My Relation with JD Edwards

My relationship with JD Edwards started in the year 2003 when I was given a campus offer from Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Consulting India in my B-School and was assigned to the JD Edwards practice. I was given a formal training on JD Edwards there mainly in the Distribution arena. I had to wait for quite a few months to actually get into a JD Edwards project. In the mean-time I was involved in Software/Bids risk management from the teams set-up, some internal tool developments and was doing some global reporting under the COO. Finally I got a chance in HPCL project-Sewree, Mumbai. I made a modest beginning as a fresher there by making the Supplemental Database documentation, Converting PDF images to Word text documents, Version control exercise for P4210 and P4205, learning a bit on purchase and inventory modules and doing a few bug-fixes on the customized objects there, going through customization documents, Updating FDD’s and TDD’s and a bit on Role-based user manuals. After spending about 8-10 months, I was put onto the JK Paper project at Delhi wherein I started to blossom as a functional guy. As this being my first implementation project was groomed by my seniors in the first half and then later on started to take independent charge. After spending about 11 months was sent back to HPCL-Mumbai for 3 months where I consolidated my JD Edwards knowledge under the able hands of Sivaramakrishnan. I was at the peak of my JD Edwards career by the end of January 2006. I again had to go to JK Paper project for the last 2 months but this time in the plant at Jaykaypur, Rayagada, Orissa. It was also a good experience as I got a feel of quite a lot of messed up things and had the opportunity to work on the Weighbridge interface. Also got a chance to visit the plant and meet the actual end-users.

My first impression of JD Edwards was that it’s very good software. It has immense functionality and is easier to tweak when compared to its other peers. Its GUI interface is very good and pretty friendly. I was awestruck in the way any related data to a particular document or transaction screen can be reached. The entire data is very well organized and related in a pretty organized manner. The first time in my life I was exposed to such a huge amount of possible permutations and combinations in a business process and then to find that they still do not suffice the entire needs of everybody’s business needs. It made me FEEL (& not just read) the huge diversity in how businesses are run. Any packaged software is a graduation/PHD in its own right. It is always interesting as first you try to familiarize oneself with the various modules and then various end-to-end processes, navigation, transactions, fields, masters, tables, reports………….. This creates a basis for the beginner to start trying out the various possibilities and scenario’s.