The Feature

Favorite Fusion Features – General Ledger

June 14, 2006 on 10:06 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Ideas and Opinions | 1 Comment |  Print |  Email

By now you probably know what this is about. The time has come to think about what you want in Oracle Fusion. If you are an expert user with real-life, hands-on experience and have ideas on how to improve the applications; if you had to customize a module to get the features you need, or additional functionality would save you time and money, submit your strategic requests via the OAUG Enhancement Request System (ERS) today! As an Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) member and/or Oracle Applications user, Oracle wants your feedback on strategic improvements to current Oracle E-Business Suite functionality for their initial Fusion releases.

Alternatively, if the option above does not work for you, then let’s also try something different. Let’s keep a weblog of improvement tips, enhancement requests and your best features in Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications you want to have in Oracle Fusion. Let’s have discussions about what enhancements and features make most sense, and then log Fusion Requests before the Oracle’s June deadline. There won’t be any wrong questions or bad ideas (or at least, we’ll let the “group intelligence” decide). Your involvement can be as easy as providing comments with your ideas to this post.

Boy, what can you fundamentally change in GL? By now we know that 4Cs are coming in Release 12. And a couple of people had few more ideas. Below is a list of improvement tips and enhancement ideas based on Oracle General Ledger 11i.10 as submitted by Oracle users at the OAUG Enhancement Requests portal. Use the portal to provide you own enhancement requests, or submit comments to this post to do the same.

Note: I believe the idea of Fusion Requests is to submit enhancement requests on top of the existing releases, not to request the existing features. Somebody correct me if I am wrong. I suppose it never hurts to reiterate what your “best features” are.

• Allow Separate Sequential Numbering by Balancing Segment. Submitted by Gerard Fuller. In several European countries (example Germany) the law requires us to maintain separate sequential numbering sequences by Legal Entity. Most organizations model legal entities by the Balancing Segment in General Ledger. We therefore need to be able to maintain and assign separate sequential number sequences by Balancing Segment. Currently this is only possible by Set of Book and Journal Category. Set of Books is too high level and prevents distinguishing between entities (i.e. Balancing Segments). Using Category requires us to create as many categories as we have legal entities, and assign them. This is quickly unworkable once we have more than a few entities per set of books.

• Data Integrity between Submodules and GL. Submitted by Cyndie Winrow. Each individual transaction is posted only once, eliminating data redundancy and the need to reconcile multiple ledgers.

• Carry Forward Encumbrances at Year End. Submitted by Cyndie Winrow. In Oracle, the carry forward process does not create journals, and not at period activity, but rather creates a view for inquiry and reporting with designated amounts as beginning balances. I believe that this functionality eliminates the need for “period zero” as currently used in PeopleSoft, unless there are other uses for it of which we are unaware.

• Interfund Balancing Capability. Submited by Cyndie Winrow. Allows set up for assignment of default natural account (nacct) segment values for fund balancing that can be specified to balance multiple journal sources and categories.

• Financial Statement Generator (FSG). Submitted by Cyndie Winrow. Used to generate financial reports based on data in general ledger. FSG is an integral part of the general ledger application. Many standard reports are provided in the general ledger application, such as trial balance reports, account analysis reports, and budget to actual reports. FSG gives great flexibility in allowing for the creation of customized reports. It is an easy-to-use tool and can be utilized and maintained without substantial technical resources. Define your reports with reusable report objects, making it easy to create new reports from components already defined. Design custom reports. Schedule reports to run automatically. Produce ad hoc reports. Print reports to tab-delimited files for easy import into client-based spreadsheet programs.

• Reporting Segments (Attributes) Off the Accounting Flexfield. Submitted by Cyndie Winrow. Used for required reporting to regulatory and appropriations agencies.

Which features would you like to become your favorite features in Oracle Fusion? Granted, it may take two years before you get them, if ever, but this is your opportunity to provide your own improvement ideas and enhancement requests. The voting to determine “best features” starts in July 2006.

Best Oracle Fusion “Halftime” Commentary Yet

February 20, 2006 on 10:12 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

I have posted several references to the “Oracle Fusion – Half Way There” press conference news reports and articles before, but the I Pity The Fool commentary by Newmerix’s CTO Neil Robertson is the best one yet. Neil Robertson has provided an excellent, exhaustive (honestly, who has time to write a 5,379 word analysis?) educational, and entertaining essay about Oracle Fusion by pretending to be writing a press conference report. If you have anything to do with Oracle Applications, this one is a must reading!

Here is my favorite part:

…John Wookey: “We looked at the all the applications we had [PeopleSoft, EBS, JDE, and Siebel] and took the best requirements from each. We’re rewriting applications based on these requirements.”

Basically they realized they had four of everything and decided to rebuild a fifth from scratch. At first blush, this seems to make a ton of sense. Many have claimed that Oracle bought Siebel because of their recent prowess in industry specific process and features. Why shouldn’t they take that proprietary IP and work it into Fusion? But hang on, take a deeper look. Think through the reality of what this means to a customer trying to move to Fusion. Most likely, a lot but not all of your current application’s features will be present. Well, what do you do if your business process depends heavily on something that Oracle decided didn’t make the cut? You have two choices: “change your business process (and retrain your staff on how to use it) or, guess what, customize the Fusion application! We’re totally back to square one again.

Are You Eligible for Oracle Fusion Upgrade?

February 10, 2006 on 8:24 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

You may have already heard the main soundbites from the Oracle Fusion press conference at San Francisco City Hall: “Oracle Project Fusion is no longer a project”, and is “Fusion is halfway done”. ZDNet‘s Dan Farber’s article Oracle Fusion: A functional spec in search of applications provides more details about what happened at the conference:

… (Oracle president) Charles Phillips said that Oracle would make sure that 80 percent of customers would be “eligible” to upgrade to the first release of Fusion when it is released. Eligible, he said, didn’t mean customers would be forced to upgrade, but he didn’t clarify exactly what “eligible” means. I would guess that customers who have the right versions of Oracle software and have primed their infrastructure are “eligible” to make the transition. Further clarifying the meaning of Fusion, Phillips said that the term would be used in three areas” attached to applications, middleware and the platform architecture…

… He also said … that with or without the acquisitions, Oracle was going to build a new platform based on Java, SOA and other standards. The billions spent on acquisitions provide “more customers, more people to help define applications and more resources…

… John Wookey, Oracle senior vice president of applications, took the stage and offered a definition of Fusion applications:

• Based on best of what Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards have delivered

• Built on a standards-based, commercially available development platform

• Designed as a business intelligent application roles and tasks of individuals through business workflow

• Service & event enabled, model driven – component isolation and easier to integrate with existing applications and fine-grained control over business process orchestration

• Scalable and secure – take cost and risk out of deploying applications

…Wookey then went over the roadmap for Fusion. In 2005 Oracle delivered the Fusion architecture, Fusion Middleware certification and a functional assessment of the current set of applications as well as a superset of functionality (services) to be delivered for Fusion applications. This year, Oracle is slated to have the next versions of its applications: PeopleSoft Enterprise 9, JD Edwards 8.12 and Oracle EBS 12, with some integration of Fusion capabilities. PeopleSoft will include Fusion analytics and data hub technology, Oracle EBS 12 will be delivered on the latest Fusion Middleware release as well as with the Fusion data model. Some applications will begin migrating to the Fusion toolset…

…In addition, in 2006 Oracle will publish a services repository and enable business process flows that leverage Fusion Middleware… Oracle will have between 500 and 1000 major services in its repository, Wookey said… “The transition to Fusion] will be incremental and non-disruptive”he said…

…However, many customers add customer code to their applications and data models, which can make the transition difficult. Wookey said that Oracle is developing a tool that can inventory customizations where data models have been extended as a way to help manage upgrades…

…In 2007 individual Fusion applications will begin to appear, leading into 2008 when the entire suite of applications will be available. “The move to Fusion is an upgrade, not a re-implementation” Wookey said. Customers will be able to move to single instance or to segregate instances of specific applications as many customers do today, Wookey added…

It’s an upgrade as long as customers follow Wookey’s advice, which is to make sure that they adopt the latest releases (which are included in maintenance fees), retire customizations and unify operational infrastructure with Fusion Middleware and Grid. That is the hat trick for Oracle; if customers don’t continuously upgrade the transition to Fusion applications, the transition will be more laborious…

…Wookey’s key message to customers was to protect their investments by adopting the latest releases, retiring customizations and unifying their operational infrastructure with Fusion Middleware and Grid. That’s the only way for customers can evolve somewhat gracefully to Fusion and for Oracle to have a chance of ending up with a success story in December 2008…

My humble advice to Oracle customers is:

• Get involved. Find ways to influence what “Best Features” from Oracle, Peoplesoft and JD Edwards are and what that means for you.

• Go standard. Avoid customizations and adopt standard functionality and processes as much as you can. However, demand flexible tools to keep your customizations and data models if they cannot be replaced by standard functionality.

• Learn What Features Will Be Eliminated Stay on top of the feature scope and find out what applications and features will be eliminated.

Take Your Time, Oracle Fusion, Take Your Time

January 23, 2006 on 8:00 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

On the eve of the first anniversary of Oracle’s acquisition of Peoplesoft, Business Week published not one, but three articles on the subject. If you missed them, here are few excerpts. Start with the Oracle Lays Out Its Game Plan story published on January 19, 2005.

“…The Oracle CEO acknowledged that many people are worried he’s trying to make two very different corporate cultures work together – his own, known for it’s pit-bull aggressiveness, and Peoplesoft’s, best known for having a soft touch with customers. It’s a nice story for the press, Ellison says, but it’s not entirely true. “Trust me, Peoplesoft was a very, very aggressive company, or they wouldn’t have lasted in the [corporate software] business as long as they did,” he says.

He reiterated Oracle’s plans to support Peoplesoft’s products until 2013 and said his company will make no effort to nudge Peoplesoft customers toward other Oracle products, such as its database and so-called middleware software that helps big companies use their business systems over the Internet. Many Peoplesoft customers run their business software with other programs made by companies like IBM (IBM ) and BEA Systems (BEAS ). “Unless IBM should go out of business between now and then, that’s just something we can’t control,” Ellison deadpanned.

In the meantime, Oracle engineers are starting work on something dubbed “Project Fusion,” which will merge all three companies’ product lines. Customers, of course, don’t have to buy it. But Ellison believes it will offer strong technological incentive because it will be built entirely on computer programming standards such as Java and hypertext markup language (HTML). That would make the new software easier to manage and easier to connect to other, standards-based programs…”

I believe Oracle deserves benefit of a doubt, and a chance to execute their vision. I also believe they will need to change their behavior to improve their bad reputation of poor customer relationships. As for the rest of us, however, we deserve to be pessimistic. Can you remember roll-outs of Oracle Financials 11i, Oracle CRM or Oracle Order Management? Memories of those releases are still too fresh and painful to be ignored.

According to Oracle, Project Fusion is “Halfway Home”. See the Is Oracle’s Fusion Coming Together? story published on January 20.

… Oracle is not actually merging code of all of the disparate applications; rather, it’s taking the best features and ideas and rewriting the code, based heavily on Oracle’s eBusiness Suite…”…

…Oracle counters the pessimists that it’s giving customers an opportunity to ease into Fusion, by implementing certain features of the new application set in new versions of J.D. Edwards, Peoplesoft, and Oracle applications coming out this year…

…Meantime, SAP is planning to release a whole new application suite about a year before Fusion is complete, giving would-be clients yet another option. As for Wall Street, many still have the same impression they had a year earlier: It’s a compelling vision that could very well knock SAP on its heels, but it will be tough to pull off….”

I would love to be a fly on the wall during discussions where “best features” get selected from all different Oracle brands and products. If I were an Oracle, Peoplesoft or JD Edwards customer, I would want to make damn sure that my best people are present and heard in all strategy councils, customer advisory boards, and user groups out there.

Anyone who has ever been involved in any ERP implementation before knows how hard it is to make decisions about what and how gets implemented. It is all about making compromises. I am hopeful that Oracle has the right guy to make all interested parties reach consensus. I do not envy John Wookey one bit. I do agree he may have The Hardest Job In Silicon Valley.

… Typical of Wookey’s style was a four-hour meeting with his top staff on Jan. 4. Looking around the conference room, it was hard to tell who was in charge. Wookey didn’t sit at the head of the table, and he let others do most of the talking. As developers argued over arcane technical matters, Wookey weighed in to resolve debates — often by reminding them what customers had asked for…

There is no doubt in my mind there is any confusion at Oracle as to who is in charge. I am sure everybody is aware of who acquired whom. However, the devil is in details. Oracle will be under a lot of pressure to show results quickly. Let’s all hope they take the time to do it right and come up with better products when it’s all over.

Please provide comments or contact me at marian.crkon@itsafeature.com if you have any questions.