Welcome to the third installment of our summer blog series, where we’re recapping key insights from our multi-part strategic workshop built to guide Oracle-run enterprises on their journey to AI readiness.

Before diving into this post—how to take a phased, practical approach to cloud and AI adoption—let’s revisit a foundational theme from our last installment: the importance of keeping your applications current.

Whether you’re running Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), PeopleSoft, JD Edwards (JDE), or starting to explore AI initiatives, you’re likely to encounter familiar roadblocks to change: technical constraints, resource limitations, and organizational resistance. 

Some of the most common concerns we hear include:

• “We’ve been running this report for ten years.”
• “We’re not sure how many customizations we have, but we don’t want to break anything.”
• “Our users do not like change.”
• “I have too many third-party integrations.”
• “We don’t have time to deal with another project.”
• “We do everything in Excel anyway.”

In this post, we’ll explore practical tools, proven strategies, and key capabilities for building a sprint-based approach to cloud and AI adoption—designed to help you overcome common barriers and advance your cloud and AI journey with confidence.

Sprint 1: Application Readiness

Building on the theme above, the first step in any successful cloud and AI journey is ensuring your application ecosystem is current. This is crucial to maximize investments and build a foundation for AI and other next-generation technologies. Here are just a few of the benefits current applications provide: 

• Current versions of applications provide stronger security, foundational stability, and more feature-rich environments for AI adoption
• Supportability for more recent versions and integrations (e.g., critical patches, security updates, etc.)
• Key updates to REST or other APIs which can aid in integration capabilities
• JD Edwards, EBS, PeopleSoft all provide advantages for AI integration

Here’s a powerful example of how staying current opens the door to new capabilities: Organizations running the latest version of EBS, R12.14, can now leverage GenAI to generate SQL queries on demand. For example, a user might simply ask, “How many orders did Vendor X give us last month?”—and the system generates a SQL query behind the scenes which is executed and the user receives the corresponding results in real time.

By upgrading to the latest version, end users gain intuitive, ad hoc query capabilities powered by GenAI—making it easier than ever to extract insights without relying on technical teams.

Sprint 2: Define the Vision

Once your applications are up to date, the next step is gaining clarity on where your organization is headed. Before diving into cloud and AI initiatives, it’s essential to align technology strategy with business objectives. What are you ultimately trying to achieve? Are you aiming to lead on price, deliver unmatched customer value, accelerate innovation, or boost operational efficiency?

Answering these foundational questions is critical to shaping a roadmap that not only adopts cloud and AI—but one that does so with purpose and impact.

Here are some best practices to consider when “beginning with the end in mind”:

• Understand how the ERP you have today can support your goals, direction, and vision as well as which AI tools you want to use (GenAI, predictive AI, machine learning, etc.) on this journey.
• Identify key issues (e.g., manual processes or data validation issues) and how AI tools may be able to alleviate these challenges. 
• Prioritize issues so you can tackle those that will have the most business impact first.
• Know your data. For example, do you have a data lake? Access to dashboards? What is your data security and governance model? What data do you have and how is it being used?
• Calculate how you can reduce cost or increase value with AI.
• Leverage AI as a competitive differentiator and an asset to help you achieve your vision.

Understanding your vision will help you find the right tools for the right problems, so you can achieve your end goal and drive business success.

Sprint 3: AI Implementation 

Arguably the most critical takeaway: adopt a crawl-walk-run approach to AI adoption—starting small, building momentum, and scaling with purpose.

Begin with an achievable short-term goal—one that delivers measurable results and helps build internal momentum to implement AI. By starting small and proving value early, your organization can gain confidence, demonstrate success, and lay the groundwork for scaling to more complex, enterprise-wide use cases.

Another essential element to successful AI implementation is understanding your people, processes, and technology—in that order. It starts with people: gaining insight into how employees at every level—from the C-suite to the front lines—use systems and where they encounter challenges. These insights often uncover valuable opportunities for improvement and reveal practical, high-impact ways to apply AI where it will make the biggest difference. 

Next, focus on processes. Ensure they’re well-documented and that employees are properly trained—because without a clear and consistent operational foundation, efforts to automate or augment with AI can quickly become unmanageable. Finally, consider technology. It should come last, because without a clear purpose, employee buy in, and strategic direction, even the most advanced tools won’t drive meaningful outcomes or bring your vision to life.

Here are some other implementation best practices to consider: 

• Bear in mind continuous development/continuous improvement.
• Leverage the experience of others.
• Measure your results and ROI so you can build on momentum from the crawl-walk-run model.
• Understand cloud/AI economics (and hire FinOps expertise if you don’t have access internally).
• Solicit customer/end user/executive sponsor feedback early and often.

Ready to Define Your Sprint-Based Approach?

Schedule a 1:1 executive session with our team or watch our latest webcast to learn how to build a customized GenAI roadmap tailored to your business.