Blue Bell Creameries Engaged Emtec for Oracle EBS Upgrade and Managed Services

Challenge

Blue Bell decided to upgrade its EBS 11i to R12y because of requirements around HR/Payroll support levels. But the company had concerns on the OPM side because it anticipated the upgrade would be complex and require numerous table changes and the merging of OPM Inventory with Discrete Inventory.

Custom interfaces for the automation of transfers between manufacturing facilities, distribution centers and OPM batch transactions had to be developed. A new third party mobile supply chain implementation was also part of the plan. Blue Bell had in-house resources that would drive the upgrade project, but it also needed a partner to offset missing skill sets and serve as an extension of the existing team.

Solution

Emtec assisted with report remediation of 60 legacy Oracle reports, assisted in several data conversion processes, and created a payment process for payables based on the new procedures in R12. It also developed several unique forms customizations in the inventory module including the ability to display item supply/demand for OPM batches and blanket purchase order releases.

Ultimately, Emtec performed several iterations of the upgrade process and conducted substantial testing, and a go live date was determined. Blue Bell successfully went live with no business disruption and the ClearCARE team continues to offer reliable, worry free hosting and managed services support.

Results

Blue Bell has used Emtec’s ClearCARE hosting and database administration services now for more than 10 years. The consulting firm’s comprehensive hosting and managed services have been bundled with service level commitments throughout the contract.

Blue Bell also has expanded the contract into application functional and development support as needed.

BlueBell Logo

Industry
Retail, Food Production

Revenue
$500 million

Headquarters
Brenham, TX

Employees
3,000

Business Impacts

  • Provided upgrade assistance, then transitioned to hosting, database and application support services
  • Personalized, high-touch service with flexibility in solution design
  • Ad-hoc training and advisory sessions to strategize on future path
“We knew what to look for and what we needed in a hosting partner and decided Emtec could best meet that need. We were mainly looking at DBA and hardware hosting solutions, but the fact that Emtec had a strong application support model was also a benefit to us. We are very satisfied with their team and service capabilities. We are not a 24x7 operation, but they are.”
– Vickie Monk, Systems Manager, Blue Bell Creameries
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