, -XXXX, XXXX- (Hope this doesn’t attract too many adult site surfers)

2. Currency: Positive Format - Options: XXX, +XXX, XXX+

3. Currency: Thousands Separator - Options: Yes or No (setting this to Yes will ensure that the thousands are comma separated)

Thursday, August 12, 2004

UK Oracle User Group Conference Agenda now available

This post contains a link to the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) Conference agenda and highlights the key presentations that an Apps consultant might want to attend.

At this site you can read the detailed Agenda for the UK Oracle User Group Conference which is taking place at the Birmingham International Conference Centre (ICC) from the 1st - 3rd of November 2004. The site lists the presentations by categories of Applications, Business and Management, Oracle Partner, Technology Other, Technology DBA, Technology RAC/Grid and Keynotes. You can also read the presentation abstracts as well as create a personalised conference agenda. If you’re planning to attend, mail me and we can make a plan to meet and chat.

Personally I will be delivering two papers, the details of which are as follows: -

Audit Considerations for your 11i implementation.

1st November 15:55 PM, for 45 minutes.

In any ERP implementation, review and audit is an inevitable part of the implementation process. This is particularly true today with the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and other worldwide initiatives to enhance corporate governance. This presentation identifies how to implement 11i in a manner that meets the control requirements of your auditors, both internal and external. Initially I will examine the reasons for auditing such systems and will then look at common problems encountered during audit and review exercises. In answer to the problems experienced the high level Oracle solution will be outlined and we will then take a look at specific auditing and review features embedded in the 11i E-Business Suite.

The beauty of Oracle’s web enabled applications.

2nd November 9:00 AM, for 60 minutes.

Demand for web services is growing and Oracle has adapted to and even pre-empted this requirement by web enabling their entire range of software. This presentation highlights what web offerings are available for Oracle Applications Desktop Integrator (ADI), Oracle Financial Analyzer (OFA) and Oracle Discoverer. It will also explore how these products interact with each other to provide sophisticated query, analysis and reporting functionality on organisational information.

The architecture of these web solutions will be discussed followed by the steps involved in setting up and configuring the web interface for each of these products.

Lastly, the single sign on functionality will be examined.

Conference Presentation Highlights

I’ve highlighted some of the presentations that you might want to attend if you are an Apps consultant with a functional orientation like myself. Most of these presentations are from the Applications and Business & Management categories. At the moment it represents my shortlist although it will obviously have to become a lot shorter. I intend to be doing write-ups and reviews on this blog for all the presentations I will be attending. Looks like it will be frantic on Monday and Tuesday whilst things will slow down on Wednesday on the functional side. If any readers are attending and would like to also contribute to this blog presentation reviews and comments I would very much appreciate this. I’m also going to try and get some of the presenter’s to publish their papers on this site so hopefully I will have fairly comprehensive coverage of the conference.

• Approvals Management Within Your Enterprise - Bill Kerr, Oracle Corporation
• Automating Integration with your Supply Chain/Trading Partners - Adam Boczkowski, Reuters
• Catalogue Content - experiences and the way forward - Andrew Douglas, Oracle
• Oracle Tutor in a Multi Lingual Environment - Jay Dunford, Sopra Group
• Completing the paperless buy to pay process - Anthony Woods, Edenbrook
• Why IT Projects Fail – and How to Avoid It - Sten Vesterli, scott/tiger
• Developing Advanced Business Intelligence Applications with Oracle OLAP
• Oracle Configurator - Ravindra Vitankar, Capgemini UK PLc
• Big IT Projects - Christopher Frost, EDS
• e-procurement in the 21st Century: A case study - Catherine Murphy, Version One Limited
• Quote Management Systems using Oracle Quoting - Kirit Goyal, GE Capital
• Converting Data Conversion – Minimising risks and costs - Sarah Keeling, Edenbrook
• Leverage features of Encumbrance Accounting in Oracle e-Business Suite - Tarun Wasan, Accenture
• How do I cut and paste that into Excel? - Simon Goldsmith, Edenbrook
• Set Up a Successful Reporting Solution with Oracle Discoverer & Other Tools - Evan Schulz, Noetix Corporation
• Bespoke Oracle eBusiness Suite – Unnecessary evil or a way to real business benefits? - Kevin Saunders, Freelance

• Managing E-Business Suite Configuration and Environments - Andy Harriss, Compelsysao
• Achievable No PO No Pay – I don’t believe you! - David Golding, Edenbrook
• HRMS Administration using Web ADI - Alison Venner, Compelsysao
• Advanced Pricing : some business examples - Mike Turner, Unilog Ltd
• Breaking Down The Functional Barriers: Shared Data At The Heart Of ERP - Marcus Glover, Vodafone plc
• ORACLE TREASURY 11.5.9 – Real Implementation Experience - Mark Skilton, Edenbrook
• Why Oracle Process Manufacturing? - Gary Figgins, Sopra Group Ltd
• Linux in the Enterprise - James Morle, Scale Abilities Ltd
• Oracle Integration
• Enterprise Planning & Budgeting (EPB) - The Real Deal - Ian Hayman, inGroup
• VAT Reporting - Tom King, Unilog
• Does Oracle Financials Really Provide Business Intelligence? - Gary Horrocks, Teamsolve Ltd
• Thales Missile Electronics eliminates profit erosion with Mestec’s Manufacturing Execution System - Jeremy Harford, Mestec Ltd
• Oracle’s Enterprise Project Management Solution - Jim Snelson, Oracle Corporation UK
• Automate Intrastat reporting with Inventory Movement Statistics - Shelly-Ann Scott, Deloitte Consulting

Now here’s an interesting one - Midge Ure of Ultravox (an 80’s band) will be giving a motivational talk. I just bought the Ultravox Greatest hit’s CD for US$6.50 at our local music store (about a third of the normal price) so I’ll definitely be making an effort to attend this presentation.

• Custom Reports Vs. Discoverer Queries - Identifying the appropriate reporting tool - Louise Shaw, Edenbrook Solutions Ltd
• CPM - Dream or reality - Jon Page, Oracle
• Oracle Balanced Scorecard – From Monitoring to Management - Chris Hett, Fujitsu

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

New Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Author

This post contains details of a new author that has joined OracleAppsBlog who has experience in the area of Oracle Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Jayakrishna Surnila, an Oracle Consultant presently working in Colorado, has joined OracleAppsBlog as an author. He has a total of 7 years industry experience starting with Retail Management and Channel Management in Pharmaceuticals and then plugging into IT Business Development within the segments of Corporate Box selling, Networking, Database Management Services, ICR and OMR.

Jay forayed into CRM implementations as a Functional Consultant about 3 years back. Major implementations include the implementation of modules of Oracle Incentive Compensation (at DELL), Service Contracts (Oracle North American Indian Operations) and some minor encounters with Marketing Online, Sales Online, Field Service and iSupport.

I wanted to welcome Jay to the Blog and introduce him to all the other members, he is experienced and I’m sure his contributions will be very useful to readers.

You can read Jay’s membership profile here or if you’re a member you can e-mail Jay via the profile e-mail console.

Improving the Transparency and Auditability of your Corporation with Oracle E-Business Suite

This post reviews a presentation given at the Oracle OpenWorld Melbourne 2004 Conference by Folia Grace, Product Director, Enterprise Resource Planning, Oracle Corporation.

This presentation, entitled Improve the Transparency and Auditability of your Corporation (2.10MB), attracted my interest primarily because it had some information on Enterprise Planning Budgeting which I understand is destined to replace Oracle Financial Analyzer (OFA). The presentation begins by outlining what transparency and auditability involves, namely: -

• Auditability of Financial Results
• Auditability of the Process underlying those results
• Clarity of results and processes to all stakeholders:
• Owners
• Customers
• Suppliers
• Employees

It states that having access to information is not what’s most important, it’s whether the information is useful that counts. The main portion of the presentation relates to how you can use Oracle Applications to improve efficiency, control and data transparency. Efficiency is achieved by the Oracle Information Architecture which has the following characteristics: -

The Unified Data Model provides a single definition of customers, suppliers, partners, employees, and business events. This single source of truth, throughout the organisation, means that the information customers use to make decisions is accurate and timely.

Global means that all data, worldwide, are consolidated into a single instance. The Oracle E-Business Suite handles multiple currencies, languages and different security needs of different countries. This means that costs are reduced, by consolidation of data centre’s and data administration, and the quality of the information is improved.

The presenter goes on to highlight how Controls are improved by using: -

• the Interface Data Transformer (IDT)
• Business Events
• the Currency Rates Manager
• the Global Intercompany System and
• Journal Approvals workflow

Data Transparency is said to be achieved by the following Oracle Reporting and Analysis Tools: -

• Daily Operational Management Reporting - DBI: Pre-built role-based BI portal pages and management reports, drill-downs, simplified architecture
• Financial Reporting and Analysis - EPB, FSG: Integrated Financial Reporting and Analysis with drill-down.
• Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting - EPB: Streamlined enterprise planning and budgeting, on-going performance monitoring

The Key Benefits of Enterprise Planning and Budgeting are stated as: -

• Fully integrated financial reporting, analysis, consolidation, planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes
• ‘Real-time’ post from GL
• Advanced multi-dimensional, multi-level reporting UI in html and export in Excel
• Easy reporting with different hierarchy versions
• Full drilldown to source transaction details

The presentation has some nice EPB screen shots which is the first time I have actually seen what the application might look like - until now all I’ve heard was the usual marketing talk. I wonder how easy it is to get it working. I would be interested in receiving any comments from readers and authors that relate to EPB, especially those who might be involved in the early adopter or beta programme for this particular product.