A US Based multinational technology firm with a history of delivering industry-leading product innovations throughout its over 82 years history is on a mission to reinvent itself. In addition to being the 2nd largest global vendor of personal computers, this organization has a product range that includes printers and related supplies as well as 3D printing solutions. The company leadership decided to invest in creating highly personalized solutions and accelerate the adoption of digital printing to disrupt industries. The leadership team determined the need to right-skill its team composition to deliver on the organization's strategy to capitalize on global shifts towards consumerization of corporate IT and building new businesses by leveraging its vast intellectual property. The leadership upgraded its focus on attracting the right talent that could innovate and launch a slew of solutions that change the way people across the world live, work, learn, and play. They chose Taleo as the talent acquisition, tracking, BI reporting of key business metrics related to talent management for their global workforce.
Following their announcement of the end of support for Taleo reporting on SAP BO(Business Objects), Oracle identified this organization as a marquee client for migration to OBIEE(Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition). As an established Oracle Partner with a successful track record for delivering such high-profile migrations, DataTerrain was chosen to handle this complex and important project. The following were major guidelines given to DataTerrain for this migration -
•Zero business disruptions to the user organization
•Complete development and testing remotely in the DataTerrain environment and without access to data from the customer environments
•Create documentation to minimize the maintenance and support effort after GO-LIVE
DataTerrain's proprietary automated migration using Zero-defect approach
This project was executed using DataTerrain's proprietary automation tool and by leveraging its methodology which is based on the Zero-defects approach. An overview of the major phases of this project and key activities is provided below -
1.Automated AS-IS assessment and Planning - Legacy BO report files were deployed in DataTerrain's environment and the automated tool was used to analyze key information like
a.Key users, SMEs, and owners for each report
b.business criticality and purpose, usage frequency, run times, schedules
c.Notable BO-specific features used
d.complex functions, queries created for specific reports, unique implementations, and joins for relationship definition between classes and objects, measures and dimensions needing intervention and appropriate handling during automated migration
A detailed project and activity plan with clearly identified dependencies was created considering the above technical assessment and included activities to handle -
•Potential report specific migration risks and issues and suitable manual intervention during automated 1-2-1 migration
•Proactive issue fixes in discussion with users to address prioritized standardization and improvement opportunities
•Data creation in DataTerrain environment for reports testing
This plan was reviewed and signed off by key stakeholders after aligning calendars to ensure the availability of key individuals.
2.Automated 1-2-1 migration and Validation - Based on the technical plan from the earlier phase, DataTerrain SMEs configured the automated utility and performed the migration and validation in the DataTerrain environment. The major tasks executed include -
a.Transport and conversion of BO Universe file and all its elements from the source BO to target OBIEE RPD
b.Translation of complex logic and report components across layers of the BO Universe
c.Transformation of BO Universe metadata to the corresponding RPD layers - physical, business model, and presentation layer by adhering to OBIEE best practices and zero-defect philosophy
d.Fixing potential performance bottlenecks
e.Data preparation to test reports in DataTerrain environment
f.Automated validation by comparing data translations and formats of reports in the source and target environments
g.Fixing issues identified during automated validation
3.End-User Acceptance and GO-LIVE - After passing QA(Quality Assurance) checks, reports were transported to the customer's testing environment. Key stakeholders validated the reports and there were no surprises as users were involved throughout the previous phases and participated in all key decisions. The accepted reports were then promoted to production and rolled out to the user community.
The DataTerrain Difference
Following the successful on-time and within-budget completion of this project, the following were noted by the customer as highlights of DataTerrain's successful approach -
1.OBIEE Best practices implementation - As a leading Oracle partner, DataTerrain fully understood and implemented OBIEE best practices and guidelines during the migration. DataTerrain's automation tool provided workarounds and handled BO-specific implementations like multi-query reports and converted them to OBIEE answers.
2.Carrying forward decades of accumulated knowledge - 1-2-1 conversion of BO reports to OBIEE was performed while ensuring that the converted reports retained the original look and feel. This way, decades of customer knowledge and refinements done for the unique business needs of the customer were carried forward into the new environment, minimizing user training and adoption challenges.
3.Global Delivery Model - Project activities were progressed round the clock by DataTerrain team members deployed across its global delivery centers using a follow-the-sun model. DataTerrain completed its migration and testing activities entirely in its environment and did not burden the customer's IT environment.
4.Change Management - DataTerrain follows customer specific change management methods and policies to accurately track the changes and inform all the stakeholders in the process
The customer's Taleo reporting was completely and seamlessly migrated from BO to OBIEE by DataTerrain. With the new Taleo-OBIEE reporting environment, the customer is better positioned to attract leading talent and deliver on its vision to be the home to those who dream of creating a better future for everyone, everywhere.