By Steve Derivan
Businesses of various shapes and sizes across the globe continue to invest in and expand the footprint of their ERP applications. Much of this increased spend includes mission critical projects such as
1) Upgrades
2) Deploying new applications and
3) Migrating new businesses, acquired companies, countries and/or re-engineered processes into an existing “corporate” ERP.
So how do these companies begin the process? What are the key considerations in play to complete these daunting tasks within an Oracle ERP environment?
Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Releases 11i and R12, and Oracle Fusion Applications – the significant majority of existing Oracle ERP customers use these 3 applications suites.
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by Robert D. Anderson, CPA
On January 18th, I presented a webinar featuring a case study of a firm that is successfully using Oracle E-Business Suite Projects, Oracle Order Management and Oracle Receivables, and I showed how they manage their revenue. This customer leverages R12.1.3 revenue management functionality for GAAP revenue recognition and uses EBS Projects with a different revenue recognition basis. In this webinar I also showed how creative approaches to integrating Orders and Projects are possible with minimal development, that robust solutions support long term business needs while also providing flexibility for growth, and that simple approaches lead to the best long term solutions.
Sound interesting? You can view the webinar here
By Ravi Shankar, PgMP, PMP, PMI-RMP and PMI-SP
For large construction projects, interest incurred during the construction period for borrowed capital is typically capitalized for the duration of project construction, until the Capital Asset is generated. In Oracle E-Business Suite Applications, the Capital Projects functionality supports these requirements. To utilize this functionality you would set up an Interest Schedule (similar to a Burden Schedule) and associate it with the project type of the Capital Project. This schedule provides for the association of interest name, interest rate for the organization and other relevant details for interest calculations, compounding effect, expenditure type exclusions, etc.
Oracle Projects generates the interest to be capitalized once per project for each General Ledger period. Based on the system linkage function of the expenditure type to be used for interest (generally it is the Miscellaneous type class), the appropriate auto accounting function and SLA need to be properly configured to ensure the interest capitalized gets posted in the GL appropriately. Capitalization interest calculation is for the differential expenditure items on a cumulative basis, i.e. until the Construction In Process (CIP) is ready to be capitalized or Asset lines are ready to be generated. Once generated and transferred to Assets, the process stops generating interest on those expenditure items. Interest is capitalized at the same task level as the expenditure item.
For tasks that don’t have specific Asset Assignments, i.e. tasks used to accumulate Common Costs for the project, Oracle EBS Projects provides various allocation methods so that the Asset generation process does not create Unassigned Asset lines. The interest capitalization process is run at month end, before generating asset lines. The Asset line generation process does not show the interest capitalization amount in the CIP.
By Ravi Shankar, PgMP, PMP, PMI-RMP and PMI-SP
The Oracle® E-Business Suite Project Management application (PJT) integrates with Microsoft® Project out-of-the-box to provide for bi-directional integration between Oracle E-Business Suite Projects and Microsoft Project (MSP). This provides for downloading the project structure and current working version of the project from Oracle and updating them in MSP to create the detailed workplan structure, together with resource assignments and resource scheduling. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ravi Shankar, PgMP
This is Part 2 of a 2 part blog series on Program Reporting in Oracle E-Business Suite Project Management (PJT). These blog articles and our May 4th Webinar will help you understand how to use Program Reporting in your organization.
Program Roll-up Metrics
The following metrics roll up at the Program level:
By Ravi Shankar, PgMP
The Oracle E-Business Suite Project Management (PJT) application offers a key feature that is not yet widely used, but delivers valuable functionality: Program Reporting. This 2 part blog article and our May 4th Webinar will help you understand how to use Program Reporting in your organization.
Program Level reporting, as distinct from managing the Program itself, is the process wherein related Projects are linked to the Program Project. While the Program itself is a Project, and hence could have its own activities for costs, budgets revenue, etc, it could also be the recipient of rolled up data of related Child Projects, whose financial, Workplan and Progress information are visible in the Performance Management Tab of the Program.
For the Program level roll up reporting, we link the individual child projects to the lowest WBS of the program project. A linked child Project could by itself be also a Program i.e. could have roll up of Projects to itself. Read the rest of this entry »
By Kimberly McDonald Baker
Project Partners worked with Iberdrola Renewables to implement their Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management system – which resulted in awards for both Iberdrola Renewables and Project Partners.
Iberdrola Renewables is a very exciting company in the fast growing renewable energy field. Its portfolio of power assets require 24-hour energy management and scheduling, every day of the year.
The firm identified several key challenges they wanted their new Enterprise Project Portfolio Mangement system to address. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ravi Shankar, PgMP, PMP, PMI-RMP and PMI-SP
Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Projects Applications Release 12 provides rich functionality to support multi currency processing capabilities in the areas of accruing revenue and generating invoices. Revenue is always processed in the project functional currency, as distinct from the project currency and project funding currency. Revenue amounts derived in the billing transaction currency (invoice processing currency) are converted to project functional, funding and project currency during the revenue generation process. The Release 12 EBS system tracks and posts the revenue, unbilled receivables and unearned revenue in both the functional and billing transaction currency to the general ledger, thereby giving full visibility, both at the project level and in the general ledger, of the details of revenue in the different currency options. Read the rest of this entry »
By Jason Ames, PMP and Kimberly McDonald Baker
Continuing our discussion from the prior blog article, we are now ready to address success factor number 2 in the Key Drivers to EPPM Success.
All Business Systems Talk to Each Other
An Enterprise Project Portfolio Management system is one of many business systems that an organization may use to improve its operations, but it must not live in a vacuum. An organization’s projects touch accounting through project costs and expenditures. Projects touch engineering through cost and material estimating, drawing releases and change orders. Service projects are affected when scheduling client engagements. Read the rest of this entry »
By Jason Ames, PMP and Kimberly McDonald Baker
Too often organizations make an investment in an Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) system but they fail to recognize the full benefits. One of the reasons is that people fail to see an enterprise PPM solution as more than just a scheduling tool.
When used properly, however, an EPPM system can be a critical factor in driving business value, not only by making sure a project stays on schedule but also via ensuring that the right projects are selected, resources are used efficiently and decision makers have the information they need to drive corporate strategy.
Key Drivers of EPPM Success
1. Top down commitment, bottom up participation
2. All business systems talk to each other
3. Measuring what’s important
4. Determining which projects to start and when to shut them down
5. Finding the bottlenecks
6. Constant learning
This series of blog articles will address each of the above success factors. Read the rest of this entry »
