R12 Order Management – What’s changed?

September 11th, 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.

Multiple Operating Unit Access – In 11i, a responsibility could only be tied to a single operating unit. However, in R12, responsibilities can be assigned to one or more operating units by assigning the responsibility to a security profile. This is a great enhancement for businesses where users require multi-organization access.

Credit Card Entry Enhancements - An additional field has been added to the order entry screen to capture the security code typically located on the back of a credit card. Additionally, the credit card number is encrypted at the database level and stored within the Payments (formally iPayments) module. I’ll put out a more detailed article that talks about the drastic changes to the iPayments module.

Reoccurring Charges - Functionality has been added to the TSO (Telecommunications Service Ordering) module which allows reoccurring billings. This is perfect for subscriptions and other like services.

Partial Period Revenue Recognition – A joint OM and AR enhancement, partial period revenue recognition is a set of new revenue recognition rules in AR which allow for revenue recognition on a daily basis. Previously in 11i revenue recognition could only be done on a monthly basis.

Pay Now or Pay Later – Upfront billing in Order Management can now be done and can be configured based on pricing charges, taxes, deposits, installment billing, and prepayments.

Mass Scheduling Changes – The scheduling concurrent request can now pick up lines that have errored in the scheduling workflow activity. It also can now pick up lines that are in Entered status – both converted and manually entered orders.

Customer Acceptance Process - Oracle R12 now provides the ability to introduce a customer acceptance step prior to invoicing. By setting up a deferral reason in AR, invoicing can be deferred until acceptance has been captured.

Tax Updates – Additional tax fields have been added to the order entry screens that provide more flexibility with Vertex.

Architectural Changes to Inventory - in 11i, Discrete and Process Inventory modules were entirely separate entities. Oracle has converged these modules into one data structure, where functionalities from both modules have combined to be available to both. This doesn’t mean much from an OM perspective, but technical changes have been performed to the Pick Release and Ship Confirmation processes to work with the new combined inventory model.

Architectural Changes to OM, Install Base, and Service Contracts Integration – My understanding is that there is no functionality changes, but from a technical standpoint Oracle has implemented a best practice approach  to OM to Install Base and OM to Service Contracts touchpoints to ensure API calls are used rather than direct queries.

Entry Filed under: Order Management, Order to Cash, R12, Technical, Uncategorized