Oracle E-Business Suite Reviews

The most valuable features are straight-through processing because we need to make sure that we have a good end-to-end process. The biggest thing that we also look for is the ability to easily research invoices, where you can attach to the specific invoice line item the detailed payments, etc. We look at it as our biggest factor.

It's important that we can constantly be able to monitor what we've spent relative to the government's money. We always make sure that we have everything in proper order since it is not our physical money. It is somebody else's.

We are an integrated contractor, which basically means that we are contracted by the United States government to operate a program specific to their needs, and to ensure that the program is spending their money correctly, and to make sure that we come in on-budget or even under-budget for the government. We would definitely need to ensure that whatever we do is very much in line with all of the government polices and regulations. We need to ensure that a software that we utilize adheres to that.

The biggest thing that we utilize EBS for is mainly Finance and HRMS. Those are our two biggest modules that we utilize within EBS. So we want to make sure that whatever we are utilizing it for will be easy for the employee to gain access to say, their HR data, or for our acquisition management department to be able to see where the invoice stands in the process of being paid. Those are just a couple of examples.

It is still a little outdated as far as what we consider a twenty-first century software. You're still using Oracle forms, that sort of thing. Payables is a prime example: there's the web interface and then the forms interface and we hate having to switch between the two areas. To create a simple report, at least in my opinion, sometimes requires a developer versus just me, as the user, going in and doing what I need to do. It's extremely difficult to do some data mining on a whim. If there's something repetitive in nature, then we can set it up with a developer, it works, but in our opinion we know that things could work better than the way they are currently.

We've really had no issues with deployment.

The current version that we're on, which is 12.2.4, is decently stable. However, the problem is that the system doesn't allow for us to have a lot of users on it. The hardware that we have is able to run beautifully when there's not a lot of people on. I equate it to, 'The machine's a Ferrari, you can't tow a boat with a Ferrari.' Essentially, the system will go fast when it's allowed to go fast, without the bogging down of users, but that's one of our problems right now. It seems to be that multiple users on the system have caused a lot of back-log.

So far, it seems like we can do a lot of things with EBS relative to customizations. We don't seem to have any real restriction in that area. But some things like, me as the cash manager, setting up banks tends to be a lot more cumbersome than it should be. There seems to be a lot more involvement with doing those types of basic things than they should be in the real-world sense. It seems to be a little bit more like it was geared towards a developer to set up the bank rather than a professional.

Since I'm not the support side of things in the organization, I don't directly deal with technical support, but there are people, such as DBAs and developers, who have been in talks with Oracle about some of the issues. They didn't seem like they had any real problems other than some of the solutions are a little slow to come about. It could be because our organization is very unique, some of the solutions that might need to happen could be a little bit more involved with trying to develop a solution that we need. I don't think we've had a situation, however, where we weren't able to get the needed support.

I wasn't actually at the company at the time, but for upgrades for which I've been apart, they did seem to be a little bit more difficult. A lot of it could be on our end, mainly because of how we do a lot of customizations. We had to do these customizations, unfortunately, because E-Business Suite didn't allow for a specific industry like ours to have more to an 'out-of-the-box'-type of developed software. There was a lot of customization. Now, they have improved from version to version, but for our business, we're still very much away from being cloud-based. Our software sits on a non-internet network. It really is hard for us as an organization to sometimes do business in the environment of, 'Everyone wants to move to an internet system', i.e. the cloud. There are organizations such as ours that have trouble at this point being on an internet-based system.

With our customizations, it stopped a lot of the upgrade that we just had last year. When we did the upgrade, a lot of these customizations were a constant battle where one would not work, another would work, and then when you'd fix one, something else would happen. There were a lot of issues, which we are, as an organization, trying to pull away from customizations. Oracle has not really been geared a lot towards what our line of business was. We have to do a lot of customizations in order to allow for that software to work as we need.

Minimize your customizations if you can. If not, get a lot of training because a lot of the screens are not as intuitive. I'm kind of a rare breed, I guess, as I do have some 'IT sense', so I can maneuver through screens, but when it comes to other people in my group who are really not 'IT minded' at all, they're usually asking me for help when there are some set-ups in their own modules. Setting up is the biggest key, and if you mess that up it's going to propagate the rest of your EBS experience, so you need to have a proper set-up.

The functional knowledge is the most valuable feature. Oracle EBS has many different problems, but I think the main feature is the functionality, how it works together. You can probably find other products that work with Oracle database, but because that’s their own product, EBS tightly integrates with it. I think that's the most valuable thing.

We needed to use financial software, anyway. I think it comes from the historical fact that we had Oracle software; we always had Oracle Database. So, from a licensing point of view, it made perfect sense. It integrates well.

We have a very strong presence from the PL/SQL developers point of view. We have good resources. We have a lot of in-house developed software and it has to integrate with Oracle. We do a lot of invoicing and so on feeding into the Oracle EBS system from our in-house system.

It was natural. The system is naturally a good fit, actually.

Their UI is not the best. It is an area with room for improvement, big time. I think they can go completely out of Java, the applet version. If they make it completely browser driven, like HTML and so on, that will be the best. Today, once in a while, it'll get out of sync. You don't have the latest version of Java. It uploads a whole slew of Java products and applets, which is very heavy-duty stuff. It doesn’t have to be.

These days, actually, everybody uses HTML-related stuff. They have started using it. It's a mix of both, actually, but they're not there yet. That's why you see a lot of other products that complement it.

I met one company at an Oracle conference that did just the re-skinning, just because their skin is not up to the mark; there's a lot of outdated stuff.

I would say 12.1, we upgraded two years ago. At this point, we are a little bit stable. We do have sometimes hanging systems, but I think it's mostly stable now.

We do have some problems sometimes, but we are a small shop, we have 35-40 users, so it's not a huge shop. If you have a 200-something, or 500, users, I think they definitely would have issues. Personally, I haven't encountered many problems.

Once in a while, I'll have some problems. I'll have to restart the system. If it's in the middle of the day, we have all the users get kicked out, and then just a restart. It doesn't happen that often.

It was not easy to set up.

That's actually one of the reasons we use Salesforce; we're loving it. We use Salesforce for our sales and marketing; no software, no maintenance. I have only a 2-3-person team. I myself oversee the department. I have one developer and one support person. Effectively, that support person is not even 100%, so he probably uses 20% of our time, maybe sometimes a little more than that. The developer is very rarely used. If you add all these three persons, it's not even one person who is actually managing the entire team.

Oracle, oh, my God. I have a team for hardware; you need some Oracle-related hardware stuff. Of course, they're not only doing the Oracle stuff, but you have to have someone. We have an Oracle apps DBA. I'm outsourcing that one. I have a functional guy; he uses 25% of his time now, but at one point, he was using 50% of his time. We also have our in-house PL/SQL developer. You can see how many people. It’s a lot of resources. Oh, man.

Upgrading is a nightmare. I mean, I shouldn’t describe it as a nightmare, but I get nervous whenever they upgrade. It's a lot of work; a lot of coordination; a lot of testing and all those things.

If it was in the cloud, I wouldn't worry about any of those things.

We did look at other products. We did look at Workday, and Salesforce also has a product called FinancialForce. Actually, the Workday partners are very, very expensive. They force you to choose one of their suggested partners; Oracle doesn't have that problem. I get it dirt cheap from somebody from India, Brazil, or somebody else, and I can get it done. As much as Workday’s licensing costs, it costs as much for doing the implementation. I wouldn't do that, but maybe there are companies who will do that. If I have to do that, no, not in the route, unless there is some overwhelming benefit in the 5-7 year timeframe.

We also looked at NetSuite, but not as much as Workday. We actually were thinking of doing more on that, but we didn't have anybody come to our site to show that.
With FinancialForce, they had some other comment there that they would not be pursuing that direction. We didn't feel comfortable that they would keep it for a long time or not.

You have to have patience, and be willing to spend more time due to the fact that eventually it pays off. Sometimes, the first impression is the best impression. Oracle EBS is not that. The first impression might be terribly bad, but once you get through there, you dig deeper, you'll get your money's worth.

They are not super efficient in the cloud business yet. They are getting there. We are using it on-premises. Fusion is the cloud-based offering for EBS. We never went that route. We're not comfortable yet.

It matches with our requirements and pulls the data from an instance that is nowhere related to the Oracle Applications; it pulls out exactly what we require.

In one shot, we know what is happening. For example, if someone submits something from Salesforce, it immediately shows what the outcome. This data you can either transmit or not transmit. In this way, it is helping not only us but the customers as well.

We didn't go with the standard features of the Oracle SOA Suite in which the Oracle APIs were included; these APIs we wrote on our own. That might be the issue for us. If we had to use the standard ones, which were a part of the Oracle SOA Suite, it could have been better for us.

Rarely, we have experienced any downtime issues. That might be because of the DBS alerts that are missing.

It has scaled a little to our needs. I would give it a 6/10 rating for its scalability.

When we have to open a ticket with the technical support, it is resolved in a timely manner. However, for this purpose, we are not using the Oracle SOA support team; instead, we are using RemedyForce, which is a part of SFDC.

We did not look at any other solutions before because we got an analysis done by the Oracle team itself. They analyzed everything and recommended it to us.

I'm really happy with this product.

There is a new software called MuleSoft that has come up and is similar to this product. I want to review it to see if it is better than this one. I have heard it is more simple to deploy than the Oracle SOA Suite.

This is our ERP and we are using it for our entire supply chain flow, i.e., from the start of the billing to the shipping process. We are using the Oracle E-Business Suite for mainly our supply chain management.

We are looking for improvement in the response time that we get.

In addition, we are not getting regular updates in terms of their patches. Many times, we log a SR and then we get a response from Oracle that they need to apply a patch. Thus, if they can inform us ahead of time for such issues, it will really help.

I have been using this product for more than 10 years.

It's quite stable. We have had no downtime. It's working fine. It's quite stable for us.

We are looking for more scalability. It should be more scalable.

The support at Oracle is good. It's not very good but good.

The Oracle support is through the Oracle MetaLink, where you open up the Oracle SR and then get the support needed. For this, we spend at least a day or two to provide them with information and it is time consuming. Hence, I think it's good.

However, in case of any urgency, we need to go with the escalation route to get the support that is needed and need to go over the issue with them. We need to struggle in terms of getting the right support. They have support in both the US and Indian time zones. Sometimes, we don't get the right support person in the Oracle SR call and that is also one of the struggles that we have with Oracle.

It is straightforward and quite good. In the Oracle application, we don't have an issue with that.

We are looking for reliability whilst selecting a vendor. They should be more knowledgeable in the supply chain area. They should have proper knowledge in the domain area and that's what we look for.

The most valuable features are the records management, procurement, and inventory.

I have been using it for several years.

We have not had any downtime.

It is very scalable. It will grow as my company grows.

I would recommend this product.

Basically, the most valuable feature is the suite; basically, your integration between APAR, PO, fixed assets. We're using Financials.

Again, integration: The reason I'm mentioning this is, basically, you can have an ERP ordering system, and it doesn't have to be Oracle. Also, it's not really an ordering system; it's not friendly, for that matter.

Maybe more real-time; that would probably be better.

I have been using it for about 15 years. The company has had it maybe four years.

It's fairly stable. We haven't really had any big issues.

We believe it is scalable. We certainly have to change our process, and maybe have to acquire more products, but we think Oracle will be able to provide all of our needs.

Technical support is OK. They're no better or no worse than other companies. You have to know what to do. Basically, for us, when we go to support, we're prepared. We make sure we have all our data – from our financial system or whatever – ready, so we will save time.

However, we do find, sometimes, depending on the time of the day, if you open the support ticket with Oracle, let's say, if you're doing it in the afternoon, or late afternoon, then it actually goes to Asia-Pacific. That problem, basically, is that you won't get any updates in the morning, if we try to. You would get something in the afternoon. If it's not urgent, maybe that's OK, but we'd like to have something, basically, in the same time zone, at least.

For one thing, there are not many things available out there. Oracle bought them all, basically. Oracle is basically a local company for us. It's pretty easy to use, so that was another one of the reasons. Also, at the time, my company was trying to go IPO. They couldn’t really claim all the financials from the spreadsheets. You have to have some kind of ERP system, so Oracle was one of the options.

Initial setup really depends on the module. It’s not very consistent, I think because different people have developed the different modules. You have to get used to it.

When we are selecting a vendor to work with, we look for a couple of things. One simple thing: basically, it has to be logical. Meaning that, whatever application's there, it makes sense to use. Also, it should be easy to implement and easy to support. Hopefully, it will work with our other systems. We also look at ease of use.

Oracle E-Business Suite is a financial and accounting reporting tool that we use for accounts payable, creating invoices, and accounts receivable. We process a lot of transactions, so the greatest benefit is that all manual activities are being automated. We don't have to spend hours to generate invoices and accounting reports. All the manual insurance processes have been automated, making it easy for the business to handle day-to-day business activities.

I think the standard reports in the AR and the GM modules need improvement. I would like to see a few new reports, including customized reports and summaries.

We have been using Oracle for almost five years.

Oracle E-Business Suite is quite stable. We did have some challenges when we when we started, but now it is more or less stable. The system was not initially optimized to find the transaction database. When we upgraded our systems in May, it took almost two to three months before our Oracle E-Business Suite implementation matched the business systems. Now everything is working smoothly.

We use technical support very often. We open service requests, and if the ticket level is a seven, we see a good response. They need to improve on their turnaround time on the Sev 2 and Sev 3 service requests.

We used to be PeopleSoft, which was a financial system, and it was not meeting all our business requirements, and was not scalable. That's why we switched to Oracle. Additionally, Oracle is more compatible with PeopleSoft than SAP.

When we introduced Oracle E-Business Suite, I was part of the implementation team. We used to be PeopleSoft, so I was part of the PeopleSoft internal auditing team, and I was also involved with the upgrade. The new implementation was very challenging because we needed to do a lot of customization. There were also many new business requirements at that point in time. But, when we later performed an upgrade, it was not too complex.

We did evaluate SAP, but found Oracle to be more compatible with our financial systems.

Our most important criteria is that the applications be more customer centered, and that manual activities are automated.

Oracle E-Business Suite is a very awesome product. It has a lot of capabilities, and you can gain a lot of business knowledge through it.

For us, the most valuable feature is that we have one database, one instance; yet we operate in more than six countries across the world, so it makes it easy for us to run with a very small IT staff.

Its features are good, but I think they need to look around at the other products in the market. There are a few industry standard features which are missing from this product. We are discussing one of these with them where synchronizing calendars across different countries is a big thing.

On the reporting side, they should give financial reports more in AxelBase to filter and sort data to make it faster and easier to close the books.

The other area is definitely the support side. Turnaround time needs to be faster. They need to improve working with the end user, and asking very specific questions to help resolve an issue. People should collect different types of information before sending the problem back and forth.

As a company, we've been using it for five years.

It didn't start that way; but at this point, it's pretty stable. Don’t forget there were improvements in the reporting side, the performance side, and in the UI experience.

I would say that it is scalable.

I have good and bad experiences with Oracle support. Sometimes it's very difficult to open up an SR, to keep it open, and to get a timely answer when you need it. It feels like everything has to be marked severity 1, critical, 24/7: sometimes in order for it to get something done. They might have heard that a lot, obviously.

We often have problems if we have to cross teams. If I have a problem, and then all of a sudden they decide, "That's receivables," so now you have to open a separate ticket with receivables. Receivables work differently than everyone else, so you're going to have to prioritize it higher and make it 24/7. It can be frustrating sometimes that all the support teams don't work similarly.

It's okay, but the real pain comes when you're moving from one area to another. Configuring the APR system is not that easy and it is not easy to get something out of it that you configured. You need to keep on working on an environment’s configuration to bring it up to speed. Now, you're sure this environment is all up-to-date, and everything is working fine. Now, we need to move into the next environment where people are going to test the system.

Currently, there is no automation for migrating an entire configuration to a different instance. You need to manually resolve all the errors. It is very difficult to even identify where and what went wrong. If you are really senior, and you have a lot of experience working on it, then it might easy for you to go and see, "We are missing that."

It would also benefit from a full-fledged comparison when something went wrong. If we could run something that will identify, "Here is the configuration here.This is a mismatch." That would also work well.