Blueprint 4D ’22 Conference: 8 things every JDE user should know

When it comes to Blueprint 4D ’22, what happens in Vegas needs to be shared. The recent Oracle conference revealed some new insights about JDE that greatly enhance how businesses can get the most out of the solution. There’s even one piece of announced new functionality that many in the industry have waited 25 years to get.

Time spent in a few keynote technology sessions and meeting with individual groups revealed challenges people are facing. The conversations revealed a need for continual investment in tools and industry functionality, a focus on staffing challenges, automation, compliance and security, World to E1 migrations, and the move to 64-bit architecture.

Here are the eight key takeaways from Blueprint 4D that every JDE user should know. If you have kids who are thinking about what career to pursue, reread #8 a few times:

1. Automation: A repeating theme at the conference is the need to cut cycle time in every process by increasing automation to reduce manual steps. We heard quite a few customers say they are investing in Orchestrator to move past traditional EDI and remove complexity from resources that focus on process engineering.
2. Security: Oracle released multiple critical security patches in 2022 across its product line. Every JDE customer to ensure that their operating applications are updated with security patches to guard against system vulnerability. The January update included 497 security updates with a specific one for JDE for versions prior to 9.2.6.1. The April update had 520 security updates, with two for JDE on versions prior to 9.2.6.3 and A9.4.
3. World Version: While Oracle is providing extended maintenance through 2025 for this product, there is a clear indication that World customers need to start putting a strategy in place to upgrade to E1 9.2. Reasons to upgrade include regular downloadable E1 updates from Oracle, extended premier support through 2033, built-in security measures, vertical industry-specific enhancements and a digital strategy to drive the user experience, process automation and enterprise integration.
4. Support Staff: We heard a lot of discussion about the types of resources that are needed for internal staff and outsourcing models to support projects or managed services. More companies are lean in IT and need to leverage their internal resources for key strategic initiatives. They are utilizing trusted partners to provide production support and system maintenance activities.
5. SP22: The crowd cheered for the announcement about a piece of functionality we’ve been waiting 25 years for… the ability to put an inventory location on hold without using lot control! Here’s a link to the other features in SP22.
6. SP23: An even bigger cheer erupted for a piece of functionality we thought would never happen…the ability of the user in some environments to reset their own JDE password. The CNC folks went wild! Here’s a link to the other features in SP23.
7. Moving to 64-bit: JDE E1 has supported vendor 64-bit hardware, operating systems, databases, Java, and middleware for many years. Additionally, multiple JDE components, such as HTML Server, AIS Server, Orchestrator and other Java-based components, are 64-bit enabled. Now, to round out the architecture, JDE will enable 64-bit processing for the Enterprise Server and development client. We recommend moving to 64-bit now with minimal impact on your business. The real risk is staying with a 32-bit architecture. Wouldn’t you rather be fully optimized?? To get more info, log in to myoraclesupport.com and review this whitepaper in FAQs: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 64-bit Processing Frequently Asked Questions (Doc ID 2390692.1)
8. Tech talent shortage continues: Technologists who have broad ERP skills are seeing a robust job market, to say the least. The analysis of the number of open positions in the tech industry shows there is a negative unemployment rate (more jobs than applicants) today and forecasted for the long term. The combination of lean internal business teams, security challenges, complex environments, multiple applications, and the aging workforce in the JDE domain make it hard to find and place extremely experienced teams and recruit necessary talent to fill support roles for implementation projects as well as in the managed service space. The true value of a successful project comes down to the team that can transition their knowledge to the end business user. We need to build the enterprise system to utilize ERP tools effectively to make the users productive and maximize the business benefits to meet the company’s strategic goals.