“I’m excited about all the valuable new capabilities in JD Edwards.. And, one of the greatest challenges our organization will have is making the time to take to adopt what’s new.”

That was a common reaction I heard from customers who attended Lyle Ekdahl’s keynote at INFOCUS17, “JDE Matters – And Why It Should Matter to You”. A standing-room only audience learned from Lyle and several of the product management leaders about what has been released recently and what is in the queue. Here are a few highlights from Lyle’s keynote.

• The future of business is digital. It’s as much about changing the ways and speeds at which businesses operate as it is about applying recent technologies in new ways. “Digital natives are coming after your business,” says Lyle.
• ERP has a fundamental role in the digital economy. It remains a core asset. It is not merely a legacy approach to business operations.
• JD Edwards 9.2 is the vehicle to help customers journey into a digital future. What is built into the product enables companies to transform approaches and processes.
• To continue transforming your business as the digital competition evolves, you need to continue staying current. If your company is not yet on Release 9.2, now is the time to upgrade. If your company is on 9.2, put in place plans to take advantage of the two to three planned updates released each year. Note: in my opinion, the more frequently you update, the more easily you can adopt new capabilities. That is because the scope of technology and user changes is smaller with planned, more frequent adoption of what Lyle calls “continuous delivery.”

If you are at INFOCUS, plan to attend the deep-dive sessions this week from Oracle, customers, and partners. Follow us on Twitter at #infocus17.

Want to learn more? Oracle has put together a variety of educational content assets at www.LearnJDE.com, many of which focus on what is new. To learn more from customers and partners about how to use these new capabilities, visit Quest’s Content Library. And, plan to join us next year at our Oracle COLLABORATE conference, COLLABORATE 18 and INFOCUS 18!