Steps in ERP Gap Analysis

  • The primary step will be to make a note of the existing business system and list out the flaws and positive aspects. This is an attempt to have an idea of what is currently happening given the scenario in question so as to help in ERP implementation.
  • Evaluate and decide the additions that need to be made to the business in view of ERP implementation. The aim is to make sure that there is not even a thin line of difference between ERP and the organizations commercial activities. It will be oriented to ERP function.
  • Rating the existing level of performance to set a benchmark or standards for the business as on date. This will help in finding out the benefit of ERP.
  • Having an in-depth study of the regulations and statements in the organizations and suggesting modifications. This also will decide ERP implementation.
  • Clearly defining the roles of individuals in the organization so that the priorities are met and the structure remains undisturbed. This is to make things clear for ERP function.
  • Checking if the objective in discharging duties are met because it is the ultimate solution to any issue. If they are not met the gaps should be made known and corrected. Only then the organization can achieve the benefit of ERP.
  • Ensuring that functions are executed properly and if need be personnel can be rewarded to boost up and encourage performance.
  • Similarly comparisons are to be made for every other factor that draws relation in one way or other. These results are to be complied for ERP gap analysis.
  • The gap analysis takes into account all the factors of study and gives the results. It either recommends the implementation of an ERP system or rejects the idea in totality.

Source: - www.erpwire.com

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How to list down Attribute Mapping Rules in Oracle Advanced Pricing

SELECT QPSEG.SEGMENT_MAPPING_COLUMN, QPSOUR.USER_SOURCING_TYPE,

QPSOUR.USER_VALUE_STRING, QPCON.PRC_CONTEXT_CODE,

QPSOUR.ATTRIBUTE_SOURCING_LEVEL, QPSOUR.REQUEST_TYPE_CODE,

QPREQ.PTE_CODE, QPCON.PRC_CONTEXT_TYPE, QPSEG.SEGMENT_CODE,

QPCON.SEEDED_FLAG CONTEXT_SEEDED_FLAG,

QPSEG.SEEDED_FLAG ATTRIBUTE_SEEDED_FLAG

FROM QP_SEGMENTS_B QPSEG,

QP_ATTRIBUTE_SOURCING QPSOUR,

QP_PRC_CONTEXTS_B QPCON,

QP_PTE_REQUEST_TYPES_B QPREQ,

QP_PTE_SEGMENTS QPPSEG

WHERE QPSOUR.SEGMENT_ID = QPSEG.SEGMENT_ID

AND QPPSEG.USER_SOURCING_METHOD = ‘ATTRIBUTE MAPPING’

AND QPSOUR.REQUEST_TYPE_CODE = ‘ONT’

AND QPSEG.PRC_CONTEXT_ID = QPCON.PRC_CONTEXT_ID

AND QPREQ.REQUEST_TYPE_CODE = QPSOUR.REQUEST_TYPE_CODE

AND QPPSEG.PTE_CODE = QPREQ.PTE_CODE

AND QPPSEG.SEGMENT_ID = QPSOUR.SEGMENT_ID

AND QPPSEG.SOURCING_ENABLED = ‘Y’

AND QPCON.PRC_CONTEXT_TYPE IN

(’PRICING_ATTRIBUTE’, ‘PRODUCT’, ‘QUALIFIER’)

Item Catalogs Overview

Oracle Inventory lets you use item catalogs to partition your items into groups that share common characteristics. You can determine in advance what is required to uniquely define an item in each group. You can define your catalogs by setting up as many distinct item catalog groups as you need to partition your items and use unique characteristics within your catalog group to completely describe the items you assign to the group.

Oracle Inventory provides item catalogs to help you quickly locate items based on key characteristics

Business Needs

With Oracle Inventory you can:

· Easily and intuitively search for items based on cataloged characteristics

· Find common existing items when developing an engineering prototype

· Use a standard language of item characteristics to describe your items

· Maintain detailed item descriptions without embedding the descriptions in your item numbers

· Implement group technology

Major Features

  1. Catalog Groups

Oracle Inventory lets you define catalog groups to match the natural groupings of your items. For example, you can define separate catalog groups for finished goods, sub-assemblies, and raw materials, or break it down further by defining catalog groups by commodity for raw materials.

  1. Item Characteristics

Each catalog group can have its own set of item characteristics, called descriptive elements. You can define as many descriptive elements as necessary to describe the characteristics of your items. For each descriptive element, you can specify whether an entry for the element is optional, giving you complete flexibility in defining your catalog.

  1. Item Description Default

You can use descriptive element values as a default item description. You can choose the descriptive elements you want Oracle Inventory to use to build your item descriptions. This gives you consistent descriptions for all your items, again helping you to quickly and easily identify any item.

  1. Item Aliases

You can specify any number of aliases for items that belong to a catalog group.

  1. Item Search

Once you have cataloged your items, you can use the item catalog to quickly and easily find any item. You can search by one or more descriptive elements to quickly retrieve all items with the specific characteristics you specify.

Example

Companies in the same industry can communicate effectively while referring to items without naming their items identically because item cataloging could provide a standard language in referring to items. For e.g. Companies that manufacture computer monitors communicate effectively (because the items they manufacture are in the computer monitor catalog group) but they do not need to name their items identically. E.g. in the manufacture of shoes, the different catalog groups could be leather shoes, synthetic rubber shoes, etc.

A detailed description of what an item is could be stored without embedding the meaning in the item number.

You can search for items by their description –

You can update the description of an item at any time with the values of the descriptive elements

You can find common existing types of items

You can provide prompt service for you customers if they dont know the names of the items but know how the items look

References

Oracle Metalink

Oracle.com

Inventory User Guide

Application Implementation Wizard

Application Implementation Wizard

Overview

Oracle Application Implementation Wizard is an innovative application tool to facilitate the implementation of Oracle Applications. The Wizard addresses the complexities and interdependencies of multiple Oracle Applications products, enabling low risk, high efficiency implementation of Oracle Applications product suite.

During an implementation, the Wizard may be used to configure one or several Oracle Applications products. The setup of each product is accomplished by the completion of implementation processes. An implementation process is a sequence of steps, which are related to Oracle Applications setup forms. You can initiate iteration of a process multiple times to complete your implementation task.

Application Implementation Wizard Structure

The Wizard automatically detects the products installed on your implementation site and displays all the processes you need to run in the correct order. You can locate specific processes and corresponding iterations using a variety of flexible selection criteria. Once you are in an iteration of a process, you are automatically routed from step to step throughout the process. Guidance is always available, providing instructions, options, warnings and alerts for key decision making.

Implementation Process Hierarchy

The most efficient implementation strategy is to perform the common tasks first. Therefore, implementation processes are grouped into these categories:

  • Common Applications

Common processes address all the shared setup steps across Oracle Applications product families, which include System Administration, HRMS, Financial, Manufacturing and Front-Office.

  • Common Process of Product Family (Financial, Manufacturing and Distribution)

These processes include shared setup steps across products, but within its own product family.

  • Products

The additional processes to implement products like HR, General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Inventory, Services, etc.

Business Needs

With Application Implementation Wizard you can:

  • Dramatically speed up your implementation process. You can use the Wizard to achieve parallel setup within your implementation team.
  • Lower your implementation risk. The Wizard guides you through the complexity of interdependent tasks and activities performed during the setup of any combination of Oracle Applications products.
  • Effectively manage your implementation project. You can use the Wizard to assign tasks to different members of your team, set objectives and monitor their implementation status and progress.
  • Document your implementation issues and suggest potential resolutions.

Major Features

Effective Organization of Setup Steps

By effectively grouping and sequencing implementation processes together, redundant setup steps across products are eliminated whenever possible. This also enables a higher degree of collaboration among implementation teams for parallel setup. After completing the common processes, your implementation team can work completely in parallel on the product specific processes. Because the implementation processes are fully automated, you never need to worry about sequencing and the complexities of cross product interdependencies.

Progress Monitor

Equipped with the Implementation Monitor, the Wizard provides situational awareness throughout the implementation. You always see graphically where you have been and what steps are ahead. By clicking on the graphic icon of a step in the implementation process monitor, you can review or preview any of the setup step information in a process

Implementation Process Overview

Status Display

Identified by different graphic icons, you always know what processes have been completed and how many are still open or active. For each iteration of a process, you can see who is performing the iteration, how long it has lasted and what the current step is in this iteration. Based on your judgment, you can also abort, suspend or change priority of any iteration.

Team Collaboration

To effectively manage and delegate implementation tasks, the Wizard allows you to assign processes to different members in your implementation team. Additionally, if you need help about how to setup a particular step, you can always reassign the step with your comments to the specialist in your team to handle.

Self-Documentation

The self-documentation feature provides an audit trail for you to track the status and issues of your implementation. You are able to append comments or note issues at process level, iteration level and step level.

At process level, you can enter information to provide guidelines and set objectives for your implementation team.

For each iteration of a process, you can enter comments, reminders, and task objectives for the person assigned in the iteration.

For each step in your iteration, you are able to record any conflict, issue, reason or open question specific to that step.

You have the option to skip steps in an iteration or branch within an iteration. All the comments and user options are automatically recorded by the Wizard for your later recall.

Setup Guidance

Guidance is always available, providing instructions, options, warnings and alerts for key decision making during your implementation. These instructions provide information like whether the step is a mandatory or optional one, what is the current context of the step and what you are supposed to do in this step. If you need more detailed help information about how and what to input in a particular setup form, you can always get on-line documentation by a simple click.

Flexible Identification of Processes and Iterations

Flexible Identification of Key Processes

A large implementation involves a lot of processes and iterations. The Wizard provides very flexible selection criteria for you to identify the critical processes and iterations you need. You can find processes or iterations according to their status, assignment, priority, duration, etc. You can also view your result sorted by process hierarchy, process name, or process context.

Phased Implementation

The Wizard provides setup support to allow the option of phasing Oracle Applications into production. You can phase your implementation based on your implementation rollout plan for Oracle Applications Products. For example, you may want to implement Oracle General Ledger and Accounts Payable in the first phase and Sales and Marketing in the second phase. The Wizard will automatically show you the corresponding processes you need to run based on the products you specified for that phase.

Define Implementation Phases

Context Check

Oracle Applications use organization context to ensure data segregation and security. To prevent setup information from being entered into the wrong organization, the Wizard enforces a context check whenever you try to open a form through a reference button in any setup step.

Some processes (e.g., System Administration) do not have any context and are only performed once per implementation, regardless of how many business entities you have. Most processes in the Wizard need to be performed multiple times if you have multiple business entities, which are categorized by Oracle Applications into the following context types:

Business Group: Used to separate employee information in HR and Payroll products for different organizations or countries.

Set of Books: Used to separate information about financial reporting entities with different chart of accounts, functional currency, and accounting calendar.

Operating Unit: Any organization like a sales office, a division, or a department that uses Order Entry, Oracle Payables, Oracle Purchasing, or Oracle Receivables.

Inventory Organization: An organization for which you track inventory transaction and balances, and/or that manufactures or distributes products.

These features allow you to implement the various multiple business entities in parallel.

The context of your process must match the security and profile of your current responsibility. This prevents accidental modifications. For example, if you have two operation units, the Wizard ensures that you are setting up the data for the operating unit you originally intend to setup.

Implementation Process Flow

Automatic Detection of Installed Products

The Wizard can automatically detect what products are installed on your site. It shows you only the processes and steps relevant to your specific implementation.

Source Oracle Functional Overview