Oracle E-Business Suite Reviews

I am a system analyst and database supervisor. I prepare the reports and take the reports from the system. 

We are mainly using this product for HR and finance. We also use it a little bit for supply chain. We are using a legacy version of this product.

It is scalable. 

We don't like Oracle EBS because it is very old. Nowadays, all the systems are on the cloud and web-based. With Oracle EBS, you need a huge setup before installing it. You need a lot of servers. There are a lot of problems and bugs in the system. We have to move from Oracle EBS to another system. In terms of improvements, it can have better training for end users and better support.

We have been using Oracle E-Business Suite in some divisions since 2014.

It is stable because we already know where are the problems and errors. So, we are able to handle it manually, but this is not healthy at all.

It is scalable. We have around 1,000 users. 

We didn't use their technical support because we didn't pay for the license for support.

I am not responsible for installation or setup. You need a huge setup and a lot of servers before installing it.

Its implementation was very difficult. We used an implementer, but he was bad.

I would recommend this solution but with good implementation from the beginning. After implementation, you can build whatever you want. You can create any flow.

We will continue to use this solution because we have the system license, but we will eventually move from Oracle EBS to another system. We are trying to go to HCM Fusion, but we have some problems with the management. That's why we haven't moved to Fusion.

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

The benefits of APEX and EBS is that APEX actually lives outside of EBS. When you develop customizations you don't have to embed them inside EBS. Now when you upgrade EBS or apply patches to it generally everything gets overwritten. If your customizations are inside EBS they get overwritten. In order to upgrade EBS you have to take those customizations out, park them on the side, do your upgrade and then take those customizations and reapply them to the product. Which is risky, time consuming, very expensive. If they're outside an EBS, in APEX that means if you upgrade everything the only thing you have to touch are the pieces of the API that may have changed in the upgrade. You don't have to do as much work to get that upgrade done.

Another aspect of it is that APEX is fundamentally PL/SQL solution with a lot of SQL. It lives inside the database. Therefore your existing EBS team who are already experts in SQL and PL/SQL can get up to speed very, very quickly with Apex. Apex is a declarative environment therefore it's a very rapid application development environment so you can do stuff really quickly.

There's a new version of APEX coming out to very, very soon, APEX 5.1 and that contains probably the last pieces of my wish list. Which would be very intuitive and easy to use, declarative set of tabular forms where's it's like a spreadsheet. You can see a lot of rows and update them simultaneously. That is a big step forward. Typically when we do conversions from Oracle forms applications, oracle forms is quite good with that multi row update and that in the past has been a weakness with APEX. This new version will completely wipe that problem out.

The scalability is really good because since APEX is inside the Oracle Database and it's just PL/SQL code with the SQL statements, it scales with the database. Which means it is completely scalable. For example shop.oracle.com which is the Oracle site for buying Oracle stuff is an APEX application. That's up 24/7, it's hit around the world, multi-lingual, you can buy the products in Farsi in German and all those languages.

Well APEX is a kind of a funny product in the Oracle space. Number one it's a no cost feature of the database. It doesn't get a lot of attention from the Oracle sales people. That's a fair comment, there's no commission for it. Therefore it's kind of like a hidden thing inside the database and a lot of people at organizations that have Oracle and very good Oracle people actually don't know it exists. That's part of what we do is we try to raise the awareness of APEX in the Oracle space. One of the big features of Oracle is if you want to do some customization and make a web application on top of an Oracle database it needs to be considered because it is a world class tool right now. Scales beautifully, it's got in their mid-tier the ORDS product, the Oracle Rest Data Services, mid-tier portion which is very light and small that has restful services which opens up the entire world to an APEX application. It can touch any database that has rest services exposed and it can go on to the cloud and if you want your list of Amazon books or go to Netflix, all of that stuff is easily available through that ORDS technology.

Training for APEX goes through several steps like anything else. You start as a beginner, go through intermediate and become senior. It's very easy to take that first step and become a very good confident beginner because it is a declarative environment all you need to do to get started with APEX is a little bit of SQL knowledge and not even PL/SQL when you start because it's all declarative. Oracle gives you some very good starting documentation. There are some good books now by the A press publisher, beginning Oracle Application Express. There's a couple of very good introduction books. If you work through those you'll be able to be very productive APEX developer.

APEX by itself is easy to learn and it's extremely powerful because it sits right sort of in the mid-tier between the Oracle backend and the JavaScript front end. The backend you since it's got a very easy interface into PL/SQL you've got all the rich environment like SQL analytics, very powerful Oracle engine underneath you and you can reach all of that stuff very, very easily from APEX. On the front end the tool gives you a lovely set of themes and templates for putting out your HTML and cascading style sheets and your JavaScript for the front end stuff. You can use APEX out of the box and get a very good user interface but if you want to customize it or brand it's nothing more than HTML, CSS and JavaScript which is all under your control.

If you're doing customization on top of an Oracle database you've got lots of competing technologies. For example ADF which is an Oracle product that Java based technology. You can use .NET. There is all sorts of other web technologies that can be used. You can even put things like Excel and Microsoft Access, those have jet engines in them that will talk to an Oracle database. All of these things can do what APEX does. A lot of that is driven by like, if you're an organization and say you've got a bunch of .NET programmers. Well if you've got .NET programmers use .NET.

Years ago I was in a small shop and we were using Visual Basic 6. Visual Basic 6 at the time was going to be deprecated by Microsoft. With this team I was looking down the road and I was looking at using Java and I was looking at using .Net going forward. Since those are heavy in the mid-tier, I was seeing maybe tiers at 2:00 in the morning for this team especially the team when they saw curly braces the Java they got with catatonic. I was really nervous because these folks were coming from like a Fox pro background and a VB park. They were just really uncomfortable with the Java stuff, .NET stuff. Then I found application express and I went back to my team, showed it to them, we got to the apex.oracle.com workspaces up which is a free cloud based solution that allows you to kick the tires. We kicked the tires and realized we were saved. We went down that road because it was very easy for my team to come up to speed very quickly with that product and we did that.

Rating: with the current version I would say eight because like any other tool it's got its strengths and there are a few weaknesses, but I consider it a very high quality product. I've been with APEX now for over ten years. I built the farm on APEX and I've been very successful with it and many of my clients have been very successful using the product.

Basically if somebody comes to me like a young millennial says, "Okay, should I learn APEX?" The short answer for me is, "Yes." The company I am with, Insum, we've been doubling over the last few years because there's a huge amount of uptake of APEX right now. We have some very large clients here in the States some of the major banks use APEX for their production systems. We're into other large industries that have really found it very very useful and we jumped into it with both feet. We have no direct competitors because the people that theoretically are our direct competitors are basically our joint venture partners. There's so much work out there that we don't step on each other and it's growing every day.

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.

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.