Whether you’re implementing a new system or simply changing office procedures, there are five core steps to successfully transforming your business process and implementing change…
Continue Reading Add comment Send To a Friend September 18th, 2008
In my last Qualifier article, I delved into the inner workings of Qualifiers in Advanced Pricing by walking through a quick demo of how to setup a Qualifier to reference Descriptive Flexfield data on a sales order transaction. In this article, I’d like to touch on how some Qualifiers require more advanced PL/SQL techniques to retrieve transactional data. For example, the “Customer Party ID” is tied to QP_SOURCING_API_PUB.GET_PARTY_ID function call because the Party ID isn’t stored directly in the G_HDR record structure. With that said, lets walk-thru the creation of a Qualifier that requires us to create our own PL/SQL function reference…
Continue Reading 1 comment Send To a Friend September 12th, 2008
Good question. I’m in the process of figuring this out myself. However, here are a few things I do know based on my research and my recent R12 engagement…
Continue Reading 1 comment Send To a Friend September 11th, 2008
Oracle Advanced Pricing allows you to create discounts, surcharges, and other promotions (called Modifiers) that can be applied against sales orders both manually and automatically. Often there are requirements for Modifiers to only apply in certain situations. For example, promotions on specific products or product lines, discounts on customer types, additional charges on international shipments, etc. So in addition to creating Modifiers, Qualifiers can be used to reference specific attributes of a sales order, product, customer, etc. to determine if the Modifier qualifies for the sales transaction.
Oracle provides a wide array of Qualifiers to evaluate a sales transaction, but situations often arise where Qualifiers are needed for attributes that aren’t available out of the box. However, with a few configurations and little bit of PL/SQL knowledge, you can create your own Qualifier attributes.
Continue Reading 1 comment Send To a Friend July 21st, 2008
Consultants - can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Majority of today’s software implementations require the need for outside consultants for their technology and industry expertise, but the costs of outside consulting can be a hard pill for top executives to swallow. Engaging consulting experts is a necessary evil in ensuring a successful implementation of your ERP system; however, by outsourcing the design process and leveraging your internal IT resources for testing and implementation, you can effectively utilize the strengths of both factions while lowering your outside consulting costs…
Continue Reading Add comment Send To a Friend June 4th, 2008
In the United States there are numerous international embargo laws in place that restrict U.S. based corporations from selling to countries that are deemed a threat by the government. Cuba, Iran, and North Korea are all examples of countries which no one in the U.S. can conduct business with. These laws can change often depending on the political atmosphere or whoever happens to be in office, making it difficult for organizations who sell or distribute products globally to not only adhere to the laws, but to also adapt their audit procedures when a change to policy occurs.
Continue Reading 1 comment Send To a Friend May 30th, 2008
Oracle’s Application Implementation Methodology is the “industry standard” for Oracle project management and implementation strategy. The main feature of the AIM software is the documentation templates that are available. I typically do not use all available templates, but there a few key documents such as the BR 100, MD 50, etc. that are handy.
Most Oracle consulting firms do not use AIM as is, but use it as a basis in coming up with their own implementation methodology. Either way, it’s a great tool to keep handy.
Continue Reading 19 comments Send To a Friend May 6th, 2008
One of the fundamental flaws in Oracle Order Management (OM) is the inability to include tax on freight and special charge modifiers that are setup in Advanced Pricing (QP). There’s just no way to do it out of the box. Even if you use the Oracle suggested work around, which is to add freight as a line item to a sales order, it’s still a manual process and defeats the purpose of being able to include and calculate freight automatically the way you can through a charge modifier.
Continue Reading 15 comments Send To a Friend February 29th, 2008
These days it’s standard practice for American based companies implementing software systems to send technical development overseas to countries like India, Singapore, and China. If you walk around the corner of your office, you may find a small offshore team crammed into a cubical gathering and reviewing technical requirements to be distributed to resources located on the other side of the world. In almost all cases, the outsourcing model is adopted in an effort to cut down on development costs. On the surface it makes sense - why pay a US based contractor the high salary when an offshore resource can perform the same work for a fraction of the cost? Several years ago, many IT executives considered this question to be a no-brainer and would have immediately adopted the offshore model. But while all their concentration was focused on cutting costs, project managers neglected other important variables in the offshore equation, and as a result there have been few successes and far too many failures in adopting the outsourcing model within the IT industry. If you’re an executive evaluating the cost benefits of the offshore model, there are other factors to take into consideration.
Continue Reading 2 comments Send To a Friend January 21st, 2008
Over the years I’ve been involved with several Oracle implementations where the decision was made to retain the existing warehouse and inventory management systems in place of Oracle WMS. Perhaps your organization had made a similar decision knowing that the existing warehouse solution was best suited for your operations. Not to say that Oracle WMS is the best warehouse management solution out there – because it may very well not be. In fact, it may be true that your Legacy inventory system is the best fit for your business. Not only may it be the best fit, but keeping the existing system in place also eliminates any risk involved in changing the systems of what can be a fragile inventory and shipping operation. In other words, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – right?
Continue Reading Add comment Send To a Friend January 10th, 2008
Recently I was looking for any working example of the OE_Order_PUB.Process_Order API to use for a volume test I wanted to setup. The idea would be to identify a base script that with minimal changes could be used to create and book a mass amount of sales orders. I scoured Metalink and Google, and for the longest time I could not identify a single working example. Many authors claimed to have posted an OE_Order_PUB.Process_Order script that, with slight modifications, are working examples, but this never was the case. There was always syntax or incorrect API parameter issues with each script I encountered…
Continue Reading 15 comments Send To a Friend December 6th, 2007
Up to 11.5.9, it was impossible to utilize the credit card functionality and secure fields unless you also implemented iPayment. Oracle iPayment is the module which screens and processes credit card transactions through Order Management (OM). While this is a nice package for clients who process high volumes of credit card payments, it’s not cost effective for the rest who may process credit cards on occasion and prefer to use an offline processor. So at the time you had two options; either fork up the money to buy the iPayment module, or process and store the transactional information offline and enter the prepayment manually in the system.
However, as of recently, Oracle has offered a patch (5192725) which allows for the use of the credit card fields in OM without the need to install iPayment. The application of this patch alone is not enough, as there are other tweaks that need to take place to make it all work. At any rate, I take this as a great act of generosity on Oracle’s part – it’s not often they provide us the choice to implement a module!…
Continue Reading 2 comments Send To a Friend August 24th, 2007
I recently bought a Lenovo IBM ThinkPad T61 notebook pre-installed with Windows XP SP2, Internet Explorer 7, Office 2007, and all the other IBM software bells and whistles. So far I’ve been quite happy with my purchase, however, I was disappointed to find several issues with IE and IBM factory software that caused my Internet Explorer session to crash when attempting to launch Oracle JInitiator. Upon clicking an apps link I get the infamous “Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close” error…
Continue Reading 8 comments Send To a Friend August 23rd, 2007
From an Oracle prospective, when I say “Shipping without Transacting Inventory”, I mean just that – being able to add a line item to the sales order in Order Management, following through with the pick release and shipment confirmation like a normal inventory item, but avoiding the inventory transactions that result from the shipment…
Continue Reading 9 comments Send To a Friend August 1st, 2007
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3 comments Send To a Friend July 17th, 2007
In a previous article, I discussed some of the advantages to using Personalizations within Oracle forms by demonstrating how to validate field data in the Sales Order form within Order Management. I’d like to further demonstrate some of the advanced features of Forms Personalizations by solving a problem that is frequently encountered within the Oracle development community – how to prompt and force the selection of inventory organization when entering a form…
Continue Reading Add comment Send To a Friend July 13th, 2007
Being that Oracle Order Management is a workflow driven module, there is a tendency for the transactions to get “hung” up on errored or deferred workflow activities that requires the workflow to be retried or progressed…
Continue Reading Add comment Send To a Friend July 7th, 2007
If you’re reading this article you probably did a Google search for this error message in hopes of finding a solution. Well, you may have come to the right place…
Continue Reading 1 comment Send To a Friend July 5th, 2007
Establishing an integrated business process is one thing - tailoring this process so that the financial results make sense to the organization is another…
Continue Reading 2 comments Send To a Friend March 9th, 2007
The latest Oracle Applications Technology rollup patch released in November 2006 introduces a multitude of fixes and enhancements to core ATG modules (FND, OAM, OWF, FWK, JTT, JTA, TXK, XDO, ECX, EC, AK, ALR, and UMX). The most notable, according to Metalink note 365228.1, are the enhancements to document attachments, Personalizations, and Workflow…
Continue Reading 2 comments Send To a Friend January 15th, 2007
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