Hi everyone,

We're looking to upgrade from R11 to R12 soon.

We would prefer to start with a clean slate and re-build from scratch rather than just lift and shift what we have.

I'd like to put together a plan/timeline for how long this will take in total and how long each object itself will take to complete.  So how long to complete Finance/Cost Source object, Vendors, Labor etc..

As far as resource is concerned, we will have 2 qualified TBMA's to complete the work.

Any suggestions would be welcome, to help plan this out :-)

Thanks,

Martyn

Hi - we are currently in the planning stage of our upgrade, so far our plan consists of taking every object and all the formulas in each one (as we want to clean some of these up in the process) to make the model more efficient.  We have also taken the model and the allocations between each object again to look at what we thought was a good allocation before can we improve it, do we have better data etc, but also being mindful that we've said to our stakeholders that Apptio is accurate, we then don't want to say that doing the rebuild will make Apptio more accurate as we want to keep the faith in it - so we are checking all the recharges at a BU level to see how much they move by.  The spreadsheet is getting bigger and bigger each day :-)

Also to keep in mind as well is your previous data are you starting from scratch for 2019, or rebuilding previous years.

After talking to others, my feeling is that we are going to be 2/3 months actually planning the rebuild, which should fingers crossed touching wood, make the building into Apptio a little smoother - this approach is better for us as there is only me doing it, maybe with 2 you could go into building quicker.

Look forward to seeing your update that says yeah we've done it :-)

Thanks @Claire Finch, good luck to you too :-)

Good luck! My biggest suggestion is to be mindful of the versioning of raw data (updated quarterly/monthly/annually) and transforms (ex. a transform has a formula override due to a change in the data as of a specific time period) if you're looking at a lot of historical data and want to have those copied properly in R12. Also, it can be helpful to utilize DataLink between the Apptio instances to copy data over without having to download and upload each time.

We're currently in the process of switching our Cost Transparency to R12 as well, and we're going to be running it and R11 in tandem for a while while our end-users adjust to the new layout and provide feedback.

Thanks @Andy Dawdy - I hadn't thought to use Datalink. Cheers, and good luck ! 

Hi, Martyn! 

We had a somewhat unique case, but I think you might still benefit from hearing how we worked through it. By the time R12 came along, our model had grown to epic proportions. Not in terms of usefulness or functionality, but in terms of size, complexity, and its ability to make us bang our heads on our desks. Much of our model had been built using technical, hands-on-keyboard help from Apptio, as well as TBMAs who had moved on to other teams. Because of this, no one on the TBM team fully understood how the model worked. We decided that when we upgraded to R12, we'd start over from scratch.

You have two full-time TBMAs, which is awesome. We had none. There are three of us on the TBM team, but none of us are full-time TBM. We have the finance person, the enterprise architect, and the developer (me). As the developer, I was chosen to build the new model...myself. We did the upgrade to R12, but lots of things in our R11 model immediately broke. In the meantime, I spent some time planning what the new model should look like, and then beginning the actual building process. Overall, it took me about four months to get the model up to a point where it was providing the same information as the old one did in R11. The difference, though, is that the R12 model is much less complicated, and I fully understand how costs, assets, and resources flow through it. The bad part is that I'm the only one on the team who does, since I'm the one who built it. It gave the rest of the TBM team an excuse to just send everyone my way whenever anything goes wrong or anyone has a question. But, the model works now, and I can (relatively) easily fix any bugs that arise.

tl;dr

If you are building a model that takes into account labour, fixed assets, vendors, etc., goes through ITRT, and up to applications, projects, and services, then it'll probably take between 600–800 hrs. to plan, design, build, and test the new model in R12.

Hi @Jonathan Cutting, and we thought we were the only ones with the 'head banging on desk' model!

Thanks for your reply, very helpful  :-)

When we moved from R11 to R12 we done a lift-and-shift but would definitely recommend building again from scratch - we're a year in to R12 and are rebuilding our model as our project is just not fit for purpose or future-proof. 

We have pulled all the datasets out of our project along with the formulas, metrics, appended data, allocations, RBS-customised elements (everything basically) and are going through every part to see what we can improve, what is still required, are there legacy datasets/reports, can we use OOTB reports, etc. To do this we are going object by object, setting up workshops with TBMAs and other team members who don't usual work on the DEV side to question why we do things.

It's been a massive learning curve, with just building out Cost Source we've cut our data sources by half and used calculation saving techniques like using combination lookups rather than multiple lookups to the same file.

Short answer - definitely build from scratch, learn from previous mistakes and take full advantage of the "better" ways of working with the R12 platform.

Thanks @Julie Batty, good to know - sounds like we're on the right track doing a rebuild :-)

Definitely @Martyn Dawes, will do away with some of the quirky workarounds we done to cover the lack of data way back when I was at CRUK

Our rebuild in R12 took us about 5/6 months to do, but our model is not yet complete.

OpEx is not fully allocated through the end yet, but it's already definitely farther along and more data-driven than our R11 config (our business audience and sponsors would only recognize allocations backed by data for now)

• Finance Layer (Cost Source) > IT Layer (IT Resource Towers) = 100% Roll-up
• IT Layer (IT Resource Towers) > Business Layer (Apps/Business Units) = 36% Roll-up

There were 2 dedicated resources (me and my team mate) working on the model, working with an Apptio R12 Consultant for 2.5 hrs each week.

Working from the ground up gave us an opportunity to improve our data sources & configuration and helped us rethink/improve our allocation rules. I took it as an opportunity to declutter/review our data and transform configurations. This reduced several tedious excel-based tasks by translating them into transform pipeline steps in R12.

Thanks @Kyle Castro, that's really helpful - all the best in completing your model

Hi Martyn,

We are in the process of upgrading from R11 to R12.  The project started 2 months ago (10/26/2018 to be exact), and we are plan to complete it by April (6 months in total).  We have three components planned: CTF (10 weeks), Bill of IT (10 weeks in parallel with Cloud Management), and Cloud Management (4 weeks), end to end testing and preparation for implementation in April.   The timeline is a bit aggressive.

Our approach is to rebuild CTF from scratch but mimic the allocation in R11 in phase 1.  During phase 1, we document what we think we can improve in next phase.  Phase 1 took us about 8 weeks to complete, Right now one resource is in the process of making improvements discovered in Phase 1, and another resource moved to Bill of IT components.

Hope this helps. 

Yi

Hi @Yi-Wen Lin, Thanks for your reply, sounds like were looking at around 6 months with 2 people.