In order to truly transform your business through the upgrade process, it is important to clearly understand where you’re at and where you’re going. Cohesive takes the following steps to determine how best to optimize your use of Maximo during the upgrade.

Documentation of existing processes (as-is process)

Cohesive gathers and documents your business processes leveraging any existing documentation that may exist.

Applying your business processes to Maximo

When appropriate, Cohesive works to simplify existing business processes to better fit the Maximo application and thereby maximize the out-of-the-box functionally that Maximo provides.

Applying Maximo to business processes (Gap/Options Analysis)

Cohesive will match your business processes to functionality in Maximo and lay out options to effectively implement your desired processes. Options typically include solutions involving the configuration tools that are built directly into Maximo such as Application Designer, Database Configuration, Workflow, Escalations, Automation Scripts and Conditional Expression Manager.

Application of industry-specific best practices

Our thought leaders may suggest industry-specific best practices to your current processes and recommend areas of process improvement that can be applied to better align your organization with evolving standards, regulations, and practices

Generally speaking, there are three possible approaches to a Maximo upgrade project:

• Use the IBM provided Maximo upgrade utilities to run the upgrade.
• A fresh Installation of the new Maximo version and manually migrate data and components from the old system.
• Perform a re-implementation of Maximo. This scenario arises when the gaps between the existing system and the desired system are significant.

Cohesive works with our clients to outline all options and recommend the best approach based on your current Maximo implementation and future goals.

Cohesive has conducted more Maximo upgrades than any other Maximo Business Partner. As such, we have significant experience upgrading any previous Maximo version to any newer version. This includes Maximo Industry Solutions and add-ons. Cohesive’s Maximo technical experience has been recognized by IBM and our customers!

Often times a Maximo Technical Upgrade alone will not result in step change that significantly transforms your business. In order to truly improve your business and optimize your investment in Maximo, you need to review your major EAM business processes including Asset, Work, and Supply Chain Management.

Cohesive employs professionals that have worked in your industry and understand your business. Their business process engineering background provides an efficient and organized approach to your upgrade to achieve the greatest possible business outcome for your organization and specific industry.

Once our team has completed comprehensive system testing, we will turn the system over to you for User Acceptance Testing (UAT). Under our guidance, Cohesive recommends you conduct thorough testing of all Maximo applications and components that are being deployed.

UAT involves end to end testing that replicates your Maximo usage processes, including approval flows, and automated generation of records. Cohesive can remain onsite throughout UAT to provide assistance, answer questions about functionality, provide ad-hoc training, and work through identified issues.

Delta training focuses on the differences between your existing Maximo system and the upgraded version. This training consists of demonstration-based overview training with added focus on any areas that include new functionality.