Peer to Peer Magazine

P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | W I N T E R 2 0 1 8 33 The Upgrade and What About all Those Systems that Require a Client\Matter List A mature finance-accounting system such as Elite has a wealth of information. The diagrams and discussion below may look like a one-to-one relationship between databases, but it actually can represent multiple sets of data like clients, matters, time entries, and billing information. An environment with no master data database may look something like this for getting information into various systems: With this type of architecture: Elite is the source for information All downstream systems needing information ingest matter information from Elite directly Any system, automated or not, would rely on Elite as the direct source Any change to Elite means changing each process 1 2 3 4 You can now go into an upgrade project knowing all the master data database to downstream system processes will not need to change. At least you're confident of that. You would still do some due diligence, take a look at those processes, and maybe even perform some light testing. The only true change, though, should be between Elite and the master database. Even in an upgrade scenario it's likely you'll simply change connection information to the Elite database. Most major software systems keep the data they had in the past and add to it. With the Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner upgrade, we had around 30 systems or databases using Elite information and more than 20 of those using the master data database as their source rather than Elite. The time saved rewriting 20 processes had a significant impact on the time taken to complete the project. Take this type of project a step further and imagine you're moving from Elite to another finance-accounting system like 3E. There is now a little more work to do from 3E to the master database as the data in the source system will change. The relationship between the master data database and other systems still does not have to change. Under the first architecture where Elite directly linked to all systems, you would have significant effort to account for the new data structure in 3E. What does this mean? You are not as tied to any one major system and you can H O W M AT T E R D ATA I N T E G R AT I O N L O O K S W H E N T H E R E I S A M A S T E R D ATA D ATA B A S E I N V O LV E D : ELITE DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT ELITE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP ELITE INTRANET ELITE TIME ENTRY ELITE ROOM BOOKING ELITE FAX/MAILING ELITE DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT TIME ENTRY CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP ROOM BOOKING FAX/MAILING INTRANET MASTER DATABASE

• Cover