. Do you use a non JDE reporting tool, Cognos, Insight, etc.? If so, which one and who will upgrade to JDE release compatible? Reports Now, and Spreadsheet Server, both will need to be compatible

12 Integrations/Interfaces 1. Do you use a Portal? If so, custom, JDE, IBM etc? No 2. Do you use Vertex? If so, is it for sales tax and payroll tax? payroll tax only 3. Imaging is in your Hardware configuration; what is the solution? Unknown. All solutions will need to be reviewed for compatibility with JDE 9.1. Yes Employee Self-Service 1. Will access be required for remote, online, or in-house or all? in-house, unless other options can be presented and explored 2. How many people will be accessing Employee Self-Service; i.e. members, employees? 137 Hosting & Hardware 1. How many concurrent users do you have? 20 a. Average: b. Peak: 2. Will there be any increase in the concurrent users count after upgrade? No (In JDE 9.1, terminal servers don t exist anymore. So, all end users need to move to web environment.)? Yes 3. Do you have a 24/7 operation? No 4. Where are your primary locations? Baton Rouge, La 5. In what time zones do you operate? Central 6. If you have a need for foreign language support, is there a requirement for Unicode? No need 7. How many "fat-client" machines do you require? None, once upgraded. 8. How many concurrent batch jobs (UBEs) are you running? Up to How many batch jobs are running in per day or week? 180 per month, consisting of 81 batch jobs. 10. How many scheduled jobs run in one night or per week? 180 per month, consisting of 81 batch jobs. 11. What is your preferred method for networking to the hosted location? (e.g. VPN, T1, MPLS, etc.) VPN 12. Are you using a portal? If so, which one. (e.g. JDE or Collaborative Portal, Oracle Application Server Portal, Oracle WebCenter, IBM Websphere Portal) No 13. What complimentary products are you using? (e.g. CreatePrint, Stellent, MIMIX, RFSmart, CreateForm, etc.) None 14. Does any maintenance window exist? If yes, how long is your current maintenance window? (e.g. 20 minutes, 2 hours, etc.) In addition, when? (e.g. Sunday at maintenance) What is the frequency? Weekends as needed a. Length: b. Day/Time: c. Frequency: 15. Describe any custom development and state the number of custom programs you have. One object 16. How many path codes are hosted in JD Edwards EnterpriseOne? DV733, PY7333, and PD How many custom path codes or environments are there in the system? DV733, PY7333, and PD What level of custom objects are in the JDE system? None 19. Are there any third party products or tools directly talking to the JDE system? If yes, are they communicating with database or with the JDE system? Vertex, Report Now, Budget Manger, Chase bank interface (Database communications) 20. How many production update packages do you build on a monthly basis? 2 per month 21. What is your recovery time objective (RTO)? (e.g. 24hrs, 48hrs) 24hrs

13 22. What is your target recovery point objective (RPO)? (e.g. 4hrs, 8hrs, 16hrs, 24hrs) 24 hrs 23. How much continuous unplanned and planned downtime can your business tolerate? The purpose of this question is to understand your requirements of high availability. a. Unplanned: 2-days b. Planned: 2-days 24. What is the target go-live hosting date and conversion timeframe? a. Go-live date: To be determined b. Conversion timeframe: Max of 100 days 25. Third Party Hardware List all third party hardware inventory planned for hosting. Unknown

14 A General Information Specify Your Comments Here 1 Customer Name LASERS 2 Industry Category and Type of Operations Government 3 Number of Countries operating from where JDE is used 1, USA 4 Do you use Worldsoft and OneWorld both?? We are coexistence, but we only using E1. B 5 Number of JDE Licensed Users 20 concurrent How long have you been using ERP 6 system? 10 years Current stability of your system? 7 (Highly stable, Stable, Not Stable) Highly stable What are the primary drivers for you to go for E1 9.0 Upgrade? Is it due to business reasons or technology 8 reasons? E1 XE support ends at the of the year Are you looking for a Big Bang approach for upgrade, If you 9 have Multiple locations?? One location Current Hardware Information 1 Enterprise Server Details Already provided 2 Deployment Server Details Already provided 3 JAS Server Details Already provided 4 Client Details MS Windows 5 Please specify database currently in use. DB2 Single or Multi-instance of Database. If you have multiple 6 instances of data, then specify version of each instance. Single 7 Single Byte or Double Byte Box Double Byte C 8 Current Size of Production Data 12 gb JDE & Network Information 1 Current JDE Version Xe 2 Current Service Pack Level SP 24.2 List of additional hardware or softwares / licences (VPN, etc) required to connect into the JDE system from an external 3 network. VPN D 4 List any additional softwares or tools used ERP System Information 1 What is the count of customized OneWorld objects Vertex, Reports Now, Spreadsheet Server, Budget Manager, i-broadcast 1 customization in the HR module, Supplemental Data (employee training data) Have you made changes directly to Vanilla JDE objects or 2 made a copy of Vanilla to make changes?? Do you follow change control process to promote changes 3 into production environment? Made copies yes 4 Do you use 3rd party application tools/systems (non-jde) 1. Vertex, Reports Now, Spreadsheet Server, i- which are integrated with OneWorld? If Yes, please provide a Broadcast and Budget Manger using ODBC driver list of the applications integrated with JDE.List all possible integration 2. Retirement system software to GL and Interfaces and Integrations which you use. AP using the Z files 14

15 What is your current Reporting Strategy (Do you use 5 Optio,CreateForms) How do you use the JDE Security Currently?? Do you use 6 LDAP or SingleSign On?? Localization - If multiple countries are involved in the Implementation project, do we need to consider the country 7 specific Localization needs? Both JDE E1 Security One location What is going to be your approach for History Conversion? Are you interested in your history transactions? If yes, please specify critical history needs. 8 9 Do you use any tools for testing?? No 10 How many environments do you have (DV,PY,QA,PD) PY, PD, DV 11 Have you maintained the Pristine environment? Yes Yes we want to convert history transactions for 10 past years plus the current fiscal year. 12 Have you maintained detail documentation including business justification, functional / technical specs and test results for all customizations? No E 13 Is LASERS interested in UPK for Training??? Maybe Current System Issues 1 Do you have any process related Issues? No 2 Do you face any data integrity related issues? Yes What change would your employees like to see in the 3 current ERP System? Time Entry and Self Service 15

16 Foundation System Select Applicable Options Financials Select Applicable Options HRM Select Applicable Options Address Book Account Payable Recruitment Work Flow Account Receivable Compensation Tools General Accounting Performance Enterprise Report Writer Fixed Assets Competancy BI Publisher Advance Cost Accounting Payroll Job Cost HSM Service Billing Time Card Contract Billing Leave Expense Management Distribution Select Applicable Options Manufacturing Select Applicable Options Procurement Select Applicable Options Inventory PDM Stock based Sales Order Management Shop Fllor Control Non Stock Based Planning Services Advance Pricing Grower Management Sub Contracts Subcontract management Blend Management EDI Enterprise Project Management Sales Configurator Forecasting Transportation Operational Sourcing Warehouse Management CRM 16