The 5 classic mistakes in setting up an EPM support environment

Is there an upgrade and patch plan? Does the support department have enough process knowledge?  Is the security up to date? In this article we provide insight into the five most common mistakes in setting up a support environment, based on our 10 years of experience in maintenance & support.

With regard to maintenance & support, we distinguish three layers: the business, application and infrastructure layer. The business layer includes support on behalf of the users of the application, the financial department. The application layer consists of the functional part of the application, where the focus is on the maintenance and continuity of the application. The Infrastructure layer focuses on the technical maintenance and continuity of the application.

1. Insight into financial processes

A common mistake when setting up an EPM support environment is underestimating the knowledge of financial processes that the functional support department should have. Having sufficient financial knowledge is important to understand the client’s needs and to translate this into the desired solution within the EPM application.

2. Support Backup

When providing application support, it is important to always have at least two EPM application specialists working as each other’s backup. Given the limited number of users of the EPM application, this is too expensive for many organizations and often difficult to organize because EPM consultants are generally scarce. For organizations, this is often a reason to outsource the support on their EPM system. You only pay for the specialist knowledge and support when you need it and are always assured of capacity.

3. Upgrade strategy plan

Suppliers are continuously releasing new versions of their EPM application, introducing bug fixes and new functionalities. It is therefore important to keep your application up-to-date to minimize the risk of bugs, security and performance issues.

Our experience is that not every organization has an upgrade strategy plan to keep their EPM application up to date, leading to an outdated application and thus increasing the risk of problems. At Swap Support, you can outsource your upgrade strategy plan. Together we determine the upgrade strategy, advise you which patches are relevant and carry out the updates on a regular basis, taking into account your company’s financial agenda. So that you can get as much out of your EPM system as possible and are not confronted with bugs that disrupt your process.

4. Application test strategy plan

When migrating to a new version or making changes within the application, it is important to perform the necessary tests. So that the quality of the application (such as performance, calculations) is guaranteed and maintained. Here it is important to test in a structured and efficient way.

Unfortunately, we often see that less attention is paid to the testing phase or even neglected. We therefore always recommend a sustainable and reusable test strategy plan, consisting of three test phases: system, function and user acceptance tests.

5. Communication

Finally, the lack of communication between the business, the functional and technical support departments is often a point of attention.  Finance and IT sometimes do not speak the same language, leading to misunderstandings and misinterpretations that result in the delivery of end products that do not meet customer requirements.

Text: Judith Pennings