Oracle’s Application Implementation Method (AIM) is a proven approach for implementing Oracle Applications (including Oracle e-Business Suite).

AIM provides direct, product specific support for all of Oracle’s application product families including: Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Financial, Human Resources, and Strategic Procurement as well as interlocks to other methods and offerings to support warehousing, enterprise intelligence applications, reporting tools, and electronic commerce.

AIM is comprised of well-defined processes that can be managed in several ways to guide you through an application implementation project. AIM provides the tools needed to effectively and efficiently plan, conduct, and control project steps to successfully implement new business systems.

AIM supports all of the activities within implementation project, including:

• planning
• requirements definition
• business process alignment and modeling
• customization
• interfaces and integration between systems
• data conversion
• organization change management including specific support for executive, management, and user groups
• application and technical architecture including network and server design
• reporting and information access systems
• security and access control

AIM defines an organization’s business needs at the beginning of the project and maintains their visibility throughout the implementation. It defines internal, external, and time-sensitive business events, and maps each event to the corresponding business and system processes. Using this method, the business community gains an accurate understanding of the business requirements to be met by the final system. Where appropriate, business process techniques are employed within AIM to assist the project team in identifying the need for business process changes and designing the changes.

AIM was designed with scalability in mind. From the largest, multinational, multi-site, multi-entity projects, through to the smallest, limited size, constrained scope projects — AIM provides the scalability that the project demands. AIM identifies each task as either a core task or an optional task. In addition, it supports the use of predefined approaches, such as FastForward, or allows to tailor custom approach to match organization’s specific needs.

The scope of AIM is enterprise-wide. In this context, an enterprise is a group of departments, divisions, or even companies, that make up an entire business or agency. AIM provides specific implementation activities necessary to achieve a successful Oracle Applications implementation. The scope of AIM addresses the smallest and simplest implementation as well as the largest, most complex implementation. By distinguishing between core and optional tasks, the scope of AIM expands based on the requirements of the organization.

Oracle’s Project Management Method (PJM) contains the project planning and management activities. PJM is fully integrated with AIM.

• AIM projects are conducted in phases. These phases provide quality and control checkpoints to coordinate project activities that have a common goal. During a project phase, your project team will simultaneously be executing tasks from several processes. The figure below illustrates the phases.
• AIM tasks are organized into processes. Each process represents a related set of objectives, resource skill requirements, inputs, and deliverable outputs. A task can belong to only one process. Project team members are usually assigned to a process according to their specialization and background.
• AIM has eleven processes as shown in the following figure. The extent to which overlap is permitted is a function of task prerequisites and the availability of project resources.