Close your books faster with Oracle Financials Cloud
Updated October 20, 2019
Close your books faster with Oracle Financials Cloud
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Oracle Financials Cloud
Overall Satisfaction with Oracle Financials Cloud
Oracle cloud is an Enterprise-class cloud platform. It has 3 main divisions, which are the platform as a service, database as a service, and software as a service. We leveraged all the three components and they worked well for us. We were using outdated disparate systems for various departments. Some of the systems were heavily customized and at the end of their life cycle based on outdated technology. We wanted to move on to a single platform, streamline our processes, use the latest and greatest technology and save money at the same time. After many deliberations, we chose Oracle Cloud. Oracle Cloud is secure, agile, comes with collaboration tools, inbuilt analytics, and is mobile and tablet friendly.
- User-friendly, intuitive interface. Comes with dashboards and inbuilt analytics.
- Comes with inbuilt collaboration tools, which helps in achieving efficiency through inter and intradepartmental collaboration.
- Helps in closing the books on time with automated reconciliations.
- Helps with ease of use and streamlined business process.
- All the features available in the Oracle E-business Suite application are not available yet. Oracle is working hard to bring them in. The sooner the better.
- The Oracle support needs to improve. More information needs to be provided on Oracle's support website.
- Oracle needs to give importance to the Oracle community. So that more users use it and more people find help in it.
- Oracle should disseminate the information freely on various products, issues, etc. The information is not available in an easily accessible way.
- There is scope for improvement in the user guides. They should be simple with diagrams, pictures, etc. As of now, it is not easy to understand from the documentation.
- By retiring old disparate systems, we saved a lot of money.
- We saved money in integrations as Oracle has a well integrated suite of applications in all modules.
- Our users were happy as the system has the latest and modern look and feel.
We evaluated various systems like Workday, Salesforce, Basware, etc. We were already using Oracle E-Business Suite, hence we are familiar with Oracle and worked well with them, hence we chose Oracle cloud.
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP Feature Ratings
Using Oracle Financials Cloud
120 - Oracle financials is leveraged by Finance, Payables, Receivables, Treasury,Procurement and Projects teams. It saves lots of time for the finance team, as they could track all the project costs and project revenue and run profitability metrics on each project. Oracle Financials cloud comes with robust reporting and inbuilt analytics. Each project manager can run their own reports and ensure that all the costs and revenue related to a project are reported and entered in the system. As a projects driven organization, we found Oracle Financials cloud well integrated with all other modules.
4 - People with good understanding of Enterprise software, business and finance knowledge will be a good fit for the role. As people work in teams, good interpersonal skills, written and oral communication skills are important. People with knowledge in finance processes, back office functions, period close, procure to pay, order to cash, record to report business processes are a good fit. As the technology is always evolving, curious and adaptable people who want to learn continuously will be more successful.
- We want to track each projects profitability and margin. with this software we were able to achieve it.
- We wanted suppliers to enter the invoices themselves, with cloud supplier portal we could do it.
- We wanted a secure, mobile and tablet friendly software which our project managers could access on the field. Oracle cloud fits the bill.
- We wanted a software which is tightly integrated with other modules. Oracle offers applications in all possible areas which are seamlessly integrated.
- Oracle cloud offers inbuilt analytics and the user interface is intuitive.
- Before we are storing supplier master in a different tool. With oracle cloud, we stopped using the other tool and we are leveraging oracle cloud as a repository of our master data. If a duplicate supplier is entered, oracle immediately flags it up, which is a great feature.
- Before oracle cloud we did not know many innovative features like self billing. we are leveraging it now.
- We like the self service reporting in Oracle Transactional business intelligence. Our finance users are pulling out their own reports now.
- We wish to leverage invoice scanning feature by using optical character recognition.
- We wish to scale up Oracle cloud to our acquired companies.
- we wish to leverage other modules like supplier lifecycle management, Oracle sourcing, Oracle project contracts, hyperion etc
Evaluating Oracle Financials Cloud and Competitors
Yes - We replaced our old ERP tool with Oracle cloud. The old ERP tool is outdated and we customized it to the point, where it cannot be upgraded. We acquired many companies over the time and we wanted a scalable, reliable solution, hence we chose oracle cloud.
We have disparate systems tied up with outdated interfaces, we chose to get rid of those outdated systems and move on to a single coherent platform.
We have disparate systems tied up with outdated interfaces, we chose to get rid of those outdated systems and move on to a single coherent platform.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Prior Experience with the Product
- Vendor Reputation
- Existing Relationship with the Vendor
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
- Analyst Reports
- Third-party Reviews
Oracle offered the best features we wanted in the product. We already have a relationship with Oracle and we were happy with them. Oracle is constantly innovating and will be around for quite some time. We did explore products from some startups, however we were not sure whether they will be around after 5 years.Oracle is doing a good job in disseminating industry leading best practices.
We would talk to some old customers in a similar industry who were using the product. we will read and research third party reviews. We will hire an independent consultant to do demos. We will get access to a test system and play around and test our use cases before making a decision.
Oracle Financials Cloud Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Yes - Software evaluation
Demos
Requirement gathering
Conversions
Use case Testing
System integration with other software
System Integration testing > Unit testing > Cutover
Demos
Requirement gathering
Conversions
Use case Testing
System integration with other software
System Integration testing > Unit testing > Cutover
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - Need to involve business users from the beginning.
Business users need to work with implementation team, hand in hand.
To reduce the work load of business users, some temps may be hired, so that business users can spend more time on the project.
The sponsor of the project should be from the top management.
Business users need to work with implementation team, hand in hand.
To reduce the work load of business users, some temps may be hired, so that business users can spend more time on the project.
The sponsor of the project should be from the top management.
- while converting data, we missed some data for various reasons. After go live we found out and we fixed it over a weekend.
- The taxes for some transactions were set up incorrectly, we figured it and fixed it.
Oracle Financials Cloud Training
Configuring Oracle Financials Cloud
Here are my recommendations on configuring the application
a) Get your users trained on the application, so that they will understand the nitty gritty of the application.
b) Hire experienced people who implemented the application, atleast couple of times before.
c) Involve the business users right from the begining, so that business users work hand in hand with implementation team and give continuous feedback.
d) Make an effort to migrate cleansed data.
a) Get your users trained on the application, so that they will understand the nitty gritty of the application.
b) Hire experienced people who implemented the application, atleast couple of times before.
c) Involve the business users right from the begining, so that business users work hand in hand with implementation team and give continuous feedback.
d) Make an effort to migrate cleansed data.
Some - we have done small customizations to the interface - We personalized the user interface whereever possible. Personalization is easy and effective. Some examples of personalization are uploading our company logo, making fields mandatory where required, hiding fields where not required, renaming the fields where it makes sense etc. Descriptive flex fields are available in almost all pages, to capture additional data.
Approvals are flexible and can be routed in different ways. Subledger accounting rules are available where, accounting rules can be defined to satisfy various accounting conventions.In summary, with personalizations, descriptive flexfields, subledger accounting rules, Business process management worklist most business situations can be handled without extensive customizations.
Approvals are flexible and can be routed in different ways. Subledger accounting rules are available where, accounting rules can be defined to satisfy various accounting conventions.In summary, with personalizations, descriptive flexfields, subledger accounting rules, Business process management worklist most business situations can be handled without extensive customizations.
No - we have not done any custom code
We integrated various applications with the Oracle Financials cloud. Some of them are Thomson Reuters One Source tax engine, Transcepta eInvoicing, concur expenses etc. We used webservices to integrate these applications. Standard Application program interfaces are also available in the oracle cloud market place for these third party applications. We used Oracle Supplier network and B2B configuration to exchange cXML purchase orders and invoices.
Oracle Financials Cloud Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
No - Instead of paying for premium support, i would hire my own oracle staff, that way i will be in complete control. The best thing with oracle is, there is abundant supply of people available who are experts in the product.
An oracle engineer offered me workarounds and alternative solutions.That was helpful. Oracle is also engaging with customers and doing frequent webcasts on topics of interest. This way information is disseminated to all customers.
Oracle has lots of features, however the trouble is many customers do not know about it. Oracle has to do more in disseminating the information.
Oracle has lots of features, however the trouble is many customers do not know about it. Oracle has to do more in disseminating the information.
Using Oracle Financials Cloud
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- The dashboards on the landing page are god send. It gives all the important metrics at one place.
- The approval notifications shows up on the landing page. They can be approved or rejected with a single click.
- The collaboration tool is great. All the communication, attachments are saved for audit trail.
- Allocations in general ledger are difficult.
- we would like to have alerts which were available in Oracle E Business Suite.
Yes - People on the field can leverage the mobile interface. Using mobile interface, requisitions, purchase orders, invoices, projects can be approved. Expense reports can be submitted. Collaboration can happen using Oracle social network.
Oracle Financials Cloud Reliability
Integrating Oracle Financials Cloud
- Integrated SAP Concur with Oracle Financials cloud. There are many prebuilt webservices available and the integration is seamless.
- Integrated Thomson Reuters One Source Tax engine. Onesource has built webservices and application programming interfaces, the integration works well.
- Integrated Workday with Oracle Financials cloud. All employee information flows into Oracle cloud.
The integration is seamless. As there are common integrations and many enterprises have already did this, many webservices and application programming interfaces are available. Lost of documentation and case studies are also available.
- we are planning to integrate salesforce CRM with Oracle financials cloud in future.
- We are planning to integrate third party Invoice automation software called Trancepta with Oracle financials cloud.
- We use a software associated with a bank for our payments. It is in our pipeline to integrate it with our Oracle cloud payables.
Yes, oracle has built partnerships with various vendors and they provide oracle certified integration tools. These can be leveraged to achieve the integrations. Another tool called Blackline reconciliations is in our pipeline to integrate with Oracle cloud. This software is used for automatic reconciliations in general ledger.
- File import/export
- Single Signon
- API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
Oracle 3 types of file import/export, they are called FBDi ( file based data import ), ADi ( Application development import ) and Business Intelligence Publisher import/export. All these tools are spreadsheet friendly and the final file can be converted into a comma seperated file with a click of the mouse and interfaced.Apart from these SOAP and REST services are also available.
Oracle has done a good job in giving tools and objects for seamless integration. However unless there is a strong reason, i would minimize integrations to the best possible extent. Oracle comes with the biggest suite of applications, i would try to use the applications from Oracle stable itself. As these applications are tightly integrated with Oracle and Oracle will take care of these integrations in future updates too.
Relationship with Oracle
We negotiated the yearly fees for the cloud software.We bought the bundled application with various modules, we negotiated the discounts. On some modules we got a discount for the first year. Oracle is flexible and easy to work with. As they have a suite of applications to offer, there are various levers available for both parties to negotiate upon.
Try to buy as many Oracle modules/applications as possible. This way the integration costs are minimal, support effort is minimal and you are dealing with only one vendor. Further this give a lever to negotiate the pricing as much as possible. Oracle has lots of tools to offer, hence one get a good deal.
Upgrading Oracle Financials Cloud
Yes - Oracle publishes the Release Content Document well in advance. One has read through it, to assess any impact on the integrations. There is time available to test all the new features in test instance. Some enhancements come with opt in feature, where the customer has the option to choose whether they would like to use or not.
- There are several enhancements in the new cloud upgrade. The features available for withholding tax are enhanced. We use withholding tax a lot and this has helped us.
- One time payments feature is made available in the recent release. This helps us in processing refunds faster. We could upload list of people via a spreadsheet and process payments.
- There are several enhancements in pipeline which are going to help us and we look forward to leverage them.
- We would leverage the new functionality wherever applicable.
- There is always scope for improvement. As oracle releases the enhancements and makes things simpler, we will utilize them to the best possible extent.
- Oracle is coming with a new User interface as per presentations in the Oracle Open world. I will look forward to it. As user interface is the key.