Oracle E-Business Suite

An Overview

Agenda
Introduction Core Product Lines Data Integration Organization Model The Multi-Org Feature Application Management Profile Options Workflow Flexfield

E-Business Suite: an introduction

Oracle Applications is a suite of more than 55 integrated software modules for financial management, supply chain management, manufacturing, project systems, human resources and sales force automation
Also called the E-Business Suite (EBS)

EBS offers world class business automation built on the preeminent Oracle databases, using the full range of Oracle s own development tools

E-Business Suite: Core Product Lines

Supply Chain Management Customer Manufacturing Finance Relationship Management

Projects Human Resources

Business Intelligence

Data Integration
The key feature of all Oracle Applications modules is data integration Integration of master data: Sharing of customers, suppliers, employees, items and other entities across applications
Need to define such an entity in only one modulewill be shared by all other modules

Integration of transaction data: e.g. Order Management sends an order line to Receivables to be invoiced Integration of financial data: e.g. implications of a price change are rippled through Inventory, Work in Process, and Purchasing systems

Organization Model
The design of EBS contains a general organization model that can be customized to fit any actual organization Organizations in EBS can be Business Groups, Set of Books, Legal Entities, Operating Units, or Inventory Organizations These organizations come in a strict hierarchy, which is as follows (each arrow points from parent to child):
BG SOB LE OU IO

At any of the above levels, there can be multiple child organizations for a parent organization

Organization Model: Business Group

Business Group represents the highest level in the organization structure, such as the consolidated enterprise, a major division, or an operation company Business Group secures human resources information. For example, when you request a list of employees, you see all employees assigned to the business group of which your organization is a part.

Organization Model: Set of Books

An SOB is composed of a Chart of Accounts, a Calendar, and a functional Currency (the 3 C s) The financial transactions and balances in Oracle General Ledger belong to one SOB The user of one SOB sees only the journals that relate to that SOB

Organization Model: Legal Entity

A Legal Entity is a company for which, by law, one must prepare fiscal or tax reports, including a balance sheet and a profit-and-loss report In accounting terms, the Legal Entity is the smallest business unit for which one needs to be able to produce a balanced set of accounts

Organization Model: Operating Unit

OUs represent buying and selling units within an organization The OU concept is most apparent in the following modules of EBS: Order Management, Receivables, Purchasing, Payables
For these modules, one OU cannot see the transaction data- purchase orders, invoices, payments, receipts- of another OU

The customer and vendor lists are shared across SOBs. However, the address sites for them are partitioned by OU

Organization Model: Inventory Organization

The Inventory Organization is a unit that has inventory transactions and balances, and possibly manufactures or distributes products The Oracle Manufacturing modules, including Inventory, are partitioned by Inventory Organization

The Multi-Org Feature

Multi-Org is a feature that supports multiple organizations within a single instance of the database With Multi-Org, one can set up multiple SOBs, with only one installation of the software and only one database instance

The Multi-Org Feature

Other major features of Multi-Org are:
Users may be assigned secure access to particular organizations One can sell from one Legal Entity and ship from another, which may even belong to another SOB One can enter purchase orders and assign for receipt any Inventory Organization that uses the same SOB Reporting across Operating Units

Application Management: User

The System Administrator sets up an EBS user Persons are defined in the Human Resources system (as Employee, Applicant etc)- the EBS user may be linked to such a Person record
This link frequently determines access to Purchasing, Payables and HR functions

An email address may also be defined for the user- Oracle Alert and Workflow processes use this address to notify a user of actions that need attention

Application Management: Responsibility

Responsibilities are Oracle s device for controlling access The System Administrator achieves this by performing the following sequential steps:
Assign multiple functions to a form Put every needed form on one or more lowlevel menus Put low-level menus on one or more higherlevel menus, working up to a top-level menu Create a Responsibility name associated with that top-level menu Assign one or more users to the Responsibility

Application Management: Responsibility

The System Administrator may additionally assign some or all of the following components to a Responsibility
Data Group (required): defines the mapping between Oracle Applications products and ORACLE IDs. This determines the database tables and table privileges accessible by a particular application Request Security Group (optional): defines the concurrent programs that may be run by an application user under a particular responsibility

Application Management: Responsibility

Function and Menu Exclusions (optional): This excludes selected lower level menus or functions (that come under the top-level menu mapped to the Responsibility) from the Responsibility

Each User can have as many Responsibilities as necessary Oracle delivers a number of seeded Responsibilities for every application

Profile Options
Set of defaults for preferences for individual users e.g.
What printer to use How many copies of reports the user usually wants What menu style is preferred

The defaults are maintained at four levels

Site Application Responsibility within an application User

Profile Options
The System Administrator sets profile options at all four levels; however, users can update some of their own, less critical profile options themselves Whatever value of a profile option is specified in a lower level of the default chain overrides that at the higher level
i.e. user s personal profile overrides values at all the other levels

Workflow
Oracle Workflow makes it possible to automate business processes by routing information to people inside or outside the organization
Driven by easily modifiable business rules

Oracle Workflow is a piece of systems-level technology that is embedded throughout the EBS suite With the Workflow Builder tool, one can define processes that loop, branch into parallel flows and then rendezvous, or decompose into subprocesses The Account Generation module is also implemented using Workflow
AG permits defining company-unique logic for selecting flexfield segments

Flexfield
Two types of flexfields Key: used to uniquely identify information e.g. GL accounts, inventory items, fixed assets Descriptive: used to capture additional pieces of information from transactions entered into EBS KFF and DFF are both multi-segment fields A segment usually describes a particular characteristic of the entity identified by the flexfield There are 22 KFFs in EBS, each owned by a particular application e.g. Accounting Flexfield owned by GL, Asset Key Flexfield owned by Assets

Enterprise Setup Data Model

Linkage Business Group Responsibility Application - Responsibility Responsibility User ID User ID Employee Responsibility OU (11i) Responsibility OU (R12) Cardinality 1:1 1:n m:n 1:1 N:1 M:n Navigation Profile Option HR: Business Group Sys Admin. Responsibility Sys Admin.User Sys Admin.User Profile Option MO: Operating Unit Profile Option MO: Security Profile. Security Profile is defined in HR.