I realize public posting of consultant discussions is prohibited, but if anyone has recommendations based on experience that they would like to PM me, I’d love to hear about them.
I’m about a full year into an E9>10 upgrade that has no end in sight. I’ve been working with a consulting group that shall remain unnamed, but it’s becoming clear that a new approach is necessary if I ever want to get this finished.
I’ve never been able to successfully replace the guy (shout out to Evan Kepner, a legit genius) I lost when ATS was sued into oblivion and so the search continues…
Thanks for any recommendations!
EDIT: I should probably add that US based would be preferred as to better accommodate potential on-site work.
We have had good experience with EpiCenter. They helped us with our E9-E10 upgrade a few years back when we didn’t have alt tech anymore either. Message me if you’d like any other info.
Thank you, Nancy. They might scrub your reply, but I’ll add them to the list. I’m just collecting names for consideration as I haven’t yet broached the topic with my boss. If you’re familiar with the poker term, we are somewhat ‘pot committed’ at the moment with the time and money sunk, so bringing up a potential change midstream is going to cause some waves…maybe a tsunami
Ryan, why not use the Epicor Cirrus Upgrade team. we give you a PM as well as the reduced rates provide a very cost effect and totally 100% success rate. i would contact your regional client partner David Gasner. This is unfortunatly the issue when you use groups that are not certified.
We have a list of our 3rd party certified partners here: https://www.epicor.com/en-us/partners/partner-directory/ and at the very least, any consulting firm you hire should be on this list. In order to be certified, their employees must each pass certification tests on the product.
There are also a few really good independent consultants out there as well, but in those cases, you will need to make sure that they have proper education/certification yourself.
Jose, thank you for your input! Our problem with going that route now is that our current group has taken us down the path of ‘cleaning up’ our database and implementing some features that we were not using or using incorrectly. We have invested significant time and energy into manually recreating all of our BOO’s and BOM’s on manufactured parts. At this point, just copying what we have in 9 into 10 would undo quite a bit of effort…unless I’m misunderstand how Cirrus works.
That said, the concern of getting all of the data I need into 10, one DMT load at a time is causing a lot of anxiety and costing me sleep. At least I’ll have a decent list of options moving forward should we ultimately move on from the current group.
@rirish When you say one DMT load at a time are you referring to one type of DMT or a single worksheet? When I did our data load I would split the DMT files into multiple sections and run up to 6 of them at a time on three different machines to get the most RPM I could.
Yes, one table or part of a table at a time…I don’t fully know what I’m doing as this is the first time I’ve been through something like this so I’m sure I’m doing it as inefficiently as humanly possible.
I would suggest making a script and practicing the DMT process. Launch several DMT sessions on the machine until you see the RPMs start to decline. Keeps notes on small things you forgot in a run so that you do not do the same going live. Here is a snipit of my DMT plan. We kept building Pilot with static data company configs, customers, vendors, Parts, boos, boms and then I would only update changes. Move that to live and then update transactional data there.
Thank you, Greg, I’ll definitely check that out. At the moment, speed is the least of my concerns as most of my DMT attempts fail for one reason or another. I’m much concerned with the how, than I am the how fast.
We can help with the failures. DMT is just a simulation of data entry. If you are having failures then try to do the same entry in the UI to see if there are required fields missing or a bpm getting triggered.
Also I would only work the first error in the DMT run. I considered the rest of them blowback from the first issue. On BOO and BOM entries each line is a complete check out, add/change, save, approve and then check in.
Thanks for the offer, although you’re definitely underestimating the headache I will provide. Reminds me of my first upgrade from 8 to 9, where I completely abused the generous offer of a kind soul, Jeff Johnson. I would have never gotten through it without constantly badgering him for help, and I still feel guilty to this day for the amount of effort he put in to help me, all for nothing more than a bottle of Glenlivet.
I’m going to end up completely derailing this thread, but…
I have the parts loaded with their BoO’s and BoM’s. I’ve been fighting customer and vendor data lately - as I don’t really have a plan and don’t know the proper order to load data, most of the failures are based on missing pre-prerequisite data. If I can figure out what it’s looking for, attempting to load that leads me to a pre-req for that data, and so on.
Basically the way I’m doing this seems to require intimate knowledge of table structure that I just don’t have. My current consultant is well aware of my shortcomings, yet isn’t really proactively setting me up for success.
Not having some of this basic data loaded has made it tough to recreate and test BPM’s, custom reports, etc.
It’s a mess, I’m absolutely overwhelmed with the situation, and just trying to explain the hole I’m in is getting the blood riled up again What does that little fish keep saying in Nemo, just keep swimming?
It does sound like you are in need of additional migration boot on the ground help.
I would move away from DMT and try to get one vendor and one customer entered manually. That should force you to load all of the required data.
It looks like someone has put together some of this in the Migration menus in DMT. You are all the way to phase 4 before you actually load a customer record. you could use that as a roadmap for data loading.
Ooof…migration menus in DMT is news to me, but I just found it. All this time I’ve been looking at this and didn’t realize there was another menu format…
I wasn’t aware there was a migration menu…a quick skim through the phases and I can see I have a lot more to consider than I was aware, although many of these might not apply. Task sets for example.
We are definitely not, or shouldn’t be, into phase 4.
Well thanks, Greg, this could be an important kick in the right direction for me.
Stalk away! I was actually chatting with your co-worker yesterday and realized we are neighbors…and we also have one of your bottle saving water fountains on site! Any chance you’re using one of our custom keyboards? Is this our chocolate and peanut butter moment lol? Well met, Randy
What does that little fish keep saying in Nemo, just keep swimming?