Thursday, January 24, 2008

Oracle Business Accelerators (OBA) for E-Business Suite

Towards the end of last year I blogged about the Oracle Accelerate programme. The first step required to participate in the programme is to complete the Oracle Business Accelerators for Oracle E-Business Suite Accelerators Overview Course available on i-learning. The purpose of this course is to:

• Provide an overview of the Oracle Business Accelerators
• Familiarize you with the Accelerators Online Portal 
• Mandatory for all users of Oracle Business Accelerators
• Gain Access to online portal after successful completion

According to the course, the goal of Oracle Business Accelerators (OBA) is to use industry targeted leading practice business flows to rapidly get to transaction testing and go live.

How do the Accelerators work?

1. Using the Accelerators Online Portal capture information from Customers and generate configuration instructions
2. Within E-Business Suite - download configuration instructions and load setups to instance

Essentially, Accelerators allow you to generate your systems configuration instructions based on a series of questions presented to the Customer that pertain to their industry. Once the configuration instructions are generated they can be loaded onto an Oracle instance to create the setups. In essence,  the setup of an Oracle instance is faster as there is now more automation involved. There are varying access levels for the accelerator online portal and these are outlined below. For each level courses have to be taken to gain access.

Level 1 Browse

This gives you access to the following:

• Datasheets
• Solution Footprint
• Process Models
• Sales Pitch
• Roles and Responsibilities
• Functionality Overview
• Industry Business Case
• Videos and FAQ
• Project Implementation Guide
• Setup Guide and Video
• Setup Tool Save Mode Off

To attain level 1 status the following courses have to be undertaken:

• Overview - 30 minutes
• How to Position - 30 minutes (optional) 
• Industry Business Case - 30 minutes (optional)

Level 2 Browse

This gives you access to the following:

• Includes Level 1
• Implementation Guidelines
• Setup Questions
• Key Assumptions
• Testing Sequence
• Setup Tool Save Mode Off

To attain level 2 status the following courses have to be undertaken:

• Implementation Overview - 30 minutes

Level 3 “Project Workspace” (per industry)

This gives you access to the following:

• Includes Level 2
• Test Scripts
• Setup Tool Save Mode On

To attain level 3 status the following courses have to be undertaken:

• Implementation Details - 60 minutes
• Common Setups - 60 minutes
• Industry Implementation - 40 minutes (per Industry)

Setup Loader Utility for DBA’s

• No other levels included
• Setup Loader Utility is Mandatory for Setup Tool Downloads

To attain the loader utilities, the following course has to be undertaken:

• Installation Training for DBA’s - 60 minutes

Following successful completion of the Oracle Business Accelerators for Oracle E-Business Suite Accelerators Overview Course an assessment exam can be taken which gives you access to the Accelerators Online Portal. The exam is a 20 question exam for which the pass rate is 95%  i.e. 19 questions right. There doesn’t seem to be any time limit on the exam but it should really only you take you 20 minutes i.e. 1 minute per question. I managed to pass on the second attempt and my advice to anyone taking it is take notes on the overview course and have them as a reference point when writing the exam.