Oracle E-Business Suite Reviews

One of the best use cases is centralizing supplier and customer data into our finance system. We identified that there were many duplicate suppliers and customers and so a lot of time was spent reporting.

When the tsunami happened in 2009, our top management asked us how many suppliers were impacted in that particular area and how it would impact our supply chain cycle. When we tried to answer this question we thought that it would take one or two weeks, but it took our entire team three to four months to identify how many suppliers were impacted. That showed how important it is to remove the master data from our financial system and start maintaining it separately.

Reporting and MIS reporting is very useful in the E-Business Suite. Without the solution, it always took a lot of time because of so many duplicate supplier data settings. 

After 2009, supply chain management became more important, and we really started thinking about how quickly we could get the product to our customers. When we thought about becoming a global supply chain organization, the number one goal was how we could clean our data, how we can identify our master data. Previously, IT used to own the data, but we are trying to change that process where the data is owned by the business and IT is just there to provide a service.

That's where governance comes into the picture. Not just the implementation of the master data management, but identifying the functional data owner for each and every master attribute, and having a discussion within the governance team.

The most valuable aspect is making sure that IT was not blindly adding an attribute as a master attribute. When creating a proposal, for example, if anybody comes back and wants to add a DUNS number in the supplier master, we then ask for this particular attribute, how is the data going to be generated? 

Then, what should the business process of this data be and the attribute maintenance? Who is going to own this attribute? And then, most importantly, what are the data quality rules for this attribute, whether there are any ISO standards or any standards that are connected, or the character length, special characters, etc.

The way things are going, Oracle is not putting much effort into their master data management. They need to look into machine data and then the integrated data domain. How, in the master data domain, do the product supplier, site master and reference data talk to one another. 

They really need to improve on this because that was my number one reason for moving to Informatica and other tools.

We have been using this solution as a point of creation and maintenance for supplier data for the last seven years.

The stability of the solution is perfectly fine.

I would rate scalability a 9 out of 10. We don't have any issues with it. 

I think support is good.

It is straightforward, but maybe that is because I have been working in Oracle for the last 20 years and so I find it easy. But I think with Oracle products, the set up and to understand everything is very easy and user friendly.

For implementation, it took about two years. It took a lot of time because of so much duplicate data. Application-related setups were relatively easy. The main challenge was to identify the right data because we had about one million records.

We implemented it in a two-phased approach. First, pulling in the clean data, which we spent near one year. And then, we moved the creation and maintenance process to a master header system, which took another year.

We used an integrator that was quite good.

The biggest return on investment is the improvements of productivity.

The pricing of the solution is at about $700-$750 per year.

The flexibility to scale up is very good. Regardless of the customer, customization is not as complicated as it is in SAP or even ISS and other products. 

There is a range of modules available in Oracle which you can switch on as you progress in your organization. You don't have to necessarily take a lot of time to kickstart the implementation. You can just start with basic HR, finance, and purchasing. Then, later on, you can extend the application landscape with more modules as you progress. There is essentially one solution for every industry within Oracle — you won't require a third-party solution. Still, if you wish to use a third-party solution because the price is too high or because of a specific technical requirement, then you are free to do so. 

I currently work for a company that specializes in aircraft maintenance. There used to be a module in Oracle called CMRO. Now, the current situation is that they are pretty much closing down that module. Roughly eight or nine years back when they started it, they were anticipating a good number of customers but the reality turned out to be different — that's why they closed down that module. That created a lot of trouble for a lot of companies. Truthfully speaking, that is the reason I moved towards ISS. Although it's not as popular as Oracle or SAP, ISS focuses on industries. ISS provides us with an industry-based solution, geared toward aviation, field service management, or manufacturing for example. 

Oracle E-Business Suite uses an old technology (Forms), which is Java-based. If you're using a functionality that is based on Oracle Forms, then the client machine needs to download an applet in order to use that function. Often I've encountered, during support issues, that the client machine, if it is a little obsolete or an older version, the Java versions cause trouble. Wherein if you look at the modern cloud perspective or modern software in general, it's mostly web or browser-based. That's one thing that Oracle should consider on-prem.

There is still a huge amount of customers who are on on-prem. Upgrades should have a business case. I don't want to upgrade just because Oracle has come up with a new version — I should have some benefits. We are one of those customers who are not interested in shifting to the cloud for various reasons. Because of this, we have to live with this old Forms technology. Oracle should try to offer a balance between both versions instead of pushing customers to the cloud. This seems to be a strategy that both SAP and Oracle follow.

I have been using Oracle E-Business Suite for more than one year. In total, I have more than 10 years of experience with Oracle. 

Oracle E-Business Suite is definitely stable. 

Regarding their technical support, my personal experience over a period of two to three years is that you'll begin to notice a pattern regarding what time you should raise a service request so that it reaches the right place. Whether it goes to India or to Egypt — these are the two most popular centers for Oracle support. But if you manage to hit the right people, the support is there. 70 to 80 percent of the time, I receive a solution to my problems simply through the technical repository — within the portal itself. I prefer to do it like this rather than by creating a service request and waiting for a response from a potentially inexperience staff member. I'd rather just depend on the documentation. The documentation is very rich. The Oracle community is big.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. I have worked with SAP, Oracle, Dynamics, and now I'm using ISS. With all of them, you need to have some basic expertise before you jump into the pool, otherwise, your life could be complicated. If you have that basic guidance and experience, it's not complicated when it comes to Oracle. Still, there are prerequisites for each of them — especially when it comes to Oracle. You need to have had hands-on experience with PL/SQL or developer experience with Java.

The best part about Oracle is that it has openly published its documentation on its implementation checklist — how to follow, configure, etc. For this reason, it's much easier to implement Oracle compared to ISS or SAP, for example. This is due to the fact that they insist that you need to follow their documentation and it's not publicly available everywhere. This makes things a bit easier when it comes to Oracle.

If you're buying a license, support is roughly 22% of the price of the whole product. So, in the first year, you'll definitely get support. Some companies, over a period of time, try to knock off the Oracle support costs because it just keeps growing. Every year, according to their published price, it will increase from three to five percent from the last year. Now, imagine you bought a product worth 1.5 billion; what would be the support cost in the first year? And then plus 5%, plus 5% — it goes on, and on. You'll come to a point where you feel you're wasting money because support is support whether I am paying for five users or 500 users.

There is a solution for all of your current problems in Oracle E-Business Suite, but the constraint is the license. I'll give you a live example. Let's say I bought an employee self-service. What I would get is a bunch of licenses that I can use on the web version on my local internet. But with the current model of digitalization, you know that the employees would prefer to have some sort of mobile app or at least a desktop site. So, if I want that to happen, then I'd need to buy another set of licenses. The same self-service on the mobile version.

These are the pain points with Oracle. The license is normalized or broken down to such a level that it becomes a pain. Regarding a new customer, unless he's been using this solution for two or three years, he won't get used to these licenses. There is a good chance that he'd become exploited by Oracle's account managers in terms of licenses. Oracle's licenses are not straightforward.

Personally, I have worked on several projects where I have had to help customers understand Oracle licensing — it's not simple in SAP either. There are pros and cons to both solutions. Sometimes it could be beneficial and sometimes it's troublesome. That is something I feel that Oracle should try to simplify.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of seven. 

Oracle E-Business Suite is not for small businesses as, over a period of time, you will incur a huge cost when it comes to hosting. It's not just about application licensing, there is also hosting infrastructure, etc. It's not the functionality that's the problem for small entities, it's the overall cost. Smaller companies should go for something like AppDynamics, SAP Business, or NetSuite. 

Oracle is best suited for large organizations — from medium to large. It's a great solution for companies who grow quickly and need the best scalability possible. Unless you have a minimum user base of 3,000, you shouldn't be using Oracle.

Oracle is for medium to large-sized companies that are projected to grow in one or two years. Otherwise, it will become a pain point for you because the IT expenses will shoot through the roof. As a product, as a functionality, if you check this particular prerequisite, I would definitely recommend it.

We are a large company using every function of Oracle E-Business Suite, such as human capital management, financial management, manufacturing, plant maintenance, and many more. We've implemented almost thirty-seven modules of Oracle E-Business Suite in our organization.

Oracle E-Business Suite improved my organization by automating every function and integrating all departments. For example, HR is integrated with Finance through the payroll module. Inventory is integrated with Finance through the inventory module. Plant maintenance is integrated with the stores and spheres, so there's a single source of truth across the organization. There's no need to maintain separate databases, software, or functions within the organization through Oracle E-Business Suite.

My organization uses the same source of truth, so there's less hassle and more accurate information, making decision-making easier because of this solution.

I like the automation and integration features of Oracle E-Business Suite.

A downside of Oracle E-Business Suite is its interface because it's less user-friendly than the latest cloud solutions.

As an organization, Oracle now has more interest in cloud applications, so nowadays, it doesn't focus much on Oracle E-Business Suite, an on-premises solution, so this is another downside.

In the next release of the solution, I want to see an enhanced GUI so that it can attract more users and for Oracle to focus more on Oracle E-Business Suite and make it more user-friendly.

I've been using Oracle E-Business Suite for twelve years.

Oracle E-Business Suite is pretty stable, and I'd rate it as nine out of ten, stability-wise.

Oracle E-Business Suite is a highly scalable solution, and I'd rate its scalability as ten out of ten.

Oracle E-Business Suite technical support is a seven out of ten for me.

Neutral

We've used custom and in-house solutions before using Oracle E-Business Suite. Still, because of the benefits, scalability, integration, and support we got from the solution, we went with Oracle E-Business Suite.

As Oracle E-Business Suite is an ERP system, it has a complex implementation process. It's unlike any other software you can install and start using immediately. The system requires installation, then configuration, so depending on the complexity of the business, it takes around three to six months to configure and run it within the organization.

Installing the software onto the server, for example, isn't a matter of one to two days maximum. The steps to deploy Oracle E-Business Suite depend on your business requirement, how you map your business requirements into the system, and how you want the system to operate according to your needs. It varies based on the complexity of your business where Oracle E-Business Suite would be implemented.

The first time Oracle E-Business Suite was implemented, configured, and integrated with our systems, we worked with a third party who was an expert, so we won't run into cost overruns.

The digitization projects we implemented in multiple areas resulted in millions of savings because Oracle E-Business Suite helped keep queries simpler, so there's ROI from the solution.

My organization has been using the solution for the past twelve years, so I'm sure it paid off, but I have yet to calculate the ROI.

Pricing for Oracle E-Business Suite is seven out of ten. You must pay extra for maintenance and technical support, apart from standard license fees.

Since we've been using Oracle E-Business Suite for twelve years, we've evaluated different solutions from time to time but eventually chose SAP as our primary solution.

I'm using the latest version of Oracle E-Business Suite.

Two or three people can maintain Oracle E-Business Suite for a small organization. Still, for a vast implementation, for example, within my organization, about twenty-five to thirty people handle the maintenance of the solution.

Around two thousand to three thousand people use Oracle E-Business Suite within the organization.

All departments use the solution, whether Presales, Sales, Finance, Plant Maintenance, HR, Compensation, Payroll, etc.

I recommend Oracle E-Business Suite, but since the newest technology is now on the cloud, I wonder if people would be interested in an on-premise solution.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten because the GUI needs improvement. I would give Oracle E-Business Suite a nine or ten if its GUI were improved.

My company is simply an Oracle customer.

We're using Oracle E-Business Suite as the complete ERP solution for the company.

As we've recently gone live with Oracle E-Business Suite, we won't be able to say what has improved, but we used to have a lot of manual processes before switching to Oracle E-Business Suite. Now, pretty much, we've done complete end-to-end automation, so there will be savings in terms of automating manual processes, but we haven't quantified that for now.

What we like about Oracle E-Business Suite is that we didn't find any issues with it. In the Indian market, the subscription solutions aren't that suitable, even in terms of the complexity of the regulations, taxes, etc., so that's why we had to go for an on-premise solution that's hosted on the cloud, and we're happy with Oracle E-Business Suite.

We also like that Oracle E-Business Suite is quite flexible, and we've also built some bolt-ons and they're working fine.

Oracle E-Business Suite is a bit outdated because it's been developed more than ten years ago, and this is an area for improvement.

My team is still getting used to the solution, so there could still be some features that have not been enabled or features my team isn't aware of yet.

There have been issues with the Treasury module of Oracle E-Business Suite, so this is another area for improvement. My company hasn't decided yet on whether to implement the Treasury module or just go with another solution.

Another room for improvement in Oracle E-Business Suite is the design, as it needs to be optimized based on usage patterns.

What I'd like added in the next release of Oracle E-Business Suite is the time attribute. The solution still has dashboards being rolled out, so the time attribute could already be there or is still in the process of implementation.

I also didn't find much use for the Projects module based on my company's requirements.

The integration of Oracle E-Business Suite with the rest of the Oracle tools isn't very tight as well, but it could be because of customizations here in India, where the integrations work seamlessly everywhere, except in India. You'll find gaps because of customizations in India which are very, very irritating. For example, if a procurement is moving in the system then all the data has to move from one module to the other, but in the Oracle E-Business Suite Procurement module, you'll notice breaks or gaps that require you to manually transfer that data, so I'd like this improved in the next release of the solution.

We just went live with Oracle E-Business Suite a few months back.

We're still optimizing the cloud infrastructure, connectivity, etc., so currently, we've seen no stability issues with Oracle E-Business Suite.

We still haven't reached that stage of needing to scale up Oracle E-Business Suite, but its scalability seems to be smooth.

My team had a lot of questions for the Oracle E-Business Suite support team. During the go-live stage, support was very, very responsive, but right now, the team isn't that responsive, so I'm rating the support team seven out of ten. The response time needs to be improved nowadays.

Neutral

My company previously used a different tool, and the reason for the switch to Oracle E-Business Suite is that the instance shifted from Hong Kong to India, so it was a greenfield implementation. The pricing was good. Licensing was also good. The offering which included cloud services was also attractive because Oracle became a one-stop service provider with Oracle E-Business Suite combined with Oracle Cloud. The integration of various packages also seemed to be okay.

SAP, on the other hand, was facing a lot of issues in terms of Ariba Integration with S/4HANA, and it was a mash-up of on-premise products and subscription-based products, while most of the Oracle modules were on-premise solutions and tightly integrated, so that has been helpful.

Setting up Oracle E-Business Suite wasn't complex, but there was a huge need for skilled manpower to implement it because of the huge demand for ERP resources in the market, so that has been a big challenge. Whether it's Oracle or SAP S/4HANA, getting good resources to stick to a project and implement it has become a challenge.

The deployment of Oracle E-Business Suite took one year.

We used a third-party to implement Oracle E-Business Suite.

The licensing cost of Oracle E-Business Suite is quite competitive. It's quite flexible, so it can be adapted to the requirements of my company. For confidentiality purposes, I'm unable to disclose how much Oracle E-Business Suite costs, but I'm rating its cost as eight out of ten.

I'm using the latest version of Oracle E-Business Suite.

Around seven hundred people use Oracle E-Business Suite within my company. The solution doesn't require a lot of maintenance, but its maintenance has been outsourced to a third-party.

I'm not an Oracle E-Business Suite expert, and everyone has specific requirements, but what I would tell others who want to start using the solution is that it would be ideal if the user can switch to a subscription-based product because the implementation becomes faster and the user experience is much better. Unfortunately, in India, it's so complicated in terms of processes and procedures, so mostly the market fights over on-premise solutions which is not the trend globally, and it's an issue here in India.

My rating for Oracle E-Business Suite is seven out of ten.

Oracle E-Business Suite was used for the finance department. In departments, such as account payables, receivables, cash management, treasury, procurement used it. Additionally, the company purchased Oracle Purchasing for the procurement module and Inventory module. They used a separate solution called Oracle Hyperion.

The most valuable features of the Oracle E-Business Suite are best practices, built-in processes, and easy configuration. Plenty of system functionality and customization. 

Oracle has improved a lot because Oracle E-Business Suite is quite outdated.   Oracle built the Oracle Fusion platform and it has many improved processes. We registered a few enhancements requests, but it's a very long bureaucratic process with Oracle. It doesn't make any sense to communicate with Oracle about what changes should be made to the system.

We had feedback from Oracle, however, it takes years to implement any new feature that is requested.

I have used Oracle E-Business Suite for approximately 10 years.

Oracle E-Business Suite is not stable because it required a lot of patches. Initially, it was we were installing a lot of patches for different functionality. They have a good knowledge base, which was helpful.

I have found Oracle E-Business Suite scalable. You can purchase additional licenses and databases.

I would rate the technical support of Oracle E-Business Suite a two out of five.

I have worked with Microsoft MyVision, which is now known as Microsoft Dynamics. Microsoft MyVision. is for small businesses and Oracle is for large companies.

Nothing is simple with Oracle. The initial installation was not easy but manageable and took a couple of days to complete.

We jointly did the implementation with an integrator.

The maintenance and support are done by a special team of six analysts. It's a corporate system, you cannot leave it alone.

I have found the solution overall to be expensive. There are additional fees on top of the standard license.

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

I don't use it directly. I'm a contractor, but my customers use it. They use this solution in their daily business operations.

It's more on the CX Suite, Oracle CX, but on the cloud that we run in combination with other ERP systems.

Oracle Cloud or Oracle JD Edwards has a better future than E-Business Suite. I don't think it has a very long lifespan.

Oracle Cloud software, like Fusion. 

It's an integrated ERP system. It's very adaptable to the finance industry. It's quite stable for the finance industry. We've also rolled it out for small manufacturing and operational production.

The supply chain management capabilities are good in this product.

I think a lot more automation can be brought into E-Business Suite.

I have been working with it since 2017.  

It is quite stable. Overall, I would rate the stability of this solution an eight out of ten.

I'm satisfied with the scalability. It's quite scalable. These days, Oracle has made sure that you can adjust most of the on-premises applications with any other interfaces that are already in place for other cloud solutions. And you can even go in and do customization on the application if need be.

It is suitable for medium-sized businesses.

The customer service and support are a little bit slow, but it's not too bad.

Neutral

The initial setup is not that complex. 

It's on-premises. The deployment would take a few weeks. 

The pricing is a little bit high because it's on-premises, users would expect to get a little bit more of a discount on the actual application, but it's not. But that's the strategy of Oracle. 

Oracle wants to go completely cloud, so they do update the pricing on on-premises applications a little bit more. But they're quite adaptable, so it's not that they're not able to give discounts or things like that.

It is kinda room for improvement for Oracle, wherein they could introduce more discounts. 

I would recommend it to the financial industry. 

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

We use this product for the management of purchasing, accounts payable, general ledger accounting, and other things. TheyHyperion software is good for management as well as processes such as accounts receivable. The product has many use cases. I'm an applications consultant and we are service providers and Oracle customers. 

It has improved our organization by enabling us to move from manual to automatic processes. It means that our clients can focus on analysis instead of transactions and dealing with a lot of paperwork. Transactions can now be approved by mobile or when you're on the road. The approval workflow has improved significantly. 

The new Subledger Accounting feature is very strong. It's the most powerful thing Oracle has done in this latest upgrade. We can easily customize which is something that wasn't easy with the SaaS product. With an Oracle database and application, everything is integrated into one solution from one provider. The entire process is now integrated. Because we use Excel and Outlook a lot, there's no need to log off and on, it's all integrated. It's transparent for the end user, which is good. Oracle implemented OTBI, which saves the need to print reports. Everything is available as you go and on the go, which is a good feature. It's great for analysis. 

The implementation can take some time and it's one of the difficulties with Oracle as compared to SAP. Deployment takes way too much time.

I've used this solution for 20 years. 

The solution is scalable. We have around 400 users in the company which includes finance people, supply chain staff, and management.

The technical support is responsive and have helped us apply patches or find solutions when we have bugs.

Positive

The initial setup is a bit complex. The EBS takes more than 12 months to implement from scratch. We're a team that carry out deployments as well as provide service and support for our customers. We have a team made up of architects, project managers, consultants, functional analyst developers, DBAs, close to 20 people in total.

We have to invest a lot but we get a good return. 

They have licensing models based on the number of users as well as one-time packages. If you're on the cloud, it's pay-as-you-go. It's not cheap technology but they have good consultants who know all the features. They are one of the longest-standing players in the market so they can dictate the price.

My recommendation is to not customize E-Business Suite. The upgrades are complicated and when you go from version to version, it's not a good thing. You have to spend a lot of money so if you're already doing that you might as well go for a product that satisfies your requirements. If an organization has the opportunity to go to the cloud, then it's worth doing. It's pay-as-you-go, you're free from DBAs and a lot of complicated processes, and everything is taken care of in the cloud, 

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

I primarily use the solution for the financial aspect.

The workflow on offer is great.

I appreciate the alerts.

The technical ability to run runtime APIs is great. The web services and APIs are very powerful.

We found the initial setup process to be very straightforward.

You can scale this product easily.

Technical support has always been very reliable. 

The pricing is reasonable. 

Sometimes I have issues with the performance tuning. There is not much help there. There have been many times where I have had performance problems if there are high volume loads.

There is some lack of functionality, specific tools, and certain ways of doing business. The business process and Oracle capabilities occasionally fall short so we have to customize many, many, many things. The depth of functionality is not that great for some niche business processes, like distribution or warehouse management. Due to this, we have to go for an outside business product, a specialized product.

One major thing we found was there are no user interfaces for corrections. If we have a lot of integrations, then error handling and correction management are very manual and we had to build a lot of user interfaces to do that. They should allow a proper framework for integration building on the E-Business Suite. In the cloud, it may be better, however, a lot of it is left to clients to do customer development. Out-of-the-box integration supports are very limited, particularly transactions and error handling and re-submission, reporting, et cetera.

I've been dealing with the solution for 20 years. It's been a while. 

E-Business Suite is easy to scale. We run a global organization with $35 billion on financials on it. It's pretty solid.

Average daily users are around 600, however, registered users are almost 3,000. Not everybody uses it every day, so about 600 people are logged in every day. They would be different people. Registered authorized users include suppliers as well.

Oracle is the only company I can count on for support. They always do a great job.

The setup was very straightforward. Now, it's well documented and we can import setups. It's nothing to worry about.

I can't speak to the exact pricing, however, I've always found it to be reasonable.

We have a partnership. We do develop products together with Oracle.

The version we are using is about two or three years old. It's not the latest.

If you do work in advance and re-engineer the process really, even E-Business Suite implementation is faster with a process engineer. Don't allow too much creativity and too many custom requirements as most of the time the requirements are standard. People in the job want to do more things than they should. Re-look at the processes before mapping. That exercise should be done in parallel to implementation.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.