New Capabilities in OTM – GTM Release 6.4

Posted on by Brian Nichols

Oracle hosted OTM 6.4 partner training on July 21–22 at their West Conshohocken, PA office where they presented overviews of new features in the upcoming OTM 6.4.x releases. I wanted to share some of the key highlights of this major release:

Fleet Management

  • Maps: Direct connectivity to ALK maps and HERE.com. Real time traffic display.
  • New Workbench: A new interactive workspace encompassing all fleet activities that is configurable with Gantt charts and maps.
  • Fleet Aware Optimization: Using notional drivers, bulk plans can be aware of driver info without the overhead of actual driver assignment. Planning logic, informed by resource schedules, creates a string of shipments that are assigned to a Work Assignment, a new OTM object in 6.4. This will enable users to plan and execute an entire shift/day for a resource.

GTM Estimated Landed Cost

Included in base GTM 6.4 is a new tool for estimating landed costs.

  • Comparison of different sourcing options.
  • Customs valuation.
  • Duty and tax calculation.
  • Flexible estimated landed cost formulas.
  • Estimation of cost components based on different criteria.
  • Leverage trade agreements to reduce taxes and duties.
  • Financial benefit visibility.

Conditional Booking

Conditional booking is targeted for Ocean, but is applicable to other modes. New functionality has been added to OTM 6.4 for conditional booking.

  • New qualifiers have been created to map to EDI codes. The creation of new codes is also available to the user.
  • New actions allows re-rate and re-drive of a shipment based on conditional booking fields being passed back. This can also be automated using an agent.
  • Location aliases: Introduction of location aliases to account for discrepancies between different names for the same location across various carriers.

Shipment Visibility

In OTM 6.4, a new shipment visibility screen developed using Oracle ADF technology will be available via a shipment SmartLink. Other objects in the current scope to use this technology are rate management, workbench and landed cost.

Rate Maintenance

With release 6.4, a new rate management tool is introduced that allows users to manage importing of new rates and update existing rates in OTM.

  • Create rate load spreadsheets by configuring sample rate offerings and rate record structures in OTM.
  • Utilize new template to upload new rates to OTM.
  • Utilize new template to update existing rates in OTM.
  • View records with data errors.
  • Simple review and approval process to activate rates.

Mobile

  • New apps for iOS and Android.
  • Native app navigation: Swiping, pinching, scrolling, rotating, tabs, etc.
  • APIs are available so users can build their own app (standard app not editable).
  • Ability to configure screens.
  • Can attach a picture to an event (POD, BOL, etc.) to be attached to the object in OTM.

FTI

  • Ability to create and upload new targets via CSV.
  • New link to run targets.
  • Harmonize FTI with latest OBIEE features.
  • Simplified map implementation.
  • New rate analysis and rate dimensions.
  • Fully combined shipment and order release analysis.

Technology Changes

  • After 6.4.1, new releases will occur about every 12 months.
  • No back-porting of enhancements will be allowed.
  • Customers can still get bug fixes applied via patches to the current roll-up.
  • Tomcat is being retired in 6.4. WebLogic will take over as the servlet container.
  • BI Publisher reports will no longer run within the OTM WebLogic process. The 6.4 installation process will require separate BI Pub server installation step.
  • Oracle 12c is required.
  • New ACL entry points for integration and web services.

6.3.x Highlights

In addition to covering new features in the 6.4.x releases, new features in upcoming 6.3.x releases were covered as well:

  • Handling time: Ability to create handling time for cross dock operations, etc. that are not billed to the carrier.
  • Equipment capacity override: Ability to create capacity overrides dependent on network leg.
  • Allocation groups: An allocation rule can now be assigned to an allocation group instead of to a specific lane in network routing. Allocation groups can also be assigned to order releases.
  • Fallback rate service: New rate service feature that can be utilized when the calendar for the main schedule is exhausted.
  • Arbitraries: Ability to setup different shipment options (rail vs truck) for origin to port or port to customer.
  • Secondary charge rule: Enhanced to allow creation of multiple SC shipments.
  • Sell shipment creation: New feature to create a sell shipment from a buy shipment
  • Split invoices: New feature to generate split invoices and bills.
  • Certification of HERE.com distance engine.
  • Web services: External distance and rating engines can be created as web services.
  • Mapping of Kewill accessorial charge tokens: New feature to create new accessorials and map to Kewill using charge tokens.

I hope this helps with a quick listing of the major capabilities you will find in release 6.4. Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions.

For addition information, you can see the full documentation at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/documentation/glog-101972.html

Brian Nichols | Key Contributor

Brian Nichols is a Managing Principal for the Logistics Management practice at Inspirage. Brian has 17 years of experience in the supply chain software consulting industry. He has been working for the past 9 years designing and implementing solutions for customers using Oracle Transportation Management (OTM).