Oracle E-Business Suite Reviews

I like that one system covers everything. The main objective of ERP, in general, is to try to integrate the departments and control various processes. It's the main objective for big companies where many people are working. By implementing ERP, you can control the processes, control the business consulting, and have one system to handle everything.

They don't have built-in bank integrations, which would be very helpful. For API, I know Oracle has a big library of APIs, and you can extend it. But most important integrations are still missing. These are mainly for features to integrate with other systems and other market forces, like banks or civic parties.

For example, for the environment to work using E-Business Suite, which is not handling the budgeting in the power tool, we have to purchase Hyperion and integrate Hyperion with the E-Business Suite. If you want reporting, you can select a reporting tool or different reporting tools for business intelligence. For each case, it's painful to have multi-systems in place. Most companies prefer to have one system and it's costly.

I have been using Oracle E-Business Suite for about 13 years.

Oracle E-business Suite is a stable solution.

Oracle E-business Suite is easy to scale. But sometimes, the company requirements don't fit with the software requirements.

I'm an implementer, so the Oracle E-business Suite's initial setup is easy for me.

I implemented Oracle E-Business Suite by myself.

I would recommend Oracle E-Business Suite to potential users.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Oracle E-Business Suite an eight.

It has improved the way we worked. Everything is now on a very well-centered database. Before, we would have things saved on Excel, but it would be on different versions, or someone would have it saved on e-mail, and it would not be saved as an Excel file. It became frustrating. On Excel it is definitely harder to keep things. With so many people in the company, everybody had his own version. Definitely that created a big disconnect. The Oracle E-Business Suite was not able to get reports. It was not able to get the connectivity. Now, we can use this solution to streamline the documentation and products of our organization.

The database is feature rich, no doubt. It is also a a tool that can easily connect an entire company. From this, you can build any BI orders. The reporting solution is good and it has a good database that connects with everything.

The UI interface is not good. In addition, there is a constant challenge that new things are evolving and people are looking at new ways of connecting. They do not want to log into web interfaces. And, the standard UI does not give you flexibility. You need to have a specialist who will work on the workflow. If changes are made, alerts are required. This provides challenges. 

Additionally, if inventory gets linked with our OEM portals, you enter some number, order number, find the OEM number and then an inventory which you have ordered. You receive the GRN updates your inventory also, links with OEM, and we really good because then you'll know the third party hardware or whatever solution you're purchasing, what is the end of life, where is the end of support, when is the warranty ending, what is the new product coming?

All things can be related. Right now it is a stand alone system that is not integrated, whereas today you're talking about global solutions things can be in database. Even if it is not loud, even then things can be dated because you have only given purchase order to your OEM, you're under warranty. We have the right to get the information. OEM has the right to push information but then ERP is not supporting us. None of the effort goes into that.

The product does not crash. It is stable. 

We have not experienced problems with the scalability of the product. The only problem I have noticed is that sometimes the scales are not available easily in the market. Maybe in the future we will move to Linux or Interface Servers that will provide a lower cost solution. We will have to evaluate this in the future.

We are currently using the technical support because we have a relationship with Oracle to be able to raise tickets. We generally have not had many challenges.

The cost is high for this product.

When deciding on a solution, I suggest looking at the vendor, the stabiliy of the product and the tech support provisions. A business has to run smoothly, and the solution has to help ease that process.

The primary use case for this solution is for Governmental Fiscal Management Information Systems (GFMIS). This is a complete solution to manage the whole country Financial System.

Its user interface is not completely a web interface. It uses a lot of traffic which costs too much for a large number of users scattered throughout the country as they connect from their terminals to do their tasks.

It costs too much. 

Basically, the most valuable feature is the suite; basically, your integration between APAR, PO, fixed assets. We're using Financials.

Again, integration: The reason I'm mentioning this is, basically, you can have an ERP ordering system, and it doesn't have to be Oracle. Also, it's not really an ordering system; it's not friendly, for that matter.

Maybe more real-time; that would probably be better.

I have been using it for about 15 years. The company has had it maybe four years.

It's fairly stable. We haven't really had any big issues.

We believe it is scalable. We certainly have to change our process, and maybe have to acquire more products, but we think Oracle will be able to provide all of our needs.

Technical support is OK. They're no better or no worse than other companies. You have to know what to do. Basically, for us, when we go to support, we're prepared. We make sure we have all our data – from our financial system or whatever – ready, so we will save time.

However, we do find, sometimes, depending on the time of the day, if you open the support ticket with Oracle, let's say, if you're doing it in the afternoon, or late afternoon, then it actually goes to Asia-Pacific. That problem, basically, is that you won't get any updates in the morning, if we try to. You would get something in the afternoon. If it's not urgent, maybe that's OK, but we'd like to have something, basically, in the same time zone, at least.

For one thing, there are not many things available out there. Oracle bought them all, basically. Oracle is basically a local company for us. It's pretty easy to use, so that was another one of the reasons. Also, at the time, my company was trying to go IPO. They couldn’t really claim all the financials from the spreadsheets. You have to have some kind of ERP system, so Oracle was one of the options.

Initial setup really depends on the module. It’s not very consistent, I think because different people have developed the different modules. You have to get used to it.

When we are selecting a vendor to work with, we look for a couple of things. One simple thing: basically, it has to be logical. Meaning that, whatever application's there, it makes sense to use. Also, it should be easy to implement and easy to support. Hopefully, it will work with our other systems. We also look at ease of use.

We have a lot of modules such as finance, receivables, and so on. The end-to-end flow is there. The features that Oracle has provided are good as an end-to-end solution. We use that and it's good, actually.

They have provided a lot of front-end programs, with which we can import data from different systems. Data from various systems comes through a single system. Then, from that data, we can generate the reports. That one single system gets data from many downstream systems.

The main thing is, if you want additional functions or any customization, you can also do that on top of the product. That route is more beneficial.

With reports, we have various options. We can generate reports in a particular format, and so on, with various options.

Right now, I don’t think the version that we are using supports mobile devices. I think it is on the desktop only, although we can select laptops. I’d like to see a mobile version.

It’s pretty stable.

As I’ve mentioned with the customization, you can do that. So, in that way, it's scalable.

Actually, I believe I was using Oracle already, but that was on the database side. That was limited to my field only, and so that's the reason I moved.

I was not involved in actually setting up the product, but I am involved in some of the customization we do. Sometimes we have to do setup, but that is not initial setup. We make some modifications.

Setup was mostly straightforward; it was not that complicated. We had some user manuals and some recordings, which made it easier.

From the beginning, we were only using Oracle. It's not a small product, it's a big company. Going from Oracle to another vendor would be very costly. That's why they are not thinking about it. Maybe for the next 5 to 10 years, my company will be using only Oracle, but I'm not completely sure.

When I’m choosing a vendor such as Oracle, I look at all factors such as scalability, price and so on. Nowadays, there is a lot of freeware available in the marketplace. We look at performance but also at big data. For example, Hadoop is freeware, so price is definitely one of the factors.

The kind of features they have provided is very helpful. It's very user friendly.

Look at the features Oracle provides and also at the customization options. For some products, there are limitations; for example, you cannot customize it. We can directly do the customization in the Oracle application. It’s not like we are developing some third-party application, and from there importing the data. We can directly customize the main application; this way, it is easier. Nonetheless, there are some risks involved with that as well… :)

The most valuable features of the product are Oracle Process Manufacturing, the module for custom production, raw material conjunction and finished good tracking; Oracle Cash; Procure to Pay; and the full circle. Finally, the Oracle financial module, the journal, the provisining and the balance sheet are also valuable. The whole product is good. It's difficult to distinguish actually because it is an integrated product.

We are now working on ASM Cloud and CX. We have already spoken with Oracle and we’ll probably implement it on February 17.

I have been using it for 10 months, from the first of January 2016.

It's a stable product. There are bugs in every IT product. Oracle also has some but their service and support is very good. You can get service from the middle level or you can raise an SR and get 24-hour service. If any issues arise, either we can fix them or they can fix them. There's no problem.

I’ll mark scalability as 70-30.

When I have faced any problem with the database table, if there’s something wrong at the application level, or when I am applying the patches, I just raise an SR, a service request with the Oracle support team. Based on the priority, they will provide feedback. The last couple of months, I have been getting some good feedback from them. From that point of view, the service is good.

Setup is always complex because you have to choose the server configuration, hardware configuration, bandwidth, and so on. On-premise setup is always very difficult. Now that services are cloud-based, it is Oracle’s headache, not my headache.

Buy and use this product. It's a good product. I'm using it and I've benefited. Buy and use this. There will be challenges.

It provides a great SLA model. Also, with all the different modules that are available, the technology stack is very good.

We do a lot of inter-company transactions, and Oracle has limitations on inter-company transactions. We would like Oracle to have inter-company transactions for more than four inter-companies, or more than five, multiple inter-companies.

We've been using it for about 15 years.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We are on an slightly older version as we don't apply as many patches as Oracle recommends because we feel it's not stable. So we've definitely had some stability issues that have prevented us from moving forward for the product.

We're able to scale it for our needs.

Technical support is very knowledgeable. I think normally the Metalink support is very good and sometimes we may have to reach out to them.

The complexity of the setup depends on whether you have a lot of requirements and are using many modules. It can be as simple or complex as you make it.

If you have a small shop, Oracle can accommodate. If you're a big shop, Oracle can do that, too. So Oracle is a solution for every kind of business. That's what I really like about E-Business Suite.