My ERP supplier has been acquired – now what?

The recent couple of years have seen lot many mergers and acquisitions, thus the flow of data and supply chain that might get affected as some of information get changed when your supplier get acquired.Sharon Crawford has nicely analyses the whole situation and potentially point out some of best case. Read the whole article

Welcome to R12 Account Payable

As we learnt during Release 12, the E-Business Suite has couple of new products like Subledger Accounting, E-Business Tax thus significant changes have been observed in Account Payable data module as some of functionality is shared by some other products. Thus it is important to understand what is new. I would like to briefly outline the details of some of new changes and underlying impact on the objects. More details can be found in R12 release documents published by Oracle a month ago.

Let’s have a dissection view of R12 payable, with some of its core objects

Supplier
We have seen in 11i

• Suppliers defined in AP.
• Supplier contacts replicated for each supplier site.

Where as in R12

• Supplier becomes as TCA Party.
• Suppliers Sites as TCA Party Site for each distinct address.
• Contacts for each supplier/address , it means Single supplier address and contact can be leveraged by multiple sites, for each OU
  • A single change to an address can be seen instantly by all OUs
  • No longer need to manually ‘push’ updates across OUs.This can be best understood by the figure below.

Then the question is what will happen if any one can come from existing financial products. The Impact from upgrade can summarize as:

1. When we upgrade supplier tables replaced with backward compatible views.

2. One party site for each distinct supplier site address

Country and address line1 are required, this is because creation of suppliers in Party in TCA data model would requires Country and address information, but it also understood if there is no country or address line 1 specified for a supplier site in cases when upgrades takes place, Payables derives the country based on the most frequently used operating unit of the Supplier’s historical transactions.

3. Employee as suppliers: address NOT migrated to party site in TCA remains in Oracle HR for data security reasons.
As we know in 11i employees are part of internal supplier’s record in order for Oracle Payables to create payments for their expense reports. Employees defined in Oracle Human Resources and associated with an Oracle Payables supplier record have existing party information. During the upgrade, Oracle Payables updates the existing party information to have a party usage of supplier but it does not migrate the employee address to the party site in TCA, they remain in Oracle Human Resources for data security reasons.

4. Utilize TCA Party relationships for franchise or subsidiary and its parent company.

Invoice

Till 11i version, we have seen invoices:

• Had only distributions line.
• Allocation of freight and special charges are captured at the distribution level only
• Tax and payment and Project accounting Payment was captured through global Descriptive Flexfields.

But in R12,

1. Invoice Lines as a new additional line accommodated in Invoice data model.

Because of introduction of invoice line there is significant improvement of data flow with n other oracle modules like

• Fixed Asset – Asset Tracking
• Business Tax – Tax line
• Payment – Payment
• SubLedger Accounting – Accounting

 

2. Allocate freight and special charges are captured to the lines on the invoice
3. Invoice distributions created at the maximum level of detail similar to 11i.
4. Core functionality

The impact with Upgrade can be summarized as:

1. One invoice line for every distribution in 11i
2. Sub Ledger Accounting requires that Payables transform the invoice distributions to be stored at the maximum level of detail
3. Global Descriptive Flexfields migrated to named columns.

That’s means functional testing is more required while upgrade takes place.

Banks and Bank Details

Now a days corporate treasury role has been greatly enhanced thus picking up a global bank as partner for all banking need is demand of time in global working model. The recent couple of years have seen drastic increase in acquisition and merger of company thus global working as well as global instance get popularity in ERP areana, and this is one of reason of the reason bank data model has been significant changes from 11 to 11i and 11i to R12.

Internal Bank Accounts
In 11i we have seen internal Banks defined in AP and that is shared by AP/AR/CE, Payroll and Treasury and they are bank accounts often replicated in multiple OUs

Where as in R12,

• Bank and Branch become part of TCA Parties.
• Internal Bank Account in Cash Management which is owned by a Legal Entity. Here the Operating units have granted usage rights.

Suppliers Bank Accounts
In 11i

• Banks/Branches defined in AP
• Bank accounts often replicated in multiple OUs Before

R12

• Suppliers, Banks and Branches are defined as Parties in TCA
• Supplier (party’s) payment information and all payment instruments (Bank Accounts, Credit Cards) moved into Oracle Payments.

The typical data model for bank can be summarized as:

Impact of Upgrade

1. With Upgrade banks and branches migrated to TCA parties
2. Banks merged if the following attributes are all the same:

• a. Bank Number
  b. Institution type
  c. Country
  d. Bank admin email
  e. Bank name alt
  f. Tax payer ID
  g. Tax reference number
  h. Description, Effective dates

3. Bank accounts, bank account uses are migrated into cash management.
4. Transactions are stamped with the bank account uses identifiers as part of the upgrade

Integration with Oracle E-Business Tax

In 11i

• Oracle standard functionality was based out of User which determines tax by assigning Tax Codes at line level of invoice and Tax rules was controlled at underline code.
• There was global descriptive flex fields were captured for country-specific tax attributes.
• More importanta most of the setup performed at OU level.

In R12

• A new module eBusinessTax determines tax based on facts about each transaction, this is reason why Oracle has introduced additional line information at invoice level.
• The module “ebusiness Tax” set and configure Tax rules which can be viewed
• Tax attributes collected in fields on key entities
• Configure tax rules once per regime and share with your legal entities

Impact of Upgrade
1. Payables Tax setup, Tax Code defaulting rules defined per OU are migrated to eBusiness Tax.
2. OUs migrated to tax content owner in R12
3. Tax information in tax codes are transformed to Regime-Rate flow.
4. E-Business Tax takes information from the AP invoice lines and creates summary and detail tax lines in the E-Business Tax repository.

Multi Org Access Control

MOAC is new enhancement to the Multiple Organizations feature of Oracle Applications.

This feature enables user to access data from one or many Operating Units while within a set given responsibility. Due to this change, all processing and some Reporting in Oracle Payables is available across Operating Units from a single Applications responsibility. Hence you can isolate your transaction data by Operating unit for security and local level compliance while still enabling shared Service centre processing.Data security is maintained using the Multiple Organizations Security Profile, defined in Oracle HRMS, which specifies a list of operating units and determines the data access privileges for a user.

Impact of Upgrade
R12 Upgrade does not automatically create security profiles, thus is important if any one want to use Multiple Organizations Access Control, the first things is to define security profiles, then link them to respective responsibilities or users.

Reference: Details can be found more on R12 RCD documents, from Oracle site.

EDI & E-Business Suite – Part II

This is a continuation of last article for EDI, here are the add-on details for most of the EDI been offered within E-Business suite. More importantly, the two different widely acceptable standards are mostly used in different continent. For example the in North America and Canada ASC X12 is widely accepted across industry where as well as Europe and Asia has EDIFACT as preferred standards.

Now, here is the extensive list of EDI with categorization with E business suite module wise.

Oracle Purchasing

• Outbound 850/ORDERS
• Outbound 860/ORDCHG
• Inbound 832/PRICAT
• Inbound 843/QUOTES
• Inbound 856/857/DESADV
• Outbound 824/APERAK

Order Management

• Inbound 850/ORDERS
• Inbound 875/ORDERS
• Outbound 855/ORDRSP
• Inbound 860/ORDCHG
• Outbound 865/ORDRSP

Shipping

• Outbound 856/DESADV

Inventory

• CUSDEC (No ASCX12 equivalent)

Payables

• Inbound 810/INVOIC
• Outbound 820/PAYORD-REMADV
• Outbound 824/APERAK

Receivables

• Outbound 810/INVOIC
• Outbound 812/DEBADV-CREADV

Supplier Scheduling

• Outbound 830/DELFOR
• Outbound 862/DELJIT

Release Management

• Inbound 830/DELFOR
• Inbound 862/DELJIT
• Inbound 866 (No EDIFACT equivalent)

Hope this helps a fair idea about the EDI messaging usage in EBS suite. Will write couple of more article under this head for setting up EDI message in EBS Suite with one business case.

EDI & E-Business Suite

This is an article is all about EDI, deal mostly with basics and some information with underline Oracle E business Product within the suite. This article start with a typical business case and describe how this is evolves and how important is in ERP, the article helps you understand the high-level overview of the EDI process.

Why EDI Evolved?

Let us consider a simple business scenario. A Customer from PO department who wants to purchase an item creates a purchase order and then faxes it to the suppliers. At the moment vendor receives the purchase order and manually keys in a sales order. The vendor’s system generates a confirmation date that is sent back to the customer via fax or mail. The vendor then ships the goods via a carrier. The carrier delivers the products to the customer. When the goods are shipped, the vendor invoices the customer. The customer makes the payment by check, and the vendor deposits the check in the bank. Finally, funds are transferred from the customer’s account to the vendor’s account.

Figure: Typical business documents exchanged by business partners

Now It clears how much of information needs to be transferred and tracked to run the business, which in reality it is called trading partner. This simple scenario requires the exchange of various documents between several business partners at different times.

All this electronic data was exchanged using floppy disks and other secondary devices. So, ANSI committee was formed to define the standards. Hence the electronic exchange of business documents in a standard format gave birth to what is known as EDI, today the business world had accepted as one of most important entity.

What is EDI?

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is the electronic exchange of business documents between the computer systems of business partners, with a standard format over a communication network. It can also be called as paperless exchange.

EDI, electronic funds transfer (EFT), electronic mail and fax are increasingly being used to schedule operations, streamline order fulfilment, and optimise cash flow.

Standard Formats
The business documents that are been exchanged between business partners need to be in a standard format. ANSI X12 (American National Standards Institute) or EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange For administration, Commerce, and Transport) are two standards, which supply a common language for formatting the information content that is been exchanged.

Components
There are five major Components in the EDI Process:

o Sender
o Receiver
o Language
o Content
o Medium

In EDI, the senders and receiver are called trading partners (Customers and Vendors) and the ANSI X12 or EDIFACT standards supply a common language for formatting the information content of common messages.

Oracle’s e-Commerce Gateway (EDI Gateway):

A standards-based integration product for Oracle Applications, which allows for companies to integrate Oracle Applications with applications residing inside or outside of the enterprise; communicating via Intranet, Extranet, or Internet.

Oracle’s e-Commerce Gateway is independent of all EDI standards and can be integrated with any upstream or downstream process via an ASCII file. Thus, any EDI translator or third party application, that best suits a company’s business requirements, can be selected.

Advantage

The major advantage of using Oracle e-Commerce Gateway are listed below:

1. Reduction in labor hours dedicated to data entry
2. Increased data accuracy
3. Quicker communication of key information to and from customers/suppliers resulting in reduced business cycle times and more efficient planning
4. Promotes commonality of business documents and processes

Know the Terminology used in EDI

• Transaction Set – Business document transmitted between companies (e.g. Purchase Order).
• Data Segment – Units of data used to communicate specific information within a message (e.g. the header).
• Data Element – Specific unit of data within a data segment.
• Trading Partner – Entity such as a customer, supplier, or sister organization with whom electronic commerce is executed.
• EDI Standards – Agreed to formats for exchanging electronic data (typically developed by representatives of industry verticals).
• Translator – Software application that translates data into or out of a specific format or standard for processing by an ERP system.

Oracle EDI Gateway – functionality

• Define Trading Partner Relationships
• Define Code Conversions
• Customize Flat File Formats
• Use Standard Report Submission
  • Initiate Extract Process
  • Initiate Import Process
  • View Extract/Import Process Status

A typical flow can be understood as:

A note on File

• ASC X12 is the EDI standard for North America and Canada.
• EDIFACT is the EDI standard for Europe and Asia.

Transaction Supported in Oracle Apps

• v10.6 – supports 4 transactions
• v10.7 – supports 4 transactions
• v11.0 – supports 14 transactions
• v11i – supports 18 transactions
• v11i10.2 – supports 23 transactions
• R12 – data not available

Some Important EDI’s Details with Orcle E business suite Modules

Some Important EDI’s Details with Orcle E business suite Modules

R12 :Released with 18 new Products

As expected, finally Oracle has announced and released five major product lines in there “Applications Unlimited” program at 31st Jan 2007 , the big event was much awaited . Few highlights on the event are:

• Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12: What they call “Global Business Release”, 18 new products with 2443 new enhancements.
• PeopleSoft Enterprise Release 9.0: This contains two new products and 1478 enhancements
• Siebel CRM 8: This offers ten new products and 366 enhancements.
• JD Edwards World A9.1: This they called Renaissance Release as this is major release of JD Edwards World in ten years, this new version offers 4 new products and 1297 enhancements.
• JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.12: The Continued Innovation Release. The latest EnterpriseOne had 5 new products, including a new Operational Sourcing and three new modules for the food and beverage industry, as well as 291 enhancements.

More information can be browsed @Link

A Note on Oracle Application Journey

Today is 31st Jan, 2006, the day when oracle had schedule to release 5 different products across 6 continent, out of which one is Oracle application i.e. R12.Thus,I thought to bring this topic here, to let everyone know how oracle helps in understanding the evolution of ERP Suite in last 20 years. 14000 installations worldwide is a wildcard entry while considering for product evaluation by companies who are looking for some ERP product. I hope everyone is bit excited to know.

Journey from 1978 till 1987

These 9 years oracle has seen lot many achievement like becoming first DBMS based Database Company. They have released 7 different database versions with technology enhancement, and they become Public company as sometime 1986 had IPO in market. The start up has turned in recognized DBMS company, thus it was perfect time for them as well as Industry expert are looking Integration with in area like Finance , Manufacturing etc..Thus ERP evolution takes place.

The application group Formed

Some times in August 1987 Oracle started there Oracle Applications division, a group focusing and building business management software closely integrated with there own database software.

The First “Oracle Application ”Product Launched

Sometime in August 1988 they released there first ERP application called accounting system that has only general Ledger functionality enabled. This is one of the reason of having General ledger application_id is 101.Intresting..

i-era/Dot com Time

The year 1997-98, the attention was primininlly focused on Internet, which already takes off in Information Technology sometime back. The concept of thin client was a baby at that time. This year oracle strategy shifts toward the internet and browser based development. The middle of year oracle launched and shipped there 11i product which was armed with 8i database, with lot many new features.

2000-2002

In 2000, Oracle9i Application Server released at Oracle becomes the first database with middle-tier cache. This 9iAS leads to launches of E-Business Suite. The suite combined with all inbuilt products.

2003 Onward

Since 2003 onward, oracle keep there attention on oracle application product and same time they make ready with departure of old 10.7 products, by simply de-supporting.

2005-06

These two year have seen acquisition and movement of oracle from DBMS to grid database, thus EBS suite does come out with MobApps, has feature of RFID and other need for manufacturing area. The year 2006 seen a release of yet another ..11.5.10.2 version.

2007 onward

Oracle is ready with there new version ready to release in market. This times a new member i.e. R12.

 

12i Documentation

Finally the wait is over. Oracle has provided a link for R12 documentation.

The download bundle consists of 408.08 MB file. Anyone can download directly from Oracle site.

Amazing this time these documents has colour jpg/gif’s that means readability is greatly enhanced. Isn’t It. Wow!!

12i Release Content Documents

A new headline for Release Content Documents would be appearing once you logged in Metalink. The document id 404152 describe with a note and the links for Release Content Documents of various Oracle EBS products. These documents mostly covered brief discussion for new and updated features in 12i.Metalink user can access these documents and get the feeling of 12i before actual release which is schedule to be on month end. Take a note, these documents does not describe any existing functionally so, bit disappointed to those who are looking for comparative study.

11i EBS and Food Industry

Could you imagine what kind of ERP system required to such kind of industry whose line of business is these products line? 

• Meat and Poultry
• Dairy
• Grains
• Processed Products
• Fruits and Vegetables
• Sea Food
• Grocery
• Beverages Alcoholic
• Beverage Beer
• Beverage Soft Drink
• Beverage Water
• Beverage Sports Drinks

I know this is bit tricky to answer. Though I have been never exposed to Food industry yet, but as EBS consultant working for such a long time, can surly consider Oracle Apps 11i as a complete product to cater this segments. The reason for bringing this topic here just because of a simple reason as sometime back I get across one the article written by Thomas R. Cutler, where he put some thoughts on the Potential usage of ERP product with Floor shop automation. What we understood, food and beverage industry require an ERP system that is flexible to respond to today’s demands and tomorrow’s changes, because of there uniqueness, rapid changing nature of there market. Sudden change in strategy, manufacturing process may require special attention for shop managers for such kind of industry, therefore a complete integration with Shop floor with ERP based application is one of key area. 

In his paper he did mention some tight system automation requirement with ERP system. Though he considers Food industry has of idiosyncratic nature of food manufacturing process. Thus the shop floor and some of area involved the process can be tighten which add-on the cost of product. Here are some of the area where he considers needs a nut and bolt requirement:

• Online tracking of engineering change orders with electronic routings for approvals.
• System generated BOM’s and routings for configured products.
• System generated production schedules from MRP module.
• Automatic yielding for finished goods and BOM components/ingredients.
• Where used and mass replace capabilities.
• System generated work orders for make to order environments.
• Fully attributed inventory from order entry through production and shipping.
• Online order promising by exploding the multi-level BOM, reviewing BOM stocking levels, and production space.
• Online messaging for production managers on plant floor exceptions.
• Integrated dashboards for management’s KPI’s.

Thus it is important to find balance between this industry sector nuance and a Basic ERP system . he too agreed that basic ERP functionality  are often lacking when the focus is too heavily on the bells and whistles. In his paper he strongly agree by Gill idea that he felt , “Many vertical ERP applications in the food sector lack strong financials and must integrate with bolt-on third party systems.” The ERP functionality should also include complete multi-company, multi-currency, and financial reporting capacity.

Here are some of potential area and functionality he mentions for ideal ERP system:

• Fully EDI enabled which offers automatic order entry, acknowledgements, ASN submittal, invoicing, purchase order transmittal, vendor acknowledgements
• Automatic check input and matching for bank deposits
• System generated forecasts based on sales history
• Online system (MRP/DRP) generated requisitions with purchase order creation and submission
• Online messaging with exception reporting
• Fully barcode enabled system
• Directed put away, pick, and restocking locations in warehouse
• Various picking methodologies for complete optimization of the warehouse
• Centralized purchasing and payment for multiple facilities, divisions, or companies
• Fully integrated e-commerce
• Integrated to Microsoft Outlook
• Fully integrated CRM

Apart from this there are some other areas which need a flexible move as required as some of changing business need to satisfy these requirements:

•     Regulatory Compliance – Reporting to support FDA, Bioterrorism Act, 702 and other legal requirements
•     Retailer Mandates – RFID, promotions, packaging requirements, private-label brands
•     Consumer Demands – Higher quality, more convenient products at lower prices Also other area like grower accounting for Contracts, pricing, settlement, payment and grower Management for Harvest management, farming activities, receipts can be add-on requirement in food industry

E-Business Suite for Food & Beverage

EBS suits does have a solid functionality to cater the food industry segment, Whether it is baking mix manufacturer, nut processor or other type of Food and Beverage producer, Oracle E-Business Suite provides specific food and beverage feature and functionality such as:

•  Process Manufacturing – Enables traceability throughout the entire manufacturing cycle with recipe management, production scheduling, process execution and inventory management.
•  Trade Management – Organizes and tracks marketing and sales trade promotions, deductions, and budgets.
• Food Safety and Compliance –Supports full accountability tracking at each step of the process.
  

  Also, I would like to share some of EBS 11i.10 enhancements like Scarce inventory allocation, lot/serial receiving, better controls for Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 21 CFR Part 11 compliance and an improved channel/partner management dashboard has been targeted for faster communications.

  This is what Oracle EBS suites provides. This is datasheet provided by oracle of this industry segment. http://www.oracle.com/solutions/mid/collateral/consumer-products.pdf

Oracle EBS Suite at Mitsubishi Electric Automotive India (MEAI)

Japan based Automobile manufacturing subsidray MEAI(Mitsubishi Electric Automotive India) selects Oracle EBS
to facilitate real time accounting and integration with tight integration with the existing production control systems
at MEAI’s parent company in Japan.
Oracle Procurement, Oracle Financials, Oracle Order Management and Logistics the areas which covered within the scope. a news paper reported.

More information can browsed at: Details