Oracle Release 12 Preview: Order to Cash

Posted on by Nilanjan Chatterjee

Part 1: Order to Cash

With Release 12 of Oracle Cloud rolling out as we speak, Oracle is extending the depth and breadth of their SCM Cloud solutions. Are you ready for the new features?

As a Cloud Co-Development partner, our Cloud Center of Excellence has been able to dig into R12 and we have been busy exploring the new features to ascertain how these new features will impact our customers and determine the best way to get the most out of the upgrade.

You can read all the details on Oracle’s website, or read this quick summary of what we’ve discovered to be the key new features. There are a lot, and we will address these in a 3 part series on this blog. First up: Order to Cash.

New Features

There are many modules in the overall Order to Cash (O2C) cycle and Oracle provides a multichannel order management capability with a central order hub at its core. Here are the most interesting new features coming out of each O2C module in Release 12.

Order Management

The OM modules has a ton of new features that will improve the entire O2C cycle.

  • Printed Oder Summary – Now you can view PDF order summaries and send them to customers for review, which greatly enhances overall process efficiency.
  • Business Rules – You will be able to reduce implementation time and errors through a new Visual Editor for business rules. The simple drag and drop rule logic will reduce amount of technical support you need.
  • Collaboration using Oracle Social Network – Now, all users involved in the order to cash process, such as order managers, warehouse managers, billing managers, and end customers, have a forum to discuss sales orders and make business decisions efficiently,
  • Customize Pages – You can have improved end-user experience and productivity through custom page layouts.
  • Integration – Leverage Oracle Integration Cloud Service (ICS) external capture and fulfilment systems.
  • Improved Order Changes – The streamlined integration with external order capture systems.
  • E-mail notifications – You can now set up email notifications based on order status.

Plus other useful new integration-related changes.

Pricing

The Pricing module provides an advanced, flexible price management capability so that you can price products and services for each targeted customer segment while supporting your corporate pricing practices. The most notable new features in this module are:

  • Customize Pages – You can have improved end-user experience and productivity through custom page layouts.
  • Transfer Price Calculations – This allows uses to manage all internal pricing scenarios in one place.

Configurator

The Oracle Cloud Configurator actively gathers customer requirements and maps them to a set of product or service options. We’re happy to see the product maturing with the following new features.

  • Extension Rules – Extension rules allow you to expand configuration behaviour at runtime to model complex logic.
  • Selectable Images – This allows the product configuration modeler to associate images with the selectable options.
  • Transactional Item Attributes – Capture transactional attributes defined at item class level during order entry.
  • Customized Pages – You can have improved end-user experience and productivity through custom page layouts.

Global Order Promising

This module helps you understand when an order can be fulfilled based on the current and projected demands and supplies across a supply chain and on an extended supply chain. Here’s are some of the improvements we’re seeing with GOP.

  • Streamlined Order Capture with External Systems – you can now use web services to check supply availability and schedule orders for delivery without routing them through Order Management.
  • Fail-safe order promising solution – Even when your system is offline, GOP can continue to function based upon lead-time availability until the server or backup server can be restarted.
  • Order Promising from Planned Supply – GOP now allows you to factor in planned order from Planning Central Cloud and schedule sales orders based upon future supply.
  • Externally Managed Supplies – You can promise against more accurate supply availability information in facilities managed using external enterprise systems such as E-Business Suite

Shipping

The final module in the O2C solution is Shipping. There’s just one nifty new feature that users should really appreciate.

  • Shipping Facility Setup – There’s now a “Quick Setup” feature that guides you through the setup process, reuses existing setups, and provides recommended defaults based on leading practices.

How to take advantage of R12

In short, there are a lot of cool new features in R12 O2C that customers should like. If you’re already on Oracle Cloud, you should have already been notified of your upgrade schedule. If you’re not sure how you can enable and deploy these new features, get in touch and we’ll be happy to help you get started.

If you’ve been waiting for Oracle Cloud to mature a bit before you jump in, with Release 12, there’s no more reason to wait. Moreover, Release 13 will be here before you know it with even more new features, and if you’re headed that direction, now’s the time to . If you’re interested in learning more, please contact us.

Stay tuned for more in our R12 Feature Review Series, including pieces on Manufacturing Cloud, Financials Cloud, and more.  

Nilanjan Chatterjee | Key Contributor

Nilanjan Chatterjee has more than 20 years of industry and IT experience. His focus areas are advisory and solutions consulting for manufacturing organizations in Supply Chain Management, Ecommerce, Customer Experience Management and Manufacturing Execution. Nilanjan also specializes in acquiring and managing large global implementations of Oracle products in manufacturing industry. He had worked in several companies like TCS, Infosys, PwC, Siemens, and Tata Motors in different roles and positions. In his previous roles, he has been instrumental in creating and heading consulting organizations through acquisition and integration of talent, assets and methodologies.