More4apps worked well for Suppliers, Customers, Receipts, and Open Transactions with a reasonable amount of data (10000 records). It did work with more than 10K but not that efficiently. The processing cycle was simplified significantly.
Lessons Learned
Our implementations with More4apps made the data migration cycle more effective. It was no longer required to cleanse and enrich at the source; the activity was moved into the More4apps spreadsheet. Excel is more flexible and users don’t need special training on how to use it. The More4apps spreadsheet became the de facto master data source for testing and transition activities. This helped in reducing the time and making the process significantly easier for users and management.
Data migration no longer needed staging tables, custom lookups, business rules, translation rules, filtering rules, derivation rules, mapping rules, validation rules, transformation rules, exception reports, custom error messages and automated notifications.
The blackout period was significantly shortened.
There was no need for a specific Dress Rehearsal Test Environment.
Very little training was needed. The tool is simple to use. Most users adopted More4apps immediately and even expanded what they could use it for. The tool became a significant booster for productivity
The number of requests to review or update data increased–it looks like users were taking for granted that updates had to be done manually. All of a sudden, they all wanted access to the tool.
We started with one loader (Supplier), but we quickly installed the AR Invoice Wizard, the Receipt Wizard, the Customer Wizard and the HR Wizard. We also recognized that the increase in productivity facilitated centralizing the effort in hubs.For integrations, we have used the PO Wizard and the AP Invoice Wizard to support Data Migrations.The original purpose of the More4apps Wizard eventually expanded. They are currently used for:
- Data Migration (new records).
- Update existing records (business as usual).
- Provide real test data for other features.
- Download data.
- Centralize master data management functions
The tool is currently used in all our shared services centers for almost every country where we have operations.
Benefits
Experian increased efficiency and productivity (KPI). Data Maintenance activities that were already centralized were further consolidated. The workload for one-time activities shifted from IT to end-users, allowing our IT department to focus on the technical job and our users to concentrate on managing the data. Turnaround for mass data updates changed from weeks to days, impacting not only the quality of the process but also the cost involved in the process. The More4apps wizards remain in use for some day-to-day activities. For these users, the time spent in entering data turned to seconds compared to minutes. The number of data entry errors dipped considerably.
Because More4apps offers download features as well, the common approach to determine what fields are needed is to reverse-engineer the template: The user creates one record manually and downloads it into More4apps. All other records are then created following the pattern set by the original record.
The Vendor
In terms of enhancements and support, More4apps has been a strategic partner for Experian as we operate in several countries, each with its own features. We no longer spend development time in the C in RICE-W component. Support also has been a good experience for us. More4apps acknowledges the incidents within the hour, and the average resolution time tends not to exceed one week. The DBAs install the wizards quickly in minutes. Named users assignments sit with a key user.
Because this is a user tool, most incidents are created because of a lack of knowledge with Oracle. One example is how to recognize a DFF. We did have challenges with large amounts of data. It is important to note that we are not early adopters of More4apps upgrades. If the current version works fine, we tend not to replace it.
More4apps has supported enhancements for Experian when needed. Specifically, they have increased the number of Flex – fields and they have supported specific localizations requests. More4apps has been a significant contributor to reducing costs at Experian. It has had a very positive impact on implementation cycles, on data entry standardization and data processing errors.