Oracle E-Business Suite Reviews

At Dekalb County, the most valuable feature of E-Business Suite is the integration of all the different modules. It's truly become our financial database from a projects and procurement point of view. It's all connected and logical.

Oracle has clearly brought experts to the table for the their design and development roles. In the early days, E-Business Suit was comprise simply of programmers' coding, but that's not their model anymore. I like that Oracle's brought in experts who know payables, who know what CFO's want to see, etc. They've got real-world experience and it shows because when you stand it up for the first time, it's an absolutely useable system. From that perspective, it's 100% worth the investment.

For example, sub-ledger accounting was new to release 12. If I am an international company or I want to deal with a company outside of the United States, they record things a little bit differently in their accounting. If I want to value my company and I have inventory in the United States, we put that on our books. I could have $100 worth of inventory, so therefore my company looks like it's $100 better than maybe Italy, but Italy doesn't record inventory on their books. It's not an asset.

So with E-Business Suite, Oracle has built a product from which I can make entity/business decision adaptations without changing the underlying code.

What sub-ledger accounting allows me to do is recreate the accounting structure, so I could still have my primary books, which is in US GAAP, but I could have secondary books. Now that I'm working in county government, where E-Business Suite really helps is with cash management.

I am fine with where E-Business Suite is now. From a county standpoint, I would like to see them integrate fund accounting into fixed assets and cash management. Right now, E-Business Suit really isn't 100% public sector. I guess we're not the market to roll out to.

Also, I'm not impressed with the out-of-the-box analytics. It's really the bare minimum.

Moreover, out-of-the-box, Oracle E-Business Suite's cash management module does not do fund accounting. It puts a strain on our accounting staff because the data doesn't really represent properly, but I was able to get it to work by using sub-ledger accounting to redefine the delivered Oracle out-of-the-box method.

I've been using E-Business Suite since 1989.

We've had no issues deploying it.

Whether we have stability issues depends on how long a module has been out. With the evolution of E-Business Suite, each new module has had its hiccups and challenges. The longer the module is out, however, the more stable it becomes. This has been our experience with GL, accounts payable, accounts receivable, fixed assets, cash management, and fund accounting.

The frustrating part of that is because it's new, you don't have the expertise out there to pull on. You could call Oracle support and yes, they're going to help you eventually, but one of the things that the user group gives me is, I know people who know GL, accounts payable, etc. I can reach out to my network, but I don't have a network on new products.

So the answer to the stability question is both yes and no.

E-Business Suite is scalable. We don't have to worry about it at my organization, but I know from my prior consulting experience that it's absolutely scalable, from mom-and-pop shops to large multi-national companies.

I have up and down days with Oracle support. Like anything, it depends on who your support analyst is. They have some phenomenal analysts. Unfortunately, the lifespan, as I understand it, is only maybe 18 months. They come to know this product inside and out, but then they go on to do other things. If I look at it realistically, here we only call support when there's an issue. We're always complaining. If I was on the receiving end of that, 18 months of listening to complaints might get old. There are the people who can answer my questions and who will get it done, and then there are those who don't.

Actually, I'm dealing with a support ticket now. I have had to on multiple occasions put in the ticket 'read my question' versus what I think is happening. I don't know if it's a computer that spits out the first few e-mails, but it's "hello, my name is X, Y, Z", and as a business, you get sick of the same old stuff. I need this resolved and, honestly, the time it takes for me to log into Oracle support and read the stock e-mails has become extremely frustrating.

The setup to me is straightforward, but I've been using it for so long. For a new person, I don't think that companies could use the software without consulting help of some sort. You need to understand your business. There are very good consultants who could come in and they will ask you the right questions to help drive the setup. They're decisions that need to be made that, if wrong, you can still live with. But, there are other, more critical decisions that you make that you can't undo. So is it easy to set up? Physically going into the screens is as simple as can be. The question really needs to be, how much time do you need to put in prior to sitting down to set the system up? You really need to understand your business and you need to understand what you're trying to do.

We had outside help, but what causes problems is the fact that when you're a company and you're looking for new software, you are sitting there and you're saying, "OK my old software doesn't quite do what I want," so you want to buy something else. You go out, you do your RFP, you decide you're going to get E-Business Suite. The problem is, the experts at the company know their business. They also know their business using their old system. The consultants that they get to come in, they know E-Business Suite, but they don't know your business. The two don't always mesh correctly. What I've noticed over the years is you end up re-implementing the old system you just came off of. You're not utilizing all of the neat features that E-Business Suite has.

If you haven't implemented it and are considering purchasing it, don't be afraid of it. Go ahead, jump in. Oracle is a phenomenal company and they will stand behind their product. The best advice is to take your time, know your business, and don't always take 100% judgement from your consultant. Use their advice, but listen to that little voice in your head of what you know as well. Have a good collaboration between you and the consultant. Don't try to do it on your own.

The last piece of advice and what many companies fail to do is the education portion. I can't tell you how many companies I've gone into to do training only after they've gone live. And it never fails that they've scaled back their education to save money. Like where I am now at Dekalb County, they never train the end users. These end users know absolute basics to get by, but they don't know all the great tools. Even though once it's implemented, they need to keep learning it. Just because you've implemented a product, you're not done. Now, after it has settled down and you've used it, you can go and see what else your product that's live can also do. So remember to get educated.

We manage all our financial operations, including sales, purchases, and inventory, through this system. Everything is fully configured, and we’ve found it highly effective.

It handles all my financial functions, including the entire process of financial transactions.

It's more expensive than other options due to licensing costs and core-based hardware. Managing licenses can be tedious. For example, if I want to discontinue some licenses, it's a complicated process. Once we're committed, it's challenging to exit the system.

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

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

About 200 users are using this solution

I rate the solution’s scalability a ten out of ten.

We opened a ticket, and we got the solution on time.

We relied on an integrator for initial implementation and cloud migration. After that, our internal team managed it.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

We primarily use the solution from an ERP standpoint. We use it for procurement processes, operations, sales, finance, accounting, reporting, all of it.

The ease of use is great. 

It was easy to set up the product.

The stability is good.

Technical support is helpful.

It is not overly expensive. 

The operations could be better, specifically for manufacturing processes. There could, for example, be some sort of forecasting available. We need more planning and scheduling options. They need more analytical capabilities. 

It can't really scale.

I've been using the solution for seven years. 

It's quite stable. The in-business application has been fantastic, and we haven't had any issues. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's about 95% stable. 

This isn't a very scalable product if you have to expand it into a different line of business. 

In our organization, we have more than 250 people using it. 

We've contacted support quite a bit in the past. They're pretty good at helping us. They are responsive.

Positive

I'm also familiar with SAP and find this solution's annual contracts and maintenance cheaper than SAP. 

The solution was very simple to set up. It was not complex at all. The deployment itself took about four months. 

The solution is not very expensive. It is worth the money.

I have been looking into SAP and Microsoft Dynamics to compare a few things. 

I'm an end-user. 

Whether or not I would recommend the solution to others depends on the company and the automation they need. Oracle works well, however, it's not for every organization. A very common practice is to use SAP. If a solution doesn't solve any value for your business, it's not worth putting it in. 

I'd rate the solution five out of ten. It's helpful in some ways yet lacking in others. For example, it can do procurement, it can do sales, and it can do financial reporting, however, it cannot do my warehouse or transportation management. It cannot do my planning bit. It can't do my production or manufacturing. There's a lot missing.

We use different modules across our organization, such as finance, auto finance and PBCS planning budgeting tool. We also use a supply chain management module. For our P2P, all the processes are integrated and mapped out.

The procure-to-pay is core to our business and relevant to us. The other benefit is finance and payroll.

We would like to see some automation in this solution. In addition, the implementation team should improve their customer service by meeting with customers regularly.

We have been using this solution for four years, and we are using the latest version.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

Because we are licensed users, we get support from Oracle and the local partner.

The setup is very straightforward, and most old practices have been corrected with Oracle E-Business Suite. There are no complications with the applications. We bought several modules from Oracle, and it took approximately one and a half years to implement all the models across the organization.

The deployment process was straightforward. We implemented Oracle with the data center, and we didn't try to customize Oracle EBS to map with our processes. So we implemented the straight line of Oracle EBS extended. One of our local partners aligned with us for the implementation because we didn't have the expertise to implement and configure it independently.

Using many modules in Oracle increases the value. The cost depends on how many features in Oracle are used. I rate the pricing a five out of ten, as customers always look for discounts.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten. The use of this solution depends on the industry.

I used Oracle E-Business Suite for supply chain management, such as order and inventory management, and for receivables.

Oracle E-Business Suite's most valuable feature is the information that it provides. For example, it's good to know the AR due date and the receipt of the products that you have sold. It is a good solution overall for enterprise management.

Oracle E-Business Suite could improve the tables. When we remove some of them sometimes they cloud the modules into one. It becomes a little difficult to segregate.

I have been using Oracle E-Business Suite for more than five years.

Oracle E-Business Suite is a stable solution.

As the Oracle E-Business Suite updates to newer versions the solution scales.

We have approximately 50 people using this solution in the previous company I worked at.

I have not used the support for Oracle E-Business Suite.

We require 15 people for the maintenance and deployment of the solution for one project. The people needed include managers, developers, administrators, and engineers.

I rate Oracle E-Business Suite an eight out of ten.

I am a consultant and I work with Oracle E-Business Suite to assist my clients with financials and supply chain management. I help with the implementation of these models.

My clients buy licenses from Oracle and they have to configure the system. I am one of the functional analysts that work with CPAs and other technical people to implement the system.

One of our recent clients was a bank in Montreal and it was a very good experience. It took us a year and a half to implement.

The most valuable feature is the integration between accounts receivable, accounts payable, general ledger, and budgeting.

The procurement-to-pay (P2P) process is something that we work a lot with.

It is difficult to get answers from technical support right away.

I have been working with this product for 18 years.

Oracle has been on the market for many years and it is really stable.

It is really scalable and customizable.

The technical support is good, although sometimes it is very difficult to get an answer from them right away. You have to send them all of the log files so that they can fix the problem.

I have also worked with Fusion, which is a combination of Oracle products combined together on the cloud. They did a great job of taking the best features from PeopleSoft, Siebel, and other Oracle products to create Fusion. It has a lot of features, although I find that clients don't use it to 100% capacity. I see some clients buy the license but they can't use it because they don't know how to.

It is not easy to set up a project.

We do workshops with the clients and all of their departments to find out the business processes that they have. We then try to match these processes with the features we have in Oracle and if there are any gaps, we try to customize the system to answer their business processes. Or, we try to convince them to change the way they work so it matches what Oracle is bringing. It may take a year, or sometimes a year and a half to be implemented. However, it does answer a lot of business problems.

This product is more expensive if you compare it to SAP.

Oracle E-Business Suite can be compared to SAP. It is a little more expensive and takes longer to implement projects. I would say that on average, it takes nine months to implement a project in SAP, whereas it might be a year with Oracle.

The suitability of this product depends on the requirements. For example, if somebody is starting from scratch and are looking for a new ERP, I would advise them to adopt a cloud solution like Fusion.

On the other hand, if they are already using the E-Business Suite then I suggest upgrading it and continuing with the same infrastructure.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The reporting capabilities keep us from having to run every report for our users as they can go in and run the reports themselves. With BI Publisher, the templates are either already there or we can help them modify and customize the existing ones. Our users get data exactly the way they like it.

It's part of the back end of finance and they're able to do their month-end closures and other tasks with much greater ease.

I'd like to get BI integrated into the transactional system and not just the Data Mart. We've been having issues with making that happen. So, maybe making that a little easier to implement would be an area of improvement. The project summarization also needs some work, though we've heard that it's fixed in version 12.2.

We've had no issues with deploying it.

We've not had serious downtime, but we've had some issue. We run projects and we've done the project summarizations, but we've got SRs open with Oracle to work on that.

It has scaled for us, though I think we're reaching our limit on it. That's why we're going to Exadata, so I hope that that will help with the scalability.

For the most part, if it's a serious issue we can escalate to level-two support and get good responses.

I've been through two of the upgrades. We went live the year before I joined the company, but then I was involved with the 11i upgrade and the R12 upgrade. They were pretty complex. We had both functional and technical assistance for both of those upgrades. It was a lot of work and a lot of long hours. But, getting on the R12 helped with some issues we were having with the 11i.

You definitely need a good IT staff with the ability to cross-train. That's really what's helped us since R12 -- bringing on some of the folks we had during the upgrade and them being able to cross-train those teams.

Our company has both our renewable and thermal fleets through the E-Business Suite. This includes planned maintenance for the thermal fleet, equipment operation and maintenance, and procurement of necessary spare parts through inventory management. Finance users also leverage the suite for invoicing, purchase order processing, and other financial tasks. It's a comprehensive solution that even supports our budgeting needs.

Sometimes, when you prepare your rules, the robustness of the rules is essential. Allowing excessive user modifications can lead to situations where only specific scenarios are considered, neglecting others. This can cause difficulties for users.

SAP doesn't allow changes in their processes beyond the limit. While this might restrict some flexibility, it fosters repeatability in system behavior, which users eventually adapt to. In Oracle E-Business Suite, we've faced situations where a procurement workflow appears stuck in someone's inbox, even though it's not there. This discrepancy is potentially caused by configuration or feature issues.

I have been using Oracle E-Business Suite as an end user for one year.

We over-implemented and customized Oracle, leading to stability issues. It's like buying a BMW and driving it for 20 years. Tomorrow, you shift to Tesla, and you still want to drive it like you drove a BMW. So, you start modifying Tesla for BMW's pleasure. Modifying it excessively compromises its inherent capabilities. Our process owners, accustomed to SAP, sought similar workflows in Oracle despite its different approach. The software has inherent rules; tweaking them too much can cause instability. Additionally, our system integrator, E&Y, might have over-engineered processes, making them fragile. Unlike our 9-month SAP implementation with a stable product, Oracle took two years with issues.

We evaluated both SAP and Oracle. We chose Oracle because of SAP's higher cost. Additionally, SAP no longer offers on-premise licenses, focusing solely on Software as a Service (SaaS), making it a bit more costier to operate regularly.

Oracle E-Business Suite is reasonably good. It offers a licensing model, which offers long-term cost advantages compared to the cloud-based license provided by SAP. As an end user, my role was very limited. In 2011, when we implemented SAP, I was heavily involved because I was heading operations and maintenance. We had inventory management, budgeting, and everything integrated seamlessly from that perspective.

Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.