OracleAppsBlog

A day in the life of an Oracle Applications Consultant

Other Enterprise Systems

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

ITtoolbox Cognos Blog

I came across a Cognos blog at ITtoolbox the other day which I though I would give a mention. Cognos has been around for as long as I’ve been implementing enterprise systems. In my former days as a BaaN consultant we used to use it and even with Oracle it’s a viable option when it comes to reporting.

According to the Cognos site:

Cognos is the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and performance planning software for the enterprise. Our solutions let companies improve and direct corporate performance by enabling all of the key steps in the management cycle—from planning and budgeting, to measuring and monitoring performance, to reporting and analysis. Cognos is the only company to support all of these key management activities with a complete solution that spans all of the essential components of CPM—enterprise planning, scorecarding, and business intelligence.

The About section of the Cognos Blog states the following:

I’ve been developing financial, accounting, and production reports for the last 20 years. Follow along as I share practical experiences in making Cognos Impromptu and Powerplay have a major impact on how organizations do business. I’ll also talk real life systems development, work philosophy, and more about the kind of people I’ve met along the way.

The Author is none other than Atlanta Dan and his bio reads as follows:

I have been developing financial, accounting, and production reports for the last 20 years. I started as a CPA who fell in love with the Apple and Supercalc. Over the years I have had to master Dbase II, Lotus, MS Office (Excel and Access), SQL, and dozens of other languages to make all kinds of reports work. Powerplay and Impromptu captured me 14 years ago and I have yet to find better reporting tools. I started developing for IWR and PPES 5 years ago. Hand-in-hand with these tools I have been developing the related SQL server queries and objects, including developing and implementing data warehouses, marts, and other data staging techniques to provide the data in the format needed by Cognos Powerplay and Impromptu.

Some interesting articles have been posted to date. Enjoy reading!

Monday, September 12, 2005

More Enterprise Software Consolidation - Oracle buys Siebel

Big news. Oracle has bought Siebel for $5.85 billion. There’s been speculation about this deal for quite some time now and personally I was certain it was going to happen. It just makes sense for Oracle to do this if they want to compete effectively with SAP.

According to the press release:

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.,  12-SEP-2005 Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL) announced today that it agreed to buy Siebel Systems, Inc (Nasdaq: SEBL) for $10.66 per share. The offer is valued at approximately $5.85 billion, or $3.61 billion net of Siebel’s cash on hand of $2.24 billion.

“In a single step, Oracle becomes the number one CRM applications company in the world,” said CEO Larry Ellison. “Siebel’s 4,000 applications customers and 3,400,000 CRM users strengthen our number one position in applications in North America and move us closer to the number one position in applications globally.”

“Today is a great day for Siebel Systems’ customers, partners, shareholders, and employees,” said Thomas M. Siebel, Chairman of Siebel Systems. “The combination of Siebel applications with the development capacity of Oracle to enhance our CRM product set assures our customers continuing success. This is a very beneficial business combination that will allow us to be even more effective in delivering high quality, leading edge solutions into the hands of satisfied customers.”

“This is a customer driven event. Our joint customers have consistently recommended this transaction to both companies for over a year,” said Oracle President Charles Phillips. “We will embrace Siebel’s best-in-class CRM products and make the features of those products the centerpiece of our Project Fusion CRM.”

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

JD Edwards Blog by Andy Klee at ITtoolbox

There’s a new JD Edwards blog at ITtoolbox called What’s Hot & What’s Not with JD Edwards. Looks like it’s going to have some good content.

The About section of the Blog says:

Welcome to my blog for the JD Edwards community. I’ve been a JD Edwards consultant for the past 16 years, and in the last 5 years I’ve headed up Klee Associates, Inc, providing consulting and training services for JD Edwards, Oracle, and SAP clients. Reading this blog will keep you up to date on the important (and no so important) happenings at Oracle, the current custodians of the JD Edwards product line.

The Author Bio reads as follows:

As President of Klee Associates, Andy leads one of the premier independent JD Edwards consulting firms in North America. He considers himself very fortunate to have been able to attract some of the best people in the business to the Klee team. He is totally committed to differentiating Klee Associates from the teaming masses of consulting firms roaming the ERP landscape.

He started with JD Edwards in 1989 and has been involved in training, consulting, and project management for over 16 years. He was one of the first consultants to implement the Energy and Chemical Suite. He also has over 10 years experience with Advanced Pricing, dating back to before the first release on A7.1.

Andy developed the concept of Mastery Workshops for the install base in 2001, and is busy creating more value-add services for both new clients, and the install base. In late 2002, Andy made a decision to start SAPtips, and OraTips was rolled out in mid 2005.

Andy moved to the Western Slope of Colorado in 1999 after living 22 years in Denver.

Andy’s first post is entitled Blog 1 - What’s Up (or Down) With Fusion? and makes this interesting statement:

Gazing into my crystal ball, I predict that by 2008, Oracle will release Fusion Financials. That will allow them to claim victory, but still leave most of us wondering when there will be enough rationale to make the move. The whole thing will be done by 2014, forcing Oracle to extend the 2013 deadline for support for World and EnterpriseOne to 2016.

I like what Andy has done here and I’m sure it will educate people as to what’s going on in Project Fusion. Recommend you add the ITtoolbox Popular Blogs and New Blogs RSS feeds to your feed reader.

Sunday, August 14, 2005

A Better Learning Environment (ABLE) at Harvard University

This post discusses the Harvard University systems support site and the use of Oracle 11i and Peoplesoft at this institution.

A Better Learning Environment (ABLE) is a support site for users of Harvard Universities systems. More specifically, the site provides support for Financial Applications (Oracle), HR Applications (Peoplesoft), Reporting Applications (Financial and HR) and for Harvard’s Central Administration Staff.

The resources available at the site include: -

• Forms
• Policies
• Rates & Schedules
• Work Instructions & Processes

Of particular interest is the section on Chart of Accounts (CoA) which outlines the account structure they implemented at Harvard.

For Financial Applications Harvard runs Oracle eBS and you can read about their upgrade to 11i from 11.0.3 in January 2003 here. According to the newsletter the upgrade introduced a new look and feel, new login techniques, and a new method of navigation for Web Voucher, General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Budget Tool, AWS2, HUDINI, and Applications Administration.

In November 2004 the University upgraded from 11.5.5 to 11.5.9 which you can read about here.

The Universities Administrative Systems e-news is an interesting insight into how ERP systems are run and maintained. According to the site:

The Office of Human Resources publishes a semimonthly electronic newsletter for users of University financial, HR, and reporting systems, policies, and procedures. It contains:

• Updates on projects underway to build or improve University administrative systems
• Information about new University financial, HR, and reporting policies, procedures, and forms
• Reminders about upcoming deadlines and cutover dates
• Tips and tricks for working more easily or productively

On the e-news site you will also find back issues of the publication as well as a useful index by topic.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

ERP Software Comparison - Oracle, SAP, Peoplesoft, Microsoft and Siebel

An article entitled ERP Packages Feature Comparison by Elisabeth Rainier of the ITtoolbox blog New Trends & Techniques in Managing CRM & SAP Projects, provides a useful comparison of the following ERP systems: -

• Microsoft Great Plains version 7.5 and previews of Microsoft Great Plains version 8.0
• Oracle E-Business Suite 11.5.9
• PeopleSoft Enterprise 8.8 and 8.9 and EnterpriseOne 8.11
• SAP mySAP Business Suite R/3 4.6 and SAP R/3 Enterprise 4.7
• Siebel 7.5 and Siebel 7.7

For the players and software versions mentioned above, you’ll find a study which provides a comparative, multi-vendor assessment across the three major phases of the application lifecycle: implementation, application usage, and ongoing support and maintenance.

I haven’t come across many ERP software comparisons on the web so if anyone else knows of other comparisons available online please add your comments and links to this post.