The Business Value of Upgrading to

Oracle E-Business Suite Financials

Release 12
An Oracle White Paper
May 2008

The Business Value of Upgrading to

Oracle E-Business Suite Financials
Release 12

EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW
As we see more free trade, as we see
capital markets becoming more
integrated, businesses have to
become more global in their scope.
Ed Yardeni, former chief investment
strategist at Deutsche Bank and chief
economist at Prudential Bache
Securities, interviewed on Daniel
Altmans Managing Globalization
blog.

The world is changing in a way weve

never seen. There is a wave of new
competition coming from countries
with large populations, such as China,
India, Brazil, and Russia. Also, there is

Globalization is an inescapable force in doing business today, whether its about

pursuing new markets and customers or responding to a new set of global
competitors. The global economy offers a tremendous opportunity for growth, but
at the same time presents management with some tough challenges. Finance is no
exception, as it faces diverse financial reporting and tax standards, increased
regulatory and security requirements, and a push to locate goods and services in
lower cost markets.
This whitepaper is intended to provide guidance in regards to the types of benefits
that may be realized through an upgrade or implementation of Oracle E-Business
Suite Financials Release 12. Other benefits may exist and organizations should fully
explore all of the process areas within Financials to understand their unique
benefits and size and scope of each benefit. Financials Release 12 enables you to
manage the complexity that comes with doing business across divisions, across
regions and across partners, without having to worry about disparate processes and
systems. An overview of the key features in this release will help you plan how to
extend the value of your Oracle Financials implementation with new functionality
and a substantially improved architecture. In addition, the certification of Oracle
E-Business Suite Financials Release 12 on Fusion Middleware allows you to take
advantage of this standards-based platform for managing and upgrading
applications, even before moving to Oracles next generation service-oriented
applications.

unprecedented access to resources

such as R&D, intellectual property,
and the internet. Because of this,
were beginning to see a wave of new
challengers to the incumbents - the
established leading companies in the
developed world.
Hal Sirkin,
Senior Partner and Managing Director
GlobalOperations

INTRODUCTION

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 is designed to help you make better decisions
and be more competitive, while lowering costs and increasing performance.
Achieving this balance requires companies to have a global (or holistic) view of
their operations, whether they operate within the same borders or across borders.
Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 enables organizations to:

Think Globally Achieve a global view of customers, suppliers, partners,

and operations to make the right decisions

The Boston Consulting Group

November 2007

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Work Globally Work better across applications, divisions and regions to

be more competitive

Manage Globally Implement, manage, and scale global applications

easier and at lower costs

The ability to make informed decisions, work across boundaries, and manage
applications at lower cost benefits every organization, no matter what size or
industry. Businesses that achieve a truly global perspective will end up the winners,
driving out complexity so that they can focus on value added activities.
CREATING AN UPGRADE PLAN
Enterprises need to transform their
financial management models. They
need to integrate their finance
operations to take advantage of this
new perspective on globalization.
Integrated operations alleviate the
threats they face and improve the
operational performance of their
organizations."
IBM Global CFO Study 2008

Oracles customers are saying that simplification is at the top of their minds.
Theyre also saying that globalization has fundamentally changed the way they do
business, adding a whole new level of complexity to operations. Through
acquisition and global growth, many organizations have ended up with inconsistent
business processes and a patch work of systems that inhibits efficiency, increases
risk and fails to provide enterprise visibility into measures and results. On top of
this, the complexity of operating a in highly competitive, global economy with ever
increasing regulation mean that managing this complexity finding a way to
simplify and standardize has become critical to enabling a platform for growth.
Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12 helps organizations manage the
complexity and ultimately take advantage of globalizations changing dynamics by:
1.

Ensuring Corporate Consistency and Global Visibility Think Globally

2.

Working better across applications, divisions, and regions Work Globally

3.

Implementing, managing, and scaling global applications easier Manage

Globally

TOP FIVE REASONS TO UPGRADE

With a focus on simplification, standardization and centralization, this release

applies to all customers, regardless of size or industry, from the large multi-national
to the small to medium sized business. Below are the top reasons E-Business Suite
customers are upgrading to Release 12.
Increase Operational Efficiency

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 offers greater efficiency and flexibility with
many new centralized and standardized key business functions. The new
centralized architecture improves support for shared services as well as standardizes
and simplifies the financial infrastructure across your enterprise. This release
supports the centralization of the following key business functions:

Accounting policies are standardized across the entire enterprise with

Subledger Accountingensuring that everyone adheres to the same set of
rules.

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Financial results are stored and easily accessible with Ledgers and Ledger
Setssupporting faster and simpler period end closing.

Legal entities easily model legal corporate structures and tie all related
components together with Legal Entity Configurator.

Banks and bank accounts are centrally managed providing a single point of
access for internal bank accounts across Oracle applications.

Payments are centrally disbursed and captured with Oracle Payments

automating and streamlining integration with external financial institutions.

Transaction taxes are consistently managed and processed with E-Business

Taxoffering consistent support and control of complex transactional tax
requirements across the enterprise.

Inter- and Intra-company accounts are centrally defined with Advanced

Global Iintercompany System improving period end reconciliation.

Improve End User Productivity

Employee productivity continues to be a top concern for most organizations as

well as a key aspect for purchasing new applications. Simplistic, convenient and
efficient are qualities customers are looking for when it comes to boosting the
productivity of transaction flows and end-to-end business processes. Oracle EBusiness Suite Release 12 leveraged intellectual property from several acquisitions
and made a significant investment in the overall user experience. New pages
introduced in Release 12 were designed with a completely different approach to
simplify the user experience. End users will experience dashboards, step-by-step
check lists, wizard-like pages, and consolidated single-page setups. Here are a few
examples:

Collections

Payments

Accounting Setup

Tax

Key New Features and Functionality

New features and enhanced functionality delivered in Oracle E-Business Suite

Financials Release 12 were designed based on extensive customer feedback,
industry best practices, analyst research, and our own commitment to improve our
applications. With a planned upgrade path to Fusion, Oracle E-Business Suite
Financials Release 12 delivers the first benefits of Fusion planning and
development. Leveraging early Fusion fundamentals, organizations can get
comfortable with architecture and technology changes while planning a long-term
applications roadmap. Enhancements throughout the release demonstrate that
Oracle offers the most comprehensive and adaptable global business platform to

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support business growth at lower cost with more control and flexibility. Below is
just a sample of the over 300 features and enhancements in Release 12:

Replacement for disabled accounts

Invoice line level entry and approval

Partial period revenue recognition

COGS and revenue matching

Line level cash applications

Conversion of delinquent receivables to payment plans

Funds optimization with cash pooling and zero balancing

Bank account-level reconciliation options and tolerances

Rollback on select assets with Automatic Depreciation Rollback

Streamlined receipts management with receipts tracking and receipts missing

capabilities

Timely and Simplified Reporting

Many customers have very strong business requirements for reporting in EBusiness Suite. Whether its for reports that include images, charts, multiple fonts
and color; board quality financial statements or government mandated forms
Release 12 makes producing all types of reports much easier. By delivering reports
using BI Publisher (formerly known as XML Publisher), were putting the capability
to format and deliver reports in the hands of business users. BI Publisher offers
configurable professional reporting. In fact, Financials has moved much of its
standard reporting to the extract and template model, offering increased efficiency
to our customers compliance with local reporting obligations.
Extended Maintenance and Support

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 delivers on Oracle's promise to support and

invest in the applications already running. By delivering E-Business Suite Release
12, Oracle demonstrates its commitment to protect, extend and evolve application
investments. Customers implementing E-Business Suite Financials Release 12 will
receive Premier Support until January 2012 and Extended Support until January
2015. Sustaining Support is also available indefinitely.
Oracle intends to deliver additional Oracle E-Business Suite point releases, which
further underscores the fact that customers will not be forced to move to Fusion.
However, upgrading to E-Business Suite Release 12 will not lock an organization
out of Fusion. With a planned upgrade path to Fusion, Oracle E-Business Suite
Release 12 delivers the first benefits of Fusion planning and development. Maybe
your organization has made a decision about the future of your financial

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applications. Maybe you are not ready yet. Upgrading to E-Business Suite
Financials Release 12 will position you for whatever choice you make.
BUSINESS BENEFITS OF UPGRADING

The following sections focus on the the business benefits that might be realized by
upgrading or implementing Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12. They
are not meant to be the only benefits available, but highlight some of the main
enhancements and where organizations should look to realize these benefits.
THINK GLOBALLY

Informed business decisions come as a result of having a single, comprehensive

view of customers, suppliers, partners, and operations. To make the right
investments in the business, you must have a global view across systems and
divisions. Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 helps you make decisions based on
complete informationeven when your systems cross regions and divisions.
Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 continues to offer real time, role-based
information, across the enterprise. Our leading Business Intelligence applications
are extended in this release, as well as our flexible reporting capabilities.
Comprehensive Business Intelligence

Oracle BI Applications are complete, prebuilt solutions that help people at all levels
of the organization better understand how their business is performing by
providing a single, integrated view of enterprise information, enabling greater
insight and alignment across business functions. Oracle released pre-built adapters
and ETL (Extraction, Transformation and Loading) maps for E-Business Suite
Release 12 in December 2007. Oracle BI Applications uniquely support EBusiness Suite Release 12 with tight integrations, including support for E-Business
Suite SSO (Single Sign On) and E-Business Suite specific security at the user, object
and data layers. Additonally, Oracle BI Applications leverage E-Business Suite
Flexfields and have pre-built "Action Links" allowing Oracle BI Apps users to
securely access appropriate content and drill to transactional detail within EBusiness Suite applications, automatically.
For E-Business Suite Financials customers, Oracle Financial Analytics, part of the
Oracle BI Applications family, provides organizations with better visibility into the
factors that drive revenues, costs, and shareholder value. Tight integration with
other applications in the Oracle BI Applications family delivers robust financial
information across the company value chain to enhance customer, supplier, and
workforce analysis. For example, Oracle Financial Analytics enables better insight
into the General Ledger to better understand product or customer profitability or
highlights how staffing costs and employee or supplier performance correlate with
increased revenue and customer satisfaction.
Oracle Financial Analytics provides hundreds of powerful financial metrics, alerts,
reports, and dashboards to financial professionals and line of business managers,

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enabling them to gain insight and take appropriate actions. Moreover, Oracle
Financial Analytics helps reduce the time it takes to generate reports for regulatory
compliance (for example, Sarbanes-Oxley) or periodic financial statements. Oracle
Financial Analytics provides more detailed reporting at a greater frequency and to a
broader range of users. Managers and front-line professionals also receive timely
information on costs and revenue at levels of detail such as by product, geography,
region, and customer that allows them to fine-tune strategy and improve
performance. Traditional solutions require managers to wait days or even weeks
for specific reports. In many cases, they have to wait until the books close to
determine how their business performed.
Finance professionals and managers across the organization can monitor
performance, analyze specific metrics, and compare them to budgets or
performance benchmarks. They can quickly spot deviations and take action to
correct them before they become problems. Oracle Financial Analytics enables
financial analysts to perform intra-period balance sheet and income statement
analyses to determine on a near-real-time basis how the business is performing.
They can also more effectively manage cash flow by understanding how billing and
collections functions are performing as well as payments and changes in inventory.
Oracle Financial Analytics enables companies to more effectively manage their
customers and improve business performance by:

Improving financial performance and more effective expense control

through timely monitoring of expense detail, delivered to departmental
managers in time to take corrective action and ensure budget compliance

Optimizing cash flow through detailed accounts receivable, accounts

payable, and inventory analysis

Analyzing detailed, transaction-level data to understand the factors driving

revenue, cost, and profitability across business units, geographic locations,
sales territories, customers, products, and distribution channels in time to
take action

Reducing time spent compiling, reconciling, and consolidating data from

fragmented financial systems, enabling employees to spend more time
analyzing, making proactive decisions, and taking action

Improving cash collections by identifying slow-paying customers or billing

issues and reducing days sales outstanding

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Simplified Self-Service Reporting

Oracles new XML Publisher is visionary
and empowers end users. This new
capability gives customers the look and
feel of Excel with a desktop publishing
look to reports, and enables users to
create their own reports, minimizing the
dependency on the IT staff.
Sean Malinski,
Accenture Partner, Global Business
Solutions - Oracle Practice

Thinking globally is all about having the right information at the right time to
support accurate, timely business decisions. Oracle BI Publisher is an easy-to-use
solution for formatting and publishing reports. It delivers immediate business
value by enabling business users to tailor report formats to their needs without the
help of costly IT resources. Using desktop applications such as Microsoft Word or
Adobe Acrobat, business users create and maintain report formats with their own
templates rather than settling for a standard layout.
Prior to Release 12, Oracle Financials supported hundreds of predefined fixedformat reports. With Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12, business users
can easily modify the standard reports using BI Publisher templates and data
extracts.
WORK GLOBALLY

Banks, taxes, payments, and accounting

everything that becomes centralized will
bring Emerson tremendous efficiencies.
Greg Harre
Controller for Emerson Tool Company

Todays organizations face a host of challenges from the new global economy.
Working in multiple geographies, with multiple systems and rules, and according to
local standards, calls for global business processes and work flows that can span
applications, divisions and regions. This need is particularly evident in the area of
global financial management. With ever more compliance and governance
mandates, organizations are centralizing critical finance operations in order to
enhance control and visibility. Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 enables you to
stay competitive by giving you the ability to operate globally while meeting local
compliance requirements. For example, Release 12 offers:
Increased Control and Operational Efficiency

Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12 centralizes accounting, tax, payment,

and banking functions to provide greater efficiency and control with unparalleled
flexibility. Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12 gives you
the chance to standardize business processes across your business units and achieve
real-time insight into your business.
Ensure Consistency with Centralized Accounting
Centralization of subledger accounting
rules would minimize set up and
maintenance, providing greater financial
control, and enforcing a consistent
approach for true global accounting.
Carolyn Carter
Director of Global Oracle Accounting,
Emerson Process Management

Control and monitor every accounting entry from a single setup with Oracles new
rules-based accounting engine, Subledger Accounting. By applying standard
accounting rules to all business transactions, whether theyre generated in Oracle EBusiness Suite or third-party, custom, or legacy applications, Subledger Accounting
ensures consistent financial reporting. Exceptions can only be done through secure
overrides, providing high levels of control and greater adherence to company
policies. Configurable accounting rules enable compliance with multiple legislative,
industry or geographic requirements concurrently in a single instance.
A single business transaction can receive different accounting treatments
simultaneously based on rules defined for that Legal Entity. For example, a
transaction can be accounted for according to US GAAP principles in one ledger

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based on corporate accounting policies, and French Plan Comptable principles in a

secondary Ledger based on local accounting policies, using the rules defined
centrally in the accounting engine, which offers greater control.
The accounting treatment (or detail) is maintained for every business event, with
balanced and detailed subledger accounting entries and different summarization
options in the General Ledger. Subledger Accounting delivers full auditability and
improved subledger to general ledger reconciliation. Subledger Accounting offers a
wealth of features to make reconciliation simpler and more efficient.
Subledger Accounting provides a universal and consistent transaction accounting
definition structure and user interface across all subledgers. The new data model
increases transparency and enables full auditability of transaction and accounting
information. A universal posting engine streamlines the close process, so that all
subledger modules can transfer data to the General Ledger using a standard,
auditable, reviewable process.
New reports and inquiries analyze data across subledgers and support drill down to
underlying transactions so you can better understand root causes and take
immediate action. These capabilities are critical to providing the context for greater
financial and management insight.
Simplified Tax Compliance

Reduce the cost and complexity of complying with multiple tax authorities using
Oracle E-Business Tax, a comprehensive infrastructure for managing transaction
tax rules and transactions. This centralized tax repository delivers consistent tax
services to all E-Business Suite business flows through one application interface,
simplifying tax configuration. It also integrates with external tax vendors for
maintaining country-specific tax content.
Oracle E-Business Tax enables central setup and maintenance by your tax or
accounting personnel. An internal (or multi-entity) subscription model allows the
tax rules to be shared across Legal Entities, along with the ability to apply business
rules that enforce company-wide tax content. You can define business rules to
comply with local regulations, supporting sophisticated tax compliance without the
need for workarounds or customizations. The Tax Rules business flow makes it
easy to change existing tax rules and rates and/or create new rules and rates. An
online Tax Simulator models the impact of your tax setup, allowing you to confirm
the accuracy of your changes. Tax setup is further streamlined with the option to
integrate with content providers (such as Vertex and Taxware in the United States)
to load tax rates.
Tax content such as tax jurisdictions, tax rates and tax rules are stored centrally. A
tax determination engine uses these rules to calculate transaction taxes (sales, use,
VAT, etc.) based on the place of supply, the parties involved and other applicability
rules. Tax lines capture all relevant information used to determine applicable taxes.
Tax transactions and all noteworthy tax information for each transaction are

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recorded in a central Tax Record Repository that can be used by management and
tax authorities for managing, auditing and reporting purposes.
The automation of tax processing through a central integrated engine improves
operational efficiency and reduces errors. It also decreases the cost of integration
and provides visibility and consistency of information across the E-Business Suite.
In addition to the centralization of the existing tax setup and processing across the
E-Business Suite, E-Business Tax also supports several global tax requirements in
Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12, including:

Deferred Tax in Payables

Enhanced handling of tax on freight

Sales and Use Tax in Procurement

Cash and Accrual Basis reporting for Tax

Tax on Intercompany movements

Multiple Tax Registrations for the same party

Tax Reporting Types and Codes

Improved Global Intercompany

Spend less time reconciling intercompany transactions at period-end close with

Oracle Advanced Global Intercompany System (AGIS). AGIS streamlines the
intercompany trading and reconciliation process across Ledgers by driving balanced
intercompany transactions for the global enterprise.
Oracle AGIS allows companies to comply not only with local regulations but also
with corporate standards for processing intercompany transactions between related
legal entities of an enterprise. It also provides interactive reconciliation reporting
which allows drill-down to the details of Intercompany Account Balances in order
to quickly identify the source of any discrepancies in trading partner account
balances.
Other highlights of the Advanced Global Intercompany System for Oracle EBusiness Suite Financials Release 12 are:

Intercompany Invoicing: Enables automatic creation of Intercompany

Payables and Receivables invoices for intercompany trading partners in
situations where local statutory compliance requires physical invoices for
intercompany transactions

Multi-party intercompany transactions: Creates a single intercompany batch

supporting multiple recipient transactions across different ledgers, currencies
and calendars, which will be automatically submitted to all recipients for
approval. Optional prorating of the distribution amounts based on the
proportion of the transaction allocated to each recipient is planned.

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Intercompany reconciliation: Performs reconciliation between any pair of

Legal Entity trading partners whether they are in the same or different
Ledgers. The reconciliation process has the flexibility to be executed at any
time for open or closed periods and run at different levels of detail.

Inter/Intracompany Balancing: When a transaction with multiple balancing

segment values is entered, the automatic Balancing Process will generate the
intra- or inter-company accounting entries, depending on whether the
balancing segments are in the same legal entity or different legal entities.

Faster Payment Cycles

Process payments and collections faster using a single payment engine that manages
disbursements and receipts, using Oracle Payments, the single central source for all
payment formats in Oracle E-Business Suite 12. The new centralized payment
engine along with a newly structured Bank Account Model enables centralized
payments and collections to be processed more efficiently.
The new payments engine serves Payables, Receivables and other products for
funds disbursement and capture, offering a complete, consistent payment hub. The
highly configurable centralized engine enables straight-through processing based on
industry standard protocols, with a dashboard for process visibility and
management. The ability to make a single payment run spanning operating units,
currencies, payment methods and bank accounts dramatically increases efficiency.
Faster, simpler period end processing

Many organizations have made significant progress in reducing the time to close
their books. Unless companies continue to focus on streamlining the close process,
recent gains could well be erased by the increasing demands of new financial
reporting regulations. Growth through acquisitions or geographic expansion also
adds complexity to financial reporting processes. Oracle E-Business Suite Release
12 makes parallel financial reporting easier and streamlines period-end processing.
Simplified Dual Accounting
We anticipate one of the most important
benefits of Ledger Sets for Emerson will
be simplifying the global accounting
process,
Debbie Gillman
Team Lead, International Systems at
Emerson Network Power

Enterprises often have multiple reporting requirements. These enterprises and

their subsidiaries may need to satisfy the accounting and reporting requirements for
multiple countries or jurisdictions in addition to those of the parent or controlling
enterprise. This can involve accounting in accordance with different accounting
principles, in different currencies, charts of accounts and/or calendars.
Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12 makes it easier for companies to
support diverse regulatory and reporting requirements. Ledgers are used to
maintain multiple representations of the same data. The new centralized Subledger
Accounting engine posts subledger data into these ledgers simultaneously,
preserving the integrity of both corporate accounting standards and local
compliance in a single consistent business process.

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Ledgers can be either a Primary Ledger or Secondary Ledger. The Primary Ledger
stores the primary accounting representation for one or more legal entities. An
alternate accounting representation (which may use a different Chart of Accounts,
Currency, Calendar and/or Accounting Method) can optionally be created in a
Secondary Ledger for local fiscal reporting, or for separate management accounts.
This secondary representation is independent of the primary representation (i.e.,
based directly on the transactions themselves) and may be used to support the
following scenarios:

Subsidiarys local reporting requirements require subledger transaction level

detail that is difficult to obtain from a secondary representation created by
consolidation

Corporate accounting policies are defined without having to take into

account the many small local requirements that will be encountered during
the global implementation.

Increased Efficiency for Processing and Reporting Across Ledgers

Ledger Sets allow processing and reporting to be performed on multiple ledgers at

the same time, including the ability to view and report, open and close periods,
create journal entries, and perform allocations across Ledgers. In addition to
increased processing efficiencies, Ledger Sets provide greater visibility and control
across all Ledgers assigned to a Ledger Set. Ledgers sharing the same Chart of
Accounts, Calendar and Period Type can be combined into a Ledger Set.
Streamlined Accounting Setup

You can now define, maintain and review accounting-related setup across all
applications through one interface. New in Oracle E-Business Suite Financials
Release 12, the Accounting Setup Manager acts as the central location for
maintaining the relationships between ledgers, legal entities and operating units.
Within the accounting setup process, the definition of legal entities and their
accounting context includes the ledgers that will contain the accounting data for
each legal entity. Multi-Org is integrated into the Accounting Setup Manager so the
user can define operating units and their relationships to ledgers. For each
operating unit, users will also be able to select a legal entity to provide a default
legal context during transaction processing. This centralized setup simplifies the
inquiry and maintenance of these relationships and offers a single, clear view of
your accounting implementation. An online checklist of accounting setup steps
ensures complete and accurate setup.

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More Productive Shared Service Operations

For many of our client organizations,
sharing services is strategic and IBM was
pleased to see Oracle recognize this as
one of the main drivers for changing its EBusiness Suite financials architecture to
facilitate businesses operating global
shared service centers.
Brian A. Mitchell
IBM Global Business Services Worldwide
and Americas Oracle Practice Lead
Executive

Shared Services provide a proven way for governments and businesses to gain
better control of their finance operations and streamline redundant processing and
systems. 1 A Shared Services model of operations drives cost savings and increases
information quality. Organizations are increasingly consolidating non-revenue
generating, administrative tasks in Shared Service Centers as a way to focus on their
core competencies, increase efficiencies, and better manage and access information.
Additionally, they can cut operating costs by eliminating redundant processes,
leveraging self-service, automating processes, and standardizing common business
practices.
Oracle E-Business Suite Financials 12 includes a number of capabilities for
increasing the efficiency of shared service centers.
Improved Productivity

You can increase the productivity of your shared service personnel with role-based
access to various organizations in your corporate structure. Multi-Organization
Access Control (MOAC) enables shared services personnel to enter transactions,
process data, view information, and run reports on behalf of other divisions or
business units within the enterprise.
Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 allows this to be done more efficiently now
with the ability of a single application responsibility to access, process and report on
multiple operating units. For example, users no longer need to switch
responsibilities in order to enter invoices, view consolidated requisitions, perform
collection tasks, and receive or drop-ship goods for multiple operating units. Users
can run reports either for all operating units within a Ledger to which a user has
access, or for selected operating units that belong to the users security profile. You
control who can perform which tasks through security profiles that define each
users access to a specified group of operating units.
Efficient Payment Handling

Spend less time managing bank account information with the new Bank Account
Model in Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12. It provides a single access
point for defining and maintaining bank account information for Oracle Payables,
Oracle Receivables, Oracle Advanced Collections, Oracle Payroll, Oracle Cash
Management and Oracle Treasury. This new model along with the new centralized
payment engine and the enhancements to Multi-Org Access delivers significant
efficiency to shared service centers that perform collections and disbursements.
For example, a single responsibility can process invoices across multiple operating
units producing separate payments, all with a single bank instruction.

Shared Services: Enabling Finance Mastery and High Performance, Accenture 2005.

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Improved Bank Account Maintenance

In Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12, each internal bank account is
assigned to a Legal Entity. Any or all operating units associated with that legal
entity are permitted to use that bank account. This new architecture eliminates the
need to maintain as well as reconcile multiple account records.
Greater Consisteny with Supplier and Customer Bank Accounts

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 provides a centralized repository for suppliers

and customers bank account and credit card information. All data is stored in one,
secure place, providing shared service centers and collection departments consistent
information that they need.
MANAGE GLOBALLY

Historically, implementing and managing applications that cross operating units or

geographic entities have taken considerable time and effort. Oracle E-Business
Suite Release 12 makes it easier and less expensive to implement, manage and scale
global applications. For example, Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 offers a
streamlined user experience, leveraging the best user experience practices from
existing and acquired products. A new user interface helps ensure maximum
employee productivity.
Increased User Productivity with New User Experience

Oracle made a focused effort to enhance the user experience in Oracle E-Business
Suite Release 12. Over 120 user experience professionals, many from Apple,
Yahoo, Google and Microsoft, performed extensive out-of-the-box usability tests
on released products leveraging focus groups and eye-tracking studies. Results
include a reduced overall number of pop-ups and duplicate screens, re-designed
and streamlined workflows, a reduced number of steps to complete key tasks, and
an improved overall look and feel and visual style. By designing business processes
intelligently, eliminating manual steps, and leveraging technology, people can work
faster and smarter.
Flexible System Connectivity
The new E-Business Suite Release 12 is
the architectural basis for Fusion and is
the first release on Fusion Middleware
utilizing BPEL, and while Release 12 is not

Connecting disparate systems and processes has long been a business priority and
IT challenge. With an updated web services repository and process management
tool, Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 enables lower cost integrations with third
party applications and adaptable business processes.

the last stop for Oracle before Fusion, it

certainly is the next step toward Fusion.
Brian A. Mitchell
IBM Global Business Services Worldwide
and Americas Oracle Practice Lead
Executive

Comprehensive Web Services Integration Repository

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 has hundreds of services so that IT can

easily integrate the E-Business Suite into cross-business, cross-product business
flows. It includes web services, public java & PL/SQL APIs, business events and
batch interfaces. The Integration Repository enables key integration types
including business-to-business, enterprise application integration, business process

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management, and business activity monitoring. Industry-standard messages and

standards-based XML documents are supported. A user-friendly interface makes
searching and viewing available integration points easy. Maintenance is simplified
by functionality that automatically keeps in step with source code via standard
patching.
Simplified Integration

Oracle Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) Process Manager offers

organizations the ability to manage processes spanning heterogeneous
applications. Oracle, 3rd party, and legacy applications can be integrated to extend
process automation. A graphical user interface facilitates the process of quickly
integrating applications and a web-based console is used to manage system
performance. Prepackaged, standard interfaces for applications and legacy systems
are used to connect systems, reducing the integration effort and shortening time to
value. In addition, the Process Manager is built on widely adopted industry
standard language (BPEL).
Oracle Fusion Middleware Certification

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 is certified on Oracle Fusion Middleware, a

comprehensive, hot-pluggable family of middleware products. This certification
enables you to more easily leverage a portfolio of leading security, integration, and
business intelligence solutions among others. For example, Oracle built crossapplication flows between Oracle Retail and Oracle Financials in Oracle E-Business
Suite Release 12. You can extend the capabilities of your E-Business Suite
implementation by creating your own cross-application business flows.
PLANNING YOUR UPGRADE

Oracle knows that continually upgrading and maintaining your current enterprise
application investment can be challenging and costly. In addition to hundreds of
cross-industry capabilities to help you manage the complexities of global business
environments, Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 was designed to make the
upgrade process easier.
There are a number of technology and process improvements delivered with Oracle
E-Business Suite Release 12 that will greatly improve the upgrade process.
Whether its the parallel infrastructure for distributing workloads during large table
updates, scheduling improvements, or optimizer dynamic sampling, the Release 12
upgrade process is far more streamlined than prior upgrades. In addition to
technology improvements, Oracle has implemented many process improvements
such as the Managed Release Program, in which Oracle works closely with
customers on the first few upgrades.

The Business Value of Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12

Page 15

Many clients are evaluating whether to

upgrade from Oracle E-Business Suite 11i
to Release 12 or wait for the larger Fusion
release. There are significant application
and architecture changes in Release 12.
Upgrading now will help build the
foundation to prepare for Fusion
maximizing business value while
mitigating risk.
Sean Malinski,
Accenture Partner, Global Business
Solutions - Oracle Practice

This release has undergone more upgrade testing on real databases than any prior
E-Business Suite release. It also requires fewer pre- and post-upgrade steps.
Additionally, Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 gives you unprecedented
continuity and choice. For example, you will be able to run your business the same
way as before once you upgrade, even with the new release architecture. While Sets
of Books become Ledgers and Ledger Sets, the Subledger Accounting engine
performs accounting from the subledgers into the General Ledger, and Operating
Units are used to segregate transaction data, your accounting results wont change.
Release 12 uses the same business rules from your 11i environment to account for
transactions and manage user access to operating units. Please refer to the Oracle
Financials & Oracle Procurement Release 12 Functional Upgrade Guide: Release 11i to Release
12 for more detailed information about what to expect with an upgrade to Release
12.
With Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, you decide when you want to leverage the
new features. For example, you may want to use this upgrade as an opportunity to
move to a single chart of accounts in order to take full advantage of Ledger Sets,
which provide a highly flexible framework for meeting corporate and local financial
reporting requirements and processing, managing and analyzing global transactions.
Likewise, you may want to look at rationalizing the number of responsibilities with
the new user access model designed to improve productivity in shared services
environments.
Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 may be the right opportunity for
your organization to evaluate consolidating ERP instances in order to reduce IT
and compliance costs, improve information quality and facilitate faster M&A
integration. . By moving to standardized processes and systems, you will be able to
make the most of the many capabilities delivered in Oracle E-Business Suite
Release 12. For assistance with planning your upgrade, please refer to the Best
Practices for Upgrading Oracle E-Business Suite white paper.
CONCLUSION

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 was designed to help organizations meet the
challenges of doing business in the new global economy, from increased complexity
to a whole new level of competition. With Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12,
organizations can make the right decisions based on complete information only a
global view of customers, suppliers, partners, and operations provides. It enables
companies to be more competitive by working better across applications, divisions
and regions. It also allows organizations to implement, manage, and scale global
applications easier and at lower costs.
With an enhanced user experience, hundreds of new, cross-industry capabilities for
improving productivity and efficiency, and Fusion Middleware for lower cost
integrations, organizations can expect a lower total cost of ownership with this
release. Additionally, Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 demonstrates Oracles
continuing commitment to the Applications Unlimited program, the long-term plan

The Business Value of Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12

Page 16

to enhance current Oracle Applications while delivering innovative, next-generation

solutions.
FOR MORE INFORMATION

Find out more about Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12 from the
following resources:

Release 12 Information Center on Metalink

Oracle Applications Release Notes Release 12 on Metalink

Release Content Documents for E-Business Suite Release 12 on Metalink

Oracle Financials & Oracle Procurement Release 12 Functional Upgrade

Guide: Release 11i to Release 12 on Metalink

Oracle Advisor Webcasts (Metalink: Knowledge > Support Tools >

Advisor Webcasts

Transfer of Information (TOI) Online Training on Metalink

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 on Oracle.com

(http://www.oracle.com/applications/e-business-suite-release.html)

The Business Value of Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12

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The Business Value of Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12

May 2008
Author: Annette Melatti
Contributing Authors: Deborah Hamilton, Zoe Read, Joe Gum
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