My article in the OAUG Insight Magazine - Summer 2012 Edition (Cover Page)

Meet your SLA with SLA -

Service Level Agreement with Subledger Accounting

My White paper on “Meet your SLA with SLA”  is published in the OAUG Insight Magazine, a quarterly magazine published by the Oracle Applications Users Group.  

Here are some of the highlights of my article:

The article aims to provide a comprehensive knowledge and  understanding of the Subledger Accounting (SLA) architecture in Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) R12. It also uncovers some of the unpublished implementation tips and tricks and show how users can meet their financial and reporting needs on time using SLA. In addition, the article highlights how we used the SLA functionality to automate and control various accounting entries using specific business rules.

SLA is a new functionality introduced in EBS R12.SLA is a powerful and flexible rules-based accounting engine with a centralized data model and repository that generates accounting entries based on source transactions for all Oracle Applications transactions. With the introduction of SLA, customers now have a unified view of all the Oracle Application Subledgers across all modules with accounting entries. SLA helps to do a single-step posting to all ledgers and also provides realtime/online accounting information as well as an audit trail for all transactions

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Subledger Accounting comprises five components: Ledger, Subledger Accounting Method, Application Accounting Definition, Journal Line Definitions and Sources 

Using SLA - Case Study: Prior to the EBS R12 upgrade, in our Order to Cash system, when an AR receipt was created, the existing process was mapping the receipt to the default cost center as per the system setup. There was a lot of manual effort involved to reclassify them to the correct customer cost center.

As a part of the EBS R12 Upgrade, using Subledger Accounting rules, we wanted to automate this and make the system automatically apply the receipts to the correct cost center for the customer. Basically, our requirement was to ensure that the create accounting process derives the correct accounting Flexfield segments based on the receipts applied to the customer based on the sales channel to Accounting Flexfield mapping. We wanted this to work for any cash application – receipt applied, receipt unapplied, receipt reversed, etc. The event type for this case study is receipt, and event class is applied, unapplied, reversed, etc.

Solution Steps we used to configure SLA rules:

1.      Create a PL/SQL code – to derive the correct AFF Segments based on receipt and other input parameters.

2.      Define Custom Sources – Associate the PL/SQL code to Custom Source.

3.      Define Account Derivation Rules (ADR).

4.     Define Journal Line Types (JLT).

5.      Define Journal Entry Descriptions (JED).

6.     Define Journal Line Definitions (JLD) – Associate the ADR, JLT and JED together.

7.      Define/Validate Application Accounting Definition (AAD).

8.     Define Subledger Accounting Method (SLAM).

9.     Assign Subledger Accounting Method to Ledger.
10.     Run the Create Accounting Process

After the accounting process completes, you should be able to view the accounting entries from the Receipts window

Co-existence Strategy in Fusion Applications

What is co-existence strategy? Is it just a myth?

Until EBS R12, Co-existence strategy was merely a product of some fancy imagination.It was indeed a myth.

 

The Myth has turned Real!

Oracle Fusion Applications has unveiled a new method of adoption called Co-existence with existing Oracle Product lines.In order to achieve value from Fusion Applications, customers don't have to upgrade or migrate their existing systems to Fusion Applications. Customers can protect their current investment on existing implementations while trying to add new functionality using Fusion Apps.

 

Where Does Co-Existence Stop?

 The co-existence processes extends across all major product lines, including Oracle's Siebel CRM, People Soft, JD Edwards and Oracle E-Business Suite.

 For example: Fusion Account hub is a new product in Fusion Applications which is supposed to co-exist with Oracle EBS R12 and the integration is supposed to be Out of box between R12 GL and Fusion Accounting hub.

 Some of the supported Co-existence modesl include Oracle Fusion Incentive Compensation with Oracle E-Business Suite CRM and HCM or Oracle Fusion Incentive Compensation with PeopleSoft HCM.

 

So What is the advantage of this Co-existence model?

* First of all, you dont need rip off your current deployments to take advantage of Fusion Applications.

* For Example if Company ACME Limited has Oracle R12 CRM and plan to add some of the Incentive Compensation capabilities in Fusion.

Why? Because of some of the new capabilities like Territory and Quota Management!

* Can ACME do it seamlessly?

YES. Because ACME does not need to migrate their current CRM to Fusion inorder to take advantage of Fusion Incentive Compensation modules.

*ACME can implement Fusion Incentive Compensation and co-exist with their EBS CRM module and take advantage of the modular approach.

* So ACME gets a lot of flexibility  to plan and implement projects in a small scale approach rather than go with a Big Bang approach on the implementation.

More about Fusion Apps in my next Blog.

COLLABORATE 2012 - Conference

I attended the COLLABORATE 2012 conference in Las Vegas (April 22 to 26 2012) just 3 weeks ago. As usual, it was an awesome experience - Great content, Excellent Networking and so on..

I presented a paper on "Road to Fusion" to talk about Dell's enterprise wide architectural strategy on Fusion Roadmap. I had the session from 2 to 3. The room was fully packed and the audience had a lot of great questions about Fusion and were surprised to know about the co-existence strategy as a part of Fusion. I will try to cover more about the co-existence strategy in my next blog. After my session I participated in an OBISIG panel to talk about our strategy on OBIEE and EPM suite of products.. Last but not the least, I attended the session on "Meet the leaders" with OAUG . I was awarded the "OAUG Member of the Year" for 2012 by Mark Clark, President of the OAUG for all my volunteer work with the OAUG. I was very much honored. Thank you OAUG for this outstanding recognition. That's all for now. More about Fusion in my next blog. Lakshmi ps: This was originally written in May 2012. But publishing it today...