Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP Reviews

I'm going to be talking about Oracle Cloud SaaS solutions - Cloud ERP and Cloud HCM.

There are many features that are available in the cloud solutions, but I could just mention some of them. I would say that SaaS is more flexible. It gives us a better ROI in terms of the investment that you need to do compared to the on premise solution. Of course all the flexibility and the encasements on the user experience. Being able to have a better usability and better productivity of your users, and everything on a pay per use basis.

Some of the things that I've seen, I actually implemented to our customers, are the flexibility to have a better use of the tool without being trained, the users. In that case, when you implement any old solution, any on premise solution, you had to go and train the users. Probably a week of training. With cloud solutions, it's more following the standards, the market standards, and how the users can navigate through the tool, based on standard patterns. In that sense, the users can easily navigate through the application and perform actions without having to be trained.

The other important aspect is that you don't have to do capital investment. What that means is, you don't have to buy servers, you don't have to buy hosting. You just go and have that available.

Something that everyone is asking for is how you can have the Internet of Things and mobility on this application. Right now, we can see that there's a need for new mobile application, native mobile applications. You can run Fusion, you know, the cloud applications in your mobile, because it's responsive, but having all the features of using the native tool in your native device makes that even more rich in terms of the functionality. In that sense, I would expect from Oracle to have more native applications for Android and iOS that will be connected to the Oracle Cloud to make the users more productive in their environments. Whether it's a sales person going to meetings with customer, or a consultant entering a task, or completing the task. That's where we expect more to be.

I've been using the solution for almost 2 years.

I did not encounter any show stopper with deployment. Something that I'd recommend is to work on the number of environments. In our case we typically use: Production, QA/Testing, Development and by default Oracle sells only 2.

No, the system was very stable and it is key to have a good implementation partner that is knowledgeable of the solution to avoid starting with the left foot.

No, I did not encounter any issues. As a matter of fact this is one of the strengths of the solution since you are able to scale without any issues.

Oracle's customer service has been improved over the last few years and specially with Cloud products has done a good job making sure the customers are very happy.

The technical support keeps improving. This is another area that has some room for improvement, but we have not had any issues.

The adoption of cloud with flexibility and scalability makes a no-brainer to move into a solution that comprises multiple modules and the best security in the market.

The initial setup was very simple and because of the nature of IT Convergence (system integrator with more than 125 certified implementers) made it simple and reliable.

The implementation of all the cloud solutions is very simple. In the past, we used to have a month of implementation projects. Right now you can count that in weeks. What's the change? Well, the change means that it's about how you can have all this solution deployed within a matter of clicks. Having no concerns on how you deployed security, how you have the disaster recovery, how you have your backups in place. Well all that, it's done by Oracle, so you just focus on how you get the application up and running, with your business needs. That means faster time to market, faster user experience, faster happiness of your users.

The ROI is about 2.5 years considering all the aspects of the resources, hosting, support, etc.

My advise would be to partner with someone that has a strong knowledge and expertise on Cloud since there are aspects, for example the number of environments or storage that could bring some surprises.

No, because we've been working with Oracle for a long time and we trust their software.

Rating: I would say that in terms of Cloud ERP and Cloud HCM, the solution is about an eight. There is still room [for improvement] in terms of mobile applications and functionality that needs to be developed. In my case, I'm based out of Argentina, so for example, it's very difficult to use, because Oracle Cloud ERP does not meet the global standards, the legal requirements in Argentina and some other countries. That's a matter of the evolution of the software. That's why I think that it will cover the majority of the aspects of a business, but that's why I would consider an eight. The good thing is, all the user experience and the brand new look and feel that it has, that makes every user that I have been deploying this application happy.

We are an implementation consultancy specialising in implementation of the Oracle Cloud products. Recently, we have found an increasing number of our customers are choosing to implement Oracle ERP (Finance).

The features which our customers most frequently comment positively on are the highly graphic nature of the user interface (Infolets, Infotiles - showing high-level analytics), the ability to drill into sub-ledgers, and the 'cube' - the multi-dimensional reporting tool.

Many of our customers report that closing books at the end of an accounting period is much faster and easier than their old systems.

End-user adoption has been very good. This is primarily because 'casual users' find the user interfaces intuitive and easy to use with little or no training.

The product is developing and maturing rapidly. Oracle makes a major release up to 2 times a year and has quarterly 'updates' introducing new functionality. The main areas we have identified for improvement are in core functionality gaps. These have been addressed very effectively in recent releases, which clearly have taken into account customer enhancement requests.

We have been implementing this solution for over two years now.

The product is now quite mature and deployment issues are minor. The main area in the implementation process which needs good understanding of the product and careful design is when the Finance modules are being implemented with the HCM modules. In this instance, careful consideration needs to be given to the overall design and configuration and there are many dependencies between the products.

The product is very stable. Being a cloud service, it has to be!

Scalability is one of the main features of Oracle's Cloud Services. Scalability is no problem!

Customer service is good.

Technical support is good.

From an implementation consultancy point of view, we used to focus on Oracle's EBS suite of products, but we consider Oracle Cloud Services as the future and therefore put all our efforts into specialising in these products.

Setup is managed via guided 'Implementation Projects' using the Functional Setup Manager (FSM) tool. As with any implementation of an ERP system, the complexities of the setup vary according to the customer's needs. We have found that implementing Oracle Cloud ERP can be significantly quicker than the corresponding EBS implementations.

We are an Oracle implementation consultancy, so our view of our own level of expertise is very subjective! However, we have been implementing this product since 2012 and consider that we are very experienced.

If you're thinking of moving your ERP applications to the cloud, give the Oracle Cloud products a look.

Remember that despite being a cloud product, with tools to allow rapid implementations, there is still a 'project' involved, usually with multiple stakeholders with competing requirements! Change Management is still very important. Don't underestimate it!

We implemented the SaaS model applications. The SaaS model means that Oracle holds the hardware/software and provides accessibility through its unbreakable network.

There are two ways of using these Oracle Apps:

• On-Premise Model: The hardware/software is the responsibility of the client
• SaaS model: Hardware/software is Oracle's responsibility. It is like renting an apartment from a skyscraper, where maintenance is the responsibility of the building owners for a nominal fee.

The SaaS model certainly saves you costs and improves profitability. It streamlines the business and the systems.

A solution is provided for a problem. The Oracle Fusion Applications meet 99% of the business problems as the underlying technology built on studying various industrial processes.

If there is any extraordinary issue/problem, it can be discussed and they offer an out-of-the-box solution.

Development is a continuous process. There is always opportunity to work to refine a process and find a solution for problem. In software industry it is always opportunity. In Industry, there would be many manual processes and wanted to eliminate the pains of Users. Hence automation taken space to refine the system process. All the time the standard packages like Oracle Applications may not meet those manual processes. There is opportunity for development to automate those processes.
Oracle EBS Applications are developed with all those manual processes in view and maximized the automation, wherever it was possible. In Fusion Applications it is further developed to meet many business processes across the Industry. In Fusion Applications, the PaaS (Service Oriented Architecture, BPML, Java EE) platform conceptually made it reality to meet any non-standard business data to get integrated from source to move seamlessly to On-Premise, and SaaS model ERP, CRM SCM Applications, thereby reducing the efforts/costs to build customizations and extensions.  Over all the costs of maintaining the custom processes is dramatically reduces. Now the Corporate Slogan is : Simplify Business Process and Simplify Systems process/Maximize profits.

Otherwise, the Fusion Applications solve any problem.

We have used this solution for two years.

Now the product is much more stable.

We had another solution and we changed to reduce the costs and improve the profitability.

I was not involved in the installation. It is Oracle's responsibility and therefore no headache for the clients.

I strongly recommend adopting the SaaS/PaaS/IaaS model and enjoying the profits.

To begin with, Oracle Financials is especially valuable. It is one of the most complex financial solution in the world. It helps us, day-to-day, manage our cash flow and manage our fixed assets, plus even getting proper reporting done because we didn't have a proper system previously. This solution will really work. It brings a lot of added value to us.

If you look at it from the support point of view, the product has to improve a lot, especially from the bug fixing side.

It’s something that they sell, so Oracle needs to determine their priorities. From what we have seen, Oracle is making Oracle Cloud a higher priority. Now, the Oracle On Premises customers are having difficulty with getting certain updates on time. Those are the areas that we have seen that there are a lot of improvements to be done.

We have been using it for about two years now. We mainly use Oracle Financials. One of our subsidiaries is currently going through a process on implementing Oracle modules, including the purchasing, inventory, product manufacturing, and order management. Those are the modules that they're using.

In terms of the system point of view, we haven't seen any downtime or anything like that. Now, we have seen with Oracle Cloud, there are a lot of nice features which have come out. As far as we are concerned, we have not seen any downtime.

It is scalable. In terms of the application, it is scalable.

I think it will continue to work for us scalability-wise. Oracle Financials itself has its own strengths scaling it to a different extent. We believe that we can scale it up when the business is also scaling up.

Oracle support for this application is not up to the standard. From the database point of view, Oracle support is very good. When it comes to this application, if you look at the SaaS, it takes a long time for Oracle to provide some of the solutions. That is where we have seen where Oracle is lacking on supporting the customers in that sense.

We would definitely recommend the Oracle ERP platform to them because it would create a lot of added value for them. Having said that, on the backend side, there is a lot of infrastructure to be developed. Our advice is to work from a different context: either put the backend application on their own cloud, or come up with their own infrastructure; hard drives, etc.

It is not at the top extreme end, but it has a lot of features which goes into the top extreme end. If you look at the application, it needs to be developed a lot.

In the market, there are only a few handfuls of products that are reliable ERP products. One is SAP, you have Oracle E-Business Suite, and you have a few other legacy products still available in the market. When we spun off the company from Agilent to Avago, Agilent was already in E-Business Suite. Straightaway, we moved our system. When we spun off the company as Avago, we deployed everything in E-Business Suite straightaway.

There are a lot of features they can enhance. That would take some time, to go into a very detailed level of the product, especially in the area of the user interface, functionality and collaboration. They could do a lot of things.

When it comes to support, there's definitely room for improvement. Initially, support was very tough. When it moved to U.S., we got better support, but there is a lot of room to improve the support.

I have been using it for about ten years; nine-plus years.

Honestly, it's a very, very stable product. We have not seen any issues.

Of course, periodically, we may end up in some fixes and for that, we get support from Oracle to fix that. We have a support team available 24x7 team. We get good support from Oracle, as well as from our partners.

The EBS is scalable. We were three node: three node middle tier, three node in database, two node in external. We scaled up to four node: four node in internal, external, as well as database. Now we are in five node: Five-node middle tier, five-node external tier, and five-node RAC database cluster. Any time you scale up, the only downstream impact is required downtime.

When it comes to support from Oracle, over the last few months, I believe they have changed the worldwide support team structure. We're seeing some challenges in getting support, especially the first level support. With Oracle, if the person is not able to fix the issue, there's no such thing as delegating to the next level. We have that challenge.

Other challenges I’ve seen are cross-platform challenges. People from ERP and the people from hosting do not talk to each other. If you have some in-between issue – hosting-related issues end up with having issues in ERP – the two teams do not talk to each other internally. We ask them to talk to each other. We collaborate with both teams at same time. It is very difficult for us sometimes; it's challenging for us.

At the same time, we are using multiple products from Oracle. We have the Fusion stack, we have the ERP stack, we have the OBIEE stack, we have the IDM stack. Sometimes we have seen some challenges when comes to cross-application collaboration between the teams.

The initial setup, when we spun off, we were in 11.5.9, 11.5.10. Two years back, we upgraded from 11.5.10 to 12.1. Then, just a few months back we upgraded from 12.1 to 12.2. It's not straightforward; it's complex. It's a complex upgrade when it comes. Getting support from Oracle, especially related to this product, is a bit tough, very tough.

I definitely recommend it; the product is really good. There is no doubt this product is really good and scalable. One good part is the reverse engineering, the changes and all those things that comes with Oracle products; it's easy to do, easy to manage and easy to maintain also. I definitely recommend it, no doubt. The only thing is that I always have some challenge with the support; that will continue to be the case.

Especially, if you look at today's world, the cloud is the important feature we are looking at. There is not much cost involved, especially with cloud. I get to pay for whatever I'm consuming. I don't have to pay for the vast infrastructure and all. That's one of the important things.

Specifically, from a back office systems perspective – storing from financials or from manufacturing systems, or to store an order to cash process – it is a complete suite; end-to-end application.

That's what we feel is very helpful for our organization.

Especially on the CRM side, the CRM modules are a bit weak compared to the financials. Traditionally, Oracle is known for Oracle financials, as opposed to the manufacturing, service or sales sides of the house. Sales and service are the areas where Oracle has to catch up.

Deployment is fairly straightforward, but we haven't seen many successes with the cloud. That’s not because of Oracle; it’s because of the customers themselves. They are hesitant in terms of moving everything to cloud. They are doing it in bits and pieces, in terms of very few systems to start with; the financials cloud, the HCM Cloud or the supply chain cloud. They are still testing the waters.

Technical support is good. Most of the time, the response is good, especially if you have any priority issues. Sometimes it depends on what kind of support agreement you have with Oracle; depending on whether you have the heightened coverage, Gold or Platinum. Having mentioned that, there are certain cases where we got very minimal support, especially during the quarterly reports and all, which are very big for us from a revenue standpoint. From a support standpoint, there is some improvement that needs to be made.

Just go with the baby steps in terms of starting to move peripheral systems onto cloud, and then slowly picking up. For example, HR is one area where you can quickly move to cloud. Similarly, then you can look at the financials, then you can look at the manufacturing, and so on with other applications.

They are supporting very well the migration itself from on-prem to cloud, especially because they are partnering with the customer. If you are having an implementation, doing it for a customer, Oracle is partnering with it, and we are jointly doing that.

The security is the most valuable feature. If you didn't have the PIN, you can’t actually get into the system, to work. It reduces the possibility of somebody coming in who doesn’t have the credentials, to actually get into the system. I think the security is probably the most essential part of it.

As I’ve mentioned, the security prevents the possibility of someone coming in without having the credentials and getting into our system.

For some reason, we had a problem: We gave PINs out to everybody and for some people, the PIN didn't actually work for some reason. We never really found out why, and we went away from the PIN because we had a lot of our functional areas that were complaining. The technical area, where we work at, we didn't have a problem. The functional areas were having problems.

We had issues as we added more users. That was the problem. We rolled it out with just the security staff, the IT staff, and then we rolled it out to the end users. That's when we ran into problems. They were having problems.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options. By that point, when we went to Oracle, Oracle was our host, we were just taking everything they were offering; we were just jumping on it. Now, we're using Sierra-Cedar.

Conduct a little more due diligence before rolling it out; not necessarily roll it out with the technical staff first. Roll it out to the end users, and see what kind of reaction you get from them. You can always come back to the technical. We have more security than anybody else anyway. Roll it out with the end users first.

I have rated highly because I didn't have any problems. I felt really good, because I know nobody could actually access my system without my PIN. As far as university-wide, I would not rate it as highly, because a lot of the end users were having issues. They were critical parts, like student financials, which is a very critical part of the university. When they were having problems, they couldn't get on the system. We had to override it, and it got to the point where it wasn't worth it. We had to continually override it. What's the point of having it, if you have to override it?

The financial features are pretty good. The users love them.

The finance users would like to be able to drill down into all of the details. Right now, we have to consider third-party software for drilling down.

We have been using it since 2005, 11 years.

It has never crashed.

We have made some customizations. It has totally met the needs for the financial department.

Initial setup is complex. We hired an outside consultant to do the implementation for us.

We chose Oracle because we think it is a big, stable company. We don’t want to find ourselves down the road, and the company is suddenly gone and we are left without any support.

This Oracle product is definitely good for at least mid-size companies. For smaller companies, it's too expensive. For bigger companies, it's very good.