Wouldn’t it be perfect if the ERP system that you spent so much time & effort carefully selecting automatically fits every criterion of your requirements & naturally worked for all your unique business processes? Even if it’s not fully aligned, what if business teams became flexible to adapt to the business processes delivered by the ERP. After all they are global best practices distilled from deep research done by the product companies. This may sound like a myth for many customers with on-premise solutions who are used to freely customizing or extending their ERP solutions to suit their specific business needs.
Now, how does this pan out if this same customer wants to reap the compelling value proposition presented by Cloud Applications? Inability to make changes to the application is a major stumbling block for many customers planning their cloud journey.
However for customers planning a move to Oracle Cloud Fusion suite, there is good news on this front. Oracle has provided the ability to customize (i.e. change processes already delivered in the product) or extend (i.e. add new objects to create new business processes) the Fusion solution at different levels. Below is an excerpt from an Oracle Whitepaper titled Oracle® Applications Cloud Extending the Applications Release 13.2.
Oracle Fusion Applications is based on Oracle Fusion Middleware. Most user interfaces are implemented using Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) and standard Java technologies. The foundation of the applications includes the service-oriented architecture (SOA) business processes. Business intelligence frameworks provide a number of reporting capabilities. Identity management works at every level to control access. Each of these areas of an application can be customized and extended to suit your business needs.
Additionally, Oracle Fusion Applications is built using a common data model. Because of this commonality, when you make a customization in one area, that customization is available to all objects in the application. For example, if you add an attribute to an object, you can easily add that attribute to the web-based view page, to an associated mobile page, and to any associated reports. Generally, the tools and processes you use to customize one application are the same tools and processes to customize all applications.
Click here to access the full Whitepaper. The Whitepaper gives details of the scenarios you may have to customize or extend Fusion applications, details of customizing reports, help, security, branding, different levels of customizations and the tools available to achieve the changes.
Customizations or extensions however come with a huge price considering Cloud ERPs are constantly being upgraded by the product vendor. And hence customers have to ensure that their customizations are reapplied and regression tested in the upgraded scenario.
Happy Cloud watching and watch out this section for more exciting blogs relevant to your business!!
Contributed by Prashant