Michael Baker Upgrades Enterprise Applications in the Cloud to Reduce Risk, Accelerate Deployment, and Save More than US$1 Million, Annually
 
 

Michael Baker Upgrades Enterprise Applications in the Cloud to Reduce Risk, Accelerate Deployment, and Save More than US$1 Million, Annually

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Michael Baker Corporation, founded in 1940, provides professional engineering and consulting services for public and private sector clients worldwide. The company serves clients in the architecture, aviation, defense, environmental, homeland security, public sector, oil and gas, utilities, and transportation industries. Its services span the complete lifecycle of infrastructure and managed asset projects, including planning, design, construction services, asset management, and asset renewal. Engineering News-Record consistently ranks Michael Baker among the top 10% of the 500 largest US design firms.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Michael Baker Corporation

  • "Conducting the upgrade to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 On Demand—in the Oracle Managed Cloud Services environment—delivered several important benefits. We significantly reduced risk, accelerated the upgrade process, and cut costs. As important, we freed resources that we can now direct to our core competencies―engineering and construction projects―instead of to managing our ERP environment.” – Jeremy Gill, Chief Information Officer, Michael Baker Corporation

  • Upgrade the company’s Oracle E-Business Suite environment quickly and with minimal risk
  • Improve ability to rapidly onboard new engineering and design firms following acquisitions―including integrating them into Michael Baker’s Oracle E-Business Suite environment―to support the company’s growth strategy and accelerate time to value
  • Provide a diverse, widespread engineering and project management workforce with updated enterprise resource planning (ERP) capabilities to improve efficiency, productivity, and collaboration
  • Enable the company to better focus IT resources on initiatives that support core competencies―engineering and construction projects―as opposed to on ERP environment upgrades and management
  • Avoid hardware investment and IT management requirements―including the cost of additional IT professionals―associated with in-house upgrades and expanded on-premise deployments

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Upgraded to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 On Demand to provide 3,200 users, worldwide, with enhanced capabilities to efficiently manage core business processes, including construction project reporting, budgets, and work breakdown structures
  • Conducted the upgrade in the Oracle Managed Cloud Services environment, which includes extensive Oracle E-Business Suite upgrade expertise—reducing risk and completing the project in fewer than six months to support the company’s acquisition strategy
  • Gained the ability to integrate new companies into the ERP environment in as few as six-to-nine months, speeding return on acquisition investment
  • Avoided significant hardware investment and IT management costs, including the need for additional IT human resources, associated with an on-premise implementation and upgrade―saving Michael Baker more than US$1 million annually
  • Maintained a lean, five-person IT team during the upgrade, avoiding the time and costs associated with staffing up for the initiative
  • Ensured timely ERP system maintenance and tuning as well as high performance with Oracle Managed Cloud Services, enabling the IT team to focus on driving and supporting business innovation for the global engineering and design firm
  • Implemented standard business practices across business lines—including those serving federal, state and local areas in addition to groups focused on specific commercial activities—for more than 3,200 employees in over 100 offices
  • Eliminated unnecessary application customizations, thanks to new Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.1 functionality, such as subledger accounting and multi-entity capabilities, as well as the addition of Oracle E-Business Tax 
  • Deployed a single global instance across the global enterprise, enabling international business lines to work with subledgers and easily accommodate multiple currencies
  • Improved Sarbanes-Oxley reporting capabilities thanks to Oracle E-Business Suite documentation capabilities, data integrity controls, and user controls

Why Oracle

Oracle has been a strategic partner to Michael Baker Corporation for more than 10 years. “We’ve looked in the market space, but continue to come back to Oracle for the value it brings to the table. Oracle has access to the whole stack, whether it’s hardware or software, and can handle any issue,” said Jeremy Gill, chief information officer, Michael Baker Corporation.

“Oracle Managed Cloud Services provides the knowledge and technical expertise that is key to running our ERP environment―and it can do so with minimal guidance, which makes it a whole lot easier and cost-effective for us,” Gill said.

Implementation Process

Michael Baker Corporation worked with Oracle to complete the upgrade to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 in fewer than six months.

“Instead of trying to do an in-place upgrade, we stood up [put into production] a new environment with an updated database for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1,” said Russell Hemwall, director of ERP, Michael Baker. “We migrated to the new version, and we had the old one as a fail-safe system in case we encountered any problems. This approach significantly mitigated our upgrade risks.”

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