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Fact or Fiction?

The Truth about the Oracle Support Agreement

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Written by Brian Lewis Monday, May 09 2011

Maintaining Oracle Support is business-critical to your enterprise. Because of this, Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) users are reasonably apprehensive about losing support when making changes to their core EBS configurations such as charts of accounts/accounting flexfields, calendars, or making changes such as merging instances, moving or splitting operating unit/inventory orgs., etc. This article documents our research to determine whether there have been any occurrences of EBS customers who actually lost their Oracle Support and to explore the basis of these concerns.

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That Old House

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Written by Helene Abrams Wednesday, March 10 2010

When you moved into the new house, everything was clean, uncluttered, and ready for you to personalize and adapt to meet your needs. So it is when you first implement an ERP system. However, many people bring with them boxes of things no longer needed – data and structures from their legacy system that were once required or that the users have simply become accustomed to. Once you move into the house, you begin accumulating stuff that looked like a good idea at the time, but now sits in a corner and collects dust. Even worse, those obsolete items need to be moved and re-boxed, and every time you need something, you might spend hours or days looking for it. Feng shui practitioners believe that clutter is low, stagnant, and confusing energy that drains energy from you. Depending on the area of your home where your clutter is located, it can also negatively influence, or even completely block, the flow of events in specific areas of your life. Once again, there are many parallels to an ERP system.

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Not Your Mother's Software

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Written by Helene Abrams Wednesday, September 16 2009

Some of you might be too young to remember - it used to be that the reconciliation and monthly closings were done on a hand-written ledger, and every adjustment was done in pencil so it could be changed.  If an account needed to be changed, it was changed only on a going-forward basis with possibly a restatement and a single entry to reflect the change.  Then there came the spreadsheet – and there was a lot of resistance from the accountants to adopting spreadsheets as the standard.

Still, with spreadsheets, there was no clear drill down process.  Further, as organizations grew and required maintaining thousands of spreadsheets rather than a few, the accuracy and integrity of the data became questionable, and for good reason.  Now, the ERP system has taken away some of the burden of manual reconciliation and spreadsheets, but even large ERP systems don’t reflect the fact that companies change.

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Details and Setup of Other Flexfields in Oracle E-Business Suite

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Written by Helene Abrams Tuesday, August 18 2009

Readers who have been receiving TECHANGES for some time have most likely seen a few articles that focus on the Oracle® accounting flexfield, or the chart of account in Oracle E-Business Suite. The accounting flexfield allows businesses to keep track of their financial transaction data by organizing them by different segments of the business, often including department, business unit, or company. The accounting flexfield is only one of the many key flexfields that must be set up in E-Business Suite, and there is another type of flexfield called a descriptive flexfield that E-Business Suite users can use for custom applications. In this article, we will discuss the setup procedures of key flexfields other than the accounting flexfield.

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TEChanges - Agility by Design

May Puzzle

David is often referred to as Rainman due to his peculiar ability to effortlessly figure out a certain date's day of the week. He recently displayed this talent when I asked him if there was a conflict with the upcoming Fuzzy Dice Conference and our weekly court-ordered community service. He asked the date of the convention. It was April 20th, 2012.

"Oh, that’s a Friday," he said, effortlessly. "And your sentences have you committed for the next few dozen Wednesdays so you'll be able to go." And of course he was right.

One day a few weeks ago I asked out loud in the office about the date June 5th. And of all people, my brother Tommy piped up and said "Oh, that's a Tuesday."

"That's right," said David.

Well how about Otcober 3rd?

"That's a Wednesday," said Tommy. Then I asked about Christmas Day 2012.

"Oh, that's a Tuesday." David nodded in agreement.

Do we now have two rainmen? Or had Tommy figured something out?

Show solution...

Solution

Here's what was going on. Tommy was using something called anchor dates. And these dates apply to each and every year. April 4th, or 4/4 we’ll call it from now on, June 6th or 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, 12/12, are all the same day of the week, each and every year.

So too are 5/9 and 9/5, May 9th and September 5th. So too are 7/11 and 11/7, and all the above dates are the same day of the week, as is the last day in February, Leap Year or not. And they’re all the same day as January 4th, it would otherwise be January 3rd, but this was a leap year, and that’s changes the anchor day from January 3rd to January 4th.

Tommy also knew that New Year's Day was a Sunday. He was sobered up by then. And he knew it was a Sunday because Christmas was a Sunday in 2011, so New Year's Day is a Sunday, so the Anchor Day for 2012, January 4th, has to be a Wednesday!

So if that's a Wednesday, then 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, 12/12, 5/9, 9/5, 7/11, 11/7, and February 29th are all the same day of the week, and they're all Wednesdays. So when I ask for example, about October 3rd, he knew October 10th was a Wednesday, 10/10. So 10/3 must also be a Wednesday. 12/12 is a Wednesday in 2012, so it’s 12/26, which is two weeks later. So 12/25, or Christmas Day, must be a Tuesday.

Success Tips for Oracle Project Management

  • Create a standard for documentation at the beginning of your project, and hold team members accountable for completing documentation requirements as well as keeping them at and above the standards required.
  • Before promulgating user documentation or training, it’s also a good idea to choose a representative from the among the business users base to review materials first.
  • If you are not sure about the resources and budget required, obtain several estimates from people that have experience with the same size and scope of your project.
  • Be explicit, before beginning the project, what internal resources are required for execution. This includes people, infrastructure, hardware, and software.
  • Help the project champion understand the impact your project will have on the organization and how its successful completion will make him or her an internal hero or heroine for supporting it.
  • Break up your project into smaller projects (try for projects that can be completed in 4-6 months, especially early on) to get success and demonstrate momentum.
  • Make sure that your testing includes reports, upstream and downstream interfaces, customizations, enhancements, and workflows.
  • Ensure that comprehensive transition reports and meetings between departing and incoming personnel are completed.
  • Instead of spending time and resources implementing third-party reporting, consider consolidating multiple instances, moving to a global chart of accounts (CoA), and/or standardizing on a consistent calendar.
  • Include governance, risk, and compliance management as part of the project plan.
  • Finally, celebrate the successes. Too many projects focus on defects, failures, or small cost over-runs without looking at the big picture and what was accomplished.

The Analyst Corner

John Van Decker, Research VP of Gartner, states:

"A single chart of accounts allows consistency in financial reporting across the enterprise by standardizing on common metrics and reporting structures, reduces dependencies on a separate financial consolidation system, and significantly reduces the costs incurred with ongoing, complex conversions and translations."

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