Yesterday I watched the movie 'Julie and Julia'. In that movie, the protagonist, Julie Powell, decides to complete all the 524 recipes from the book 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' (written by the legendary cook Julia Child) and blog about it.
You can watch this movie on Netflix. Nice movie.
Watching the movie reminded me that I started this blog as a medium to pen my learning, successes, failures and frustrations as an ERP Consultant. When I work, I work a lot, about 11 to 13 hours on an average. I love my work and the challenges that I face.
I hope that you, my reader, will enjoy reading about it as much as I do doing it.
Right now I am working on two separate challenges, one of them is urgent and the other is not so much.
The first one is Bank Statement Integration. My customer has moved to a new bank and we have to configure the statements integration into Oracle ERP.
Let me explain.
On any day, a business organization does many bank transactions. They may make payments to the vendor, pay salaries and advances to the employees, reimburse employees for their approved expenses or receive checks and transfer payments from their customers.
These are some example transactions.
The payments are always entered in their books first and the bank impact happens later. For example, if I give you a check for 1000 INR, I record it in my books as soon as I cut the check and give it to you. However, the transaction is reflected in the Bank Books only when you deposit the check in the bank.
This means that there is an entry in my 'Cash Book' which is not reflected in the 'Books of the Bank'.
Another example, is when a customer directly transfers the money to your bank account electronically. In this case the Bank's records are updated but that change is not reflected in the books of the company.
This difference is regular and dynamic. The result is that the 'Cash Book' of the company is different from the 'Books of the Bank'.
But these books should be in sync, right? I mean, if you cut a check, you need to know when it is encashed, right? Else, how will you plan your cash position?
Or, assume a fortunate situation where customer has deposited money in the bank. If you do not sync it up with your records, you may have unused bank balances that you did not know of.
The process of syncing up the two books is called Bank Reconciliation. This is an important and sacred process followed by finance managers in any company. They prepare a statement known as Bank Reconciliation Statement.
There are many formats of this statement. One such format is given below.
Answer: It is month end and he is smiling :)
Finance managers are very passionate about how the Bank Reconciliation Statement looks. They want it exactly as per their format. But ERP is naughty. It will give you all the information, but will not structure it the way you want. Bank Reconciliation Statement look and feel is a constant source of friction between consultant and customer in a typical ERP Implementation !!!
Shall I tell you a trade secret that only very senior ERP consultants know? We welcome this specific friction. It tells us that there are no other critical open issues in the project. If they were there, customer would be focusing on them rather than on the look and feel of this statement. Ironically friction on Bank Reconciliation Statement is a good friction to have.
The document that companies use to reconcile Bank Book and Cash Book is called the Bank Statement. You all know what it is. Every once in a while, you check your bank statements to see if the salary has been credited, right. Even companies do the same. The only difference is that they do it everyday since they have many receipts and payments to reconcile !
This process is tedious to do manually. But ERP makes it easy by automating this entire flow.
Everyday, the bank server will send (transmit) the Statement to a location specified by the Organization (target directory). This process is called File Transfer. There are many rules (called Protocols) used in File Transfer. The latest and the most secure protocol is called SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol, duh ! ). ERP Process will automatically pick this statement and load it into the ERP System. And ERP will also do the Automatic Reconciliation of the Bank Statement with the ERP Transactions so that the accountant will only need to handle the exceptions.
This is what we are trying to do for this customer.
The challenge we are facing is that the statement is not getting interfaced into ERP. The process is throwing some errors that I am unable to decipher.
When faced with things that you can't handle on your own, you seek support from Oracle Support. I have raised a Service Request (SR) to get this issue sorted out.
Many consultants have this mistaken notion that raising SR will expose their ignorance. They feel that the customer will prejudge their knowledge and lose confidence in their consulting skills.
Au contraire...
There are many reasons why you should raise SR as soon as you face a problem. One, there are about 40000 highly skilled support engineers working to resolve your issues. Customer is already paying for the support. So why not use it? Two, back in the days of On Premise applications, many of the issues faced were product bugs and only Oracle Support could resolve it. Three, Oracle Support might have already faced this issue and have a solution readily available
Of course it is possible that your knowledge was not sufficient. But that is OK. Show me one consultant, nay one person in this world, who is expert in everything...
I spent four hours yesterday (third November, today is Fourth) with my colleague Anurag to resolve this issue. We tried multiple options. Modified the transmission configurations, checked tonnes of documents on Oracle Support and validated that they are not relevant to the issue that we faced, logged out of the application, logged in again and tried. shut down the computer and restarted and tried again....
No luck. Sigh...
Despite today being holiday I have been working on it since morning. Oracle had asked us to change some settings and try again, which I did.
As of now, I am sitting in front of the computer, regularly refreshing my Oracle Support page to see if there is any update. I feel like a horn-bill waiting for rain...
Wait continues...
My problem is that when faced with a challenge like this I can't sleep. The problem keeps bugging me at night. What did I miss, I ask myself. I twist and turn at night. In the day, I am acerbic and irritable and the world disgusts me.
I am in that phase right now.
Just now Oracle has posted an update. They have asked to update the configuration and try again. I have asked for clarifications.
That is another thing I do. Whenever I am interacting with Oracle Support, I ask many clarifications before I take any action. This helps me in two ways. One is to keep engaging with the support consultant. He / she is the one person in the world that can help me right now. So it is good to keep that engagement going. Another is that it helps to understand their thoughts and clarify the issue.
It also helps the consultant. I might have done some analysis that may add a fresh perspective to them.
It is Win-win. I always look for win-win.
18:44: Oracle gave an update. They asked me to remove the decryption configuration and try again. I tested it. The process is still failing with error. Updated the SR. Also reviewed the log file, the error message is different from last time. That is progress.
Today is Diwali and I am working on an SR. The last time I spent my Diwali working on an SR was back in 2005, while implementing Lot Costing for Tanishq.
The more the things change....
19:00: Again refreshed the SR. No update.
19:40: Still no update. Called the Support Engineer and left a message.
21:00 Still no update. It is frustrating
I am stopping for today. I won't sleep today, I think
Next Day, 5th November... Good morning universe...
Woke up at 4.30 after a disturbed sleep. Wanted to check the SR status, but did not want to switch on the lights and wake up others. Walking around the home on pins and needles...
5:00: Checked the email. There is an email from client to see if we can do this task manually. Very embarrassing to me as a consultant to have the situation come to this pass. I said Yes
6:00: Finally checked the SR. Still no update from support. Updated the SR explaining the urgency.
6:10: Called Oracle Support helpline and asked for a manager call back. They told that the manager will call me back in an hour. Lets see.
6:30: Manager, a lady named Diane, called me back from the US. She told me that the SR is Sev 1, Non 24X7. A new consultant will be starting the shift in an hour, he / she will call me back.
Diane wished me 'Happy Diwali'. Very thoughtful of her
This issue is becoming exciting.
I am going out cycling right now. I couldn't do any exercise yesterday evening since I was glued to Oracle Support Portal. I don't want to waste this day as well.
Here is my cycling route (Cicola Routa)....
09.00: Back from almost two hours of cycling. Feeling energized
09.30: Oracle support called. They want to do an OWC along with a consultant who has access to SFTP Server. I am not sure who is the resource. I asked the PM, he told me to check with the customer.
In Tamil, my mother tongue, there is a saying "Pazhaya Kurudi Kathavai Theradi", which roughly translates to 'Back to square one'. Not sure if customer knows the login credentials. What tool will I use to connect to SFTP Server?
I am stuck here? This is tech stuff and I have no idea. I have many questions.
Who owns the SFTP Server? How to access the server? From what I see, the bank is the owner. Will they allow Oracle Consultants to see the data? How can we purge SFTP Server?
Handling these multi-stakeholder issues is the most challenging. I am no longer in control and I have to accept uncertainty and delay in the resolution of the issue.
09-Nov-21: No real update from anyone. Updated the SR with this status and asked for an OWC to keep the issue moving.
10-Nov-21: We had an OWC with Oracle. I asked Vaibhav to participate since he had been following up on this ticket. One SFTP expert from Oracle Support joined the call. They said that the problem is related to the FTP Server maintained by the bank. They asked for the screenshot of FTP Server with the Files and also asked to change the name of the input file to a short file name. I informed the same to all the stakeholders. Lets see.
That is another thing I do. I communicate often and in detail. I would like to keep all the stakeholders informed so that they feel comfortable about the progress of the ticket and also they know where the responsibility lies to progress the ticket. In addition, it keeps the ticket moving.
And in ticket resolution any type of movement is progress.
10-Nov-21: Customer send us extensive details. Updated the SR. I loved the level of details provided by the customer. Updated SR. Informed customer
11-Nov-21: Another OWC with Oracle. They reviewed the details. We were able to connect to the Customer Server using WinSCP (I don't know what it is) and verified many information. Based on the input from Oracle support team, further testing was done.
Good news is that the program is now ending with 'Warning' and not 'Error'. That is progress. I think we are very close to resolution.
Fingers crossed.
Done Finally...
On 19th of November we went live. We loaded all the statements till 19th of November. And went live.
So what is my approach?
- Clearly understand the issue.
- Accept Uncertainty. There is bound to be delays. Don't stop
- Ask your network for support. You may know many people who can support you.
- If you raise an SR Follow up regularly with Oracle Support.
- Be an active partner in solutioning with Oracle Support. Don't just raise an SR and forget. Seek clarifications, give inputs, engage.
- Communicate often and in details. Keep the stakeholders regularly updated
- Drive the customer and the other stakeholders. Lead.
- Follow up till closure. Don't be an 80 percenter.
- Seek Win-win
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