Oracle Projects Suite of applications

What is Oracle Projects Suite of Applications?

• Project Foundation (PJF) - Common setups for Projects Suite like templates, project types, expenditure categories, expenditure types etc
• Project Costing (PJC) - Costing related functions for projects
• Project Billing (PJB) - Billing (both Revenue and Invoicing). Billing module license includes access to Costing module features
• Project Resource Management (PJR) - Labor resource management features. Project team role requirements are staffed through this application
• Project Collaboration (PJL) - Project team member collaboration
• Project Management (PJT) - Functionalities relating to workplan management, enhanced budgeting and forecasting, change control & project performance reporting. Seamless integration with all of the above modules.

Projects suite features comparison chart:

BIG DECISION - do you want to turn on Item Serialization?

One of my clients whose primary footprint on the supply chain is Oracle EBS was at the crossroads of making a big decision - whether to turn on item serialization or not. This decision has lots of benefits but also comes with a lot of additional responsibilities to enter and track serial numbers. Here is the journey on how we evaluated the item serialization big decision for the client:



What is Serialization?

Oracle Inventory provides complete serial number support for inventory transactions. You can enable serial number control for specific items in your inventory. For items under serial number control, you assign unique serial numbers to individual units and

thereafter reference the same serial numbers each time you perform material transactions. This allows you to have tight control over every unit of every item in your inventory.



Serialization in Inventory & Installed Base tracking design:

Key considerations for the Client:

• Client does not create its own Serial No upon installing the Products and hence Serialization is applicable only to the Inventory ordered for the Project
• Serialization can be selectively turned on at specific item (A Type?) level

Key questions and design considerations presented to Client leadership team:

• Can we use serialization features at selective A type items such as Cameras?
• Can this be enabled using Item category/Catalogue definitions
• Can we model the Product sold (eg product1 product2 etc) as MTL Items (non tangible, but Item Master record with IB tracking enabled)?
• Can we define/track Client Serial No at that level?
• Is that scalable to future design of serialization turned on at lower levels?
• How does this get IB tracking benefits and for maintenance/upselling?

Based on the above framework and many deep dive sessions later, the client decided to turn on serialization only to key 'A' level high value items to begin with. This enabled them to adapt slowly to best industry practices and also have a scalable design to turn on serialization for 'B' and 'C' level items in the future.

Is Oracle Project Contracts a fit for your organization?

To understand if Project Contracts is the right fit for your organization, let us understand in detail its integration to other Oracle EBS modules:

Oracle EBS Integration:

• Provides several mechanisms to ensure timely delivery and receipt of products, services, and other contractual obligations.
• The Deliverable Tracking System (DTS) is the center of Contract Execution and is used to track all activities related to a contract.
• Deliverables can be inbound and outbound oriented, and can be internal or external.
• Examples of deliverables that can be tracked include planned receipt and shipment of items, mailing of an initial engineering drawing, or monthly submission of progress reports.
• The Deliverable Tracking System is integrated with other major components of the Oracle e-Business Suite, including Oracle Projects, Oracle Project Manufacturing, Advanced Planning and Scheduling, Oracle Internet Procurement, and Oracle Shipping Execution.
• This integration allows you to collect cost against a contract through projects and tasks, feed contractual demand into the planning system, create procurement documents such as purchase requisitions and purchase orders for direct-procured contract material and other items that are not sourced through planning, create shipment requests for shippable deliverables and track shipping and delivery statuses, generate billing events, and recognize revenue.
• All the manufacturing transactions take place at the project or project-task level depending on how the organization parameters are set, and if the project/project-task information is on the deliverable.
• Contract related information from the other products can also be viewed and tracked within the DTS with additional drill down capability.

Fitment and Suitability of Oracle Project Contracts for your organization:

• Project Contracts was designed and built primarily for Aerospace and Defence Industry. Enhancing its features or Web enabling it is on the current roadmap of Oracle Development
• Its powerful features is Contract creation, authoring and maintenance and handling Deliverables associated to the contract Lines (DTS)
• Funding association is at the Contract Line level and hence one contract can fund multiple related projects
• Billing integration is manual and the Application doesn’t call the Billing extension (for both Revenue and Billing)
• Sub Project associations can be modeled through the creation of a Master Project to represent the Contract and the associated projects created as Sub Projects
• Procurement integration is seamless based on Deliverables
• As an organization, you have to determine if you have any other similar modules / systems which provides project contract capabilities
• If not, then because of its powerful features and functionalities and its seamless integration with other EBS modules, you might want to consider implementing Oracle Project Contracts

Understanding Project Contracts (OKE)- features and functionalities

Project Contract structure and relationship:

• OKE Contract structure is similar to that of a Purchase Order.
• A PO could reference multiple Lines. Each PO line could reference multiple shipments. Each shipment could reference multiple distributions, which is the lowest level at which transactions are processed
• Similarly, OKE Contract (Header) contains core information of the Contract and references multiple Contract lines.
• Seeded values for Line style (Data Item, Free Format, Item, Option) are available for the defaulting of appropriate fields for data entry into the Contract Line
• Each Line could be associated with one or more deliverables classified as, inbound (receipt of goods and services) or outbound (shipment or providing of services)
• Contract is associated with a project and the contract line with one or more projects (please see below)

Master and Sub Project association:

• At the Contract Header, we associate the entire contract with a Project. This association is core to the integration with Projects Suite
• Typically, we might have several parallel projects that are being planned and executed for one Master Contract/Agreement. They might reference multiple lines and multiple deliverables, each of which might be a finished item, manufactured and shipped from an inventory organization
• To ensure they are all appropriately linked to the contract line, we need to define the Sub Project Association (at its task level) for the Project selected for the Contract Header
• Sub Project Association does not roll up costs, revenue, etc and is meant primarily to select it at the Contract line level. To achieve the benefit of Performance roll up, if the client is licensing PJT too, the Master project associated at the contract header should be defined as a Program project and the child projects associated with its task, in addition to also associating them as sub project
• Through this design, a Master (Program) project associated at the Header can be used to associate the multiple delivery projects (defined as sub project to its task) at the individual contract line

Contract Funding Process:

• The unique feature of OKE Funding is that a Contract could be funded by multiple parties and can fund multiple projects
• At the Contract level, in the Parties and Contacts Tab, we associate the multiple Fund by Parties, which drives the validation for funding association at the contract line level. Hence, a Contract could be entered into with multiple Fund by parties simultaneously
• The Application validates the Fund by Party assignment at the Contract when we select a party in the Funding Workbench in OKE to fund the applicable Project associated with a line
• OKE funding is initiated and handled only in OKE and upon the funding being definitized, the Application automatically creates the Funding Agreement record in Projects with the Product Source of OKE and populating the Reference field with a unique No that is concatenated with the Currency code of Funding
• We can enforce Hard limits for invoice, revenue, etc as per the normal Funding done in Projects. Maintenance of Funding is done only in OKE. We could also use the functionality of automatic baseline without revenue budget feature from OKE Funding

Deliverables Tracking System (DTS):

• This is the core of OKE functionality. Integration of OKE with other Applications is handled, controlled and monitored from this workbench.
• It displays the relevant information in various tabs the details of integration and provides particulars of records processed there.
• These are Requisition, Purchasing, Receiving, Payables, Shipping, Receivables, etc. For example, Receivables tab would show the Draft Invoice No, AR Transaction No, Amount unpaid, etc.

Project Manufacturing Integration (PJM):

• OKE integration with Manufacturing, for a project centric operation, is through PJM.
• Each of the project referenced in the contract line needs to be PJM enabled in the inventory org referenced in the Contract.
• This ensures that the standard Project Cost Collection Process transfers the summarized costs from Mfg at the cost element level (Material, labor, Outside Processing and Material and Mfg Overheads) to PJC.

Manufaturing Planning Integration (Project MRP):

• Manufacturing Planning integration is another key area of integration.
• We can initiate Deliverables Planning from DTS for the item.
• We need to select the Master Demand Schedule (MDS) Plan Name and the application creates a manual entry for the MDS.
• After that, we need to run MRP with the manual MDS source and the Application plans the execution using the Planning option, pegging levels, BOM, etc of the item.
• Project and Task references default into the various Work Orders and costs appropriately collected in PJC.
• We need to run a process to relieve the MDS demand to avoid duplication of demand creation (upon shipping execution, Planning Manager does not relieve the manual MDS demand created through this integration)

Procurement Integration:

• Expense, Inventory destination items and Non catalogue items can be initiated for Procurement from DTS directly.
• OKE workflow creates the process and we launch Requisition Import with the source as OKE to create the approved Requisition in Purchasing.
• It can be then auto created as PO and processed normally.
• Project information defaults into the Distribution based on the association of the DTS Deliverable with the Project and Task.

Shipping Execution Integration:

• We can also launch Shipping Execution and confirmation from DTS.
• This information is passed to Shipping Execution.
• This would be done when the outbound deliverable item that is planned for execution in Mfg is ready for Shipping

Project Billing Integration:

• When the outbound deliverable item is ready to be billed (item defined as Invoicable and Invoice enabled), we can launch the creation of billing events (for both revenue and invoice).
• In the window we enter the event type and initiate the event creation.
• This creates the eligible event that is then automatically processed when we generate revenue and invoice from Projects.

Why TCA Matters for Clients running Oracle Ebusiness Suite

Why TCA Matters - What clients get from the TCA architecture:

• Architecture to model your customers and other trading partners as you see best for your business
• Architecture that will grow with your requirements
• Features to maintain extremely reliable customer information (e.g. ABC Co. is now sure that their supplier John of XYZ Inc is the same person as their customer, John of XYZ Inc)
• Glue that ties several E-Business Suite flows in a seamless way
• Customer Data Integration solution even if you are not running a single E-Business Suite module
• Platform that can play a key role in your IT landscape for Master Data Management

Why TCA Matters - What clients have to do:

• Take a close look at how you do business and how your business processes are most efficiently performed
• Ask questions about how you should model customer information e.g. which entities should be modeled as parties; when should you create an account; should you create multiple accounts for some parties; should you create multiple billing sites for an account; should you create account relationships
• Even if you are implementing few modules of E-Business Suite to start with, keep in mind the bigger picture about customer information

Oracle TCA uptakes in Oracle Release 12

TCA update in R12 to additional entities:

• Banks & Bank Branches
• Suppliers
• Legal Entity

TCA in R12 - New Bank Account Model:

• Central place to define internal bank accounts
• Keep track of all bank accounts in one place
• Explicitly grant account access to multiple operating units/functions and users
• Multi-Org Access - In the new model, bank accounts are owned by Legal Entities with the option to grant account use to Operating Unit (Payables, Receivables), Legal Entity (Treasury), Business Group (Payroll)

TCA in R12 - Bank model benefits:

• Reduce number of access points to manage bank accounts - Centralized user interface
• Improve visibility and control of bank accounts - Multi-org access control
• Simplify bank reconciliation - Single bank statement can be reconciled across multiple Operating Units
• Increase percentage of automatically reconciled transactions - Bank account level reconciliation parameters add flexibility

TCA in R12 - Supplier Representation:

• Supplier organizations are in TCA
• Terms of doing business with the supplier are in Purchasing / Payables
• Supplier organization, address, contact, phone, email etc. are all in TCA
• Employees are already in TCA, Payables using the same employee records in TCA
• New supplier maintenance UI using TCA UI components

TCA in R12 - Benefits of Supplier representation:

• Single repository for suppliers data
• AR/AP netting
• Oracle Payments serves as a payment data repository on top of the Trading Community Architecture (TCA) data model. The TCA model holds the party information. Oracle Payments then stores all of the party’s payment information and its payment instruments (including credit cards, debit cards, customer bank accounts, and supplier bank accounts).

TCA in R12 - Legal Entities:

• Legal entity is created as a party of party type ORGANIZATION or PERSON
• An establishment is created as a party of party type ORGANIZATION
• TCA creates a new classification category called “Business Function”. It is used mainly to model what business functions a party can perform in E-Business Suite
• For modeling legal entities and establishments in TCA, classification code “Legal Entity” and “Establishment” are created under the “Business Function” class category
• An establishment is created as a party and always link to a party that is classified as a legal entity through the relationship model

TCA in R12 - Integration with HRMS:

• TCA creates the global view of person
• TCA enables you to store person Information at a corporate level
• Person is stored as party in TCA
• Comprehensive duplicate person check when entering a new person – Across the business group
• Propagate some information entered in one business group to the record in the other business group
• PER_ALL_PEOPLE_F.PARTY_ID is a foreign key to the HZ_PARTIES table, an integral part of Oracle's "Trading Community Architecture" (TCA).

Oracle Trading Community Architecture (TCA) - key concepts

I have seen many clients who do not understand the power of TCA architecture and how they can effectively use the TCA model to design their customer master. In this post I will explain the key TCA concepts and I will also try (in later posts) to take a real world example of customers and model it in the Oracle Release 12.1.3 environment.

TCA = Trading Community Architecture; Data Model and not Module. TCA provides a single, universal definition of trading partners across applications and job function.

A Trading Community Architecture is a way to understand who our trading partners interact with inside and outside the enterprise. TCA puts a foundation in place for a trading partner model:

• Linking Suppliers and Customers
• Online Marketplace
• Shared Service Centers

How did TCA come about?

• First introduced in 11i
• Introduction of Oracle CRM application
• Requirement for a common customer model for all Oracle Applications
• Model evolved from working with ERP and CRM teams to create a view of the customer base which supports all flows throughout the E-Business Suite
• To support both B2B and B2C business models
• Re-architected to enable future support for entire trading Community

Guiding Principles of TCA:

• Create a central repository for the entire E-Business Suite to store information relating to all members of a trading community versus separate tables for each member
• Prospects, Customers, Contacts, Employees, Partners, Distributors, Suppliers, Banks, etc.
• Record complex business relationships between Trading Community entities (including 3rd party relationships)
• Support all business models, industries, and geographies

TCA Data Model: Parties vs. Accounts:

• From an application perspective, one of the most important things to understand about the TCA model is that the concept of “customer” is separated into two layers: The Party layer and the Account layer.
• When CRM applications refer to “Customer” they are referring to the Party Layer.
• On the other hand, when ERP applications refer to “Customer” they are referring to the Account Layer.
• Thus, confusion arises because both are using the word “Customer” to refer to two different things.

Other features of TCA:

• Public API’s for data manipulation of TCA tables
• Common Party User Interface Components
• Hierarchy Model
• Bulk Import of customer data and D&B Integration
• DQM for duplicate prevention
• Party and Account Merge

TCA data dictionary:

• HZ Parties - Stores basic information about parties and their relationship. Party ID is the primary key. Party id, Party Number, Party Name and Party Type are key columns. Establishes the Business Relationships.
• HZ Locations - Stores delivery or postal address. Location ID is the primary key. Not to be used for modeling party hierarchical relationships (use party relationships). Identifies the Party and its Account. Location can cross Parties and a Party can have multiple Locations. Account (beneath the Party) inherits the Locations defined for the Party.
• HZ Party Sites - Table that links HZ Parties with HZ Locations. Party Site ID is the primary key.
• HZ Cust Accounts - Different instances of Business Relationships (Selling, etc). Multiple Accounts can exist for a Party. Cust Account ID is the primary key.
• HZ Cust Acct Sites All - Site reference to the Account . Partitioned by Org Id. Primary Key is Cust Acct Site Id.
• HZ Cust Site Uses All - Stores business purpose usage (Bill To, Ship To, etc) for the Customer Account. Site Use Id is the Primary Key. Integrated with HZ Cust Acct Sites All.
• HZ Customer Profiles - Stores credit characteristics of Party, Account, Site.
• HZ Party Relationships - Stores relationships between parties.
• HZ Cust Profile Classes - Stores credit characteristics that is common across a group of Accounts