Written by Simon Andrews, Support Manager, Eagle Europe
The Scouts motto is “Be Prepared”. It is also a song from The Lion King but that isn’t important right now. As Support Manager for Eagle Europe and a long standing Support Representative for QAD Environments this has always been at the forefront of my thinking. Specifically, Be Prepared for your go-live or upgrade situation. You have promised all sorts of things to your users so you need to deliver. After nearly 25 years of being involved with upgrades and go-lives in QAD and Eagle environments, it is always very obvious to tell which customers are going to be successful and which will struggle.
What do you need to consider?
These are the steps you need to consider for both on premise and QAD Cloud deployments;
- Test, Test, Test. Keep a meticulous record of every Transaction you want to use in the PROD system. Test everything and record everything.
- Make sure you know exactly what needs to be copied from your, thoroughly tested, TEST system to the vanilla PROD system. This includes settings in QAD such as Generalised Codes and Default Printers. As well as Eagle configuration and label files and the correct Eagle source code set.
- Ensure that the proper people have been trained. This means actual users and not just those involved with the implementation who may soon walk off onto another Project.
- Data Migration and Cutover Activities should be practiced. Run through a dummy go-live in a PRE-PROD environment.
- Make sure you know how to re-configure the scanners so they are pointing to the PROD environment and not the TEST environment.
- Make sure you have access to the key members of your organisation for go-live. In addition ensure you have access to your software providers. In this case that will be Eagle and possibly QAD. So many customers say they do not need go-live cover from Eagle only to end up calling with an “urgent” issue at 5am on a Saturday morning.
- Ensure you have a good post go-live process in place to ensure users are supported as they start to use the new system. Get feedback from the users even if it isn’t good news.
In order to assist you with your On Premise or QAD Cloud Deployment it is important to allow Eagle access to your servers.
How can we help?
With On Premise installs this can be via Webex, Team Viewer or a Customer specific VPN. However with QAD Cloud installs QAD need to grant our representatives access. For this reason it is important that you, as the customer, lets us know as soon as you can that your upgrade/install will be in the QAD Cloud. We can then contact QAD to ensure our access to granted to assist with the installation and ongoing support. With the correct preparation the go-live or upgrade will go seamlessly with zero or minimal problems.
Get in touch to discuss any of this further. Speak to your Account Manager or get in touch with our team. We can help you upgrade your system with appropriate cover at every stage.