Oracle Cloud Release 12 Financials Implementation – Lessons Learned

Oracle Cloud ERP Financials has provided a user-friendly framework and it offers excellent features for the Finance department. Centroid has recently implemented Cloud Financials (GL, AP) and Cloud Procurement for a client in less than 4 months and went live successfully.

We would like to share some of the lessons learned during the implementation:

Roles and Users

In Cloud Financials R12, Oracle has made architecture changes to its Identity Management. The Security Console is the primary area to manage roles and their assignments to users. The security and controls governing the corporate policies need to be managed in this console. It has great features for administering the access standards. Employees have to be defined before Users are created in the Security Console. This would create the association between the Employee and Users. The Party ID is referred on the User. It is recommended to copy a Seeded Role to create a Custom Role.  The ESS job “Import User and Role Application Security Data” needs to be scheduled to run on a regular basis. The key setup would be to assign the User and Role to the Data and this needs to be performed by the Manage Data Access Set function.

Example of a Custom Role – AP Invoice Inquiry:

Using the Rapid Implementation Spreadsheet

Before the spreadsheet is loaded, the business team needs to approve the COA Structure and provide the segment values. To populate the GL Enterprise Structures and populate the segment values it is recommended to use Rapid Implementation spreadsheet. It is important to populate the values in the appropriate sequence. Account Hierarchies need to be defined for the Base and Current version.  They must be in Active status before the transactions can be entered.  The segment labels must be validated.

Each segment is associated with a Label:

The Accounting Flexfield must deployed before transactions can be entered into the system:

When Accounting Values are assigned, Payable values need to have the Financial Category of Accounts Payable as seen in the example below:

This Financial Category value setup is a key prerequisite to run the Payables to Ledger Reconciliation Report.

Cross Validation Rules

All the Cross-Validation Rules need to be defined before the actual transactions are entered into the system:

Maintenance of the Chart of Accounts is a key exercise and it needs to be performed in a structured manner. Since Cloud Financials is integrated with Essbase cubes it is important to maintain the account strings in a consistent manner. Once the Accounting Configuration is completed, the cubes are created. The GL balances are maintained in Essbase cubes and used for Financial Reporting.

Notes

1. The Rapid implementation spreadsheet will likely need to be loaded more than once as testing may result in new decisions from the business team.  This is supported and will not be a problem.
2. The project planning and number of POD’s determines the frequency of GL Ledger creation
3. FR Studio reporting should be carefully planned and all the elements need to be captured
4. Adequate time needs to be factored to show the results and build the OTBI Reports
5. Data conversion and integration efforts need to be well planned and appropriate time allocated

Customer Experience

• R12 is a very stable version with an easy to navigate UI.
• The ESS jobs must be scheduled in the background to avoid any user intervention.
• Assistance needs to be provided to the users regarding month end close.
• Period close reports need to be run for reconciliation purposes.
• Check formats need to be determined as per Bank needs. A minimum effort of 4 weeks would be an ideal implementation timeframe because of back and forth testing with each bank.

Still have questions? Contact Centroid to learn more about Oracle Cloud Release 12, and how you can best leverage these tools for your business.