woensdag 8 maart 2017

Oracle Procurement Cloud Blog Part VII: Reporting, reporting, reporting!

In continuation of our blog series on Oracle Procurement Cloud, this week I will share my experience on Business Intelligence in Cloud ERP. For more information you can read our earlier blogs on the go-live, implementation speed, structural flexibility, Setupsupport and user experience.


“I quickly need that report, can you provide it as soon as possible?”, is something almost every consultant must have heard at least once in their lives. I know I did. Business Intelligence (BI) is becoming a more and more vital part of every ERP system, as many major management decisions are based on BI reports. In the past, most ERP systems were very  capable of storing data, but pulling data out of the system in a proper manner -  that was a  different ballgame! Nowadays, in Oracle Cloud ERP a report is created just by a few clicks.

A lot of people are interested in how their company is doing on various topics: from ordering to invoicing and from revenue to costs. They do not need outdated reports based on data from yesterday; they need the information updated real time and they need it now. Oracle Cloud ERP makes it easy for everyone to get a clear and structured overview of all data stored in the system, even for those people who do not ever log into the system or do not even own an account .

Embedded BI

With the later versions of Oracle e-Business suite, BI is becoming more and more part of the system, but in Oracle Cloud ERP BI is more integrated with ERP than ever before. Every Oracle ERP license includes embedded BI at no extra costs. Next to embedded BI,  the BI Cloud is also available and is the successor of OBIEE used together with e-Business suite (BI apps). The difference is that embedded BI only shows data stored in cloud ERP and BI cloud is able to connect and integrate more easily  with external systems (similar to OBIEE).

Embedded BI consists out of subject areas that contain out-of-the-box objects around a particular business area, such as invoicing, contracts and suppliers. In each subject area the most important fields applicable to that area are made available for you to use in your analysis or report.
If you need any customizations done on subject areas, that is also possible, but for our project the standard provided options are very rich and gave us  all the information we needed.

Drag and drop

Throughout our project, we found out that a very good thing about embedded BI in Oracle Cloud ERP is the simplicity and how fast we are able to build a report. It is really just drag and drop. In under 30 minutes we were able to create a report including a table  with different figures (pie charts, diagrams, etc.).

Furthermore, it is very easy to schedule any report you create to be sent to users outside or inside of the system. This way it is easy to send daily/weekly reports to managers who do not have an actual account.

This did not only help us throughout our own project, but will also help us in the future when we are doing demos or proof of concepts. Reports and dashboards are always good to show to any management team, as it really appeals to their interests. It definitely adds value that we are able to create a report in such a fast manner.

Look & feel

The options for graphical representations of any analysis is a big plus in Cloud ERP compared to on premise ERP systems. Especially Infolets are worth mentioning. Infolets are easily configurable figures giving you direct real time insight into specific areas of interest.


                                  Example of financial Infolets in Oracle ERP

These Infolets are shown on the homepage of users, depending on the access they have. A great advantage is the option to drill down to the transactional level through all Infolets. This makes Infolets  the ‘go to’ place for many users.

To conclude, with Oracle Cloud ERP you are easily able to  show all information available in the system in many ways possible.


Our next blog will be on how you can work more efficiently with your suppliers.