Oracle E-Business Suite Reviews

We use this solution in our company to help with processes and dealing with payments for company projects. We are customers of Oracle and I'm the director of ERP systems. 

There are a few valuable features in this solution, the most valuable of which is the ERP. The customization and integration features are also great, it's the main thing you look for in a suite. 

Our biggest problem with this solution is the user interface. We'd like to see a simpler, more user-friendly product, with a flexible process, like you get with Fusion or SAP S4HANA. Both those solutions have a better UI, whereas Oracle has older features and feels like an outdated product. We're looking to migrate to another product because of that and because Oracle is lacking AI features. 

I've been using this solution for five years. 

This is a stable product. 

Technical support is a mixed bag and depends on the support requested. Sometimes it goes to someone who isn't knowledgeable and can't help us and sometimes they're fine and can solve our problem. 

The initial setup was a little complex for us and I think it took close to seven months to complete using an integrator team; it's a continuous process. We have a team that deals with the maintenance of the solution and there are around 400 users in the company. 

This is an expensive solution but it's to be expected because ERPs are expensive. 

This is still a good product and I would recommend it even though it doesn't suit us anymore. 

I rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

The flexibility to scale up is very good. Regardless of the customer, customization is not as complicated as it is in SAP or even ISS and other products. 

There is a range of modules available in Oracle which you can switch on as you progress in your organization. You don't have to necessarily take a lot of time to kickstart the implementation. You can just start with basic HR, finance, and purchasing. Then, later on, you can extend the application landscape with more modules as you progress. There is essentially one solution for every industry within Oracle — you won't require a third-party solution. Still, if you wish to use a third-party solution because the price is too high or because of a specific technical requirement, then you are free to do so. 

I currently work for a company that specializes in aircraft maintenance. There used to be a module in Oracle called CMRO. Now, the current situation is that they are pretty much closing down that module. Roughly eight or nine years back when they started it, they were anticipating a good number of customers but the reality turned out to be different — that's why they closed down that module. That created a lot of trouble for a lot of companies. Truthfully speaking, that is the reason I moved towards ISS. Although it's not as popular as Oracle or SAP, ISS focuses on industries. ISS provides us with an industry-based solution, geared toward aviation, field service management, or manufacturing for example. 

Oracle E-Business Suite uses an old technology (Forms), which is Java-based. If you're using a functionality that is based on Oracle Forms, then the client machine needs to download an applet in order to use that function. Often I've encountered, during support issues, that the client machine, if it is a little obsolete or an older version, the Java versions cause trouble. Wherein if you look at the modern cloud perspective or modern software in general, it's mostly web or browser-based. That's one thing that Oracle should consider on-prem.

There is still a huge amount of customers who are on on-prem. Upgrades should have a business case. I don't want to upgrade just because Oracle has come up with a new version — I should have some benefits. We are one of those customers who are not interested in shifting to the cloud for various reasons. Because of this, we have to live with this old Forms technology. Oracle should try to offer a balance between both versions instead of pushing customers to the cloud. This seems to be a strategy that both SAP and Oracle follow.

I have been using Oracle E-Business Suite for more than one year. In total, I have more than 10 years of experience with Oracle. 

Oracle E-Business Suite is definitely stable. 

Regarding their technical support, my personal experience over a period of two to three years is that you'll begin to notice a pattern regarding what time you should raise a service request so that it reaches the right place. Whether it goes to India or to Egypt — these are the two most popular centers for Oracle support. But if you manage to hit the right people, the support is there. 70 to 80 percent of the time, I receive a solution to my problems simply through the technical repository — within the portal itself. I prefer to do it like this rather than by creating a service request and waiting for a response from a potentially inexperience staff member. I'd rather just depend on the documentation. The documentation is very rich. The Oracle community is big.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. I have worked with SAP, Oracle, Dynamics, and now I'm using ISS. With all of them, you need to have some basic expertise before you jump into the pool, otherwise, your life could be complicated. If you have that basic guidance and experience, it's not complicated when it comes to Oracle. Still, there are prerequisites for each of them — especially when it comes to Oracle. You need to have had hands-on experience with PL/SQL or developer experience with Java.

The best part about Oracle is that it has openly published its documentation on its implementation checklist — how to follow, configure, etc. For this reason, it's much easier to implement Oracle compared to ISS or SAP, for example. This is due to the fact that they insist that you need to follow their documentation and it's not publicly available everywhere. This makes things a bit easier when it comes to Oracle.

If you're buying a license, support is roughly 22% of the price of the whole product. So, in the first year, you'll definitely get support. Some companies, over a period of time, try to knock off the Oracle support costs because it just keeps growing. Every year, according to their published price, it will increase from three to five percent from the last year. Now, imagine you bought a product worth 1.5 billion; what would be the support cost in the first year? And then plus 5%, plus 5% — it goes on, and on. You'll come to a point where you feel you're wasting money because support is support whether I am paying for five users or 500 users.

There is a solution for all of your current problems in Oracle E-Business Suite, but the constraint is the license. I'll give you a live example. Let's say I bought an employee self-service. What I would get is a bunch of licenses that I can use on the web version on my local internet. But with the current model of digitalization, you know that the employees would prefer to have some sort of mobile app or at least a desktop site. So, if I want that to happen, then I'd need to buy another set of licenses. The same self-service on the mobile version.

These are the pain points with Oracle. The license is normalized or broken down to such a level that it becomes a pain. Regarding a new customer, unless he's been using this solution for two or three years, he won't get used to these licenses. There is a good chance that he'd become exploited by Oracle's account managers in terms of licenses. Oracle's licenses are not straightforward.

Personally, I have worked on several projects where I have had to help customers understand Oracle licensing — it's not simple in SAP either. There are pros and cons to both solutions. Sometimes it could be beneficial and sometimes it's troublesome. That is something I feel that Oracle should try to simplify.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of seven. 

Oracle E-Business Suite is not for small businesses as, over a period of time, you will incur a huge cost when it comes to hosting. It's not just about application licensing, there is also hosting infrastructure, etc. It's not the functionality that's the problem for small entities, it's the overall cost. Smaller companies should go for something like AppDynamics, SAP Business, or NetSuite. 

Oracle is best suited for large organizations — from medium to large. It's a great solution for companies who grow quickly and need the best scalability possible. Unless you have a minimum user base of 3,000, you shouldn't be using Oracle.

Oracle is for medium to large-sized companies that are projected to grow in one or two years. Otherwise, it will become a pain point for you because the IT expenses will shoot through the roof. As a product, as a functionality, if you check this particular prerequisite, I would definitely recommend it.

We primarily use the solution mostly as the ERP system at the moment.

The ease of use is the solution's most valuable aspect. The user levels are easy to take on. 

Everyone in the company is quite used to the Oracle functionality. 

It's easy when you want to integrate certain solutions that are being developed. When adding modules, the process is quite seamless.

The initial setup was pretty easy.

We are in Zimbabwe. At the moment we are having challenges with foreign payments. The pricing for us is quite high due to the exchange.

We wanted a fully-fledged solution that has got payroll, HR, finance et cetera, basically everything finance and administration we'd like to see sustainability management. This solution doesn't offer exactly what we need all in one package. We want to upgrade, therefore, we're currently seeing what else is on the market to see if there are competitors that have the kind of full packaging we require.

There's an issue with business process automation. I would like an end-to-end in terms of processes. There are different modules, however, there's not that end-to-end that we are looking for in terms of process automation. That is what is lacking right now. I have seen Microsoft, for example, really work well when it comes to process automation.

I've been using the product for about six years at this point. I started using the solution around 2014 if I recall correctly.

The version we are using is extremely stable. We've found it to be a reliable product. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. We haven't had to engage with technical support on any issues as it just seems to run very well.

The solution offers good scalability depending on the setup. Since we have an on-prem product, we have a big data center. In terms of the database replication, I think maybe it was more expensive. We didn't have to deploy an active/active setup on the DB side. 

We haven't really needed to reach out to technical support. That's a testament to how well this product runs. 

That said, in the past, I recall dealing with them, and for the most part, they were great. There were a few issues they were a bit slower to respond to, however, overall, as I recall, they were good.

When you are running a business you want a faster turnaround time. However, there are also some issues where they will be operating within their SLA, be it 24 or 48 hours. Still, sometimes you just need those quick turnarounds, such as maybe one or two hours, to get things done.

We did not find the initial implementation to be complex. It was rather straightforward. As time went on there were some little customizations being made, however, it was just rather straightforward in general. We didn't struggle with the implementation at all.

The pricing for us, being based in Zimbabwe, is expensive. The exchange is not so good. While we have some constraints now, we don't foresee this being an ongoing problem.

Although we don't have an imperative to move solutions, we are looking at other options to see what is available on the market.

We are just customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with Oracle.

I would recommend the solution to other organizations.

Overall, I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We've been largely happy with the product's performance.

I am a system analyst and database supervisor. I prepare the reports and take the reports from the system. 

We are mainly using this product for HR and finance. We also use it a little bit for supply chain. We are using a legacy version of this product.

It is scalable. 

We don't like Oracle EBS because it is very old. Nowadays, all the systems are on the cloud and web-based. With Oracle EBS, you need a huge setup before installing it. You need a lot of servers. There are a lot of problems and bugs in the system. We have to move from Oracle EBS to another system. In terms of improvements, it can have better training for end users and better support.

We have been using Oracle E-Business Suite in some divisions since 2014.

It is stable because we already know where are the problems and errors. So, we are able to handle it manually, but this is not healthy at all.

It is scalable. We have around 1,000 users. 

We didn't use their technical support because we didn't pay for the license for support.

I am not responsible for installation or setup. You need a huge setup and a lot of servers before installing it.

Its implementation was very difficult. We used an implementer, but he was bad.

I would recommend this solution but with good implementation from the beginning. After implementation, you can build whatever you want. You can create any flow.

We will continue to use this solution because we have the system license, but we will eventually move from Oracle EBS to another system. We are trying to go to HCM Fusion, but we have some problems with the management. That's why we haven't moved to Fusion.

I would rate Oracle E-Business Suite a seven out of ten.

One of the best use cases is centralizing supplier and customer data into our finance system. We identified that there were many duplicate suppliers and customers and so a lot of time was spent reporting.

When the tsunami happened in 2009, our top management asked us how many suppliers were impacted in that particular area and how it would impact our supply chain cycle. When we tried to answer this question we thought that it would take one or two weeks, but it took our entire team three to four months to identify how many suppliers were impacted. That showed how important it is to remove the master data from our financial system and start maintaining it separately.

Reporting and MIS reporting is very useful in the E-Business Suite. Without the solution, it always took a lot of time because of so many duplicate supplier data settings. 

After 2009, supply chain management became more important, and we really started thinking about how quickly we could get the product to our customers. When we thought about becoming a global supply chain organization, the number one goal was how we could clean our data, how we can identify our master data. Previously, IT used to own the data, but we are trying to change that process where the data is owned by the business and IT is just there to provide a service.

That's where governance comes into the picture. Not just the implementation of the master data management, but identifying the functional data owner for each and every master attribute, and having a discussion within the governance team.

The most valuable aspect is making sure that IT was not blindly adding an attribute as a master attribute. When creating a proposal, for example, if anybody comes back and wants to add a DUNS number in the supplier master, we then ask for this particular attribute, how is the data going to be generated? 

Then, what should the business process of this data be and the attribute maintenance? Who is going to own this attribute? And then, most importantly, what are the data quality rules for this attribute, whether there are any ISO standards or any standards that are connected, or the character length, special characters, etc.

The way things are going, Oracle is not putting much effort into their master data management. They need to look into machine data and then the integrated data domain. How, in the master data domain, do the product supplier, site master and reference data talk to one another. 

They really need to improve on this because that was my number one reason for moving to Informatica and other tools.

We have been using this solution as a point of creation and maintenance for supplier data for the last seven years.

The stability of the solution is perfectly fine.

I would rate scalability a 9 out of 10. We don't have any issues with it. 

I think support is good.

It is straightforward, but maybe that is because I have been working in Oracle for the last 20 years and so I find it easy. But I think with Oracle products, the set up and to understand everything is very easy and user friendly.

For implementation, it took about two years. It took a lot of time because of so much duplicate data. Application-related setups were relatively easy. The main challenge was to identify the right data because we had about one million records.

We implemented it in a two-phased approach. First, pulling in the clean data, which we spent near one year. And then, we moved the creation and maintenance process to a master header system, which took another year.

We used an integrator that was quite good.

The biggest return on investment is the improvements of productivity.

The pricing of the solution is at about $700-$750 per year.

I am a consultant and I work with Oracle E-Business Suite to assist my clients with financials and supply chain management. I help with the implementation of these models.

My clients buy licenses from Oracle and they have to configure the system. I am one of the functional analysts that work with CPAs and other technical people to implement the system.

One of our recent clients was a bank in Montreal and it was a very good experience. It took us a year and a half to implement.

The most valuable feature is the integration between accounts receivable, accounts payable, general ledger, and budgeting.

The procurement-to-pay (P2P) process is something that we work a lot with.

It is difficult to get answers from technical support right away.

I have been working with this product for 18 years.

Oracle has been on the market for many years and it is really stable.

It is really scalable and customizable.

The technical support is good, although sometimes it is very difficult to get an answer from them right away. You have to send them all of the log files so that they can fix the problem.

I have also worked with Fusion, which is a combination of Oracle products combined together on the cloud. They did a great job of taking the best features from PeopleSoft, Siebel, and other Oracle products to create Fusion. It has a lot of features, although I find that clients don't use it to 100% capacity. I see some clients buy the license but they can't use it because they don't know how to.

It is not easy to set up a project.

We do workshops with the clients and all of their departments to find out the business processes that they have. We then try to match these processes with the features we have in Oracle and if there are any gaps, we try to customize the system to answer their business processes. Or, we try to convince them to change the way they work so it matches what Oracle is bringing. It may take a year, or sometimes a year and a half to be implemented. However, it does answer a lot of business problems.

This product is more expensive if you compare it to SAP.

Oracle E-Business Suite can be compared to SAP. It is a little more expensive and takes longer to implement projects. I would say that on average, it takes nine months to implement a project in SAP, whereas it might be a year with Oracle.

The suitability of this product depends on the requirements. For example, if somebody is starting from scratch and are looking for a new ERP, I would advise them to adopt a cloud solution like Fusion.

On the other hand, if they are already using the E-Business Suite then I suggest upgrading it and continuing with the same infrastructure.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We have been using this as an enterprise solution for many things including for financials, for supply chain, for sales, for maintenance, for manufacturing, et cetera. You name it. It helps us with many business processes.  

As we have been using this for the past nine years we have had the opportunity to explore the product. Really everything has worked well and all the modules are very good. The financial parts are very good, the sales part is also very good, the maintenance of our supply-chain is meeting our requirements. It has been very helpful and it is hard to separate out one thing that is better.  

After the announcement of the cloud products, the on-premises products from Oracle are not garnering as much development attention. Some of the new features that used to come to us earlier before the cloud product are now coming at a slow pace. So we want Oracle to work on the on-premises product in parallel with their cloud product. E-Business Suite should not fall behind.  

What I want to improve about this product is the user interface. In some of the modules compared to recent, cloud module releases do not have a very nice look-and-feel because they are letting the on-premises product age. Compared to the advanced cloud modules, this product has some rigid look-and-feel for the user experience.  

We have been using the Oracle E-Business Suite for about nine years.  

I am satisfied with the stability of most of the Oracle products which we are using right now. The problem is not the stability but a lack of new development.  

I think the E-Business Suite is very highly scalable. Right now in my organization, we have around 1000 total users. We have been increasing usage over the years and have plans to increase usage going into the future. We are going to continue to use the on-premises product in the future because it is not easy for us to migrate to any other products. That is primarily because it is a huge implementation here.  

We do have experience with the product technical support. Whenever the support is assigned to India, we are not satisfied with it because we do not get quality support from teams in India. But whenever that support is assigned to any other country — that may be from the US or any European country — the support is phenomenal. When we reach good support they know the product very well and the experience is good. That is where I think the Indian resources are a bit concerning. The support from them really takes a lot of time.  

We were using another product nine or ten years ago. It was a very old product made by IBM. That was AS/400.  

I think the initial setup is done in a very smart way. It is not very complex. If a person is technical enough to do it, it will be easy for him or her. If someone is not comfortable doing the installation, it will be difficult for him or her. 

The deployment was about nine years back, so I do not remember everything exactly. I think it took us around two to three days. What I consider deployment may have a different definition for some people and may not be the same definition for me. As long as by 'deployment' it means just the installation and initial configuration, then it is just a few days. When it comes to setting up and finalizing all of the business requirements and going live with the system, it took us four to five months.  

We used a consultant for the deployment. It was from an Oracle partner in Pakistan.  

Even though we used the services of a consultant, we have an in-house support team. We do not require any support from outside and no longer require or include any external vendors. So we have a team of around 25 people supporting this application.  

The advice that I would give to others who want to start using this product is that, in this day and age, you need to first evaluate different products. At the very least you would want to compare the E-Business Suite with the other Oracle cloud products.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate the Oracle E-Business product at an eight-out-of-ten.  

We use the solution in a variety of ways via modules. There are parts for employees and other areas for services. On top of that, we have modules for supply chains. We have modules for human resource management, and financial as well as for retail and inventory.

The solution has helped the organization in a multitude of ways. For example, it has really helped with the way we manage retail orders. The automation of retail and dealer order management has helped us a lot. It is one big use case that's a good example of the transformation that's possible with this product. Previously, the order management was manual. Currently, it has been automated to such a degree that a dealer can simply go to a portal, and actually make a payment. The payment reflects right in the system. After making the payment in the system, the dealer is able to make an order. Within a matter of 10 to 20 minutes, he has his stock. There's an integration between the dealer self-service system to the ERP to inventory and even to the warehouse. Everything surrounding that is fully automated, thanks to Oracle Release 12.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the employee self-service.

The order management is excellent.

I would say the integration needs improvement. Oracle needs to work on the integration layer to make the solution much more robust and modern.

The solution needs full cloud netting.

I've been using the solution since I joined the company. It's been about seven or so years now.

The solution is stable. So far we've not had a priority one or priority two incidence from Oracle E-Business. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. So far so good. I'd describe it as reliable at this point.

The scalability of the solution is good. If a company needs to expand the solution, they should be able to do so.

Our company has between 5,000 to 10,000 users if you factor in the dealers and the employees together. Our average employee count is 6,000. That's employees alone. On top of that, we have dealers who are around 3,000. Adding both groups together, you are looking at somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 users.

The solution technically is supported well both from Oracle, who is the owner of the solution, and IBM, who is the integrator. I cannot complain. So far, we're quite satisfied with the technical support offered by both companies.

When I joined, the company was on a previous version of Oracle. One of the first tasks I handled when I joined I was to head up the upgrade project. It's a solution that's been used from the beginning, or, at least that's my understanding.

I wouldn't describe the initial setup as straightforward. It's very complex. Even Oracle themselves would say that this solution has the most complex implementation of their products. It might even be one of the most complex in the world.

Deployment took almost one year. This was due to the fact that the analysis design alone took almost six to seven months. Implementation and testing alone took another five or so months. 

We used an integrator and a consultant to assist us in the implementation. The consultants were from Oracle and the integrator was IBM. We needed them both due to the complex nature of the setup.

Our relationship with Oracle is simplly one of supplier-customer relations.

This solution is deployed in our organization on credit in two sides active-active.

What I would tell other companies considering the solution is this: first, they need to know that it is an expensive solution. It's very expensive and therefore could only be affordable for companies that have a given level of revenue. 

Beyond that, I would say Oracle needs to be a fit for future use in terms of being cloud-native. Organizations should ensure their solution can run on other public cloud providers other than Oracle themselves. They need to have their permission that it can be deployed in AWS or Azure or Google. Right now, the cloud version that they have most likely locks to Oracle cloud itself and they just need to be aware they need the option and flexibility.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We manage all our financial operations, including sales, purchases, and inventory, through this system. Everything is fully configured, and we’ve found it highly effective.

It handles all my financial functions, including the entire process of financial transactions.

It's more expensive than other options due to licensing costs and core-based hardware. Managing licenses can be tedious. For example, if I want to discontinue some licenses, it's a complicated process. Once we're committed, it's challenging to exit the system.

I have been using Oracle E-Business Suite for 13 years.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

About 200 users are using this solution

I rate the solution’s scalability a ten out of ten.

We opened a ticket, and we got the solution on time.

We relied on an integrator for initial implementation and cloud migration. After that, our internal team managed it.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

I use the solution in my company for supply chain management. I also use the tool to deal with WMS implementation.

The integration features of the tool on on-premises weren't that great, making it an area where improvements are required.

I have been using Oracle E-Business Suite for seven years.

The technical support for the solution was very good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in a few months.

Overall, the tool reduces customer capital expenditure. It is difficult to explain the actual reduction in capital expenditure, considering that my company deals with a huge customer base, in which a lot of things are absorbed, and there are a lot of complexities involved in supply chain management. The tool provides value for money.

Products concerning areas like CRM and ERP should provide value at lesser costs to customers, especially if you consider that the initial cost of implementation is high.

The area of service planning was neither very difficult nor very easy.

Oracle E-Business Suite has impacted our business process from the standpoint of KPIs.

The features of the product were not useful for me since they were mostly used to help my customers.

The tool's integration capabilities were standard in nature since the product is deployed on an on-premises model.

The tool was integrated with a lot of other legacy solutions and Oracle Siebel CRM because it was on an on-premises deployment model, but not everything was as fast as things are on the cloud, so there was the need to have multiple devices in our infrastructure.

The tool has had an impact on industry-specific solutions in our company's customers' operations since it gives customers autonomy over third-party logistics and service providers. The tool also helps to reduce the problems in the supply chain management.

I recommend the tool to enterprise-sized businesses. The problem with Oracle is that it comes with everything and may contain certain modules that customers don't need. With Oracle products, since you get a lot of features, the prices are pushed up. The tool can only be used by those who start off as a reseller and want to become a manufacturer in the future since it helps to manage both workloads.

Considering that it is one of the best tools I have worked with, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.