Oracle E-Business Suite Reviews

The functional knowledge is the most valuable feature. Oracle EBS has many different problems, but I think the main feature is the functionality, how it works together. You can probably find other products that work with Oracle database, but because that’s their own product, EBS tightly integrates with it. I think that's the most valuable thing.

We needed to use financial software, anyway. I think it comes from the historical fact that we had Oracle software; we always had Oracle Database. So, from a licensing point of view, it made perfect sense. It integrates well.

We have a very strong presence from the PL/SQL developers point of view. We have good resources. We have a lot of in-house developed software and it has to integrate with Oracle. We do a lot of invoicing and so on feeding into the Oracle EBS system from our in-house system.

It was natural. The system is naturally a good fit, actually.

Their UI is not the best. It is an area with room for improvement, big time. I think they can go completely out of Java, the applet version. If they make it completely browser driven, like HTML and so on, that will be the best. Today, once in a while, it'll get out of sync. You don't have the latest version of Java. It uploads a whole slew of Java products and applets, which is very heavy-duty stuff. It doesn’t have to be.

These days, actually, everybody uses HTML-related stuff. They have started using it. It's a mix of both, actually, but they're not there yet. That's why you see a lot of other products that complement it.

I met one company at an Oracle conference that did just the re-skinning, just because their skin is not up to the mark; there's a lot of outdated stuff.

I would say 12.1, we upgraded two years ago. At this point, we are a little bit stable. We do have sometimes hanging systems, but I think it's mostly stable now.

We do have some problems sometimes, but we are a small shop, we have 35-40 users, so it's not a huge shop. If you have a 200-something, or 500, users, I think they definitely would have issues. Personally, I haven't encountered many problems.

Once in a while, I'll have some problems. I'll have to restart the system. If it's in the middle of the day, we have all the users get kicked out, and then just a restart. It doesn't happen that often.

It was not easy to set up.

That's actually one of the reasons we use Salesforce; we're loving it. We use Salesforce for our sales and marketing; no software, no maintenance. I have only a 2-3-person team. I myself oversee the department. I have one developer and one support person. Effectively, that support person is not even 100%, so he probably uses 20% of our time, maybe sometimes a little more than that. The developer is very rarely used. If you add all these three persons, it's not even one person who is actually managing the entire team.

Oracle, oh, my God. I have a team for hardware; you need some Oracle-related hardware stuff. Of course, they're not only doing the Oracle stuff, but you have to have someone. We have an Oracle apps DBA. I'm outsourcing that one. I have a functional guy; he uses 25% of his time now, but at one point, he was using 50% of his time. We also have our in-house PL/SQL developer. You can see how many people. It’s a lot of resources. Oh, man.

Upgrading is a nightmare. I mean, I shouldn’t describe it as a nightmare, but I get nervous whenever they upgrade. It's a lot of work; a lot of coordination; a lot of testing and all those things.

If it was in the cloud, I wouldn't worry about any of those things.

We did look at other products. We did look at Workday, and Salesforce also has a product called FinancialForce. Actually, the Workday partners are very, very expensive. They force you to choose one of their suggested partners; Oracle doesn't have that problem. I get it dirt cheap from somebody from India, Brazil, or somebody else, and I can get it done. As much as Workday’s licensing costs, it costs as much for doing the implementation. I wouldn't do that, but maybe there are companies who will do that. If I have to do that, no, not in the route, unless there is some overwhelming benefit in the 5-7 year timeframe.

We also looked at NetSuite, but not as much as Workday. We actually were thinking of doing more on that, but we didn't have anybody come to our site to show that.
With FinancialForce, they had some other comment there that they would not be pursuing that direction. We didn't feel comfortable that they would keep it for a long time or not.

You have to have patience, and be willing to spend more time due to the fact that eventually it pays off. Sometimes, the first impression is the best impression. Oracle EBS is not that. The first impression might be terribly bad, but once you get through there, you dig deeper, you'll get your money's worth.

They are not super efficient in the cloud business yet. They are getting there. We are using it on-premises. Fusion is the cloud-based offering for EBS. We never went that route. We're not comfortable yet.

It's out there in the market and the suite of products seem to cater really well to the business needs of our organization. When we buy Oracle's different products, we look to see how they integrate with different modules. With E-Business Suite, they all talk to each other.

So E-Business Suite is kind of one solution, and it's also a well-known product. It's highly stable and we get great support for it.

It's very stable, which directly affects our business from an assets and support perspective. It provides us with purchasing, financial, procurement, payables, and order management modules. These are all business assets for us that E-Business Suite directly affects.

The Oracle support site needs to be better. We go to it for pretty much any sort of issue we have, and I'd like for the search capability to be improved. Sometimes I can get as good if not better results from Google compared to the Oracle site.

Also, there have been issues where we've had to play with E-Business Suite to develop custom fixes because the solution itself isn't precisely catered to our requirements. We're able to get it to work, but it would be nice to not have to customize our own fixes so much.

We haven't had any issues with deployment.

There have been instances of instability, and we've been able to resolve those with custom workarounds from either the Oracle support site or from simply Googling the answers.

We haven't had any issues scaling it.

The support site is the only bad thing I've seen with Oracle. Unless you type in the exact right words, you don't get the right answers.

I think its quality seems to have gone down a little bit compared to the way it used to be when I started working when I always had good support.

I am more on the development side so I didn't install it. The initial setup was done by OBPS. It seems that because it's a popular product, we can find answers on the support site. For my part, development for it has been easy.

I think it's the leader in financial software. I've talked to people who aren't Oracle fans, but who like E-Business Suit anyways. It's a very good product.

We are using this solution in our whole business as an EBS.

The solution is good for small businesses.

Earlier when our organization was small they chose Oracle because in the telecommunication industry everybody was using Oracle. Our company has grown to a size where our particularly billing phase has created some challenges and now we are looking at alternate solutions. There is not a billing engine or module that you can buy from Oracle that can be added to this EBS solution to fix our problem. They should add a billing module or engine to the solution.

I have been using this solution for approximately three years.

The solution is stable.

The scalability has been good.

We have been in continuous contact with technical support but they do not have a solution to the billing problems we are faced with. Additionally, there are other issues they have not been able to help us with.

The initial setup was complex. The migration took a very long time, approximately four months.

The price of the solution is extremely high.

We are evaluating different solutions.

In my current scenario, I would not recommend EBS for anyone. It is better to purchase a cloud solution rather than having this one.

I rate Oracle E-Business Suite a five 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.

I implement the solution for customers in Saudi Arabia who prefer on-premises solutions.

E-Business Suite is an on-premises solution but you have the option to deploy its infrastructure as a service. For example, we have already implemented Amazon, Google, and Oracle on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. With the infrastructure, you don't need to have your own data center but you need to have ownership of your database and more. You have options with the solution. You can install it on-premises, host it elsewhere, or place it in a cloud solution like Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as a service. 

The on-premises solution has maturity in features but also flex fields. If you have ownership of a database, you can fully customize and personalize the solution. 

This differs from a public cloud where you are limited in customization such as adding tables or integrating with a third party. 

Improvements could be made in mobility for mobile applications or tablets. The solution still has some web-built pages and Java forms, and Oracle is currently shifting Java forms to be web-based. Once that is complete, Oracle will be accessible from mobile applications and tablets. This is a main difference and strong benefit in comparison to cloud-based solutions like Oracle Fusion. 

I'd like the addition of modern merges and an integration with social media like LinkedIn. 

Minor enhancements in function are sometimes requested and should be implemented. 

I have been using the solution for nine years on and off. 

The solution is very stable. It was created in 1980 and there's a pool of consultants very experienced in working with it so they don't even need to contact support for issues. There are 40 years of knowledge behind it and all issues are known. 

The solution is scalable. 

Customer support is based on the awareness of the person who contacts Oracle. Service requests sometimes loop because Oracle supports the solution at the product level, not the functional level. The product level is any item related to the product itself. The functional level includes change requests or maintenance for the product.  

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward and simple. For maintenance, two consultants might be needed to address any issues. 

I am a member of the Oracle Implementation Team and implement the solution for customers. 

One of the major issues is that the solution has a high price. 

We evaluate options to determine the best solution for customers based on scope of work. We determine the type of business, requirements, architecture, and streamlining needs. For small to medium companies, we generally recommend Oracle. 

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

I am actually working in a services company and we are serving our customers Oracle E-Business Suite.

Some of our customers are moving to the deployment on cloud. In the past, it's been on-premise but some of them have moved to the cloud, whether it's for Oracle cloud or AWS cloud, people are trying to host it on the cloud.

The complete product suite is good. The financials are good, it is the best product I've been working with is Oracle Financial. Supply chain manufacturing is very comprehensive and the connectivity, between all the modules, is seamless. They are all communicated well with one another.

There are many new features that Oracle is providing.

In the cloud version of Oracle E-Business Suite, I think most of the features are already there. We are working on Oracle EBS SaaS applications as well, a lot of the improvements have already been made in the new modules that Oracle. The on-premise version could improve.

In the future, Oracle E-Business Suite could improve by having a better UI. Competitors are providing much better interfaces.

I have been using Oracle E-Business Suite for 15 years.

Oracle E-Business Suite is highly scalable. All Oracle solutions are highly scalable, whether it is on-premise or on the cloud.

The support from Oracle is excellent, they have always been good.

Our customers are also using customer support for their particular problems. My team is contacting the support and as a services partner, we are raising a lot of tickets from Oracle for any services we need or any certifications. Their response has always been good.

The initial setup time depends on the size of the implementation. In a medium-size business, the implementation could take between six months to one year to complete.

We implement this solution for our customers.

I have evaluated CX which is Oracle E-Business Suite's biggest competition. Workday is another competitor, and NetSuite is for medium companies.

I rate Oracle E-Business Suite on the Cloud an eight 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.

It immediately resolved an issue we had because, as a spin-off company, we were operating on a transitional service agreement and had to get off the previous systems. E-Business Suit allowed us to do that, having an immediate impact.

Although I don't have daily, hands-on work with E-Business Suite, I know that my colleagues are concerned with its reporting and dashboarding abilities. They'd like better reporting on data and dashboard functionalities.

We've been using it for three years.

We've had no issues deploying it.

E-Business Suite wasn't initially stable, but it has been in the last year-and-a-half.

It has scaled for our needs.

The previous solution wasn't our system, so we had to do something else. At prior companies, our executive management and some of the leadership team had experience with Oracle and always had good success. We did a lot of homework and research. There was interest in considering at least one of the manufacturing ERP systems, and we did give that solution a consideration. But from a pure finance, non-manufacturing perspective, Oracle was the way for us to go.

It was straightforward because we wanted to use Oracle out-of-the-box. There were a few extensions, but we wanted to adopt the processes rather than change the system to support our processes. We knew that there was going to be expanded scope and implementations globally. We wanted to keep it simple.