February 10, 2014
Get a FREE eBOOK "8 Key Success Factors Implementing eBtax""
I am just getting organized for OAUG 2014 in Las Vegas where I am offering a new FULL DAY course and a new White Paper. Rummaging aorund my old presentations, I found one for Tax Managers and Directors, or Project Managers and PMOs facing some decisions on Oracle E-Business Tax, so I thought I should make an eBook out of it and Voila!. Just sign up with us using the button below and you will receive a welcome package that includes this downloadable eBook. Simple as that!!
This is a FREE eBOOK offer, if you sign up with us.
Posted by alexfiteni at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)
October 9, 2013
R12 eBtax Upgrade Learning Opportunity
One of the benefits of a blog is to promote some aspect of one;s body of work. I created a video based training course that summarizes the key elements of the R12 upgrade from the point of view of the new module - Oracle E-Business Tax - which has been poorly served in many Support notes on the E-Business Suite Upgrade from R11.5.10.2. The course is entitled "Oracle R12 Upgrade for EBtax". It is currently offered at a reduced price for October 2013.
Posted by alexfiteni at 5:31 PM | Comments (0)
September 11, 2013
Join the OAUG User Communities for the Bi-Annual Webinar Series – September 16 – 20, 2013
The OAUG User Communities bi-annual Webinar series will be held September 16 – 20, 2013. Each webinar is FREE and open to all members of the User Communities and OAUG.
Registration for the series is now open and you may register for one or more sessions. High quality content will be presented by multiple User Communities including:
· AP SIG
· AR, Credit and Collections SIG
· Asset SIG
· Cost Management SIG
· EBS User Management SIG
· Hyperion SIG
· Multi-National / Multi-Organization SIG
· OAUG NJ
· OAUG NYC
· Procurement SIG
· SysAdmin SIG
· Tax Management SIG
The Geo/SIG Committee looks forward to your participation in this series. Links to register for all sessions are available below. For questions or assistance, please contact the Geo/SIG Manager at geo-sig@oaug.com
...
The following OAUG Webinars are being presented the week of September 16-20
eBTax Extreme Hacks 1 with the Tax Management SIG on September 16, 2013
Legalize It (Round the World) – Statutory & Management Reporting in Global Implementation with the Multi-National SIG on September 16, 2013
Utilizing Asset Source Lines with the Asset SIG on September 16, 2013
Implementing Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management in a Professional Services Firm with the OAUG Nj on September 16, 2013
Working Effectively with Oracle’s Public APIs: Finding, Understanding, Using, Tuning & Extending with OAUG NYC on September 17, 2013
E-Business Suite DBA Best Practices with the SysAdmin on September 17, 2013
Finding Your Way Through Localizations & Globalizations – Hitchhiker’s Guide for the Adventurous – presented by the Multi-National SIG on September 17, 2013
60 Inventory Orgs & 6 Ledgers? No Worries – Reconcile Your G/L to Inventory Perpetual Balances with the Cost Management SIG on September 18, 2013
A Mobile Strategy for Oracle EPM with the Hyperion SIG on September 18, 2013
Understanding Asset Tables with the Asset SIG on September 18, 2013
Oracle Financial Close Management – Embrace the Change with the OAUG NYC on September 19, 2013
eBTax Extreme Hacks 2 with the Tax Management SIG on September 19, 2013
R12 Surprises in User Management with the EBS User Management SIG on September 19, 2013
AR, Credit and Collections SIG – Knowledge Through Shared Experiences with the AR, Credit and Collections SIG on September 19, 2013
Global Implementation Projects Which Are Considering Using Oracle Tax Manager with the AP SIG on September 20, 2013
Posted by alexfiteni at 12:53 PM
February 17, 2013
5 Things you need to know about eBtax
I am doing a webinar on Oracle E-Business Tax on Tuesday, February 19, 2013 at 10am PST/1pm EST. Register for one of the few spots left at http://www.eprentise.com/blog/landing/webinar-sign-up/.
The webinar will focus on five key requirements that eBtax can create value for the organization, ensure improved processing data quality, and reduce compliance risks.
Posted by alexfiteni at 9:52 PM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2012
OAUG Tax Mgt SIG presents 'Integrating Third Party Software with EBTax to Simplify Your Implementation'
Om behalf of the Oracle Application User Group and the Tax Management SIG is pleased to present:
"Integrating Third Party Software with EBTax to Simplify Your Implementation" Join us for a Webinar on January 25
Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/354156590
The presentation will identify the complexities that may exist for a tax solution, discuss the functionality and features of EBTax, outline the activities required to implement a tax solution, and discuss the benefits of using third party software integrated with EBTax to simplify the implementation and achieve a successful, automated tax solution. Presenter: April Stooksberry, Senior Solution Architect, Oracle ERP, Perficient, Inc. Date: Friday, January 25, 2013 Time: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM EST
Posted by alexfiteni at 1:52 PM | Comments (0)
OAUG Oracle Tax Management SIG presents new webinar
Upgrading to R12? An Oracle E-Business Tax Perspective – Presented by the Oracle Tax Management SIG – December 3rd 3:30pm EST
Posted by alexfiteni at 1:52 PM | Comments (0)
OAUG Oracle Tax Management SIG presents new webinar
Upgrading to R12? An Oracle E-Business Tax Perspective – Presented by the Oracle Tax Management SIG – December 3rd 3:30pm EST
Posted by alexfiteni at 1:52 PM | Comments (0)
November 26, 2012
Register Today for the 2012 OAUG Geo and SIG Best of Webinar Series
Fiteni Enterprises Inc and Alex Fiteni are pleased to promote this special education series.... "The OAUG User Communities first annual Best of Webinar Geos & SIGs series will be held December 3-7, 2012. Each webinar session is FREE and open to all members of the User Communities and OAUG. The Geo/SIG Committee looks forward to your participation in this series of 13 webinars."
"Registration for the series is now open. You may register for any or all sessions. Each session and registration link is available below.
Session Listing:
2. Using Oracle Configurator & Agile PLM to enable the Data Driven Model – Presented by the Configurator SIG – December 3rd 11am EST
3. R11i & R12 Open Transaction Interfaces for Finance and Supply Chain Month-End Close – Presented by the Cost Management SIG – December 3rd 12:30pm EST
4. Product Information Management Foundations – Presented by Master Data Management – December 3rd 2pm EST
5. Upgrading to R12? An Oracle E-Business Tax Perspective – Presented by the Oracle Tax Management SIG – December 3rd 3:30pm EST
6. Procurement - Approval Management Engine (AME) for Purchase Orders in 12.1.3 – Presented by the Procurement SIG – December 4th 12:30pm EST
7. Multi-Source Costing & Profit in Inventory Recognition In Oracle – Presented by the Cost Management SIG – December 4th 3:30pm EST
8. Utilizing Source Line information in Assets – Presented by the Assets SIG – December 4th 5pm EST
9. Procurement - The Best of Procurement Offerings! – Presented by the Procurement SIG – December 5th 12:30pm EST
10. Introduction to Fusion Customer and Product Hubs – Presented by the Master Data Management SIG – December 5th 2pm EST
11. Event Accounting Revolutionizes Accounting in Oracle Assets – Presented by the Assets SIG – December 5th 3:30pm EST
12. Turbo Charge Your Business With Oracle Customer Master Data Management – Presented by the Master Data Management SIG – December 6th 12:30pm EST
13. Shared Services & International ERP Implementations Panel Presentation & Report from the Field – Presented by the Multi-National / Multi-Organizational SIG – December 6th 2pm EST
14. Desktop Integrators - You Mean I Can Load Data From a Spreadsheet Straight Into an Interface? – Presented by the ADI SIG – December 7th 11am EST
For questions or assistance, please contact the Geo/SIG Manager at geo-sig@oaug.com"
Posted by alexfiteni at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)
August 20, 2012
Oracle Tax Management SIG Presents: Fusion Tax Update/Demo
OAUG and the Oracle Tax Management SIG invites you to an exclusive Webinar on Friday August 24 Webinar with Oracle E-Business Tax Senior Development Director Harsh Takle. Register at https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/897670926.
SPACE is LIMITED.
Title: Oracle Tax Management SIG Presents: Fusion Tax Update/Demo
Date: Friday, August 24, 2012
Time: 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM EDT
Posted by alexfiteni at 3:55 PM | Comments (0)
July 3, 2012
Oracle R12 Upgrade for E-Business Tax ONLINE COURSE AVAILABLE NOW!
Make your R12 'tax' upgrade a success. Learn how to plan and execute a quality upgrade to E-Business Tax. This 1.5 hr. online course is invaluable to IT Implementation and Support staff, Tax Subject Matter Experts, and Analysts, Tax Practice Managers, Payables Managers, and Receivables Managers who are interested in improving their business process, implementations processes, and skill level. Go>> http://fiteni.litmos.com/online-courses/
The objectives of this course are:
Session 1. E-Business Tax Architecture and the R12 Upgrade
Review eBTax Architecture
Tax Schema Differences
Transaction Schema differences
Session 2. Review Migration Approaches
One to One upgrade with no migration
Legacy upgrade & migration
Integrate with a 3rd party tax service
Why Migrate to Regime to Rate & Rules
Data Quality Challenges
Session 3. Key challenges, Risks & Mitigations
Upgrade and Migrate
Fresh or Re-Implementation
Key Patches
Product Gaps
Oracle Support Notes
Posted by nfiteni at 8:53 AM | Comments (0)
June 25, 2012
Oracle Tax Management SIG Presents: R12 eBTax Upgrade Considerations
FREE WEBINAR THIS FRIDAY-
June 29th @ 9 am - 10 am, PST
A brief overview of some key issues facing the upgrade team around eBTax. We’ll identify the critical success factors that will ensure they hear your business case. We’ll discuss where to find more information about the eBTax upgrade and answer questions about the eBTax upgrade. https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/993835302
Posted by nfiteni at 4:36 PM | Comments (0)
Oracle E-Business Tax Online Training Session launching this WEEK!
Alex Fiteni's extensive knowledge in Release 12 E-Business Tax will be available across the globe and accessible to all by July 2, 2012. Our online video will focus on the Best Practices, the new Architecture Model, and some critical Mitigations for a smooth and reliable Upgrade or Re-Implementation from R11i to R12 E-Business Suite.
Click here to get on our subscriptions list and be the first 100 clients to receive a 10% Discounted Rate!!
Expires July 1, 2012~ Please take a minute to enter your email address here: http://ow.ly/bOSJ3
Select our 'Education' list for your discount!
We have created 3 sections to this Lesson.
Oracle R12 E-Business Tax Upgrade Challenges, Risks and Mitigations will include;
1. E-Business Tax Architecture and the R12 Upgrade
Review eBTax Architecture
Tax Schema Differences
Transaction Schema differences
2. Review Migration Approaches
One to One upgrade with no migration
Legacy upgrade & migration
Integrate with a 3rd party tax service
Why Migrate to Regime to Rate & Rules
3. Key challenges, Risks & Mitigations
Upgrade and migrate
Fresh or Re-Implementation
Posted by nfiteni at 4:32 PM | Comments (0)
February 29, 2012
The Oracle R12 Application Master Series
We are very pleased to announce a series of hands-on instructor led education opportunities for those who are most interested in building a deeper understanding of the Oracle Applications environment from both the functional and technical perspectives. The Oracle R12 Application Masters series will focus on new R12 products and features, upgrade and implementation challenges, and master data management strategies to ensure a successful project completion.
Click here to subscribe to this education opportunity! http://ow.ly/bOSJ3
Why instructor led and lab training?
Our objectives are based on a progressive knowledge acquisition model using technology and people to deliver the learning experience. We create an environment in which the participant
a) will be able to acquire the available knowledge incrementally,
b) complete labs in which that knowledge is exercised, and
c) through that experience become more confident in using or transferring such knowledge on to others.
How to do you find out more?
Follow this link to get more information and register for upcoming sessions.
Tell us about your needs
Fill out our survey to help us create highly focused courses and workshops.
Posted by alexfiteni at 5:15 PM | Comments (0)
November 8, 2009
Announcing R12 Oracle E-Business Tax FREE eSeminar
This presentation has been refined over the last year durin several implementaitons and is of interest to those who want to know more about what to expect and prepare for when upgrading or implementing Oracle R12 E-Business Tax. ATTENDEES MUST REGISTER.
Please register for Oracle E-Business Tax Implementation - Lessons Learned on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PST at:
Presented by Alex Fiteni CMA. This is a distillation from several projects resulting in some basic "rules of the road" when implementing or upgrading to Oracle E-Business Tax in R12.
Posted by alexfiteni at 9:23 AM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2009
Oracle Openworld 2009 More for Less?
Dateline: Oracle Openworld 2009, San Francisco, Ca, USA If there ever were a dramatic end to a great conference, the Governator's appearance at the Keynote Wednesday was it! By my count, Arnold used 'technology' enough times in 20 minutes to merit an honorable mention in the Guiness World Records. But I digress.
The Oracle Openworld conference is the premier marketing event for Oracle annually held in San Francisco. The investment this year might just be worth it. Between the unveiling of a new technology products from the Sun partnership/merger to the first of demos of Fusion, we see that the Oracle technology ecosystem is in full flower.
The Sun/ORACLE Exadata Version 2 box has a lot to offer to the data center folks who are running out of space, licenses and budget, finally allowing OLTP and Datawarehousing to co-exist with impressive performance while offering a significantly improved risk profile and an ROI that is not measured in decades.
The sneak peek at Fusion Middleware was reviewed by Tony Baer/Sys-Con media. The demo at the end of the session provided some clues to what may be an interesting end user story at long last. From the incorporation of standards based tools, integrated business activity management and a new user interface, to providing the IT department with tools to monitor and manage measurable SLA's, Fusion holds great promise.
More to come....
Posted by alexfiteni at 3:03 PM | Comments (0)
May 17, 2009
MDM - Does it have a clear Value Proposition?
Last week I presented a paper on Master Data Management Best Practices at OAUG Collaborate 09 in Orlando, Florida. In a couple of recent projects involving data management, I found that the difficulty was mostly in making clear to senior management that investment in the quality of their master data repositories was not simply to increase or consolidate the number of new entries (customers, suppliers, parts, etc), but rather to ensure that existing data was properly managed.
Data Quality
The problem of building confidence in master data repositories starts and ends with data quality. The value proposition to senior managers is that clean, consistent and validated master data can increase the overall value to the organization from data mining to business intelligence. Investing in these latter projects without high quality master data can increase the costs of such projects, render them obsolete as original master data is cleaned up, or even provide misleading or erroneous results due to incorrect assumptions. Using a risk management framework to define areas where master data is at risk can help identify 'high value' areas where effort can be applied with good returns. Then develop data quality initiatives to gain traction on the initial clean up effort. Afterwards, consider using six sigma principals to drive a continuing commitment to data quality and increase the value of master data repositories.
Posted by alexfiteni at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2009
R12 E-Business Tax - Rule#1 Use Your Rules
Oracle E-Business Tax (eBtax) in Release 12 is a powerful tool for managing your transaction tax compliance needs. R12 is not R11i with several tax engines, almost one per module. R12 is one tax solution which integrates with any application module. The Latin Tax Engine still available, though. For those who want to manage their tax compliance needs globally, seriously consider the advantages of leveraging the eBtax Rule Based engine.
The advantages become obvious when one considers that the tax compliance decisions are taken centrally by the tax manager, and implemented for all modules. Each tax decision results in a set of rules that are implemented as a unit. The Tax Rules implement these decisions using data from each transaction and the events and the process including any relationships to prior or future transactions. This new Rule Based Tax Engine has access to these context data. The primary rules use this context to make decisions based on five (5) key drivers - Parties, Place, Products, Purpose and the relevant parameters of the business Process attributes within the transaction itself. These Determining Factors are properly named, since these connect the real world transaction to the compliance world of tax. These contextual data connect back to Tax Classifications which are associated with master data. Employees, Suppliers, Customers, Locations, Inventory, Organizations and Trading Community Architecture repositories are all important resources To use Tax Rules effectively, well designed and abstract Tax Classifications and Tax Jurisdictions along with associated Geography are important. Using Tax Rules can reduce and even eliminate Tax Classification Codes, so it is an important consideration after the upgrade. While it applies the same rules globally across all modules and can thus reduce maintenance, it still allows the tax manager to limit application of rules to certain types of Transactions or Tax Events. In fact, it is a best practice to build tax rules only under the Global Configuration Owner (GCO), rarely using Legal Entity (LE) or First Party Overrides for unique situations. It is important that the compliance tax decisions are housed within the tax rule engine and thus made centrally, while limiting overrides at the LE level where possible.
I would go so far as to say that using eBtax Tax Rules to manage Tax Compliance is a key success factor for your Release 12 project.
Sooooo ..... what is Rule # 2?
Posted by alexfiteni at 8:30 AM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2009
Oracle Applications Critical Patch Updates
It is always a good habit to keep up to date with the CPUs in Oracle Applications E-Business Suite. A new CPU for Release 12 was published this week in Oracle Metalink, and it contains a number of important fixes for R12.06, covering Financials, in particular Payables, Receivables, Accounting and Tax.
The changes affect Subledger Accounting Trial Balance reports and upgrade processing, performance improvements and integration updates for Tax, Payment processing updates across Payables, Receivables and Funds Capture.
As always, best practice recommends that one apply the CPU to development and test environments and certify it against your customizations, if any, before applying to production.
Posted by alexfiteni at 8:15 PM | Comments (0)
February 11, 2007
Oracle Supply Chain Management
The management of complex global supply chains can be challenging. From Planning through Execution, it would be convenient to have a road map from those with expertise in the discipline. The Supply Chain Operations Reference outlines the entire business process. The Overview Booklet is free to download, while you willl have to register to get ont the site for the detailed reference model.
The ideas outlined can be found in the Oracle Supply Chain Solution, which includes not only Advanced Procurement, but also Supply CHain execution, PLM, Advance Plannning, Manufacturing and Transportation Management, among others.
For global manufacturing and distribution companies, an efficient Supply Chain Management proces is a critical success factor to ensuring margins are maintained across complex trade, tariff, tax and regulatory boundaries. The risks inherent in managing a global supply chain are also further complicated by fluctuating foreign exchange, ensuring secure supply lines, managing supplier relationships while recognizing time zones and cultural diffferences.
The consulting SME will review these risks against standard SCM risks matrices, verify secure and efficient electronic transaction processing exchanges follow best practices, while also validating that approproate COSO controls are in place throughout the business process.
Posted by alexfiteni at 1:50 AM | Comments (0)
February 8, 2007
Business Intelligence and Oracle Blogs
A recent BI blog covers the Windows installation of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. It is part of a series on BI reviews, tips and tricks which may be helpful to those interested in the BI toolset.
Oracle also has a section dedicated to Business Intelligence , where you can download the latest versions.
Oracle Blogs has aggregated executive, employee and mom-oracle contributors in a convenient way for browsing. Its one of my favorite links. You will also find links to Mark Rittman's insightful musings, as well as Richard Byrom's Oracleappsblog site, which supports multiple authors.
Posted by alexfiteni at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)
February 7, 2007
Oracle Financials R12 - Managing Global Compliance
All compliance is local, so starting a blog about ‘global’ compliance may seem to be supporting an oxy-moron. Oracle Corporation VP Terrance Wampler's recent blog about Globalization, which he defines as "the methodology for implementing and maintaining a holistic view of your business operations", led me to think about how one would approach this tension between "local compliance" and "global competitiveness" as a requirements problem.
Managing compliance is always problematic, and local regulatory, legal, accounting and tax staff spend a lot of time extracting data from their Oracle E-Business Suite systems through various means and preparing endless spreadsheets and filling out forms for filing their compliance reports (e.g. Income taxes, Sales Taxes, Labor Statistics, Workers Compensation, etc.)
It is not possible for Oracle, or any business application software vendor, to support complete compliance reporting in every single jurisdiction. But customizations are costly not only to develop but also to upgrade, and also maintain in compliance with regulation. Enter the personalization approach, originally called adaptation, in which no code is changed, only parameters are manipulated to achieve the desired result. Originally, it meant simply enabling Flexfields with Validation. Reports still had to be produced and lost of them, then support for simple data extraction and reporting in the form of RXi was introduced, then Discoverer. release 12 now includes tools like XML Publisher inegrated with BI and Discoverer which will help to reduce report generation costs. But, what about those pesky regulations that need to be applied to transaction processing?
Enter the rule based engine. Hard coded customization in forms and programs have been replaced in the sub-ledgers and other products by rule engines for tax and accounting that users can modify and maintain. These engines now support much more flexibility for the subject matter experts (SME) groups to apply local compliance requirements in various jurisdictions. The neat thing with these engines is that they also allow the end user to test the results before applying them, a feature I would recommend any SME implementer to take advantage of.
Posted by alexfiteni at 9:18 PM | Comments (0)
February 5, 2007
Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Financials Architecture Changes
Oracle E-Business Suite R12 contains some major architectural changes in the Financials section, that for once aren’t about technology and more about serving up some new compliance functionality that multi-national customers will be find useful. The new features that fundamentally change the way compliance is addressed include:
• Legal Entity
• Ledger Sets
• Accounting Engine
• Transaction Based Taxes
• Inter-company Accounting
• Multi-Organization Access Control
The Legal Entity in Oracle eBS Release 11i and prior corresponded to the Operating Unit Government reporting entity/Legal entity (GRE/LE) used by HRMS in defining payroll and HR jurisdictional requirements. The Set of Books was also mapped to the GRE/LE. This imposed a limit on how to structures that could be modeled with this approach. The rule for Global Financials is 1-1-1, which created problems in accounting, transaction flows and compliance when the legal rules and business operations were not monolithic or top-down.
A new implementation of this compliance concept in Oracle eBS is defined as the system ‘Legal Entity’ corresponds with an independently identifiable ‘legal person’ – a public company, a private business or limited partnership, a trust, a not-for-profit, a government or a non-government organization (NGO) - that can operate as if it were a real person in conducting business transactions. Along with this new business object comes some basic functionality that helps to migrates the old GRE/LE concept buried in the Operating Unit and more functionality through flexible accounting rules, tax rules, and some basic legal rules.
In consequence, formalizing the LE releases the Operating Units (OU) from acting as surrogates for real world ‘Legal Entities’ as in prior releases (when it was called a GRE/LE). The Operating Unit, however, retains its primary role in managing user access. The Legal Entity now manages the local jurisdiction requirements. This arrangement helps best practices like Shared Services to be rolled out more easily.
In separating the legal requirements from operational requirements at the transaction level, the transaction flows are now able to apply legal requirements based on the Legal Entity context (found in the relative juxtaposition of the First and Third Party contexts) while allowing the security context (within limits) to be set by the OUs assigned to Responsibility used to access the transaction flow. I’ll look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of this approach in more detail in future blogs.
All of this is nicely described in the Oracle E-Business Suite ‘Financials Concepts Manual’ (120fincg.pdf) and also introduces some tools such as the ‘system Legal Entity Configurator’ to allow the user to properly choose the right configurations (or closest thereto) to support local compliance needs.
Also note that some good diagrams are also evident in the Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Financial Concepts document, which explain visually how the various functional components (Legal Entity versus business organizations) relate to a multi-country implementation scenario.
To be Continued….
Posted by alexfiteni at 8:43 PM | Comments (0)
February 4, 2007
Service Oriented Architecture
This CIO article announcing support for SAPs ESAO in addition to Oracle's SOA launched a year ago validates the growing popularity of software integration services based on Service Oriented Architecture to stitch disparate systems together. SOA may be viewed as a panacea for solving the Best of Breed integration problem. Too often, though, IT organizations will roll out a new methodology to resolve transaction and reference data synchronization issues, without dealing with some of the underlying issues with BoB.
The issue that many organizations face are that the Best of Breed point solution approach is costly. While one has the advantage of simple, easy to use and meets end user exact requirements, the 'behind the scenes' costs of support, integration, software upgrades, end user training, as well as the overhead of managing data access and data quality, ensuring governance and controls are in place for all the applications at the same level, all of which can be quite daunting. Enter Oracle's unique approach 'Applications Unlimited', which uses the Fusion Middleware to integrate all of the Applications Suites (Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Ewards, Peoplesoft Enterprise, and Siebel) together.
Nevertheless, the Best of Breed approach should still be evaluated carefully before embarking on the support and operation of disparate point applications. The investment should cover not only IT initial hardware, software and implementation and customization costs, but also software support fees, IT operations support, ongoing training, skills enhancement as new features are introduced and product knowledge management, integration, and upgrades - often on different technology stacks and on different schedules. On the other hand, the benefits arising from the implementation must be carefully evaluated as well. The direct savings arising from the efficiencies gained from a point solution in one process may likely be offset by the negative as well as positive impacts to one or more other business process efficiencies, which are often unexpected or under-estmated. In any event, a full analysis of the costs and benefits of a BoB implementation should ensure that the true costs and benefits are included in any recommendation.
Posted by alexfiteni at 1:02 PM | Comments (0)
February 3, 2007
Oracle E-Business Tax R12
The new tax engine that is included Oracle e-Business Suite Release 12, Oracle E-Business Tax, is fundamentally different from the multi-point solutions that were implemented piece-meal in various modules over prior releases.
The new Tax Services provide several new ways to perform tax operations, not simply tax calculations. Some of the new services include a consolidated tax line audit data repository, integration with XML Publisher, a new tax simulator to verify tax set up, and most importantly new rules and conditions that leverage more data associated with the transaction and thus less reliance on direct assignment and defaulting of tax codes. The functionality is ideal for a global organization, with complex requirements that are in constant flux. This new flexibility also adds complexity, so there is a learning curve before the tax analyst can fully leverage the nuances in the product to meet their compliance needs. Nevertheless, for simple taxes, some basic set up steps can ease the implementation of simple tax computations. As well, the new tax integration services allow third party tax engines to be configured more easily.
All the new functionality, however, poses a problem for the migration from Release 11i. The upgrade process, although automatic, should be approached with some care. While the upgrade will occur automatically, there is no real advantage to the organization since all of the old tax codes become tax classifications, and automatically use the old defaulting rules. Thus, no harm no foul. To get some real value out of the new tax product, however, the organization should take stock of its existing configuration, including third party integrations, and determine a path through the upgrade to leverage the new tax services.
I will go over some of the new Oracle E-Business Tax features, their challenges and benefits in future blogs.
Posted by alexfiteni at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)
February 2, 2007
Oracle Announces Applications Releases
Oracle announced the simultaneous release of several business applications upgrades on January 31, 2007 in New York and across the globe. In fine style, the president, Charles Philips, and senior managers from development reviewed a wide variety of new features in all of the Business Applications Suites under the marketing banner 'Applications Unlimited'.
The event was simulcast in Europe and South America, and a second round for Asia-Pacific later in the day. As a participant, the hype certainly made for good television. The ensuing months will confirm if Oracle really has managed to stitch the applications together to provide users with a choice.
Some key highlights that I heard included:
A. All the Suites have incorporated aspects of the new Fusion middleware platform, most notably the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) components. Along with these new components, a repository of well documented pre-built integration points are ready use, which helps to sell the 'Best of Breed' solution approach, and support existing customers.
i. Existing customers can upgrade and eliminate a lot of integration customizations that may exist in a 'Best of Breed' environment.
ii. New customers can lower their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) simply by not having to invest in complex inter-applications integrations amongst the five Suites since many come pre-built 'out of the box'.
B. Oracle OnDemand will fully support all Suites and some 1000 customers have signed up to-date.
C. There is an active ISV program and SOA/BPEL has become one of the key means of integrating ISV applications offerings into the Suites.
The afternoon sessions were dedicated to the individual Suites Overviews. I attended the Oracle E-Business Suite R12, presented Steve Miranda, using the mantra Think Globally, Work Globally, Manage Globally. The key areas that changed, over and above the technical updates above, include:
A. A new Accounting Engine, that supports multiple accounting representations, and a comprehensive audit trail.
B. A new Tax engine, E-Business Tax, that replaces several point solutions embedded in various products, and formalizes a tax line audit repository.
C. A new Legal Entity structure along with Ledger Sets, now supports compliance documentation and reporting requirements while ensuring full managerial reporting.
I will be looking into these new features and offering my views on their application to business and compliance problems.
Posted by alexfiteni at 1:03 PM | Comments (0)
May 8, 2006
OAUG Conference 'Collaborate06' held in horse country
Tennessee in spring time can be a lot of fun, I hear, but buried in a back room, I saw very little of it. The OAUG Collaborate06 conference was held this year at the Gaylord Resort Opryland in Nashville, home of country and western music, and the cradle of rock’n’roll. This observer did not walk in the shoes of the great one, nor make offerings at his alter - Graceland.
The Oracle Applications User Group's MultiNational SIG met in Tennessee this week at the Collaborate06 Conference. The agenda covered a wide variety of topics, led by the Chair, Hans Kolbe, along with SIG board members. Presenters and panelists included Steve Jolly from Genpact, Hans Kolbe of Celantra Systems, Patty McGrath of CSC, Mohan Iyer and myself. Our presentations are located on the MultiOrg page. The sessions examined the risky depths of the multi-national roll-outs; the vagaries of outsourcing; the business of running a business on a global basis; and the pressures of multinational implementations and upgrades. There was some speculation about the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 for Financials. An Oracle representative was in attendance and provided some answers to our qustions. On a final note, the MNSIG did get an award for either longevity or plane bull headedness. Oh, and I did get the MNSIG T-Shirt…… does life get better than that?
Posted by alexfiteni at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
November 2, 2005
Oracle Discoverer
Just worked with Discoverer again and the web based process Discoverer 4i has some features that make it really easy to use. Rather than creating a query and downloading the resulting database rows into your favorite spreadsheet, do the manipulation on-line with D4i using one of the tools like crosstab or ad hoc calculations. Oracle has lots of documentation and training on the tool. The Daily Feature highlights important functionality in the product. Also, to keep up with developments, tips and tricks on Discver, look over the Discoverer/BI blogs by a couple of Oracle development guys.
Posted by alexfiteni at 9:09 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2005
Oracle Openworld SIGs
Moscone west hosted the Special Interest Group (SIG) meetings over the weekend to kick off Oracle OpenWorld September 17-22, 2005. I attended three of them - Fusion, Internal Controls, and Multi-National.
The Fusion SIG was quite well attend for a Saturday afternoon, but that may be as expected. There is a lot of interest in the Fusion strategy, and lots of feedback from and dialogue with the participants. Most questions were about what, how and when the process will be completed. The answers are still vague, and given the increasing complexity of the Tech Stack and the enormous overlaps in products, it will take some time to work out the details.
The Internal Control and Security SIG was, conversely, quite sparsely attended. Since this is a very hot topic, and one which should give every CEO, CIO and CFO pause - especially with convictions like Tyco going up amongst these high powered members of society - this observer would have thought attendance would be higher. In any event, the attendees heard from a couple of firms in this space, Fulrum and , and an Oracle spokesman, Nigel King, also attended to discuss Internal Control Manager.
The MultiNational SIG was also relatively sparsely attended, but the participants were very involved in the issues. The panel included Hans Kolbe of Celentra Systems, Mohan Iyer of FSCP Solutions Inc., Steve Jolly of GECISS and an Oracle spokesman, Terrance Wampler. Questions raised focused on the true cost of supporting complex global applications environments, R12 changes, localizations and reporting.
Posted by alexfiteni at 10:26 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2005
Getting the most out a conference can be daunting.....
Without making this sound like an attendance log, I did drop in to several sessions at OAUG 2005 to sample security, compliance, best practices and general Oracle product sessions ( which I mentioned yesterday's blog ).
The Sarbanes-Oxley Idea Exchange session was very lively and hosted by Kim Autreyan OAUG board member and a great facilitator. The dialogue roamed the length and breadth of the debate from the interpretation of Sarbanes-Oxley through access controls to file retention. It was the opinion of many that these types of forum discussions really help users to share concerns and information.
I also attended a great session on Process Automation hosted by fellow Canadians Marianne Rait and Peter Gee of Ryerson University (gotta plug the home team occasionally!). They demonstrated that a serious effort to handle a piece of paper only once can be achieved using the right imaging and workflow software - in this case 170 Systems integrated into Oracle Applications - and be able to save storage space by destroying the originals (depending on the local/federal laws, of course). Such a project is not without its challenges, and while getting executive buy-in is important, they stressed the importance of communicating to and listening at all levels in the organization and at every step in the project to ensure that the community knows what to expect and when. If you missed the session, the presentation will be on the OAUG Conference site shortly.
Lastly, a session on E-Commerce to Application Integration hosted by SiteStuff was a panel discussion that ended up as a demo of Oracle's new BPEL middleware product, which Basheer of SOA Software really showed off. The visual designer walks you through the steps needed to complete a basic flow between two systems, with sufficient flexibility to handle a wide variety of integration scenarios.
There were many tracks, so an OAUG conference attendee had plenty to choose from.
Also, a visit to the exhibit floor included Oracle's demo areas, as well as visits with Sabrix, Vertex, and also attending on Virtual Trader, and Applimation demos.
Oh, yes, there was the obligatory evening event. The evening's entertaininment was top notch, as usual, but what do you do when you are in Texas? Play Texas Holdem, of course, and ride bulls, get your picture on top of bull, or rope a bull (maybe too much bull?).
Traveling the so-called friendly skies is getting a little harder each year.....
Arriving and Leaving Dallas is like getting a toothache, the memory lives on longer than the event. Hated the airport, the weather, and the urban sprawl. I found myself at 3 am looking for a mis-directed hotel address ...thanks a bunch - NOT - Travelocity ... and thanks to a very helpful front desk person at Bedford Suites in lovely Irving for her incredible service to not one but two forlorn travellers to get us sorted and re-directed to our respective hotels.
Flying out of DFW was part of the toothache experience, like who was the smart ass who figured out that a two foot long roller counter on the security gate was enough time to get all your valuables into those pesky rubber bins less than 8 feet from the security gate? And when are the airlines going to catch up with Jet Blue at Oakland airport .... free WiFi, please and thank you, is the only way to go for add-hoc web access!
Posted by alexfiteni at 10:12 PM | Comments (1)
June 15, 2005
Welcome to OAUG Texas 2005
The OAUG/Qwest combined conference in Texas this year was very well attended and very well organized, so props to the conference commitee and the collaborative teamwork that pulled it off. This observer found the mix of SIG Special Interest Group) sessions, functional and technical tracks very helpful. The sessions I found particlarly interesting were the end user experiences, and the SIG sessions. I participated in the Multi-National SIG with Hans Kolbe of Celantra Systems, and later in the CPE accredited session on Statutory Compliance Tools on Tuesday. Also, a nod to Solution Beacon LLC for allwing me to use their demo environment via WiFI at the last minute due to network issues.
On the Oracle front, John Wookey's session on Monday that laid out the Fusion strategy with some solid business drivers around adaptable business processes and better business insight driving better business decisions. He also mentioned that Oracle wants their customers to have a "Superior Ownership Experience" and made the first steps toward a real customer focus, clarifiying what was being supported and until when for many nervous J D Ewards, PeopleSoft and indeed Applications users. The messages were also clear in all the presentations it seems, although I only got to see Steve Miranda's session, where it was tied to both the 11.5.10 new features and at least one hint on Release 12 around Multi-Org Security.
More later ......
Posted by alexfiteni at 4:45 PM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2005
Oracle & PeopleSoft - Convergence or co-habitation?
Looks like Oracle has begun to make plans for their 'Project Fusion', which purports to merge their E-Business Suite offering with the Peoplesoft products into a single business applications strategy, but is it a fusion or a co-habitation? A recent Oracle Applications Day at Redwood Shores presented some tentative steps toward a unified technology platform, and PeopleTools seems to have gained some points for 'ease of use' for customers and 'productivity' for developers. Where does that leave Java? Well, the mantra for 'Fusion' is Open Standards, but it is not clear how this will be achieved, since some of the technologies, like PeopleTools, are proprietary. We will keep a watching brief on this promise.
The timeline for 'Fusion' seems to be about four years, so we may be waiting till 2008 to get the full benefit from Oracle's new applications strategy. Co-habitation will be a way of life for a while yet.
Customers wanting to make a decision about an applications strategy should do so with today's facts in hand. For those with investments in the current offerings, keep in mind that some changes are inevitable, but precisely when is still vague. For those with PeopleSoft and E-Business Suite running, send your list of most troublesome interface APIs to Oracle.
Also showing promise on the E-Business Suite front are Internal Controls Manager, which after 18 months on the market is getting some traction in the marketplace. Enterprise Planning and Budgeting, just rolling out now, had early adopters praising its ease of use, primarily based on embedded formulae and integrated database.
PS. Noticeably absent were any PeopleSoft products, but it is early days yet, and OpenWorld this year will include the Peoplesoft applications line.
PPS. Plug for OAUG/Quest who have recently agreed co-host a user group conference ConnectionPoint2005 in Texas.
Posted by alexfiteni at 3:18 PM | Comments (1)