How to successfully implement Oracle WebCenter

As with many other complex software products, Oracle WebCenter implementations are usually a challenge for clients. It costs a relatively important amount of money, resources must be allocated from the own company and success is not absolutely guaranteed.

There is a lack of studies regarding IT implementations, but I have found an interesting article that analyses the critical success factors of ERP implementations, focusing on the client side. Authors Finney and Corbett (2007) researched the available literature about this topic and built a list of factors; obviously, WebCenter is not an ERP system, but I found the described keys to success are almost the same in this type of projects. So I have extracted and modified the most important ones according to my own experience, and this is the result:

Strategic factors:

Factors that relate to the big picture.

• Top management commitment and support: It is one of the two most important factors. Strong and commited leadership at the high-level management has been proven as crucial for the success of implementations.
• Visioning and planning: Objectives must be defined, planning would include QA  (Quality Assurance) and Oracle WebCenter best practices.
• Build a business case: Implementation should be justified to earn commitment from the client.
• Project champion: This interesting name refers to the need of having a person in the team with not only excellent leadership skills, but also with good technical and business skills.
• Implementation strategy: A strategy must be defined with different phases and milestones.
• Vanilla WebCenter: An early analysis of the requirements should determine which out-of-the-box functionalities could be used, minimising customisations and developments, as well as the number of products to be deployed.
• Project management.
• Change management: It is usually the most important factor. Users must be trained in the new environment and be convinced of the benefits of WebCenter, having a possitive employee attitude, otherwise it will be really difficult to accomplish the goal. This task includes negotiation with different management  and opinion leaders. Sometimes it is common to find IT projects where leaders have not paid enough attention to this factor, jeopardising the whole project; based on my experience, I think you cannot succeed in an implementation if customers are not convinced of the advantages the product brings to their day-to-day work. Thus, we must be sort of Oracle evangelisers, even though I do hate that word.

Tactical factors:

Factors related to details.

• Project team: Members must be carefully selected amongst the best available IT professionals, although some training should be planned. Some business skills are desirable too.
• Communication plan: Communication must be fluent between business and IT, including low-profile employees.
• Empowered decision makers: Implementation leaders must have the authority to perform the necessary actions.
• Team morale and motivation: Project leader should care about the work environment, recognising the work, because the implementation could fail due to losing demotivated employees.
• Project cost planning and management: Client needs to know the cost of the project, however it is recommended to have an extra budget for unexpected expenses.
• IT infrastructure: Infrastructure must taken into account not just Oracle FMW Certification Matrix, also a sizing analysis would determine the hardware resources to meet the expected load of the system, depending on the number of concurrent users, page loading time, etc.
• Selection of WebCenter: Client needs to choose the products and versions of the Oracle WebCenter suite to be implemented: WebCenter Portal, Content, Sites or just plain ADF applications. Expert advise should be sought.
• Troubleshooting/crises management: Troubleshooting skills are rquired for this type of implementations, because it is usual to face new unforeseen issues.

 Once we know the critical success factors for implementations, the difficult part is how to properly manage all of them. That would depend on the unique characteristics of each client.

References

Finney, S. & Corbett, M. 2007, "ERP implementation: a compilation and analysis of critical success factors", Business Process Management Journal, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 329-347. (Not freely available on the web).

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