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Upgrade Readiness Assessment (910)

How ready is your company to handle the Lawson 10x upgrade?

This comprehensive guide will help you determine if you have planned for success or not.

Prepared by Nogalis, Inc.

Copyright 2014

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INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................................. - 4 -

HOW TO USE THIS DOCUMENT ................................................................................................................. - 4 -

DATA ................................................................................................................................................................... - 5 -

SECURITY ........................................................................................................................................................... - 5 -

APPLICATIONS ................................................................................................................................................. - 6 -

HARDWARE / SCALING ................................................................................................................................. - 6 -

DISK SPACE ....................................................................................................................................................... - 7 -

USERS (SETUP/JOBS/GROUPS/MIGRATION) .......................................................................................... - 8 -

PRINTER MIGRATION ................................................................................................................................... - 9 -

TRAINING .......................................................................................................................................................... - 9 -

TESTING / TEST SCRIPTS .............................................................................................................................. - 9 -

DATABASE CLEANUP ....................................................................................................................................- 10 -

HISTORY / PURGING .....................................................................................................................................- 11 -

DISASTER RECOVERY ...................................................................................................................................- 11 -

BACKUP AND RECOVER ..............................................................................................................................- 11 -

LID/PORTAL/WORKSPACE/MING.LE .......................................................................................................- 11 -

INTERFACES .....................................................................................................................................................- 12 -

PROCESSFLOWS ..............................................................................................................................................- 12 -

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CUSTOM SCREENS .........................................................................................................................................- 13 -

ANCILLARY (MSCM, PUNCHOUT, EDI) ...................................................................................................- 13 -

LBI AND OTHER REPORTING .....................................................................................................................- 13 -

MS ADD-INS .....................................................................................................................................................- 13 -

THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONS ...................................................................................................................- 14 -

PASSWORDS/ ACCOUNTS/LICENSE KEYS .............................................................................................- 14 -

PEOPLE ...............................................................................................................................................................- 15 -

GO-LIVE / CUT-OVER .....................................................................................................................................- 15 -

RISK TOLERANCE ...........................................................................................................................................- 16 -

OPPORTUNITIES .............................................................................................................................................- 16 -

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Introduction

For over a decade we have been helping our clients successfully implement and upgrade their

Lawson applications. Upgrades are relatively straight forward and predictable projects. All the

components of an upgrade can be planned for in advanced. However, many organizations find

the upgrade process challenging. The main reason we have found for this, is lack of good

preparation and education. In this document, we have used over 100 years of consulting

experience of our team along with our experience with the 10x applications. This will provide

you with a comprehensive guide on how to prepare you for your upgrade and ensure a

successful project. We are certain that after completing this assessment, you will be well

prepared to plan you 10x upgrade and avoid any unforeseen surprises.

How to use this document

This document is comprised of a set of questions and explanations. We have determined that if

you know the answers to all these questions, your chances of a successful, timely, and on-

budget upgrade will increase tremendously. You will notice that asking the right questions will

help you with developing a project plan for success. To complete this document, you have two

options:

1) You can complete this document in-house working with your technical and application

resources.

2) We can work with your team to develop a complete readiness assessment and project

plan for you. This work does to obligate you to use Nogalis as your upgrade partner.

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Data

How many gigs of data do you currently possess?

Which applications do you currently own? Are any of these applications being

decommissioned? If so, do you have a conversion plan in place?

Since, you’re not likely doing this upgrade in place; this upgrade presents the unique

opportunity to purge historical information prior to performing the upgrade. Purging historical

information can drastically improve upgrade times. Do you plan on purging historical

information prior to your upgrade?

Here are some ideas of data that can be purged safely:

- Inactive customers older than …

- Historical invoices closed x years ago and older

- Historical POs closed x years ago and older

- Closed work units and variables

- Transaction level GL information older than x years

Do you plan on installing new apps as a part of this upgrade? Are these new applications going

to affect configuration of existing applications? Will there be a change to account structure as a

result of implementing new applications?

Security

Are you using LAUA or Lawson LSF Security?

Do you currently have any Landmark applications installed?

Do you plan to install any Landmark Applications (like LTM)? If so, have you planned your

Landmark security profiles?

Do you currently use SmartOffice or plan to use SmartOffice with version 10? If so, have you

determined how you will implement security for Smart Office?

If you are still on LAUA, you will need to implement Lawson LSF Security before your upgrade

to 10x. Do you have role based security anywhere else within the organization? Have you

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looked into a Lawson Security implementation yet? For a brief overview of Lawson security via

our Lawson Security overview webinar at http://www.nogalis.com/education

You will need a plan for moving all your security information to the new 10x environment.

Do you have a plan to move your security roles, profiles, and classes to the new environment?

Do you have a plan for moving your users and group to the new environment?

Note: if you’re using a custom built script for moving user information, we recommend making

frequent backups of your LDAP.

Applications

Do you currently have any Landmark Applications installed? Do you plan to install new

Landmark applications as a park of this install?

Are there any net-new applications being installed as a part of this upgrade?

Have you considered all your licensing requirements? Are your current license counts going to

be sufficient in the coming years?

Is your staff trained in all new 10x applications? See also Training

What version of the applications are you currently on?

Are you aware of the minimum version requirements to upgrade to your desired version of

10x? (9.0.0.5 or 9.0.1.3)

If not do you have a plan to upgrade to these MSP levels first prior to your upgrade? It is highly

recommended that you begin this planning well in advance of your 10x upgrade because of the

amount of testing and time required to perform these MSP level upgrades.

Have you downloaded and reviewed the Application Upgrade documents outlining these

requirements?

Are all your systems (DEV, TEST, TRAIN, STAGE, PROD) on the same level of the applications

and environment today? Do you plan to create the same productlines in the new environments?

Hardware / Scaling

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Your 10x Lawson application requires a few more hardware resources than before. Below is a

minimal hardware configuration for a typical 10x install. You may find that you will have to

add hardware or VM resources as a part of this upgrade. Furthermore, as it is unlikely that you

will be doing an in-place upgrade, you will likely need separate Hardware or VMs.

Landmark Server (WebSphere, Java, Perl, IPA) (NEW)

SharePoint Server (SharePoint, Java, Perl …, Ming.le) (NEW)

Infor LSF Server (WebSphere, NetExpress, Java, Perl, LDAP)

Database Server

LBI Server (Lawson Business Intelligence)

Secondarily, if you are currently running your Lawson applications on a hardware server, this

may be the perfect opportunity to virtualize your installation which then allows you take

advantage of the Disaster Recover, Scaling, and Portability of a virtual environment.

Are you currently using a virtualized environment (VM)?

Do you plan to use this opportunity to move Lawson to a virtualized environment?

Have you planned for your new hardware requirements?

Depending on configuration, plan on 20% increase in CPU and Memory for your 10x install.

More is better.

Is your current system horizontally scaled?

Do you plan such scaling for the new system?

Are you aware that there are no provisions for horizontal scaling for the Landmark applications

as of yet?

Disk Space

How many GB of data do you currently have in your main Lawson Database?

Keep in mind that while performing upgrades, you will want to have access to at least 2-3x this

amount of space for test runs and backup images.

Lawson 10x install takes on average 20% more disk space. Have you planned for this additional

disk space in addition to your current production?

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Do you plan on keeping your current production system around for reference for a period of

time? If so, have you planned for this additional temporary data usage?

We recommend maintaining your current environment and date for at least one quarter and if

possible for one year. At the end of this period, our recommendation is that you create an

archive backup for long term storage. This is especially important since the upgrade programs

change the data in significant ways and a future audit may require visibility to the data prior to

the upgrade.

Additionally, plan for disk space for the following:

SharePoint

LDAP

Database

Landmark Server

LBI and all reporting services reports

Archived jobs and files

Backups and Disaster Recovery Servers

Users (setup/jobs/groups/migration)

As you may know, there are no upgrade programs for migrating your users to your new 10x

environment. While many utilities are available to assist you, the task is still a rather

customized process which requires development and testing for each client.

Have you planned your user migration yet?

Do you have a plan for re-assigning roles and groups to users when migrating? If no, you will

need a process that is easily reproducible for multiple iterations.

This upgrade presents the opportunity for cleaning up your users and removing unneeded

ones. This is especially important for privileged users. Have you determined if your user list is

cleaned up and ready to move?

Do you plan on moving user jobs to your new environment? Have you determined how you

will do that yet? Although we don’t recommend moving jobs from one application version to

another, when done methodically, migrating jobs can work quite well.

If you do not plan on migrating jobs, do you have any LBI reports that run off of back office

jobs? These jobs will need to be setup in the new system.

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There are several new users that you will need to setup as a part of your 10x install (Like

SharePoint users). Does your enterprise have user policies that allow you to create new LDAP

users for application purposes? What is the lead time in creating such users? Can you create

these users prior to your install?

Printer Migration

Although server-side printers are likely not being used to print jobs to as often as they used to

since the ability to print directly from your browser, many clients still use server-side printers

for important and secured print jobs.

Do you have a plan for migrating and testing your printers to the new server?

Are your printer drivers available for the new Operating System release?

Training

As always, if you’re planning on installing new applications, your users will need to be trained

in the new application. We recommend training your SMEs (Subject matter experts) and then

following the train-the-trainer methodology.

Note: Schedule training as soon as possible to avoid scheduling difficulties that might occur

during periods of high upgrade activity. Lawson Software provides training at Lawson facilities

and at client sites upon request.

We recommend planning for the following items:

10x difference training for all your applications

Smart office training

Ming.le training

SharePoint administration training

WebSphere

Landmark Admin / Security Training (highly recommended)

IPA Differences (highly recommended)

LBI (highly recommended)

Testing / Test Scripts

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Testing upgrades is a tremendous effort requiring the engagement of your entire team. Having

a testing plan and test scripts is crucial to testing your upgrade properly. Test scripts must be

thorough and extremely detailed in order to be effective. Successful testing means testing each

task form start to finish after each test upgrade. It is imperative to catch even the smallest

glitches as a small bug on a batch job can hold up payroll or a month-end close if not addressed.

It is also very important to perform regression testing as one change can affect items you have

already tested. We recommend using a repository to keep track of all your test results and have

people sign off on their tests after each iteration. Here is a quick assessment to determine if

you’re ready for testing your upgrades:

- Do you have Test Scripts for all your functions (e.g. Add Employee, Term Employee,

Add Vendor, Create Special Invoice, … )

- Have you revised your Test Scripts or created new ones for the 10x upgrade?

- Have you created test scripts of technical items such as interfaces and sysadmin tasks?

- Do you have a system for keeping track of test results that can yield a simple view for:

o What has been tested successfully

o What is in error

o What percentage of your scripts are completed

- Do you have people designated for each test script? We recommend a non-SME be

involved in testing each test script as well because they are more likely to follow the

directions in the script.

- Have you set the expectation for testing with all your users?

- Do you have a ticketing/PSA system for tracking issues and bugs? Even if you’re using

excel only, it is important to have a system that everyone is going to use and upkeep.

Database Cleanup

One of the biggest problems while running upgrade programs is insufficient data; specifically,

data that does not obey the index requirements of the new database tables. This can cause

serious issues during your upgrade as database reorgs are likely to fail with no obvious solution

other than to dig through thousands of records for the culprit record. Some very simple

measures can be taken ahead of an upgrade to eliminate issues of this kind.

Have you cleaned up any of the following potential issues?

- Duplicate records

- Orphaned Records

- Missing required fields

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- Special Characters

- Missing Key fields

- Corrupt records

This is also a good opportunity for cleaning up other formatting and unclean data such as

phone number, ssn, and address formats.

History / Purging

Upgrade programs can take up to 20 hours to run depending on the amount of data being

upgraded. While the intention is typically to upgrade the entire productline, there is an

opportunity during a major upgrade to purge some historical data prior to the upgrade. This

will not only remove unwanted data, but it can also cut the upgrade time nearly in half.

Have you considered purging data prior to the upgrade to save time during the process?

Disaster Recovery

Given the differences between 9x and 10x, your current DR plan needs to be carefully reviewed

and revised. The additional of the Landmark and SharePoint servers adds complexity to the DR

process.

Have you accounted for changes to your disaster recovery process?

Backup and Recover

As with 9x, your 10x enterprise systems must be backed up in accordance with your audit and

internal policies. With the additional Landmark and SharePoint servers and several new layers

of security, backup and recovery needs to be part of your upgrade plan.

Have you considered the changes to your current backup and recovery plans?

LID/Portal/Workspace/Ming.le

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As with most new version upgrades, the User Interface (UI) layer is getting a noticeable

upgrade with version 10x. Things to consider as a result of these changes:

Your desktop team will need to understand the requirements and installation process

for the new UI including SmartOffice and Ming.le

Your desktop support team will need to make sure that all browser and other

component requirements are available on user PCs prior to the upgrade and that they do

not break the 9.x version of the application while the upgrade is taking place

Interfaces

Custom interfaces are often the most involved parts of performing a major software upgrade.

At the minimum, each interface needs to be examined and tested in the new version to ensure

that it will continue to work after the upgrade. In order to prepare for this process, all interfaces

need to be well documented and appropriate third parties must be coordinated to test the

interfaces.

Have you created a repository of all your interfaces?

Do you have designated contacts at third party application vendors for testing?

Do you have internal resources designated to support and retrofit each interface?

Have you verified that new hardware and operating systems will support your current

interfaces?

ProcessFlows

ProcessFlow, or Infor Process Automation (IPA), is a powerful tool that can be used to automate

business processed and create interfaces to other applications. If your organization is currently

using IPA you will need to be aware of the changes between the current PFI and the new IPA.

Several new features necessitate the need to revise every flow, resave, retest, and redeploy. In

many cases the existing flow will work fine with minor modifications, but extensive testing is

required to ensure proper function.

Do you have any processflows in your 9x system?

Are your flows properly documented? If not, proper documentation of your flows can expedite

the upgrade process.

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Do you plan on having any open WorkUnits over the go-live cutover?

Do you have services setup?

Do you use Inbaskets?

Custom Screens

Any custom 4GL programs or Design studio screens need to be examined and tested as a part of

the upgrade. The following measures can help prepare for this process:

Document any and all customizations

Prepare test scripts for each customization

Do you have any custom tables or indexes? These modifications must be documented.

Ancillary (MSCM, Punchout, EDI)

Are you currently using any of the add-on applications from Lawson like MSCM, Punchout, or

EDI? If so, specific upgrade processes are required for each of them and enough time must be

planned to test and upgrade each one. Any open records have to be handled properly in order

to create a smooth transition.

LBI and other reporting

Lawson Business Intelligence is a powerful reporting and BI tool. If your organization is

currently using LBI, the upgrade plan needs to account for this upgrade. The following

considerations must be made:

Do you have a plan for migrating user records and rights?

Do you have a plan for migrating reporting services reports?

Do you have a plan for migrating Infosets and Smart Notifications?

Do you have a horizontally scaled system with separate Crystal servers?

MS Add-ins

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With each major upgrade, all your MS Add-ins will need to be revised to work with the new

screen layouts. Although this is a relatively easy task, it is a necessary one. In order to simplify

this process the following measures can be taken to prepare for the upgrade:

Prepare a list of the add-ins your users are testing

Designate the people who are going to test each of them

Prepare testing scripts for each add-in

Third Party Applications

Your third party applications will likely need to be updated to comply with your 10x

application. The following is a list of third party applications you should review.

BSI Tax Factory

Vertex

GHX

Imaging Software

Kronos

Other time entry applications

MHC

Printers

Passwords/ Accounts/License Keys

To perform the 10x upgrade process, several license keys, usernames, and passwords are

required. Ordering the correct license keys, and documenting the username and passwords

required ahead of time can expedite the upgrade process. Not making these preparations can

potentially delay things by weeks.

Schedule software deliveries with your Lawson Account Executive.You will need:

The latest cyclical version of your current applications, this is recommended even if you

meet the minimum requirement.

The latest cyclical version of your current environment or a new release of environment.

The target applications and any other products, including BSI Tax Factory/Tax Locator if

you are a Lawson Payroll user.

Some other examples of licenses and users to prepare for the upgrade:

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IBM Advantage (to download WS and patches)

Infor Xtreme (to download products)

Database SA password

LDAP Admin Passwords

LDAp bind password

BSI password setup for downloads and the phrase

Request the activation password for NetExpress

Request Infor10 Application License Key and Password

Oracle Account to get Java

ActiveState Account to get PERL 5.14

People

As with most IT projects, it is important to plan for all the right people resources. The following

resources are minimum required resources for your upgrade:

Testing staff

Training staff

Project manager

Department SME

System Admin and DBA

Desktop support

Programming, Pflow, LBI resources

Go-Live / Cut-Over

Do you know how long your cut-over will take?

Have you prepared a detailed cut-over plan?

Will your cutover take place over a weekend or during a weekday?

Are vacation schedules taken into account for the cut-over and the following week?

Is your company support staff available during the cutover? Consider the following staff:

System Admin

Desktop Support

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DBA

Network support

Web support

Lawson support team

Are users available during the cutover for testing?

Risk Tolerance

Determine your risks and options prior to the upgrade. It is important to have rollback

provisions for each step of the upgrade process and frequent backups at each stage. Any

additional risks need to be documented and planned by your team.

Opportunities

Determine other possible opportunities that may be available as a part of this upgrade. For

example:

Virtualization

Operating System Changes

Data Cleanup

User Cleanup

Security Cleanup

Hardware Upgrades

Database Changes

Network and Hardware Optimization