Project Partners Blog

By Ravi Shankar, PgMP, PMP, PMI-RMP and PMI-SP

Oracle Report Manager is an online report distribution system that provides a secure and centralized location to produce and manage point-in-time reports. Report producers submit, publish, and set security for reports. Report consumers view and approve reports. Reports can be published and presented to certain responsibilities without additional security or a variety of security models can be applied, allowing only authorized users to view entire reports or parts of reports. In addition, we can use specific templates to integrate reports displayed by Report Manager using the organization’s individual style

The key benefit of Report Manager in R 12 is that the report can be directly viewed and opened in Excel (as against earlier releases wherein it can be viewed only in PDF or html).

The following are the key benefits and highlights of using Report Manager.

• It provides a centralized report distribution system for point-in-time reports.
• It enables information producers to submit and publish Financial Statement Generator (FSG), Ad Hoc FSG, Variable Format, and Standard reports to a central repository.
• It enables information producers to present reports in the repository to end users via menu items on the Oracle Apps Home page or portal.
• It is accessible by any Oracle Applications user using a Web browser.
  It offers approval requirement before making reports available for general viewing.
• It permits report availability in a future timeframe.
• Reports can be opened and viewed in PDF, html or Excel formats.
• It secures reports by utilizing security paradigms.
• It provides an archive facility to maintain reports for future reference that no longer need to be displayed.
• It enables the publishing of reports that have been submitted as part of request sets or report sets.
• It enables the uploading of any type of file and publish it to a central repository. Reports in the repository can then be distributed to the Apps home page.

By Ravi Shankar, PgMP, PMP, PMI-RMP and PMI-SP

Oracle Advanced Global Intercompany System (AGIS) is a powerful application designed to handle the complex Intercompany accounting and processing requirements of global corporations. It has been designed and built using the OA Framework that is easy to use, and yet very sophisticated and rich in feature sets. It leverages the core building blocks of R 12 architecture in the areas of Legal Entity, Trading Community Architecture, Sub Ledger Accounting for Transaction Account Definition, workflow integration for processing and Approvals Management Application(AME) for transaction approval. The greatest benefit of the application is its ease of use for multiple companies belonging to different legal entities and Primary Ledger(s) across the globe that shares the same Oracle Application instance.

Once the Intercompany accounting and relationship is setup in the respective Primary Ledgers for the various transacting trading partners, the application elegantly processes the transactions and creates the accounting. Distribution account defaulting for the Initiator and Recipient can be automated through configurations in the Transaction Account Definition Window of sub ledger accounting and assignment to the respective Primary Ledgers. Transactions can be entered online in the application or loaded using WebADI integrator.

Approval of the Intercompany transaction is key to further processing in the respective ledger(s). Depending on whether invoicing is required or not, the journal is sent to the respective General Ledger(s) or to the Initiator’s and Recipient’s Receivables and Payables Module, respectively. Transaction access is secure using the Role Based Access Control model at the Organization level. The application provides for effective reconciliation of transactions with drill down features to identify the differences between the processed Receivable and Payable transactions of the respective trading partners .AGIS needs to be properly configured to harness its rich features. Further, additional care needs to be exercised in certain setups to ensure that the application behaves as intended, as these are either not clearly documented and or learnt based on implementation experience.

By Robert D. Anderson, CPA

During the last two years, Project Partners has been approached by several firms who run Oracle Order Management and now want to implement Oracle E-Business Suite Projects applications to provide a project-level profit and loss view, as well as contract and client profitability across the firm. Generally this request is happening at the same time the firm is undergoing massive growth and management wants it done quickly so they can get a handle on the growth that is happening and make sure it is profitable or identify problem areas quickly so action can be taken to prevent serious impact to the overall business.

The Oracle E-Business Suite Project Management module (PJT) does not create transactions but provides several tools to allow the tracking of financial transactions that are happening in the Project Costing and Project Billing applications. In addition, it offers both direct tracking in the tool and integration with project management tools, such as Microsoft Project Standard Edition and Primavera P6, as well as an open interface to interact with other similar management and scheduling tools in the market. Since the financial, resource and schedule information all resides in Oracle, the ability to leverage Key Performance Indicators and grouping them into Key Performance Areas, progress tracking and status reporting all combine to offer a strong tool to present the exceptions out of large volumes of data so the firm can take appropriate action at an early stage in the work. Read the rest of this entry »

Join Project Partners and Oracle Corporation on Wednesday, February 24 for a free, live webinar to learn about Oracle’s Application Integration Architecture (AIA) solution for integrating Oracle Primavera and Oracle E-Business Suite applications.  You’ll gain valuable information about how this solution will help their organization bring E-Business Suite and Primavera silos together. Read the rest of this entry »

By Peter Budelov

Project Managers (PMs) lead a hectic life because they not only need to manage the day-to-day operations of a project (i.e. work deliverables, schedules, cost and revenue), but they also must spend time with the appropriate IT tools to do this.  The keystone in making good project management decisions is having accurate, timely and easy to access project reporting data. 

Typically when using enterprise project management applications, this data is available, but not necessarily easy to get to, may not be easily displayed in a user friendly manner, does not necessarily have all the data needed, is not configurable, and certainly unavailable in a disconnected mode. Read the rest of this entry »

Oracle provides a strong resource with its recommended patch lists (RPL).  However, Project Partners is pleased to provide a  detailed list of patches that we have uncovered, either during implementations or as a result of internal testing. 

As with any patch you should always do detailed research so you can find the patch number and a description of the patch.  It is always important to investigate the patches completely, understand their compatibility with those you have already applied and how they might impact your environment, especially where customizations are concerned.  This is where the importance of testing your functionality comes into play.

With that said, below is some very useful ‘insider information’ for your review. Read the rest of this entry »

Challenges

Determine if you have a demand or supply oriented environment

• Demand resource management is more prevalent with internal resource organizations, i.e. IT organizations. The primary focus is to assure that resources are optimally allocated to projects in keeping with the organization’s stated goals and objectives. Or, in other words managing the problems of “everybody is over-booked” or “there’s more work than resources”.
  
• Supply resource management tends to be more attuned to billable professional resources. The primary focus is in balancing staff retention, skill mix and gross margins by assuring that resources are optimized to their maximum capacity. Or in other words “Is everybody billable?” or “Do we have enough analysts or too many designers?”
  
• Professional services and other resource intensive organizations may have both issues at the same time Read the rest of this entry »

There is no cookie-cutter definition of an engineering-construction (E&C) company other than they are all project-oriented businesses who perform construction-related work for a client (often referred to as the owner – the entity paying for the work and for whom the work is performed). There are those who perform design-only work (engineering), construction-only work, or design-build work (a combination of both).

Engineering companies are essentially professional services organizations who specialize in providing engineering-design solutions to clients – often in specialized fields.

Construction companies can generally be classified as either (a) contractors who perform all or most of the work themselves, or (b) subcontractors, who perform specialized work such as electrical, mechanical, or masonry tasks. General contractors (GCs) are contractors who perform many different types of work (even engineering services), often manage overall aspects of large (sometimes global) projects – referred to as construction-management (CM), and usually have access to large bonding resources.

Special cases are owner-CM, or owner-performed work. In the former, an owner (such as a large natural resources company, a government entity, or a specialty retailer) may act as a GC who subcontracts most or all of the work on a project to others, but manages the overall work themselves (CM). In the latter case, owners may have the people and equipment resources to actually perform some of the work rather than contracting it to others.

This article is a discussion of solutions for general contractors who use Oracle Project Management and Project Partners User Interface Applications in the execution of design-build projects. Future papers will focus on the other members of the E&C family. Read the rest of this entry »

Executing multiple projects for one customer is common practice for many project-based organizations. But what happens when the time comes to invoice your customer for work performed? Native Oracle Projects allows you to generate only one invoice per project. So, multiple projects lead to multiple invoices. For many organizations, this involves hundreds, maybe thousands of invoices being processed each month. Invoicing for such complex situations is extremely daunting, expensive and time consuming. Each invoice needs to be generated, approved, issued, mailed, processed, reconciled and audited. Not only is this a time and money waster for you but your customer is on the receiving end of this accounting nightmare.

Native Oracle Project Billing does a good job of calculating and generating your draft invoices but many companies need the power to consolidate invoices at a higher level than a project. Seeing this requirement over and over, Project Partners developed a solution to streamline the often complex project invoicing process. It is called Project Partners Consolidated Invoicing. Consolidated Invoicing is included in the Project Partners Invoicing product offering designed to simplify the various customer billing mandates facing project organizations today.

Consolidated Invoicing is a simple solution that does not involve changes to your current Oracle Projects setup or configurations. This solution simply extends the standard invoicing functionality of Oracle Project Billing and Oracle Receivables, therefore requiring no additional training for your users. By utilizing the same invoice processes and review screens currently in use by your project managers and accountants today, such as Invoice Review, Generate Draft Invoices, Interface to Receivables, Autoinvoice import etc., Consolidated Invoicing allows you to consolidate multiple project invoices into one single invoice. You can issue one monthly invoice to a customer at a summary level, with back-up details that break the charges down by project. Your options for consolidation include invoicing across multiple projects, programs, agreements, contracts, or customer “bill to” levels.

With Consolidated Invoicing, project invoicing can be simplified and your project managers and accountants can refocus on activities that add real value to your organization. In addition, your customers receive one invoice from which to pay and the reconciliation of your customer accounts becomes almost seamless. Customers that have implemented this solution have seen time savings of up to 100 hours per invoicing cycle which translates to a cost savings of up to 80%. A solution any project based organization with many projects should consider. Make your project invoicing easier using Project Partners Consolidated Invoicing.

Stay tuned for future blogs on Credit Memo Consolidation and Invoice Formatting and Printing – two additional offerings included in Project Partners Invoicing designed to make project billing easy!

Invoice Consolidation Overview:

The success of any implementation is never guaranteed: challenges seem to lurk around every corner.  As indicated in a prior blog (Structuring a Global Implementation) there are ways to anticipate and address these challenges before they materialize.  With a properly structured team, best practice solutions and standardized business processes, the implementation has a strong chance for success.

But what about rollout?  What about that phase after much of the hard work has been done, changes have been fought over and agreed to, and surprises have been uncovered and addressed in testing?  After all the headache and heartache (and heartburn), isn’t it better to just ‘get it over with’ and not prolong the pain to the enterprise and go ‘Big Bang’ as opposed to a Phased Approach? 

The implementation rollout can be done in an either big bang approach or in a phased manner. The big bang approach, which implies putting together the entire system in one stroke across the organization, is possible for mature companies having previous experience in similar projects and capable of managing huge organizational changes. 

In a phased implementation, a pilot run is conducted at a pre-selected site and after stabilization and lessons learned, it is rolled out for other locations. Learning from the initial deployment can be applied to subsequent deployments.  Using a train the trainer approach, trainers for subsequent deployments can get hands on experience in current deployments.

 The global template will be continuously modified to incorporate local statutory requirements.  The phased approach is manageable and less risky for many organizations. It is also important to sequence the ERP module implementations and align it to the company’s business objectives.

Some of the factors influencing the above approach decision are:

·         Availability of resources and capital

·         Time horizon on Return of Investment

·         Impact of customers/vendors

·         Limitations of current legacy systems

Availability of resources and capital will dictate how far you can ‘stretch’ your implementation team.  Your time horizon for ROI is the guideline for determining ‘how long this should take’ (and if done correctly has factored in your rollout approach).  The impact to your customers and vendors should be mitigated by your implementation strategy (ensuring customers are billed, cash is collected and vendors get paid).  The limitations of your current legacy systems imply that the systems are either slated to be retired or can no longer be supported, either from an IT or a usability standpoint. 

Project rollout can come at a time when most of your resources have ‘implementation fatigue’ and its significance is often overlooked:  all the hard work is done—now it’s time for a handoff, right?  Obviously, there is more to it, which tends to favor phasing your rollout in a way that best meets the demands of the enterprise.