Oracle R12 Preview Part 2: Planning, Finance, Manufacturing … and more

Posted on by Nilanjan Chatterjee

Last month, we talked by review what’s new in Oracle R12 Order to Cash. This is a continuation of that story where we’ll talk about new features in Planning Center, Procurement, Manufacturing, Product Data Hub and Financials.

Again, 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.

Common Security Features

There are several new security features, including:

  1. Improvements to Security Console – IT security managers can manage through Oracle Identity Management (OIM) and Authorization Policy Manager (APM) via the Security Console.
  2. SSO Integration – Easy Integration with Identity and Access Management (IDM/IAM) Systems (Customers must continue to log a Service Request (SR) to set up federated Single Sign-On (SSO) between Microsoft Active Directory (AD) and Oracle Identity Management (OIM))
  3. An Upgrade-Safe Reference Role Model – Customers can make copies of pre-defined roles and freely customize these copies.
  4. Improved Data Security – Now simply create setup objects, such as ledgers, business units, asset books, etc. and then use the Manage Data Access for Users page to assign users the appropriate job role and security context and value.

Planning Central

Oracle has a quick video that demos all the new features, but if you don’t have time to watch, there There are just two new features of interest related to Planning Central for R12:

  1. Order Promising – In R11, order promising was entirely based on material availability rules, but now you can factor in promised planned supplies with your order promises.
  2. Integration – Now your plans can work in non-Fusion (Oracle Cloud) transactional system data such as JD Edwards, EBS, etc.

Together, these two new features are real game changers to help you build out robust plans, however, you still need to build out the integration. Inspirage can help expedite the integration with the recent release of our 4th Generation iHub, which is now optimized to support the coexistence of Cloud applications with other cloud-based or on-prem solutions.

Manufacturing Cloud

There are quite a number of advances related to Manufacturing Cloud.

  1. Supervisor Mobile App – With this new app, Production supervisors can access Work Orders and take actions from their mobile device.
  2. Automatic Work Order Generation – For simplified manufacturing processes, you can initiate a system-generated work definition for standard work orders.
  3. Integration – There are several new REST APIs that are that make it easier to integrate with external system
  4. Production Exception Management – We now see improved visibility features that will notify stakeholders of exceptions and help them manage the issue through resolution.
  5. Inventory Valuation Preview – With this feature, you can preview the impact of standard cost changes would have on your overall inventory valuation.
  6. Retroactive Costing – The system now allows Standard Cost definition for Items with a past effective date.
  7. Expense-based Internal Material Transfer – You can now perform internal material transfer to expense destinations as well as capture freight charges and inventory value in the in-transit inventory valuation report.
  8. Seeded Mapping Sets – This provides an efficient way to define a segment or account combination rule.
  9. On-hand Inventory Valuation Analysis – To facilitate the monitoring of the investment in inventory, the system now offers the capability to query and view the on-hand inventory valuation on the Review Inventory Valuation GUI.

Procurement Cloud

We have not seen any major enhancements to Procurement application, however we do anticipate many new features to come out in R13.

Fusion Product Hub

Here are some of the nice new features in R12 Product Hub:

  1. Supplier Product Consolidation – You’ll now be able to improve supplier efficiency via the supplier portal. Suppliers will be able to better manage item imports and data corrections through a simple UI. Watch video >>
  2. Supplier Data Upload Monitoring – You product data steward can review the data changes being made by the suppliers to accept / reject / seek more information. Watch video 1 >> Watch Video 2 >>
  3. Product Hub Catalog Management – You’ll see improved data governance and easier product managed with a simplified catalog and category structure in this new release. Watch video >>
  4. Referencing Custom Objects in Product Hub – Attributes of custom business objects (built using Application Composer) can be used in item rules & import maps. Watch video >>

Financials

Last, but certainly not least, Financials Cloud has a ton of beneficial new features:

  1. Integration – Business users can launch the outbound extract process from either the Oracle ERP Cloud Scheduled Processes page or automatically by using the ERP Integration Service.
  2. Receivables
    • Advance Collection – New infotiles will show delinquent customers, promises, strategy tasks, and activities.
    • Case Folder – you can now group transactions into a case folder to manage collection efforts as if they were a single transaction.
    • Recurring Billing – Generate invoices from the bill plan based on the billing frequency and bill plan dates
  3. Payment Approval – Approvers can receive approval requests via e-mail or online payment approval process notifications.
  4. Asset Management – You can expedite depreciation reconciliation with General Ledger by reviewing depreciation expense by asset account and balancing segment for each tax year. Also you will be able to maintain control of assets by tracking asset sources as well as comply with US Inland Revenue Property Tax Sections 1245 and 1250 by tracking amounts for sale or exchange held longer than the capital gain thresholds.
  5. OTBI Reporting – There are several new OTBI reports available in R12, including:
    • Reconciliation drill down scalability
    • Usability Improvement for Assets
    • Usability Improvement for General Ledger
    • Global Descriptive FlexFields with country-specific data
    • Improved Audit reports

Time to Get Ready for R12 (or R13)

So that’s about it for R12. With the Cloud, new releases will be coming fast and furious with new releases coming out every 3 to 6 months. If you’re in the middle of an upgrade and need some help figuring out how to take advantage of some of these advanced features, let us know. We’ll also be able to help you prepare for R13.

R13 is expected to release beginning sometime in June, and we’ve heard that this will have a massive number of exciting new features. With good preparation today, you can hit the ground running with our M-Cubed program. A lot of companies have been waiting for R13, so if you fall into that bucket and are going to need help with implementation, it’s best to start speaking with our team sooner rather than later so you can get to the front of the line.

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.