Oracle Financials Technical Interview Questions and Score Sheet

Over the last few years I’ve been involved in interviewing a number of Oracle Financials Consultants and have also in the past been sitting on the other side of the desk as an interviewee. The last time I conducted an interview it was more technical in nature and I decided to came up with a list of questions to ask the interviewee. These questions were focused along the lines of people, process and technology and I thought I would write a blog entry with the questions as I’m sure it will be useful for interviewers and interviewee’s alike. In addition to the questions I also developed a score sheet utilising the Kepner Tregoe decision making methodology, an approach I learnt when doing my Masters in Business Leadership (MBL). This score sheet allows the interviewer to develop an objective means of evaluating the answers to interview questions rather than a subjective one and can be modified to suit a number of different scenarios. I haven’t included any answers to the questions as in many cases there is no right answer, I prefer to see if someone understands the concepts and can explain them well. Having said that, if any one wants to come up with a suggested answer sheet I will gladly append it to the questions listing. Hopefully this question listing and score sheet will provide readers with a baseline/guideline that can be used in any type of interview.

Technology Questions

General Ledger

Explain the organisational concepts of business group, set of books, legal entity, operating unit and inventory organization and the hierarchical structure relating to these.
What are the three C’s in relation to a set of books?
Explain the difference between a key flexfield and descriptive flexfield
What is the difference between a cross validation rule and a security rule?
What is a value set and what are the different types of value sets that you will find within Oracle?

Accounts Payable

Describe the Key Configuration decisions you would need to undertake when implementing the Accounts Payable module.
Briefly describe the Supplier Invoice to Payment process within Oracle.

Accounts Receivable

Describe the Key Configuration decisions you would need to undertake when implementing the Accounts Receivable module.
Briefly describe/draw the Customer Invoice to Cash process within Oracle
Describe the Key difference in setting up accounting for Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable
What happens when you have a receipt in Oracle that can’t be applied to an invoice?

Fixed Assets

Describe the key configuration decisions you would need to undertake when implementing the fixed assets module.
Briefly describe/draw the asset additions process within Oracle.

Cash Management

Describe the key configuration decisions you would need to undertake when implementing the cash management module.
Outline the Statement to Reconciliation process within Oracle with particular reference to the different options you might want to consider when reconciling.

All Modules

Describe/draw the sequence of events you would undertake in closing the various financials modules.

People Questions

Draw a typical structure relating to project implementation and describe the role each person would play within a project.
Describe how to implement an effective training strategy within an implementation – include the timing of training relative to the project lifecycle.
Within an implementation describe a Change Management strategy that you would put in place.

Process Questions

Describe/draw the main phases of an implementation lifecycle and the key milestones and deliverables within each of these phases.
Describe the key differences between a process and work instruction
Within a project describe the different test phases that you might go through and what level of testing would be undertaken.
Describe a typical process you would implement for managing Change Requests and Bug requests within your organization.