If you are someone that deploys Sage 300 ERP for a living, the one piece of advice we could offer you is to never go on site unprepared.
One of the first things you need to do before ever setting foot into the client’s site is have a talk with their server administrator. It is always a good idea to be on good terms with the system administrator because when you are, and they like the installation and you then they are more likely to be supportive to upcoming releases of the software.
But there are cases where the system administrator and the Sage 300 ERP qualified installer don’t get along very well.
Why is that?
Well, sometimes the qualified installer or business partner isn’t very forthcoming with all the information that the system administrator needs. So then the software doesn’t work and aren’t getting the support, the system administrator gets frustrated to try and get it to work. So when it comes to time to renew, they would switch to a competing software.
The moral of the story is do everything you can to make the relationship work with the client’s system admin.
When you introduce yourself, tell them that you need a copy of their network architecture map.
Then you need to ask the following questions:
- What the system administrator password is?
- They may be uncomfortable with that so try and include them as much as possible with the installation.
- At minimum you will need the network admin password or somebody that knows it. If the system admin isn’t going to be around, you need to have an ID that has admin authority.
- If you are using SQL Server, you have to know the system admin password as well, if using SQL Server Authentication.
- How many servers are on site?
- What operating system is running on their servers?
- How much memory is installed on each server?
- Would the server be utilizing virtual machine technology?
If you are doing local installs, then you need a map of the client’s hardware but also you need to ask these questions:
- What operating system is running on each client machine?
- How much RAM is installed on each client’s machine?
- How fast is the network
- Is it a peer network group or a client server type network?
And finally here are things to consider:
- Is there a pre-existing database engine installed on the client’s site like an earlier version of Microsoft SQL Server or Pervasive? If they do then Sage 300 ERP isn’t going to work on a really old version of Microsoft SQL server. The requirement for Sage 300 ERP to run is version 2005 or higher of SQL Server. If you see that the client has version 2000, don’t uninstall this version and install the latest version of SQL Server because that client might have older products that rely on that version of SQL Server. The same holds true for Pervasive.
- Determine if the client is an existing Sage 300 ERP user. If they, you might have to prepare for a database dump and a database load.
- Make sure you have enough time to do the implementation. Monday morning at 6am is a terrible time to start but Friday at 6pm is; if something were to go wrong, you have the entire weekend to fix the problems.
- Have a contingency plan in place. If for some reason your installation is not working, you have the option to revert back to the old system and come back another time after the issues have been resolved.
- If you are doing a conversion, convert the data offsite
If you are finding out all of the above information while on site, you will run into problems.
These discovery calls will actually save you a lot of time so that when you do go on site, you are prepared with the appropriate software that the client needs for a successful Sage 300 ERP implementation.
If you have any questions yourself on off-site prep or have some of your own that you do, sound off in the comments.
