Author: Mike Shepherd, Senior Functional Consultant, Namos Solutions
I’ve often read that you have to kiss a lot of frogs to get to your Prince Charming and with 20 years of Oracle releases behind me, I’ve kissed enough Oracle release ‘frogs’ (including a couple of toads) to eventually find a handsome enough upgrade with the release of 12.2.8 and the innovation of the Enterprise Command Centers. These are also backwards compatible and can be applied on Release 12.2.4 and higher.
The development of these discovery-oriented dashboards delivers out of the box reporting that previously had to be developed using whatever business intelligence application the organisation used and then transactions had to be changed and the report ran again. Users can now browse and drill down on whatever engages their attention. With each drilldown or search refinement, the entire interface recomputes, revealing new information on which to base next discovery steps. Through this they can narrow in on the important areas and possible challenges without having to run reports or structed queries, drilling down to the detailed transaction screens to take action immediately, and then switch back to the dashboard to work through the next transaction.
There are Command Centers across the e-Business suite. The following command centers are available:
- Financials: Receivables, iReceivables, Payables, Assets, Lease Contracts, Lease and Finance Management.
- Procurement & Projects: iProcurement: Consumer-Like Shopping, Procurement, Projects, Project Procurement, Contract Lifecycle Management for Public Sector.
- Order Management & Logistics: iStore: Modern Shopping Experience, Advanced Pricing, Order Management, Inventory Management, Landed Cost Management, Channel Revenue Management, Incentive Compensation.
- Manufacturing: Discrete Manufacturing, Process Manufacturing, Outsourced Manufacturing, Cost Management, Quality.
- Asset Lifecycle & Service: Enterprise Asset Management, Asset Tracking, Service Contracts, Service (TeleService), Field Service, Depot Repair.
- Human Capital Management: Human Resources
A good example of the dashboard content is the payables command center. It currently consists of 4 dashboards:
Supplier Balance:
The Supplier Balance dashboard gives an overview across suppliers and organisations of supplier open balances and aging of past due invoices. The Accounts payable department can manage working capital effectively, but also get quick updates and perform corrective actions by reviewing 7 days invoice history.
Holds:
The Holds dashboard includes invoice aging, invoices on hold, top hold reasons and discounts available for invoices on hold. The Accounts payable personnel are able to resolve the invoice holds quickly and efficiently by drilling down via the invoice number to the Oracle Payables Invoice Workbench.
Discounts Opportunity:
The Discounts Opportunity dashboard displays information such as available discounts in the next 7 days and graphs on weekly discount opportunities by date. These graphs can be drilled into quickly to identify invoices that need to be paid to realise these discounts and manage working capital effectively.
Period Close:
The Period Close dashboard provides real-time visibility into the accounting process. Back in my systems administrator days this would have been extremely helpful in identify any potential bottlenecks early in the period by focusing on the unprocessed accounting events, any accounting errors, and untransferred journals to General Ledger. The dashboard helps the accounts payable manager to reduce period close time, accelerate delivery of financial results to internal management, and identify improvements to be made over the next period.
These and all present command centers using Enterprise Command Center Framework (ECC) Release 12.2 V4 (released alongside R12.2.10) are able to export the results table to a csv file, a much desired improvement from when I configured these for my last client.
Over the next couple of weeks we will take a look in detail at all the out of the box dashboards supplied and then we can look at the process involved in extending these dashboards with some custom dashboards of our own using Oracle’s ECC Developer.
To find out more about the E-Business Suite updates, please get in touch with the team at info@namossolutions.com.
About Namos Solutions
Namos Solutions are an award-winning Oracle OPN Modernised Partner specialising in the implementation and support of ERP, EPM and HCM business solutions, both in the Cloud and on-premise.
With global experience together with an impeccable track record, our business is built on our passion for delivering successful business transformation. Passion underpins everything we do at Namos – passionate about delivering beyond expectations, earning trust and building long-lasting relationships with our clients.
Although based in central London, we work wherever our clients need us to be. Many leading organisations located all over the world trust and rely on our expertise to deliver industry-leading business solutions. Namos customers can currently be found in the UK, Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific, North America and Africa.
For more information, please visit www.namossolutions.com or email info@namossolutions.com.
