Item: Oracle E-Business Suite
Rating: 5
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle eBusiness Suite

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

EBS is used by all users globally at least for time and expenses, iProcurement etc. It supports sales operations, quoting and fulfillment, supply chain operations including manufacturing in multiple locations, warehouse management in 3 main distribuion hubs (US, Europe and Asia). EBS is also used for service manangement, service contracts, plus we use full financial suite.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Order fulfillment, scheduling, and planning. WMS and mobile warehouse operations are very good now.
Easy user management of responsibilities and access.
Supports multi-language environments.

Cons

EBS is mix of different technologies that shows its age and history of Oracle acquisitions. The older forms are generally better than the OAF web pages. Its code is a mix of PL/SQL, Java, SQL scripts, with some C, Javascript. It requires Oracle Workflow, Report Builder to maintain basic extensions.
It is an expensive suite to keep supported. Oracle has improved patching but there are still frequent issues caused by applying fixes for one problem that create issues elsewhere.
Some of the newer technologies to extend SOA are expensive to implement and license.

Return on Investment

Replaced one large ERP system and 20+ smaller applications.
It took 1 year to implement for North American operations and a further 2 years to bring up EBS in 6 other business unit/countries. This was ontime and under budget.
Financial reporting is faster and more streamlined.
Better visibilty to global inventory, able to fulfill demand from global locations.
Faster and more on-time delivery of product

Alternatives Considered

SAP,JDE One World

SAP was not appealing and badly presented. It seemed extremely complex and we never found anyone who had implemented a large SAP ERP system in under 3 years. PeopleSoft had acquired JDE and sold us 'PeopleSoft' (we already use it for HR) but actually presented a JDE product. EBS had a full range of functionality that best met our needs for global manufacturing, distribution and service.

Likelihood to Renew

It is extremely expensive and distruptive to implement ERP systems. We have taken the 'no customizations' approach to EBS and keep current (within a year) with the latest releases. Upgrading is relatively easy but does take a large amount of testing by the user community. We reinvested in new hardware and will likely stay on this platfrom for 5 - 7 years.

Likelihood to Recommend

Oracle eBusiness Suite is well suited to larger mid-size and large companies. Even taking the no customization approach EBS is complex and needs lots of expertise from business analysts to implement and support. How large an IT organization will be needed to support EBS, DBAs, developers, business analysts, super-users, system administrators, plus managers? What other applications will be needed for integration, tax calculation, shipping, transportation and customs and excise, HR and CRM?

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EBS Review from Support Perspective

Software Version

Modules Used