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The establishing and maintaining of the ERP solution on an IBM System i (formerly known as iSeries 400 & AS/400) hardware platform presents a unique set of new challenges. As the business models change a procedural based System i model, business will also experience multiple paradigm shifts. These shifts will affect how business will be conducted in the future, how operating an System i will change the way the data center is run and the management and maintenance the data flowing through the new ERP system.
Because the System i is a procedural based architecture, it is necessary to have a competent staff 24/7/365. Having an System i 400 as the platform requires that you develop a multiplicity of new procedures. These procedures require management. That is the purpose of an System i operations department. They perform the following services:
- Manage system statistics, disk space, job performance and general system performance.
- Manage job schedules. It is necessary to execute procedures to perform daily system functions. In a retail environment, this includes running replenishment schedules, picking schedules, sales processing and polling, interfaces with peripheral systems and daily business knowledge reports. Job schedules change periodically as well. The job schedules change at week-end, period-end and year-end.
- Manage back up schedules. The back ups must be scheduled around daily, weekly and yearly procedures.
- Manage the sends and receives during the polling process.
- Manage the applying of physical inventory counts against the book.
- Manage the System i environments. A significant amount of effort goes into developing procedures. They must be developed and tested before they are put into production. This gives rise to the need for multiple environments. It is just simply too risky to develop and test in a production environment.
- Develop and manage a disaster recovery plan. It is operations responsibility to develop an employable disaster recover plan.
Questions that you need to ask?
- Is my daily System i operation schedule ready up-to-date?
- Do I have the resources in place and ready to take on these responsibilities?
- Do I fully operate, maintain and maximize my System i?
- Do I really manage the polling process? Or does it manage me?
- Am I ready to manage the applying of inventory into the system?
- How much processing takes place at night?
- How much processing takes place on Saturday/Sunday?
- To whom do I call for technical help during the middle of the night, weekends and holidays?
- Have I considered System i training and continuing education?
- Do I know what to back up?
- Am I staffed and operate the data center 24/7/365?
- How do I manage ongoing menu modification?
- Am I ready to set up and configure printers?
- Do I have a purge schedule in place?
- How do I manage security administration on the System i?
- Are W/E, P/E, & Y/E procedures and reports in place?
- Do I have all the productivity tools I need to manage operations?
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