Author: Jen Thomson, Associate Consultant, Namos Solutions
Day 3
After finally completing many, many attempts at the Oracle Explorer badges, I was finally ready to embark on phase two of the Oracle Freshtalent program. This week I would learn about Oracle architecture, cloud environment and operation essentials, consulting skills and PaaS4SaaS, which I’m still quite unsure about.
James Davis, an EMEA Enterprise Architect, walked us through Oracle Cloud Architecture. He explained that all the Oracle Fusion apps are built the same way, hence the name “fusion”, which means they integrate well with each other, but there are other products as well which are acquisitions they have bought. This is mainly due to the fact that some industry’s data is different and can’t be accommodated by fusion, so they still need to have different products to cover industries, such as marketing.
For most businesses, the fusion cloud apps can meet their business needs and because Oracle is in charge of the whole product, they can easily make adjustments and scale up when the demand is there. Another benefit is they can react quickly to cyber attacks, they aren’t relying on third parties for answers, they are in control of the whole product.
Due to these benefits, we must make sure we limit any customisations to get the most out of the product and reduce issues down the line caused by customisations or unusual configurations. As implementors, we must get businesses to change to best practice to suit the software they have invested in, we must adopt not build.
Then, we had Sarkis again talk about the essentials of working in a cloud environment and how to work with Oracle successfully. To do this we had to become familiar with some terminology, I had heard most of it from my training at Namos, but it can’t hurt to go over them again.
I would say getting your head around all this stuff is one of the toughest parts. There are many words and acronyms which I try and stay away from while working with clients in order to not confuse them too much!
We learnt all about how the customer gets set up and ready to start their implementation, this tied in a lot with the stuff I learnt while doing the Onboarding and Planning Essentials for Oracle Cloud Applications badge on Oracle my learn. This was really useful to get a better idea of how it works at the beginning and what the customer needs to do.
Day 4
Today we learnt all about consulting skills, the soft skills you need to navigate your way through implementations and difficult conversations with clients. They shouldn’t be called soft skills, I think as it lulls you into a false sense of security thinking they will be easy to learn, but in reality it can be a serious challenge for the more introverted among us.
We must act confident to be confident, always dress the part even on Zoom, speak slowly and clearly and make sure you prepare ahead of time…
Sarkis recommended we read The Oracle Way to Consulting by Kim Miller, I’m about half-way through and it has some good tips about elevator pitches and how to communicate effectively with the client and your team. It’s available on Percipio if you would like to listen to the audio version.
Next was PaaS4SaaS with Andor Imre, PaaS stands for Platform as a Service and it provides a framework for us to create and develop apps. You can now use Oracle APEX and visual builder to be able to extend the Software as a Service modules capabilities if you need to create something different to meet your business needs, you can even sell what you have created on Oracle Market Place. We are seeing this technology being used at Namos to sort out time sheets, I’m sure there are many applications where this could be useful, I just need the imagination!
Day 5
Last day of the phase was about understanding and delivering cloud projects, we went over the typical team set up as you can see below in the diagram.
We learnt about general project management tasks and to making sure the projects goal aligns with their business goals. Then we had to go into break-out rooms and discuss the ten most important aspects of a project to consider before kicking off, we debated for a while but managed to come up with ten but I can’t even remember… I’m sure they’ll come to be before I start a project.
Next, we were introduced to Ian Carline from de NOVO Solutions. His team will be taking us for the next phase of training where we will be specialising in a specific pillar. I will be doing HCM and Bhavya Batra is doing ERP. I’ll be back next week with more amazing #oraclefreshtalent news!
About Namos Solutions
Namos Solutions are an award-winning Oracle OPN Modernised Partner specialising in the implementation and support of ERP, EPM and HCM business solutions, both in the Cloud and on-premise.
Although based in central London, we work wherever our clients need us to be. Many leading organisations located all over the world trust and rely on our expertise to deliver industry-leading business solutions. Namos customers can currently be found in the UK, Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific, North America and Africa.
For more information, please visit www.namossolutions.com or email info@namossolutions.com.
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