System Upgrades

Pohl Consulting and Training can help you plan an upgrade path, no matter how outdated your system version. Application vendors periodically provide functionality improvements and other enhancements to their products through system upgrades or patches. These enhancements are designed to enable customers to get the most out of their enterprise software solutions.

Mature production applications can grow brittle over-time as interfaces and integration with other systems become out of synch due to software changes.  It is critical that all system versions are monitored, and patches and upgrades are installed in a timely manner.  Keeping current with the latest system version will allow you to take advantage of all the latest features, functionality and enhancements made by your vendor.

At face this sounds simple, as enhancements enable customers to get more out of their software solutions and help users take advantage of new features.   In reality though, patches, upgrades or other enhancements may not affect or be required by your organization.  With limited resources it is sometimes easier to push out an upgrade than confront the risk of disrupting a functioning environment.   To develop and manage an effective process requires regression testing, and this will impact personnel and production, and for organizations with a low tolerance for business disruption, it is easy to fall many versions behind.   Pohl Consulting and Training can help.

With a properly architected solution and confidence through a good health check of key processes prior, during and post upgrade, your organization can be confident of success and positioned to leverage feature enhancements.  Our upgrade process follows best practices for upgrades, including upgrade planning that aligns technical and business project teams, active analysis and testing to ensure congruity with other applications and processes to avoid any surprises, and updating procedures and providing training as appropriate.

The development of an ongoing process template for your organization’s future upgrades can also be included to allow your organization confidence to self-manage future patches and upgrades.

We help organizations keep current with patches and upgrades, and in building a self-reliant ongoing process.  Tactics employed include:

• Developing an inventory of all production systems (and versions)
• Ensure end-to-end process compatibility during and after patch installation or upgrade
• Compare reported vulnerabilities against your internal process and controls.
• Reduce upgrade concerns by creating a team approach to pre-testing and implementation.
• Ensuring procedures are updated.
• Post upgrade testing.