Oracle Applications Suite for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

- A Technology Briefing on Enterprise-wide Systems

 by

Dr. Olufemi O. (Femi) Babalola

E-mail: olufemi.babalola@mail.uh.edu
Daytime: 713-656-9874
Home: 281-565-0051

Femi's Home Page ^©2001 is maintained by Femi Babalola.
Major modifications to this page last made on October 18, 2001.

• BUSINESS  OVERVIEW
• HISTORY
• DESCRIPTION OF TECHNOLOGY/APPLICATION & PRODUCT INFORMATION
• USER EXPERIENCES, STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES
• FUTURE PROSPECTS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY & REFERENCES

My background in technical consulting for the major Petroleum Exploration/Production companies on a range of multi-vendor software applications and databases that run mainly on UNIX client-server platforms, have spurred my interest in the integration of information from the technical applications into the "business" desktop by porting them into managerial/financial (ERP) and marketing/sales (CRM) applications such as those of Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, JDEdwards, Siebel, and Baan.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an application software system designed to support and automate the business processes (such as manufacturing, distribution, personnel, project management, payroll, and financials) of medium and large businesses. The effectiveness of a firm’s ERP technology depends greatly on its information technology (IT) infrastructure. The IT infrastructure is a combination of networking hardware, telecommunications access and equipment, software, and skilled technocrats to operate the equipment. Two major challenges have been identified as militating against effective deployment and usage of ERP systems in corporations. The first is an easily solved retraining problem. Most managers are pre-information age products, trained to manage a product line, a division or an office. They are rarely trained to optimize the performance of the organization as a whole. The objective of retraining will be to enlarging the scope of each manager’s thinking across the entire enterprise. The second is the technological complexity of ERP systems. This may be more difficult to solve within the management cadre but effective managers can assemble the different skill sets required by ERP systems beyond legacy and mainframe systems. Managers of large firms would need to become effective in to managing the technological complexity of different platforms, in harnessing the increasing power of ERP systems, and in the integration of the firm’s large-scale, mainframe, legacy systems. The increasingly important role that corporations are placing IT managers (as Chief Information Officers or Vice-Presidents of information technology) is a significant solution to this second problem, but should also be leveraged to solve ameliorate the first problem taking advantage of the enterprise-wide function if IT.

Effective ERP systems enable rapid and flexible response to changing business conditions (both internally within the corporation and externally in the marketplace). The Oracle E-Business Suite of applications is a scalable comprehensive application-suite covering virtually all the spheres of business and industry and meets the requirements of large and of medium-sized firms. The components of Oracle E-Business Suite can be implemented in stages, and thus allow for system growth at a pace accommodating the needs, capital outlay and technical capacity of customer companies.

In any economy, the Oracle E-Business Suite is a cost-cutting tool in terms of manpower and time saved. Oracle E-Business Suite help maintain profitability in periods of economic downturn (such as the present), and help to manage expansion in periods of economic upturn. Oracle E-Business Suite is a strategic and effective tool for maintaining competitive advantage, assisting a firm’s senior executives to continually assess the four major measures of corporate success: Cash Flow, Market Share, Profitability, and Revenue. Managers can then steer the company toward the desired combination. Oracle E-Business Suite supports such assessments, enabling managerial rapid response and sensitive adjustments to the course they are steering the corporation. Oracle E-Business Suite also generates prompt and reliable feedback of the effects of each adjustment assisting managers to reduce cycle-time between their business decisions and the implementation of those decisions in the corporation.

Senior managers of the firm must clearly articulate the colloquialism: "who we are and where we want to be in five years" in order to determine how to get there. A firm need to meet four conditions in order optimize the return on investment in IT infrastructure:

· acquire just-enough infrastructure to adequately support the firm's business processes and overall strategy,
· closely couple the IT design (architecture) and the firm’s business processes which it is intended to support,
· adequate strategy to cope with a rapidly changing IT environment and competitive (market) pressures, and
· adequate governance model (organizational structure) for rational alignment of IT infrastructure to business strategy.

 

Historically, ERP evolved from MRP. Material Resource Planning (MRP), developed in the 1960s, is any application software system that effectively facilitates the managing of material requirements in a manufacturing process. The American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS), defines MRP as a set of techniques that uses bill of material data, inventory data, and the master production schedule to calculate requirements for materials. MRP makes recommendations to release replenishment orders for materials. Furthermore, because it is time-phased, MRP makes recommendations to reschedule open orders when due dates and need dates are not in phase. Time-phased MRP begins with the items listed on the Master Production Schedule and determines the quantity of all components and materials required to fabricate those items and the date that the components and material are required. Time-phased MRP is accomplished by "exploding" the bill of material, adjusting for inventory quantities on hand or on order and offsetting the net requirements by the appropriate lead times.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Manufacturing Resource Planning (designated with the acronym MRP II) was developed from integrated Material Resource Planning (MRP) with other manufacturing and business functions. The American Production and Inventory Control Society defined MRP II as "a method for the effective planning of all resources of a manufacturing company". MRP II addresses operational planning in units, financial planning in dollars, and has a simulation capability to answer "what if" questions. MRP II was made up of a variety of linked functions: business planning, sales and operations planning, production scheduling, material requirements planning (MRP), capacity requirements planning and the execution support systems for capacity and material. Output from MRP II systems was then integrated with financial reports such as the business plan, purchase commitment report, shipping budget and inventory projections in dollars.

ERP systems are accounting-oriented information systems for identifying and planning the enterprise-wide resources needed to take, make, distribute, and account for customer orders. ERP systems were originally extensions of MRP II systems, but have since widened their scope. An ERP system also differs from the typical MRP II system in technical requirements such as relational database, use of object oriented programming language, computer aided software engineering tools in development, client/server architecture, and open system portability.


3. DESCRIPTION OF TECHNOLOGY/APPLICATION & & PRODUCT INFORMATION

Oracle Applications is a tightly integrated suite of application products that share a common look and feel. The most recent release of Oracle Application Suite is Oracle 11i (now termed Oracle E-Business Suite). Oracle E-Business Suite offers upgraded functionality of Release 11 for the web (intranet or extranet). Oracle E-Business Suite runs on the Oracle 9i database application but Release 11 can run on either Oracle 9 or 9i database applications. Oracle E-Business Suite (both customer-hosted and as an online service) gives companies the power of the industry's only fully integrated, internet-powered solution. Oracle Applications are currently available for industry use in the fields of Customer Relationship Management and Business-to-Business, to Financial Management, Project Management, Human Resources and Business Intelligence.

Oracle ERP Applications automate the entire enterprise with about 50 integrated client/server (ERP) software modules which can be classified and are usually packaged in six functional categories:

1). Financial (Financial Management)
2). Project (Project Management)
3). Supply Chain Management (Procurement)
4). Manufacturing (Production Planning)
5). Sales Force Automation
6). Human Resources (Human Resources Management)

The individual Oracle applications are not mutually exclusive to a particular functional category and therefore belong in more than one functional suite. Some of Oracle Application’s Enterprise Resource Planning sets of products are also in the CRM Applications suite.

The entire functional applications suite utilizes a common set of Oracle Applications to function effectively. These Oracle Technology Applications (or Common Technology Applications) include Application Object Library and Oracle Workflow, and Oracle Alert, and Oracle Technology.

Oracle Alert is a flexible, automated exception management and reporting tool that keeps the user aware of critical activity in the corporate database, helping the user to automate steps in the user’s business processes and make better business decisions faster. Oracle Workflow is a complete workflow management system that facilitates business process reengineering. Oracle Workflow automatically processes and routes information of any type, according to business rules the user can easily change, to any person inside or outside the user’s enterprise. The user can easily include customers and suppliers in the user’s workflow using the Internet and the Worldwide Web. Oracle Technology includes Flexfields (Descriptive and Key Flexfields), "SmartClient" architecture, Reports and Programs, User Profiles and Electronic Data Interchange/Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), electronic mail and fax are increasingly being used to schedule operations, streamline order fulfillment, and optimize cash flow.

Oracle Financials is an e-business suite for strategic planning, Planning, accounting, treasury, project management, and travel management provide the tools companies need to thrive and succeed in the internet economy (the "new" economy) and uniquely enable companies to capitalize on global opportunities, drive enterprise profitability, and build a smarter business.

The Financials Applications suite consist of the following, of which the major ones will be discussed subsequently:

The Business Processes supported by Oracle Financials include corporate finance (managing finance and administration operations), but also include driving the organization’s key decisions, helping define the strategies that make companies succeed. In the new economy, Oracle Financials can play a decisive role in helping transform corporate finance for corporate success by enabling:

· Worldwide Best Practices
· Global Financial Management
· Enterprise Decision Support
· Rapid Continuous Improvement

Oracle General Ledger and Oracle Financial Analyzer, the user can perform powerful top-down, bottom-up, and distributed budgeting and forecasting at both the corporate and departmental level. Financial Analysis requires information both for executives, as well as for a broader set of Stakeholders in the corporation who need to better make financially sensitive decisions on a daily basis. With Oracle Financial Analyzer, authorized personnel can find the data they need, and drill down as necessary, to perform sophisticated analysis.

Financial Consolidation after corporate mergers and purchases are easily accommodated with Account Hierarchy Editor, a powerful drag and drop tool, to graphically restructure the new organization. Financial Consolidation helps to automatically consolidate the different business entities, regardless of differences in currencies, calendars, or charts of accounts.

Leveraging the tight integration between Oracle Purchasing, Oracle Payables and Oracle Assets facilitates expenditure Management and operational efficiency with strong managerial controls. Paperwork and redundant data entry is eliminated, operational efficiency is improve with data automatically routed through the System for automatic purchase order creation, automatic tax withholding, and automated invoice and payment processing.

Significant automated in Billing and Cash Collection in multiple currencies, international tax methods, and other global business practices is handled globally with Oracle Receivables with the capability for multinational payment methods, recording of local, regional, and federal taxes, and issuing letters of credit. This includes automatically processing receipts using Oracle’s lockbox transmission, bills of exchange, or direct debit.

Oracle Cash Management is integrated with Oracle Receivables, Oracle Payables, and Oracle General Ledger to provide a comprehensive solution for multi-national, multi-currency bank reconciliation and cash management. Oracle Assets helps to maintain accurate property and equipment inventory. This Asset Management Application ensures that the corporation always chooses the best accounting and tax strategies for the corporate asset base.

Human Resource Management Suite of Oracle Applications

Oracle Human Resources is a proactive management tool that helps control costs while developing and supporting an effective work force for the corporation.. Oracle Human Resources is an integrated suite of business solutions designed to support continuous process improvement for enterprises competing in time-critical markets.

People Management: The management of people within any enterprise involves a complex and dynamic inter-relationship of management and personal skills. This complexity results in a unique set of structures and policies within each enterprise.

This unique identity is often referred to as the culture of the enterprise, and as the enterprise develops so does its unique culture. Corporate Culture: The organizational structures of an enterprise, the ways in which its employees work, and its compensation policies all reflect its unique culture. This culture is also evident in more subtle ways, including enterprise policies on information sharing and decision-making. The cultural diversity of enterprises is reflected in their implementation and use of information systems. It is generally true that all companies need a human resource information system. However, the information they require, its structure, and the means by which they obtain it, produce a different system in every case.

Changing Role of Human Resource Management: Human resource management was originally an administrative and welfare role within an enterprise. Recruitment and record-keeping functions of the HR role was primarily reactive in nature since Human Resources responded to the needs of both managers and employees, but did not anticipate them. In the last few decades, human resource management has evolved and assumed a more proactive role reflecting the recognition of the importance of managing people in the attainment of enterprise objectives. The HR function within many enterprises now encompasses responsibilities that include a wide ranging spectrum of activities.

Payroll Management: Traditionally a function of the Finance Group in most enterprises, Payroll management was responsible for the correct payment of employees in line with local and national legislation as well as company policy. Often this has been a reactive and operational role in which payroll staff responded to the needs of both line managers and employees.

Market and Compensation Analysis: The corporation needs to provide its efficient sales and marketing force with immediate access to information for informed market analysis. The Data Warehouse and Oracle Financial Analyzer applications provide sales and marketing decision support for finding hidden opportunities amidst market trends.

Sales Compensation provides a robust rule-driven incentive compensation solution for informed compensation analysis that is easily adaptable to the changing market environment. Sales Compensation and Data Warehouse can be used to model compensation plans and sales quotas with revenue plans to evaluate their impact on target revenues.

Market Expansion is facilitated by using the low cost of the Internet infrastructure to open new markets that were previously cost-prohibitive.

Operational Support for successful market expansion is provided by assuring adequate inventory to meet increased demands from the detailed channel-forecasting, channel-allocation protection, and direct-ship capabilities guarantee that all channels can meet their obligations. Integrated utilization of Supply Chain Planning, Master Scheduling/MRP, Order Entry, and Inventory applications helps to manage a coordinated plan.

Oracle Supply Chain Management applications facilitates multi-facility distribution and manufacturing plans to optimize the firm’s operations across a global supply chain. Users can generate Distribution Requirements Plans (DRPs), multiplant Master Production Schedules (MPSs), and Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) as well as Supply Chain Plans (SCPs). These plans allow the user to account for material requirements and replenishment for all facilities in which the corporation manufactures products or stores inventory, including those facilities of trading partners. Supply Chain Management applications integrate multiple-facility planning and execution functions that streamline demand and supply management.

Supply Chain Management uses Graphical Supply Chain Pegging, so that each location across the supply chain can view the source and importance of every item requirement whether it's a component, assembly process, or finished product to ensure that managers can evaluate the impact of plan changes. A plan's impact is visually displayed for inter-plant demand as well as for customer and forecast requirements. Graphical Supply Chain Pegging feature can be used to quickly identify sales orders or planned orders that contribute to a shortage of a purchased component in a plant. Based on this

information, the user can change the date or quantity on sales orders, simulate adding a new sales order, or change the source organization or supplier of a planned order to specify an alternative warehouse or plant to ship the product. Users can change the order from a purchase order to a make order.

The Planners Workbench screens show the impact of the user’s plan changes throughout the supply chain.

Streamlining the Procurement Process: The traditional manufacturing procurement cycle is labor-intensive and requires that buyers "work" the MRP to determine replenishment requirements. Purchase orders are created to support these replenishment requirements based on target inventory levels and are subsequently approved, printed, and sent to the supplier for confirmation. In the marketplace, buyers and suppliers constantly need to communicate and respond to rapidly changing supply and demand requirements.

The traditional system, in which management focuses on individual purchase orders as supply and demand requirements change, resulting in repeated to be updates, approval, and printing of the same purchase order. This forces often forces buyers to develop an alternative, manual record-keeping and communication methods such as spreadsheets outside the integrated planning and procurement system. These manual methods are unreliable for frequent or/and rapid changes.

Oracle Supplier Scheduling reduces procurement costs by streamlining and automating the order-management process between a company and its supplier partners. Supplier Scheduling provides a process for calculating, maintaining, and communicating both forecast and shippable order requirements. Requirements outside the actual lead time are automatically rescheduled by the system as changes in customer demand are recorded, so that that buyers need respond only to exceptions.

Oracle Supply Chain Planning integrates manufacturing and distribution planning by utilizing bills of distribution and sourcing rules to simultaneously plan the entire replenishment network, and then automatically release production, replenishment, and purchase orders.

Supply Management eliminates the typical shortcoming of most supply management systems – poor external communications. Oracle Manufacturing provides streamlined operations both within and outside the enterprise. Oracle Purchasing enables corporate buyers to retrieve supplier catalogs, transmit forecasts and purchase orders, and receive advance ship notices electronically. Suppliers can use Oracle Applications for the Web to review their forecasts, agreements, invoices, and payments.

Materials Management provides operational flexibility and inventory accuracy for supply chain reliability. Oracle Inventory defines the warehouse structures and controls needed across multiple inventory locations.

Oracle Order Entry provides streamlined efficiency and superior customer service for Sales Order Management. Order Entry helps establish channel and customer-based pricing, credit, approval, and delivery policies. Selling locations can check availability, allocate from on-hand or future supply, and promise delivery from anywhere in the global organization. Oracle Product Configurator ensures that complex configurations are valid prior to order booking in order to guarantee accurate and timely deliveries.

Post-Sales Customer Service: Oracle Service provides for post-sales service management. The firm can track its entire installed base, manage service contracts, record service requests, accept returns, and perform repairs.

Oracle Manufacturing guarantees reliable delivery schedule for each specifically configured product. With Oracle Product Configurator, Oracle Supply Chain Planning, and Oracle Inventory’s Global ATP capabilities, the corporation can depend on a supply policy based on reality. For the factory to respond quickly and avoid large inventories, companies must evolve from their make-to-stock orientation to make-to-order. Manufacturers must make several fundamental transformations, such as engineering products for configurability, allowing for rapid changeover if manufacturing lines or designing manufacturing lines for multiple models, and the firm must be able to rely on suppliers capable of just-in-time delivery.

Oracle Manufacturing tightly integrates the various manufacturing departments, such as, engineering, order management, planning, production, procurement, cost accounting, logistics, quality, and financial accounting. The capabilities of the Oracle Manufacturing suite of applications enable companies to make more timely decisions, bringing time-critical exceptions to production supervisors and senior management. Manufacturers with multiple plant dependencies and outsourced manufacturing can be seamlessly linked into a fast, unified material and capacity-planning model.

Operational groups, such as, engineering and quality, can benefit from Oracle Manufacturing suite’s rich information repositories around product data management and quality results. Internet and Intranet capabilities of Oracle Manufacturing applications enable domestic and international business units to connect and communicate thus enhancing decentralized operations and centralized control for facilitating corporate globalization.

Oracle Projects suite of applications links Corporate Operations’ project planning and scheduling systems with Corporate Financial Accounting, maintaining the central repository of project information while sharing it with other systems and varied users in the format that serves each best. Oracle Projects allow Project managers to track detailed costs, manage within budget, and stay on schedule while successfully achieving their project’s objectives. Oracle Projects translates project details into financial transactions so that financial managers have the details they require in the format with which they are comfortable. With Oracle Projects, users can organize and monitor project activities and budgets with an unlimited work breakdown structure (WBS) independent of the corporate General Ledger chart of accounts.

Oracle Projects provides a flexible Cost Collection and Calculation system that lets the user decide the amount of cost control appropriate. Track and account for all project costs in the user’s enterprise with Oracle Project Costing as the central cost collection repository. The user can input charges directly or import them via batch interfaces. Easily record supplier transactions for projects in Oracle Purchasing and Oracle Payables. The user can also collect equipment usage and other charges with the user’s existing cost collection mechanisms and interface those to Oracle Project Costing. The user has the ability not only to collect expenditures and commitments incurred against project activities, but also to control which charges can be made against a project. Your mobile workforce can use Oracle Personal Time and Expense to charge employee time and expenses to projects while on the road or in the office. Using mobile computing technology, employees who travel frequently can enter data from a laptop in a disconnected mode, and later upload the data to the production server. Oracle Projects translates project costs into financial transactions through accounting rules that is defined to meet the firm’s needs, using the powerful AutoAccounting feature. To minimize general ledger transactions, Oracle Projects summarizes information across all projects before posting to the firm’s General Ledger, while maintaining a complete audit trail of all project details.

Oracle Projects is so integrated with Oracle General Ledger that the user can update the corporate General Ledger with summarized project costing and billing activity. Oracle Projects is so integrated with Oracle Receivables users can process invoice and track customer payments. Users of the Projects suite of applications can easily create and pay invoices for project expense reports in Oracle Payables. Oracle Projects is so integrated with Oracle Purchasing and Oracle Payables that users can enter project-related requisitions, purchase orders, and supplier invoices from those applications. Oracle

Projects’ integration with Oracle Assets allows users to manage Capital Projects in Oracle Projects and transfer developed assets to Oracle Assets when they are placed in service. Oracle Projects shares organization, job, and employee information with Oracle Human Resources. Transactions can be entered directly into Oracle Projects loaded from external transaction collection systems.

Oracle prides itself in having helped more than 800 businesses transform to e-businesses, with another 3,500 more businesses in the process of implementing E-Business Suite applications.

The fact that components of Oracle Applications can be implemented in stages is a significant advantage of Oracle Applications over its main competitor SAP. Since the function of ERP is to enable key business processes and business models, guided by a keen awareness of the future business model, both small and large firms can invest in Oracle Applications whereas SAP is hardly within the financial capacity of small companies. This means that most rapidly expanding companies and start-ups would be more inclined to invest in Oracle E-Business Suite rather than SAP. An additional advantage of Oracle Applications over SAP is its adaptability to different business models compared to the inflexible, predetermined model that users of SAP must align their processes to. For example, it is very difficult to add to or change GL (General Ledger) hierarchies in SAP without expensive customization. However, this adaptability of Oracle Applications is a tactical disadvantage in its cost of implementation relative to SAP. Implementing Oracle Applications involve a higher disruption of the firm’s business than SAP, while the Implementation Team gathers detail operational information from the entire enterprise as input into the technical implementation of Oracle Applications. While Oracle Applications are seamlessly integrated across applications (from front-office to back-office) and across functional suites (ERP to CRM, etc), there is no seamless integration between SAP and its partner-application suites. Addressing SAP’s inhibition of transaction flow between applications require costly integration implementation, and additional future expenses to upgrade and maintain such installations.

Users of Oracle Applications are usually featured in the Oracle website. While it can be presumed that Oracle publicizes only self-serving positive comments that are amenable to marketing and promoting Oracle Applications, it does appear that Oracle’s clients are quite satisfied with the applications and the Technical Support.

The leadership of Oracle Corporation in providing the complete set of Oracle Applications via the web (internet, extranet or intranet) will certainly be followed by SAP. Since SAP has existing strategic alliances with complemntary product vendors, it is logical to presume that SAP’s web version of its ERP applications will include a more integrated suite with those vendors. It is probable that there will eventually be a consolidation (by merger or acquisition) of the companies with SAP-complimentary applications. This will essentially result in a market of three major vendors counting IBM/xx as a survivor of industry consolidation.

A new wave of the future is Enterprise Information Portals (EIP). An Enterprise Information Portal is a browser-based tool that consolidates and organizes data, information, and knowledge from transaction processing systems (ERP), decision processing systems (CRM/SCM), and collaborative processing systems (Knowledge Management Systems) so that business users can find and access information more efficiently and are able to make informed and effective business decisions. Enterprise Information Portals combine a diversity of web content through a single access point by relying on technologies that users are already comfortable with: browsers and search capabilities. Portals differ from static Web-sites in the ability to incorporate data from multiple sources and from multiple formats, into a single organized and consistent view. Users of Enterprise Information Portals will be able to jump within their browsers from business intelligence systems to ERP applications to sales reports.

Potential and perceived risks of implementing an EIP solution include the recurring costs of ownership (due to frequent upgrades and re-implementation). However, many benefits can be leveraged from implementing an EIP solution. Example of potential advantages of EIP over ERP include the following:

 Increased collaboration.

· Increased employee productivity.

· Increased effectiveness.

· Competitive advantage.

· Decreased cost of information.

· Universal access to enterprise resources.

Early adopters of EIP technology include Polaroid, Citibank and IBM. A significant number of Fortune500 firms are expected to deploy EIP solutions in the near future. SAP has launched mySAP.com as workplace solution that is its preliminary debut into EIP.

Oracle has also entered the EIP solutions delivery by providing a secure, personalized web interface for a faster and more efficient, every employee, customer, partner, and supplier access to corporate information and applications. Oracle's portal software provides the Internet Desktop, an organized, personalized view of the business information, web content, and applications needed by each user. Internet Desktop eliminates Webmaster bottlenecks with self-service web publishing features that allow end-users to share any kind of document or file with other users without needing to know HTML. Any kind of web application or content can be integrated into the portal environment with its extensible, open architecture. OracleMobile allows users to take the portal on the road with mobile and wireless solutions.

1). EIPs - The revolutionary path to information age. Adhip P. Chaudhurichhaya & Vinayak Khadye. ExpressIndia.com, Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd., January 13, 2000.

2). Oracle Technology User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.

3). Oracle Alert Release 11, March 1998.

4). Oracle Workflow User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.

5). Oracle General Ledger User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.

6). Oracle Receivables User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.

7). Oracle Payables User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.

8). Oracle Assets User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.

9). Oracle Sales and Marketing Connected Client User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.

10). Oracle Purchasing User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.

11). Oracle Inventory User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.

12). Oracle Cash Management User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.

13). Oracle Order Entry User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.

14). Oracle Human Resources User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.

15). Oracle Payroll User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.

16). Oracle Project Costing User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.

17). Oracle Project Billing User’s Guide. Release 11, March 1998.