How an Oracle Implementation Project is carried out in real time !

Dear All,
many would have been working in the field of oracle Applications on various specializations without knowing the whole cycle of a project. Most of the professionals are asked to do only what they are told to do with a limited period of time....due to which the learning process on other areas are completely blocked out. He carries out his routine job for years without any knowledge upgrade and value addition.
Just in case if some one is interested in knowing, how a Project is practically Carried out in real time Scenario, you can continue reading further...
In order to make the whole picture easy and understandable, let me give it as an Scenario first :
Assume that you are owning a Company called " ABC Limited " and you are running a Business ( Can be any industry ) . You have been using a Customized software for recording your financial transactions of the company.
After few years, your business have grown, and you got expanded geographically through out the world. The customized software which you have been using so far is not compatible enough to handle your requirements at this stage and future requirements that may arise...
You decide with the top management that we should implement an ERP for the company, to save time and cut down costs, and to increase profitability.
Now that you have got the approval from the managment to implement an ERP, you got to select the ERP package which suits your line of business . There is nothing called as best or worst, since every package is intended for a specific purpose.
Assume that by doing a competitive analysis, finally you have decided that you will go for Oracle Applications !
Now having decided that your need to implement Oracle Applications, the next step is that you need to buy this product from ORACLE by paying the required licence fee.
After having the product in hand, you need experts to implement that product, so that it can be put in to optimum usage !
(For sake of Discussion let us assume that we have paid licence fee for Oracle Financials Product and we are looking for experts in that area to implement it for our company )
Those experts are called Consultants or Consulting Agencies. You can approach an Consulting agency and sign up a contract to implement the product by so and so date.
After Signing the agreement, the Consulting agency will send thier consultants to the Clients place to carry out the the implementation work. Here the consultants sent by the consulting agency can be thier regular employees or contract employees from some other concern or people doing freelance.. ! During the course of implementation, the Consulting agency and client will provide consistent support to the Consultants at the Site to facilitate them in completing the implementation successfully.
Once the consultants job is done, he will demonstrate the work perfomed by him so long, and get it accepted and signed by the Client, since that moment the consultant dissappers from the picture.
The consulting agency then will provide another consultant to the client called a Support Consultant, who will be in the clients place for some time till the client gets a comfort level in usage of applications.
After a specific period of time, support consultant will also be taken away from the client, from that moment , client is on thier own and they can get in touch with Oracle Support for future queries.....

Will write more about an Implementation Consultants Work in the Project in my future posts !