• Oracle Ebus Products Implemented• Human Resources

• Payroll• Finance

• Performance Management

• Moved from an critical account to customer reference

Turning challenges into Opportunities to improve Oracle Ebus R12.1.3 , Customer Success story

Ahmed Jassat APPS DBA +27 76 44 11 873

• Who am I ?

Ahmed Jassat has over 14 years of experience in working as an Oracle APPS DBA; he has done numerous implementations in the financial services, mining, manufacturing, information technology and healthcare sectors. He works as being Pro-active is improving customer experience in the Oracle Ebus suite. Ahmed is a member of the Oracle customer advisory board and has presented at the SAOUG 2011 , 2012 & 2013. He has mentored and trained clients around South Africa. Ahmed’s white papers have been recognized globally and he has been interviewed by Oracle Media network, Oracle Customer success and Oracle Advanced customer services. He is passionate on being PRO-Active and resolving issues before they occur

Winner Best Speaker SAOUG 2012

Support Environment

UsersSRs

Support staff

Challenges I faced !!!• No dedicated testing team• No user acceptance / quality assurance team• I had to support the application for any issues• Performance ?• Impact of functionality finance vs HR • DBA testing• Don’t know what changes are going in • Clones

• Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact

Prevent Resolve Latest

Get Proactive and Maximize the Value of Your Oracle Investment

Technology Used

Sent to Bryanston

3 Hours to restore from TapeBackup done to

tape

3 Hours to restore from Tape

Cloning …

• Create a exact copy of Production daily using dataGuard as an engine

IDEA was born !!!

Daily Clone with DataGuard

Mirror image of Production

Our Cloning

Archives Shipped To DGuard

Current setup

Summary of Environment

Support Environment

UsersSRs

Support staff

Benefits of daily copy / clone No additional costs Backups can be tested No requirements of tapes No requirements for assistance of Linux admin No requirements for restores No human interaction , only to check logs No functional support or super users on production Time saved from 24 working hours to 20 minutes for clones DR available immediately DataGuard environment is read only which means it can be used for reporting Production Servers are up and running 24 X 7 X 365 Clones to DEV, UAT, Training and dba environments takes 1 hour as clones on local servers Users and support team can test anything at anytime Copy of production available 7 days a week. Backup of production can be verified by dataguard. Rman backups can be run from the DataGuard instance. No need to purchase expensive software for cloning. Daily copy of production which functional support team can use Assistance with OWC with Oracle as scripts and updates can be tested with production data immediately We noticed a reduction in TARS as support team could test solutions from metalink Patches can be tested immediately using Production data No more P1 SRs Super users can test changes to the system Demos can be given to Directors using latest data Training can be given with data from Production Disaster recovery environment is available immediately Changes can be made on TEST system and user acceptance testing can take place easy Emergency changes can be tested No additional money was spent on this solution

NO ADDITONAL

COST !!!!

Backups c

an

be test

ed

daily

Steps we used to reduce Work load

Gather Schema Stats 3 hours to run

Patch to apply

And Now !! Gather Schema stats completes in minutes with Auto option

User picks up problem

Oracle requires information

User contacts DBA

Both work on collecting files

DBA uploades file to Metalink and this process can take place a number of times

Oracle Support Process for HROracle Support Process for HR

New Process by using Patch 14051237

Oracle Support and Medscheme Support can work with each other without the need of a APPS DBASaving a lot of steps and timeFunctional Support User can do traces without the need of an APPS DBA

• Environment Health Script

• : Ahmed Jassat Oracle E-Business DBAICT Infrastructure / Operations

Patch Wizard

Output

Has the patch been applied ??

Easy way to check if patches are applied

Easy way to check if patches are applied

Easy to check Technology Components

What is the file version ???

Tools to assist

Improved Performance Managment

Issues faced with the above process{Electronic tax file}1. Payroll Users had to e-mail the apps dbas for files 2. Payroll users had to have the apps dbas available if running payroll

afterhours3. Auditing risk as the apps dba have access to these files4. Too many steps involved to retrieve .mf file from server, 5 steps5. If payroll is rerun the apps dba needs to extract the files again6. Payroll User dependent on APPS DBA7. Overtime for both APPS DBA and Payroll User8. APPS DBA needs to be available all the time9. Miscommunication causes issues between Payroll and APPS DBA10.Customers is not happy with the above process

New process benefits1. Saves on resources2. No more required to e-mail APPS DBA3. Complies with Auditing4. No more storing the files on PCs for APPS DBA5. No more storing the files on PCs for HR USER6. Adds feature to Oracle ebus7. Saves costs on overtime for APPS DBA8. Saves costs on overtime for HR user9. Saves costs no need to purchasing a FTP tool10. Customer will be happy11. I have spoken to HR users & APPS DBAs … all of them want this

feature12. Oracle ZA clients want this feature 13. Users will be kept working in the application14. Single point of failure

file will be e-mailed to you

We have also added

• Current – Electronic Tax files• Added …Extext files {payment files}

Old GDF Process

Issue in Finance APPS dba asked to apply GDF

Finance User runs GDF on EBus

Finace User asks APPS dba for GDF ouput

Apps DBA then e-mails output

Issues with the above process

• 6 Steps to resolve single issue• APPS DBA needs to be available all the time for finance user• Too many steps• Too many e-mails• If there was a communication issue the process had to be started again• Standby for finance User• Standby for APPS DBA• Two client resources to resolve finance issue

Ahmed Jassat has worked on SR 3-6128961691 : Pro-active - Generic Data fix improvement for 2 months convincing Oracle development on the need for a improvement

New GDF Process after the patch

Issue in Finance APPS dba asked to apply GDF Finance User

runs GDF on Ebus without the need of apps dba

Benefits are• No Need for APPS DBA• Finance User can work independently• From 6 steps to 3 steps• No more overtime for finance user• No more overtime for apps dba• No more e-mails• Huge improvement for Oracle Ebus• All South African Customers benefit

• Old Payslip Generation Process

Payroll could only be run at night…… due to the high CPU usage and ran for 3 hours (180 minutes)

Issues where•Payroll could only be run after hours•Payroll ran for extremely long time•A lot of testing and hours spend due to payroll running along time•Overtime for payroll admin•APPS DBA needed to be available all the time•If a issue is pickuped, payroll could not be run after hours which means time is wasted•Planning … Planning … Planning

• Looking at Oracle Tuning advisor, I had a Idea & decided to logged an SR explaining to Oracle this needs to be tuned

• Worked on SR 3-5675377601 : 14057355 Proactive : tuning the payslips sql for 5 months begging Oracle for a fix

• Oracle development agreed with the help of Paddy Toner – Oracle HRMS support and delivered the following patch

• Uses less CPU

• Completes in 20 minutes

Old RUN After tuning working with HR development

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

Minutes

Minutes

• After the patch is applied • Payroll can be run anytime during the day as it uses

less CPU and completes in ….20 minutes

Benefits are• Payroll can be run anytime• No more working at night for payroll admin• No more working at night for apps dba• No more overtime for payroll admin• No more overtime for apps dba• Payroll issues can be fixed during the day and run

again during the day• Huge improvement for Oracle Ebus• Huge improvement for payroll• All South African Customers benefit

Taking Part in the Early Adopter program

• Taken Part in the HR Tax early adopter program• Trained Payroll & HR staff• Trained Management• Discussed tax setup with Oracle development • Moved from re-active to pro-active• No Oracle issues on tax this year verses last year• Improved the Oracle Products reputation

What helped me !! Oracle Community

Innovations on Project • Daily copy / clone instance / Support environment• Self Extraction of Payment files & Tax files• Link to development• Assisted with the South African Payroll User Group• Improved GDF for finance Team• Support Staff can do system checks { patches , file versions, RDA }• Improved Payroll• Improved HR tracing• Constant performance Tuning , improved Performance management , finance

reports & Custom reports• Taken part in Oracle early adopter program• Taken part in Oracle Pro-active program { workflow & concurrent Analyzer}• Improved Product Value onsite• Customer reference program

Benefits of daily Clone

• Wayne Wright { SYSADMIN} Benefits of having the TST environment are: No developers have access to production (Benefits of this are: no “accidental” data changes, proper segregation

of duty, any change a developer does has to be tested as they cannot just do it via the back end, they have no access to do any change in PROD)

Data is available the next day to do problem solving on PO’s Workflows can be checked the next day to get a solution, no more waiting for a refresh. If you break the

workflow, the next day the environment is refreshed so you can try another solution. Post production checking can be done on TST, this is especially nice as if you have a targeted user group, you can

reset there passwords can check, this allows for faster checking of the post implementation.

• Phil Louw { Workflow Consultant } From a developer point of view: It is great to have a accurate and dependable environment where one can debug critical production

issues with up to date data without the risk of impacting on production processes. It is also good to be able to test the deployment of patches and custom developments to a near

production environment before they are moved over to the live system. The risk of faulty deployments is greatly reduced.

Benefits

• Juan Ferera { Oracle Developer } The most crucial aspect of our TST environment for me is that we have access to the latest data. It is very difficult to re-

create problem scenarios otherwise.

It is almost more of a benefit for me that the instance is refreshed daily, seeing that changes can be re-done and tested if unsure, on a fresh environment. This is the closest instance we have of Production, and therefore the closest reflection of how changes will behave in PROD.

• Christine Abrahams { Payroll Department } We as Payroll benefit from having TST which is a daily clone of PROD for the following reasons : Able to do corrections on errors received on PROD Different scenarios can be done on TST with package structuring or other changes required by staff Quick fixes on reports and testing (using latest data) SR Resolution as we do our testing on TST and not PROD for scripts received or other data requirements Use TST as a general ‘playground’ for any change you want to implement on PROD to check all results

first.

• Thank You !!!

Ahmed Jassat+27 76 44 11 873Ahmedj@rdc.co.za

“Take challenges / issues and turn then into opportunities! "