Oracle E-Business Suite Reviews

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. 

It's integrated. For any ERP solution, that’s really where the value comes in; just one solution to cover a whole bunch of areas and having the integration.

I have been using it probably 20 - 25 years.

It is very stable. From an internal standpoint, nothing is going to drag it down.

We did recently have an issue with the supplier network, Oracle Supplier Network, where some certificates were changed that caused a brief outage for us. But that's the exception, not the rule.

It is scalable. We're not a huge company but we haven’t had any issues with that. I have run it at much larger organizations with no issues there.

Technical support is mediocre. It used to be a lot better. The last 10 years or so, it's degraded, where it's hard to get an expert that can really help. It seems to be, a lot of times, their preference is just to get it back in your court and not necessarily help but put the onus on you and hope that you take a few days to respond and then it'll auto-close.

Initial setup is complex. I think any ERP is going to be a complex setup. That's just the nature of the beast.

Usually you'd have a partner that can add the bandwidth. I know we did an upgrade about three years ago. We had a partner come in and help us with that. It's a probably nine-month project, end to end, to do a major upgrade from 11 to 12.

When I start working with a vendor such as Oracle, expertise is a requirement that I look for. Ultimately, it comes down to the team that you're getting from that partner. I always say the best partner in the world still has a B team, and the worst partner in the world still has an A team. Your job is to find that A team in whatever partner you choose.

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.

The Order Management and Financial modules are the product’s most valuable features because they are easy to use, customizable and useful. Order Management manages sales orders, shipment transactions, customers data, list prices, etc. The Financial module manages all aspects related to payments, receivables, invoices, budget, etc.

Thanks to Oracle EBS, we can manage all company processes (inventory, manufacturing, logistic and finance) on one platform.

The Oracle Process Manufacturing (OPM) module manages full end-to-end traceability with embedded quality and multiple cost methods that provide complete visibility into plant operations. At the moment, we have an old version and it is an area of the product with room for improvement.

I know that the new version has been improved and it works better; some bugs has been resolved, some features are improved.

I have been using it for 10 years.

I have not encountered any stability issues. Over the last two years, some patches were not applicable because of the new release. We are considering upgrading to the new version.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is good. You can contact support to ask a question or to open a request. The first type of contact is immediate, as in you ask the question in a forum and the answer is immediate. This is for basic knowledge or for small problems. On the other hand, a request is a particular issue and you can show a critical problem that often requires a patch or running a script. I have tried using both of these and I have almost always received some answer.

I did not previously use a different solution.

The initial setup was quite complex because ERP can manage a lot of processes; therefore, a company must consider what it wants to manage and set up.

I think that there are two efficient ERP platforms, SAP and Oracle; they are similar in term of price and licensing. The other platforms are for small or medium companies.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options because we have Oracle knowledge inside the company.

ERP is quite complex to manage. Therefore, it’s necessary to have a DBA, some developers and functional resources. In addition, the price is consistent, and the product is very reliable.

The most valuable feature for us is that it gives us the ability to process the requisitions from our end users quickly, which is tied into all of our financials. It's given us a quick, easy, seamless process to do that.

E-Business Suite ties together many modules -- financials, procurement, HR, and many others. So that's the biggest benefit for us: it's just one platform. We don't have to deal with a lot of different external modules. They're all tied together neatly.

I wish that it was more public-sector friendly. It just seems like with the encumbrances, they slow down the process a little bit, and most public sector entities like us use encumbrance accounting.

In the private sector, invoices are paid when goods or services are received. However, in the public sector with encumbrance accounting, funds are reserved against the budget so that there are no overages. Once funds are committed, we've agreed to purchase goods or services without having already received them. Without encumbrance accounting, we wouldn't know whether a good or service has been received until after the invoice is paid and entered into the system.

We haven't had any issues with deployment.

It's not 100% stable. As I'm a functional user, I notify IT to fix issues. Whether they do it or ask Oracle to do it, I'm not sure.

We haven't had any issues with scalability. For us, it seems to run at the same speed with the same functionality whether we have one user or a thousand.

I wish they would improve on it. For a functional user like me, technical support has been tough. With SR's, I've had to go back and forth. It seems like this is one area that hasn't improved in the ten years I've used Oracle. They have analyzers, but sometimes we just need help from Oracle support.

I was involved in the initial setup and had help along the way. The setups were easy for me, but I know that the technical portions of the install with our IT guys had some glitches.

We had third-party help in some regards, but then our DBA and our system admin knew most of the areas that we needed to for setup to convert from 11i to 12.1.

It's complex. In my opinion, it's similar to Apple products. It's complex in nature, and once you're on it you need to stay on it. Don't be afraid of the look and feel of it, because I've been on other products and although some of the other products look and feel a little bit better at the beginning, they are all buggy. They all have their issues, and I like Oracle products.

The ability to streamline all of our information is the most valuable feature for us. Right now, we are on several ERP systems, most of which are not fully integrated so we don't have the ability to track our inventory through these systems.

It is still being implemented and this has been slow, so I would say we have not seen a lot of benefit yet. We do believe it will help us track our inventory from multiple ERP systems.

The biggest frustration I have with Oracle is that they have taken an acquisition approach. Because of this, the modules don't talk to each other. It is touted as being a fully-integrated system, but if something happens and purchasing doesn't necessarily follow through to the cost module, the amount of programming and specific manipulation required to get the modules to talk to each other is surprising to me, especially for a package from a company of Oracle's size.

We are partially implemented. We have been partially implemented for two-and-a-half-years. We started two-and-a-half years ago and are probably still three to five years out of a full implementation.

We had deployment issues with the modules not fully integrating with each other.

I haven't been particularly happy with it, but I think it is because we are transitioning from an ERP system, so that right now we don't run it as a fully web-based solution. I think all of the additional frustrations also have to do with internet speed and long wait times. Most ERP systems that aren't tied to the internet have quick response times, but with Oracle it's very slow.

We have struggled with it. The portions of our company that have implemented it are the smallest divisions, and in each instance when we've brought another one on, we've discovered that it creates a lot of challenges particularly from the volume of part numbers and transactions that are required to make anything happen.

That is actually where we are right now in our implementation, and we have paused it because we are about to go into the division that requires the most complexity and the highest number of transactions, and the scalability is a concern.

I don't interact enough with them to be able to answer. I know that we occasionally have to open service requests with Oracle. Of course, the IT team handles that and I am not part of the IT team. Sometimes the response time is a little slower than we would like, particularly when it has to do with month-end close. Very often we can't close a module because we are waiting on an SR.

It has been a very slow process that's very complicated and very rocky. We have used a consulting partner to get it implemented and there have been a lot of bumps and hurdles to get over.

It lacks integration between the modules, and the amount of customization required is surprising.

We primarily use it as an ERP.

This product helped us automate our business processes 13 years ago. But nowadays it is not modern enough. 

The system has been useful to us in the past. We have had a good experience with this solution for 13 years. 

But now it is deprecated and not suitable enough. So, we go to Oracle Fusion Cloud. Now we are launching a new system.

This system can't be improved.

For 13 years.

This system was quite stable. 

We didn't use Oracle technical support directly. We worked with an Oracle partner, a Russian company. We are happy to work with them and satisfied with the level of service they provide.

Positive

Previously we used iScala 2.2

The initial setup was not easy.

Oracle ERP is not a cheap solution.

It is not a good idea to use this old system nowadays. It is deprecated.

Choose more modern system.

Some of the features we have are purchasing the inventory, general ledger, order management, receivables, payables, and process production.

It would be nice to have more web services. For example, it would be easier to integrate our applications with EBS.

I would definitely like to see web services in purchasing. It has badly covered integration with APIs.

I have been working with Oracle E-Business Suite since 2007.

Oracle E-Business Suite is a stable product.

We have approximately 250 licenses in our organization.

We have support from our local vendors who send service requests directly to Oracle.

Service requests directly from Oracle take too much time and effort. 

The price would be better if it were lower.

We are adopting other modules with local vendors. We have support from them.

I would suggest getting a local implementor.

I would rate Oracle E-Business Suite a seven out of ten.