Pros and Cons of JDE Customizations

To customize, or not to customize: that is the question. Out-of-the-box software, systems and solutions are industry standards, but occasionally, businesses have requirements beyond that scope. When that happens, some JD Edwards customers find themselves turning to customizations. 

For ERP systems like JD Edwards, customizations help overcome roadblocks to easier operations for your business. This has historically been a manual, coded project. Now, with the User Defined Object (UDO) framework included in recent JDE releases, the ability to tweak how and when you want is possible within JDE itself. No code changes necessary. You do need to operate on an upgraded version of JDE to access the UDO framework, though.

At ERP Suites, we help our customers make their JD Edwards work for them now, keeping long-term impact in mind, too. Our experts have encountered countless business scenarios and can help you put together the best roadmap for your needs. We can walk you through upgrade scenarios to stop using customizations, if that’s in your cards. We don’t typically recommend customizations to our customers, but it is a matter of fact that many users who aren’t ready for an upgrade choose to keep using customizations. 

In this article, we cover common customizations, why companies make them, and the pros and cons of doing so.

What Are JDE Customizations

First things first: JDE is designed and meant to be a customizable platform. This doesn’t always mean that you should customize, but it means that you can. It’s how you customize that matters.

A customization is changing the base code of JD Edwards. The original code comes from Oracle, and if it doesn’t meet a functionality or requirement, a business can go in and tweak this. Customizations run the gamut from adding a field or changing the color of a row to building an entire custom module.

As with any product, there is a right way and a wrong way to do customizations. Done properly, customizations can save time and money. Done incorrectly, customizations can incur risk and increased costs.

Luckily for JDE users, the ERP system’s latest releases include a new customization hero: the UDO framework. Introduced in the 9.2 release and beyond, UDOs can often make customizations unnecessary.

But not everyone is ready to be on the latest releases of JD Edwards.

Companies might choose not to upgrade due to:

• Budgetary considerations
• Business cycles
• Existing customizations

And for those that haven’t upgrade yet and don’t have access to the UDO features in 9.2, customizations are one of their few options.

The Pros of Customizations

Users are typically opting for customizations because standard JD Edwards features don’t meet their requirements. Customizations can range from simple, 30-minute code edits to a ten-hour project to something so complex that it takes 800 hours. 

Prices, too, will range widely; for example, if you’re using a third-party partner that charges $185 per hour, applied to an 800-hour project, you could be looking at nearly $150,000.

Now, that’s usually reserved for highly specific and finely tuned customizations, like a new mathematical formula for sales forecasting. Most customizations are not that involved. But at the end of the day, customizations are helping businesses thrive, which is why they have many attributes in the pro column.

Examples of common, beneficial customizations include:

• Tailored functionality
• Competitive differentiation
•  Long-term efficiency

Customizations Add Features Specific to Your Business

Thousands of clients in different industries use JD Edwards, all over the world. The software starts out with a baseline code with various standard features. Customizations make JDE bespoke to your business needs.

Let’s say you’re a steel manufacturer. There are lots of companies like you, but your company specializes in working with a particular shape and type of  steel. With JDE, you’re able to capture the number of steel units that someone orders – but you also need to capture the data about color, shape, width, or other attributes. With a customization, you can accommodate that requirement, gather that data, and keep your business in lockstep.

Customizations Can Set You Apart from Your Competitors

Some customers take customizations to the next level. Some have created multiple new custom modules – again, all specific to their business. This creates operational possibilities only available to said organization.

Take a machinery manufacturer, for example. They have a custom module for their delivery promise. The module performs the specific calculation the company uses to create a guarantee-by production date for their product. This helps the company continue to meet the standards they have set for their customers, guaranteeing their good name and differentiating them from their competition.

Customizations Can Boost Productivity

Think about how much time your team spends on manual tasks. If a customization could automate that task, what could you do with that time? Put it to better use somewhere else – specifically in areas that still require human brain power.

Another way to boost efficiency? Seamless communication between all your systems – ERP, CRM, etc. However, many systems don’t communicate as smoothly as we would like. You know what fixes this, too? Yep. Customizations.

The Cons of Customizations

Customizations can be helpful. But they’re not without their challenges. We mentioned how utilizing UDOs in the latest JDE releases can replace just about every customization out there. This remains a viable solution. For the purposes of this article, we’re addressing folks who are already using, or want to use, customizations over UDOs, for any number of reasons.  

When you make a customization, you’re changing the JDE base code. But if JDE pushes out an upgrade, your customization won’t also be updated. It starts to get pretty tricky when you’ve got 35 customizations that you have to individually adapt when you take an upgrade.

The most common issues with customizations include:

• Increased cost
• Complexity and risk
• Vendor support challenges
• Upgrade and scalability issues

Customizations Can Be Expensive Over Time

Customizations can range widely in cost—from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands—depending on their complexity. Add in maintenance, updates, and troubleshooting and you could be looking at a pretty penny.

For example, a customization might cost $50,000 to develop, but every time JD Edwards is upgraded, that customization now requires $2,000 - $3,000 in retrofitting to maintain compatibility.

Customizations Can Be Risky

If you’re not methodically testing your customizations before they go live, you could experience unintended consequences, like: 

• Downstream data errors
• Performance issues 
• Operational disruptions

Let’s say a customization adds a "rush order" feature that automatically prioritizes certain orders. However, due to a coding oversight, it also overwrites standard order priorities, causing regular high-value orders to be delayed. No one knows until customer complaints start, which leaves you on the back foot.

Customizations Could Silo You from Support

While JDE is designed as a customizable platform, Oracle generally does not support customizations. Customers are reliant on the original developers or third-party consultants for troubleshooting and updates. 

You want to select a partner you trust if you’re going this route.

Customizations Can Be Hard to Scale

Inefficiently written customizations can lead to system slowdowns or crashes, especially when processing loads are not effectively distributed. These issues can become more pronounced as the system scales, requiring additional resources to adapt and manage the customizations.

Poorly designed customizations can create bottlenecks and increase the complexity and cost of scaling operations.

Test and Vet Carefully with Customizations

If your business requires certain specs and you aren’t ready to upgrade your JDE yet, customizations are one solution. However, if you’ve also been tossing around the idea of an upgrade, you just might want to make that leap. A JDE upgrade can give you access to many more features - including the UDO framework - and help you move away from customizations. We recommend adopting standard functionality and utilizing UDOs to make that happen. 

If you want to explore your upgrade potential, an expert can help make it a smooth process.