Oracle 12i functionalities in depth

In the next few weeks I will be focusing on new functionalities introduced by Oracle 12i in the following areas:

1.       Financial Management

a.       Across Financials

                                                               i.      Oracle Financials Concepts and Implementation

b.       Assets and Real Estate

                                                               i.      Oracle Assets

                                                             ii.      Oracle iAssets

c.        Cash and Treasury

                                                               i.      Oracle Cash Management

                                                             ii.      Oracle Treasury Management

d.       Credit to Cash (Receivables)

                                                               i.      Oracle Receivables

                                                             ii.      Oracle iReceivables

                                                           iii.      Oracle Advanced Collections

                                                           iv.      Oracle Trading Community Architecture

e.        Financial Control and Reporting

                                                               i.      Oracle Advanced Global Intercompany System

                                                             ii.      Oracle Financial Consolidation Hub

                                                           iii.      Oracle Financial Accounting Hub

                                                           iv.      Oracle General Ledger

f.         Financial Common Modules

                                                               i.      Oracle E-Business Tax

                                                             ii.      Oracle Subledger Accounting

g.       Oracle Internet Expenses

h.       Procure to Pay (Payables)

                                                               i.      Oracle Payables

                                                             ii.      Oracle Payments

2.       Projects

a.       Oracle Projects Fundamentals

b.       Oracle Project Costing

c.        Oracle Project Billing

d.       Oracle Project Management

e.        Oracle Project Portfolio Analysis

f.         Oracle Project Resource Management

Oracle Lease Management Overview

Lease Life Cycle :

a) Credit Checking of the Lessee (Customer)
b) Author a Contract between Lessor and Lessee
c) Bill the Lessee during a Contract Term
d) Receive Payments from Lessee during the term of the contract
e) Lessee interacts with Lessor during the term of contract.
i. May inquire regarding his payments or next invoice
ii. May request for some additional Product information
iii. May dispute an invoice.
iv. On the basis of Lessee’s interaction, Lessor’s agent may initiate certain tasks internally or send some notifications

f) At the end of Contract term, as per T&C of the contract
i. Lessee may return the Asset to Lessor
ii. Lessee may purchase the Asset
iii. Lessee may renew a contract
g) Lessor sends quote to the lessor if there is a purchase option as per T&C
i. May be an early termination Quote
ii. End of Term Quote
h) Asset is returned to the Lessor
i. Asset may become part of inventory which can be re-leased later
ii. Asset may be remarketed

OLM integrates the power of Oracle’s ERP, CRM and Contract Applications for complete leasing solution.

Key Business Flows:
OLM has designed the following Key Business Flows to address all the scenarios of a typical Lease Life Cycle

1. Credit Application to Booking
2. Invoice to Receipt
3. Asset return to Disposal
4. Quote to termination
5. Inquiry to Resolution
6. Period Open/Close - This is purely Accounting setup

Oracle APPS responsibilities for OLM:

All the Key Business Flows except Inquiry to Resolution are performed by
Logging into OLM HTML Version. Lease Super User module is used

OLM has number of concurrent programs for processing data within OLM and transfer of data to other modules like AP, AR, GL etc. All these concurrent Programs are accessed by using Lease Administrator responsibility which is in Oracle Forms Version.

Lease Center Agent Responsibility in Oracle Forms Version is used for the inquiry to Resolution Business Flow.

1. Credit Application to Booking:

Modules involved: AP, FA, GL, Inventory, Contracts Core and Installed Base
A Third party Lease Price modeling software, SUPER TRUMP performs stream generation and Lease Pricing

· Credit Approval
· Authoring a Contract
· Vendor Payment
· Asset Tracking

For some clients, Credit Application of the Lessee( Customer) is processed in a separate system.
Approved contract is entered in OLM. Contract information is available different subsystems. Most of the times, Contract has to be imported by drawing information from those subsystems.
In a few cases, we may be entering a Contract from scratch

2. Invoice to Receipt:
Modules involved: AR, Collections, GL, Contracts for Service

Billing functionality identifies items to be passed onto lessee.
Billable items are as follows

· Cost of the equipment – multiple assets
· Fees incurred like Customer Service Fee, Documentation Fee
· Expenses like Insurance premium, Installation charges
· Taxes like Sales Tax, VAT

Billing amounts may be generated automatically or manually
Lessee may have assets at multiple locations under same lease contract
Various Billing requirements like Usage Based Billing
Payments from Lessee – Receipts to Lessor
Transfer of funds – Lessee or Lessor may initiate
Mode of Payments: Direct Debits, Checks, Wire Transfers or Credit Cards
Notifications to Customers
Collections – missing Payments, delinquent, litigations etc


3. Quote to Termination:

Modules involved: AR, FA, CRM Foundation, Workflow and GL

Alternatives when a Lease Contract expires

· Manage a repurchase
· Restructure a Contract
· Terminate a Contract

OLM processes restructured contracts through Contract authoring and Booking
Request for a renewal or termination quote
Complete termination of Contract
Update Asset records

When termination quote for sale is accepted, assets are retired in Fixed Assets

4. Asset return to Disposal:
Modules involved: iStore, Marketing Online, Advanced Pricing, CRM Foundation

· Asset returns
· Remarketing

Asset evaluation process
Shipping instructions for returned Assets.
Returns may be accounted as scrap, or inventory to be remarketed
Remarketing manages disposition of Assets when a Lease expires.
Sale of Asset to a 3rd Party or internal remarketing efforts


5. Inquiry to Resolution:
Modules involved: CRM Foundation, Telesales, E Business Center

Customer Service representative tracks a customer inquiry through its resolution.
Communicate to appropriate authorities regarding tasks to be performed for resolving a customer query
Define processes to manage specific requests such as:
· Insurance quotes
· Claims
· Contract transfers
· Equipment exchanges
· Asset modifications
· Lease Renewals

Components of CRM Foundation used in OLM

· Resources
· Sales Representatives
· Remarketers
· Assignment Groups
· Interaction History
· Fulfillment

Summary of the modules used in OLM:

Functional
Financials : GL, AP, AR and FA
Contracts: Contracts core, Contracts Service
CRM: CRM Foundation, Installed Base, Telesales, iStores, Marketing Online
Distribution: Inventory, Advanced Pricing
(Telesales – Customer Service and Collections Functionality)

Technical
Workflow – Processes Approvals and Notifications
XML gateway – Integrates with Lease Price Modeling Software
Advanced Inbound and Outbound – Customer Service, Call Center functionality, Universal Workques, Fulfillment Server

Designing Simple Forms Personalizations for Functional Consultants

Forms Personalization: I kept reading about this amazingly new feature called 'Forms Personalization' but what really bothered me was almost all the articles / whitepapers had the targeted audience as ‘Admin / Developer’ who have some ‘knowledge of Oracle Developer, PL/SQL, Coding Standards and API’s’.

This really caught my attention and I spent about 2 hours trying to figure out what can a Functional Consultant like myself get out of this new feature. Good news is that you don’t need to have any technical knowledge to design some simple personalizations. So in this article, I have tried to explore some easy to design personalization’s which the Functional Consultants can easily build and test.

Why personalization’s are handy – Since Oracle Apps is a pre-built product, most of the clients would like to remove/ rename, change default values of some of the fields, buttons, tabs etc. Traditional method of getting all the above ‘extensions’ done was to ‘customize’ the form (by customizing the custom.pll) which was generally protected during upgrades / patching. Luckily most changes traditionally done using cutom.pll can be accomplished using Forms Personalization.

Functional Folks - How to quickly get started – The ‘personalize’ menu can be found at Help -> Diagnostics -> Custom Code -> Personalize. To prevent unauthorized users from changing the look and behavior of forms, please use the following profile options:
Utilities: Diagnostics = Yes / No
Hide Diagnostics = Yes / No

Four sections to define a Personalization – There are four sections in the define forms personalization form:
Rules Header – This is where you enter the rules and rule descriptions in plain English. You can sequence these rules using a number and enable/ disable any one rule by using the Enabled checkbox.
Conditions – Consists of Trigger Event: the event within the form that causes invocation of the rule, Trigger object: the context for the trigger event, such as a
particular block or item, Condition: an optional SQL fragment that, when it evaluates to TRUE, allows the rule to execute.
Context or Scope - The Scope is evaluated based on the current runtime context to determine if a Rule should be processed or not. The Scope can be at the Site, Responsibility, User, or Industry level. Each Rule can have one or more Scopes associated with it.
Actions – Determines what the personalization does when the condition and context are true. Various types of actions available include ‘Property’, ‘Message’, Builtin’ or a ‘Special’. Based on the type, additional definition

Real world examples you can try – One of my banking client wanted the Journal Enter form to be customized for the following business rules:

1. Change the ‘Journal’ prompt to display ‘Voucher’
2. Journal description should always be in UPPER CASE
3. Do not display the Budget field, as budgets were not implemented
4. Note to display warning to change Period for prior period Journals.

The following screenshots explain how these four business requirements were implemented using Forms Personalization:

1. Change the ‘Journal’ prompt to display ‘Voucher’:




2. Journal description should always be in UPPER CASE:



3. Do not display the Budget field, as budgets were not implemented:



4. Note to display warning to change Period for prior period Journals:



Journal Entry Form after Personalizations:

When opening the form, the following note gets displayed:



Journal Entry Form after Personalization (Note - Voucher, Budget not displayed and Description in Upper Case: