Challenges with Oracle Cloud Transition – Part 1

Disclaimer: This is my personal view on practical challenges encountered as someone heading the finance function, as the organisation transitioned from on premise Oracle Ebusiness Suite (EBS) to Oracle Fusion on the Cloud. The purpose is more to inform and caution those considering a similar transition and not to highlight any shortcomings of Fusion or in the Service Delivery of either the Oracle Team or the Implementation Partner involved in this particular transition. The views expressed here may not be applicable and/or may not be endorsed by the organisation with which I am currently associated.

Customised Features in the on premise EBS

First and foremost requirement is for your IT team and the Finance team to take stock of what are the customised features in the on premise EBS version. Some of the customised features are possibly seamlessly integrated with the EBS that the user department (like, finance, procurement and/or stores department) may not know that the feature that they use is not an inbuilt function in Oracle EBS but a customised feature. If the on premise version has been there in the organisation for quite some time, it is possible that the system has evolved over the years and to meet the requirements of the organisation, many customised features may have got added. If both your IT team and your Finance team has seen turnover of staff and no clear documentation is being maintained at the IT department, it is necessary to make special efforts to understand what all customised features have got added to the on premise EBS.

Why is this required?

Oracle Fusion allows very limited customisation option to the customers. Even the implementation partner can’t help much on this, as the source code of Oracle are seldom shared with the Implementation Partner. It is possible some of the customised features have already been taken care of in Fusion. However, Oracle product development only addresses the common and generic business requirements. Every business and every organisation still have their own specific and unique requirements. Depending on how critical are these requirements, and if the same, similar or better option is not available in Fusion, as an inbuilt function, this may cause user acceptability challenges, as you transition to Fusion.

Possible remedy

Before you sign-up for the transition, you need to put the onus on Oracle and the Oracle Implementation Partner to do the following:

1.      Understand the complete business requirement;

2.      To thoroughly review the existing EBS (be it Oracle or any other) and understand the complete information flow and use of the various reports for control and decision making purposes.

Based on this review demand from the Oracle Team or the Oracle Implementation partner to come out with a document, covering the following:

1.      Any specific/unique requirement, which may not be supported by Fusion and suggested alternative, if any.

2.      Any of the customised feature that won’t be available in Fusion

3.      Any of the customised control functions that won’t be available in Fusion

As the staff in your own IT department and/or user department are unlikely to know the features of Oracle Fusion, until it is implemented and they experience the same, Oracle and their Implementation Partners are better placed to prepare this report, as they are expected to know the product that they are selling and implementing. 

Based on this report, it is a management call if you would want to compromise on some of the customised features to transition to Fusion, depending on how critical is it for your business. Left to Oracle (btw, I find some of them good orators – and I hope they are equally good in their technical skills, of which, I have no competence to judge!) the team would start arguing that your customer business processes are incorrect and you need to tweak, modify, reengineer the processes, to suit what Fusion can deliver. This will be cutting the coat according to the cloth and the net result is, you may end up with a half-sleeve coat J when your requirement and expectation was to get a full sleeve coat.

On the other hand, if Oracle and Implementation partner team do not go into proper details and if they don’t give a complete list of features that won’t be available in Fusion, you may hold them accountable for non-delivery and for deficiency in service.

Note: Look forward to the critical views of the readers, whether agreement or otherwise to the views expressed here. If any of you have any specific issue that you would want me to cover, kindly comment and if possible, I will try and address them in one of the next part.

The next part will be on “Properly Defining milestones and deliverables for the Cloud Implementation Cost”. Watch this space. This will come up soon.

#Oracle #OracleFusion #Cloud #ImplementationChallenges