BizTech Blog

Like most software upgrades, generally the newer version would provide some type of backward compatibility. Well, with the recently released Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 11g, you will not have the ability to do so. Due to the major enhancements of the OBIEE toolset, there is no way to seamlessly migrate our metadata from 10g to 11g. The road ahead may be a little gloomy for 10g but fear not, there is still some light down the tunnel. Fortunately, bundled with OBIEE 11g is an upgrade utility called “Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant.”

The Upgrade Assistant provides option for RPD and Presentation Catalog upgrades. In Part 1, we will tackle the RPD metadata upgrade. To see how to upgrade your Presentation Catalog metadata, please jump to Part 2 of our OBIEE Metadata Upgrade.

Calculating time series functions in Oracle Business Intelligence (OBI) requires development of a time hierarchy. This time hierarchy is necessary because while OBI can calculate the previous period it does not know the context of the period.

Just about every for profit business organization generates it precious life blood (revenue) from sales, and the current SFA/CRM market is estimated by Gartner to exceed $US 9 Billion in annual spend. However, a 2009 study revealed that only 39% of corporate executives believe their employees have the right tools and authority to solve SFA/CRM related client issues (source: Strativity Group, Inc 2009). So an astounding 61% do not feel they have the right tools in place.

In a previous post, I spoke of an organization that needed to create a custom BI Publisher template to accommodate their Canadian bank’s proprietary file format for EFT files in R12. What I didn’t mention was that some of the required data was stored in descriptive flexfields within Oracle. Descriptive flexfields are not included in the Oracle Payments Funds Disbursement Payment Instruction Extract data which is the standard data definition for AP funds disbursement.

As is the case with many organizations, they were concerned that they would have to modify the standard programs to accommodate their bank’s requirements. Their minds were put at ease when they learned that Oracle provided a standard API which allows organizations to add additional fields (i.e. XML Tags) to the XML extract. This standard PL/SQL package was the IBY_FD_EXTRACT_EXT_PUB.

The standard XML file that is generated by the Payment Instruction Extract is organized into 4 hierarchical groups:

1. Payment Instruction – The payment instruction group encompasses the entire file.
2. Payment – The payment group represents a payment to a specific supplier.
3. Document Payable – The document payable group represents the individual invoices that are being paid to the supplier within the payment.
4. Document Payable Line – The document payable line group represents the lines within the invoice being paid to the supplier.

As a consultant I have seen numerous organizations conduct business with banks that do not conform to the ACH CCD Cash Concentration/ Disbursement File format. Most recently I was at an organization that sends electronic funds transfer (EFT) files to a Canadian bank that required a proprietary file format for incoming EFT files. To conform to the bank’s requirements, the organization had customized the NACHA Payment Format program in 11i.

In R12, Oracle introduced the Payments module which replaces the payments functionality within Payables. The Payments module utilizes BI Publisher templates instead of Oracle Reports to generate formatted EFT files. As a result, you have to re-implement the customizations that were made to the NACHA Payment Format program in earlier releases.

R12.1.3 has been released for some time now. BizTech has compiled a list, module by module, of the main features that have been added, amended, or removed in this latest release.

One way that implementers of CRM software can help their potential customers during the sales cycle is to show them their vision for how their CRM system will work once they are live on the application. The art of the demo is a powerful tool to gain acceptance of the key champions early on in the CRM selection process. Below is an article that speaks to the success of this concept at one of BizTech's CRM On Demand customers:

In order to understand how General Ledger may be used to provide projects based or project related reporting, we must first explain how Oracle General Ledger stores and tracks account balance information.

R12.1.3 has been released for some time now. BizTech has compiled a list of the Tax, Legal and Regulatory updates that have been added, amended, or removed in this latest release.

Getting started on a Business Intelligence (BI) project can be the most difficult part of the project. There are countless places to start. The common approach is to ask a business user “What reports and dashboards would you like?” This is a recipe for disaster. Most business people will struggle to articulate their requirements and, at best, will provide a set of reports which will likely already meet their needs rather than truly improve their operations.

The best way to begin a BI project is to follow a simple three step process. First, focus on a particular functionally-oriented business problem, objective or strategy. For example, a VP of Procurement who is trying to partner with suppliers to reduce the cost of raw materials, improve quality and on-time delivery.