Oracle E-Business Suite Reviews

EBS r12.2. can be used in many industry  like oil and gas, energy, construction,health and care industries to implement Purchasing,HR,Finance modules in it.

It was complex to follow HR processes, such as leave application, approvals, and job applications. Now, they are integrated and managed from only one screen.

Online patching, which lets administrators apply patches on the fly and with minimum downtime to make it active.

Deployment of customization is complex, thus nobody is using it. Instead, we are deploying the same code on both filesystems (fs1, fs2). In order to follow standards, the deployment process should be as easy as before, in R12.1.

No, but you have to apply latest technology patches after base installation.

Yes, while using Shared Appl_top, you have to use NFS or related technology. But if your admin apps node fails, the second node cannot continue without the primary node. Manual interaction is required.

A seven out of 10.

No.

It was easy.

Do not enable any module that you do not use. Check them and disable, if necessary.

No, decision was already made before the project.

If your requirement is not so complex, give a try. For smaller ERP solutions, Oracle EBS is a complex solution which has complex requirements.

Oracle E-Business Suite is a financial and accounting reporting tool that we use for accounts payable, creating invoices, and accounts receivable. We process a lot of transactions, so the greatest benefit is that all manual activities are being automated. We don't have to spend hours to generate invoices and accounting reports. All the manual insurance processes have been automated, making it easy for the business to handle day-to-day business activities.

I think the standard reports in the AR and the GM modules need improvement. I would like to see a few new reports, including customized reports and summaries.

We have been using Oracle for almost five years.

Oracle E-Business Suite is quite stable. We did have some challenges when we when we started, but now it is more or less stable. The system was not initially optimized to find the transaction database. When we upgraded our systems in May, it took almost two to three months before our Oracle E-Business Suite implementation matched the business systems. Now everything is working smoothly.

We use technical support very often. We open service requests, and if the ticket level is a seven, we see a good response. They need to improve on their turnaround time on the Sev 2 and Sev 3 service requests.

We used to be PeopleSoft, which was a financial system, and it was not meeting all our business requirements, and was not scalable. That's why we switched to Oracle. Additionally, Oracle is more compatible with PeopleSoft than SAP.

When we introduced Oracle E-Business Suite, I was part of the implementation team. We used to be PeopleSoft, so I was part of the PeopleSoft internal auditing team, and I was also involved with the upgrade. The new implementation was very challenging because we needed to do a lot of customization. There were also many new business requirements at that point in time. But, when we later performed an upgrade, it was not too complex.

We did evaluate SAP, but found Oracle to be more compatible with our financial systems.

Our most important criteria is that the applications be more customer centered, and that manual activities are automated.

Oracle E-Business Suite is a very awesome product. It has a lot of capabilities, and you can gain a lot of business knowledge through it.

Probably one of the most valuable features that we've seen has been around the E-Business Suite change, as far as the UI is concerned. As far as the E-Business Suite 12 2.5, the look and feel has drastically changed from 11i to 12.1, to 12.2. The UI from an end user's perspective, being able to configure the UI, such that they have buttons; using it on an iPad or an iPhone, mobile application integration, all these different technologies coming together. It is kind of one of those things where the E-Business Suite's starting to get that new look and feel that has been lagging for a couple of years.

The benefits are around ease of use, trying to make those end users lives easier, to be able to make transactions, point-and-click transactions, having the ability for drop-down lists to be much easier. As far as the UI is concerned, over the years, you'd have to go through multiple tabs to put a transaction in. Now, you can go to one screen and have the options right in front of you. Pick the options you want, press save, and away you go. Oracle's trying to improve the ease of use for the end users.

As far as additional features of the E-Business Suite, I would like to see more of the framework applications in use. Oracle is slowly transitioning there. We do realize that the older form's version of the technology has a lot of intelligence built in them; very difficult for Oracle to make that migration to the new technology. Ideally, it's getting to one platform. Perhaps, the removal of Java from that integration right now. Java continues to be an issue for organizations that are running multiple products. If they have multiple products that they're using, E-Business Suite, maybe third-party products. You've got different versions of Java that are required for each. That becomes a problem. It's an ongoing issue. We do know and we've heard Oracle's heading towards some type of new solution, if you will. Certainly, trying to focus on becoming a fully frameworked product, versus the old form's technology.

As far as stability of the E-Business Suite 12.2.5, the product was released in October 2015. It's been out for several months. There are, obviously, from a patching perspective ... I'd say Oracle's improving the release. With any release of a product, there's always going to be a need for patches and things like that. Being that the product's fairly new, there's a low number of users that are actually making that transition to 12.2.5. With that, the repository of issues within Oracle support is slowly building. One user may have an issue where another has not, that issue by that one client may have the solution available to them now in the support repository.

The solution's very scalable. Oracle, E-Business Suite, the various releases, 12.2.5, 12.1, 11.5, they're being used by organizations, small and large. From very small organizations, to multi-billion dollar organizations, they're very scalable solutions.

Oracle's technical support has drastically improved over the years. The support.oracle.com, or My Oracle Support, is a very good tool. We do encourage our team members, as well as our end users, to look there first. Literally, sometimes it's trying to find a needle in a haystack. Certainly, the information's typically there, based on the search ability what you're searching for is putting specific criteria to find that. Sometimes, people are so broad that they get many, many hits. The ideal situation is putting in something very specific, that you may be able to find what you're looking for, and not having to scroll through pages and pages of results, if you will.

I think investing into, or even investigating into the products, typically, some organizations might buy the E-Business Suite, they own more product than they realize. If they buy 100% of the product, they're only using maybe 20% of the functionality. It's taking advantage of that other 80% and implementing those features and functionality into their business, that's a return on investment that some organizations don't take, for various reasons. They don't know they have a product, and perhaps they start investigating their maintenance agreement, and they find that they own something, and now they want to implement that.

Looking at some organizations, they have some folks that are dedicated to looking at new technology, it's constantly looking out to see what can be applied to the business. Some organizations don't do that; they don't have the time or resources to do that. Organizations that do, you look at them, they're fairly progressive. It's trying to, at least, maybe identify someone that can help, I'll say, support the investment that they've made into the organization. You have companies that are investing millions and millions of dollars into these products, and really only taking advantage of a very small footprint of their total ownership of the product.

The E-Business Suite, there is certainly, if you're operating or implementing, from a set-up standpoint, usually from an upgrade standpoint, the set-ups are minimal. You're always going to have some type of set-up in the application. If you're doing a fresh implementation, the setup material's available for you, step-by-step set-up documentation by Oracle. It doesn't mean that you'll get a perfect solution by the end of the day, but it'll lead you down that path of being successful.

When looking at new solutions, considering that Oracle E-Business Suite is the core, and looking at other products that may integrate; key is going to be integration. Someone that's certified, has a certified integration with the Oracle E-Business Suite, you don't want to be looking at third-party solutions that don't have the integration, those that are part of that program are basically required to keep their products at the certification level of each release of the product. That 12.2.5, they must be integrated with that. At 12.2, 12.1, 11.5.10, they've got to have their products integrated at that release. Very critical, when looking at third-party products, to integrate with Oracle E-Business Suite.

Rating: looking at the E-Business Suite right now, having worked with the product since 1991 and looking to see where they're at today, I'd say maybe a 7. They're heading towards that fully integrated product, that new technology, like the framework technology. If they get there, I'd give them a 10. Right now, probably a 7, because we have multiple technologies we're still dealing with.

Recommendation to peers: Looking at their business requirements for selecting the product, ensuring that every time you're looking at purchasing a product, derive that selection from defined business requirements. We get some organizations that just go out and buy things, then you go back, and they figure out that they bought a product that doesn't fit the solution they're trying to solve. Really, evaluating internally, getting clearly documented business requirements, mapping those through product selection, and literally having the organization sign off on that, so you're not investing all this money into a product that may not be used, because it's not fulfilling a solution.

I love SLA because it gives me flexibility. Not me, my team. I don't deal with it anymore. SLA gives me flexibility to do things that I need without involving development, not that I mind, but it's better to do it yourself. For example, adding descriptions that I need for for my Latin American business. It's a great thing. It's like a couple of clicks you have it without any development involvement. I love that. So SLA is good, AME (Approval Management Engine) is also very good. It's excellent.

If you upgrade to 12.2.5 you won't have iProcurement problems. But if you upgrade to 12.2.4, you're going to get those in abundance. It's going to keep you employed till the rest of your life. So you upgrade to 12.2.5 to get rid of those. However, if you upgrade to 12.2.5 you will get localization support at zero level because it hasn't been added yet to the release.

So go figure, what I going to do when I have the whole world of Oracle in Latin America and I can't take 12.2.5? We opted for a broken iProcure that we're going to fix ourselves.

We've been using Oracle EBS since 1998.

Well, let's think about it. This product could be stable if it's a good support team supporting it. If there is a teams of experts supporting it, yeah, it is stable. But sometimes it becomes unstable and then a good support team jumps into it and makes it stable again.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

I would probably say that the biggest benefit for the company is just having all of the information under one umbrella, in one central location. It's also very useful having the ability to create connections between the different departments within our organization.

To me, it seems overly complicated and the interactions between the modules are unclear to me. Oracle needs to provide training sessions that teach about the interactions, and we need someone in our company who also knows how the pieces fit together. This would go a long way towards helping us fit E-Business Suite to our business. Right now, it's like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole and I feel like we're not using it the way it's supposed to be used. We have to bend the rules or try to force it to do what we want. And it's been difficult.

We use Install Base, Service Contracts, Order Management, and Deeper Repair, and a few other modules. There's just so many that if someone who understood both our business and our tool, then this person could configure E-Business Suits to meet our business needs. Currently, each department needs something different and there are so many changes for each to the solution, that the changes aren't cohesive and, in fact, create problems for each other.

I'd prefer for everything to be web-based and not as a Java program. When I compare it to familiar tools, such as Salesforce and other CRMs, E-Business Suits seems really outdated and difficult to use and navigate.

Deploying it optimally across our various departments has been troublesome.

In my experience, it's been stable, but I think our IT department would say the opposite.

It's scaled, as far as I know. But, again, our IT might not agree.

I don't personally like it all that much, but I know that it does a lot of stuff that's important.

My advice would be to find somebody who knows everything that the tool does and somebody who knows your business. Make sure that you're building it at the beginning to fit your business.

The most valuable feature is definitely the ability to go in as a manager or as an individual and do everything in one place, for example, to add/change/remove a goal. 

Mandating a goal plan was a really good idea because it forces you to actually think about it, and it makes it easier at the end of the day for a user. 

The ability to see the goals and move them over to next year in one place is really great. They can copy, extend, and delete all in one place.

We've only been playing with it less than a year - so not long - but it forced us to be able to have a change in management. It is really helping management to have a conversation about goals. 

Previously, goal management wasn't something we did well. Now that we have implemented Fusion, with powerful competencies, it's simplified the process. At the end of the day, the goal thing was awesome.

The account executive was good, but when it came to training HR, it really failed - on this point I'd rate Oracle as 3/10. 

The webinars are OK but they definitely didn't hit the target. 

This application is so large for a small company like ours, so it was very hard to train everyone with such an extensive product.

We implemented it this year.

Getting everyone on-board was a tad slow, but there were no major pick-ups, and all was well for the most part.

No issues encountered.

We had other Oracle products, but I can't remember which ones.

It was seamless and went very well.

We use a vendor who is really great.

For us it's high, because now we can focus on gathering the right amount of info about our information.

We did, but I can't remember which ones.

I like the new version as it's easier to manage. The problem is that the timing is bad - they did quite a bit of work to the goals feature, and changed it around quite a bit. For me, it's hard work because I need to train everyone to use but it's much more fluid and easier to navigate.

We needed a lot more training and best practices for a small company. Oracle hasn't done a good job preparing best practices for small companies. However, it's great for goal management.

Our client implemented the Oracle Human Capital Management part of the solution. With these features, they can:

• Rapidly implement jobs, positions, grades, and steps within setup of organizational structure.
• Measure and monitor performance for personal goals and corporate objectives.
• Define and manage workforce competence through the management of learning path, course completion, and learning certification.
• To do this before on paper basis, it was very time consuming. Now, they can use the gained time to properly manage their workforce.

Our client has not only implemented the Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) solution. They did also the integration with other solutions, such as the Work Management solution, so when there is a certain work order to be issued, they can easily and rapidly identify the proper available resources to perform the work.

More flexibility in configuration related to the Payroll module, in order to easily implement the local legislation.

We implemented this product for one of our clients. This client has used the solution since 2010. In 2015, they upgraded the solution from version 12.1.3 to version 12.2.4.

No.

No.

I would rate the level of the technical support as a seven out of 10. There are big delays in the issues of resolution times

Our client previously used an internally developed application. They switched because this application covered only a small part of their needs related to human capital management, and it was difficult to maintain due to the lack of IT specialized resources.

The initial setup was straightforward. Our team has a lot experience in the Oracle E-Business Suite implementation and we also cooperated with professionals from Oracle Romania. Lastly, the client was actively involved in all the stages of the project.

All pricing and licensing information is public and available for everybody. I advise others to check this information in advance in order to correctly decide what to ask to the vendor.

Our client evaluated other options from smaller and similar companies, as Oracle, but Oracle’s solution was suitable for them at the time in terms of features and possibilities for integration with other already existing solutions.

Be careful at the number and complexity of the reports needed to compare with the pre-defined reports. If the gap between the two is big, then they have to consider a bigger duration for the project and its corresponding additional price.

The most valuable feature is mostly the integration process that connects to a lot of our backend systems, such as manufacturing and other processes that do payroll, HR, and those things. There's a kind of integrated solution system.

It is a single-point solution, where we use one application that connects to a lot of systems, as opposed to trying to buy multiple best-of-breed systems or integrating them together; instead of having a lot of features in one system. It is easy for us to maintain and support the system, as well.

I would like to see more connections with the third-party application, such as banks and credit card companies. They could develop a seamless integration. Right now, we use batch processing for sharing the data that comes out of a file system. We would like to have that online connection, a real-time connection, where you can go and pull the data whenever you want.

We've been using it for five or six years now.

Stability is great.

We have had some patching issues, but at the end of the day, once we patch it out, and we bring up the applied solution, it works.

I would not see scalability as an issue, but we are not a large company, as such. We have around 2,000-plus employees at the company, but we do run all kinds of applications on it. It's pretty decent. We have not had any issues.

We worked with Oracle On Demand and with support. Most of the time, they are great. Because we are a support customer, we have a big advantage there. They are responsible for managing our systems. We go with them, and log whatever the technical request there. Most of the time, we get resolutions fast.

We were initially a start-up company. We looked at Oracle, but initially, for a start up company, Oracle is not the most suitable option, but we know that our company is going to grow, so the solution had to scalable. We chose Oracle because it has the most scalability for us to go and do that.

Initial setup was complex because it extends to a lot of our applications’ integration points. Once you find out the solution, what to do then, the next time, it kind of streamlines the process.

When we were making the decision, we looked at a lot of other companies such as NetSuite and PeopleSoft. Given the Oracle presence and a lot of technology support available in the Bay Area, and being a company in the Bay Area, we chose Oracle as the best product for us to go with.

Look into the Oracle product and see if it will satisfy your requirements. Then, instead of buying 10 different products and integrating them, maybe you'll see that a product provides 80% of those benefits; go with that product, which I think Oracle does.

The most important criteria when I’m choosing a vendor such as Oracle is knowing that when new products come out, they will increase our company’s efficiency in terms of managing scalability, see that we can run these applications, and maybe they will help us increase sales and productivity. That's what we look for in most of them.

They are continuously improving the products, making sure they are staying with the competitors to make sure that they are following the industry standards and bringing customers up to speed so that we can use industry leaders.