Generative AI and Large Language Models

Time to unlock your finance team's digital potential! Join Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Sr. Principal ERP Learning Strategist David Barnacle, as they discuss the Procure to Pay process flow, an integral financial process that integrates purchasing with accounts payable activities. They also talk about the Asset Acquisition to Retirement process flow, which includes all the main activities that occur during the life of an asset, right from acquiring it all the way to disposing it at the end of its life. Oracle MyLearn: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Radhika Banka, Parvathy Narayan, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I'm Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor. Nikita: Hi everyone. In our last episode, we looked at Invoice to Cash, which is the first business process within the Oracle Cloud Financials Business Process Model. Invoice to Cash refers to everything from the moment a receivable invoice is created until the customer's receipt is settled and reconciled with the bank statement. If you missed that episode, do go back and give it a listen. 01:01 Lois: Today, David "Barney" Barnacle, our Sr. Principal ERP Learning Strategist is back on the podcast to tell us about the next two business processes, Procure to Pay and Asset Acquisition to Retirement. Nikita: Hi Barney! Thanks for being back with us. So, what is the Procure to Pay process? 01:20 Barney: Hi Niki. Hi Lois. Good to be here. Let's focus on Procure to Pay or P2P for short, which is an integral financial process within any organization. It integrates purchasing with accounts payables activities and involves a series of tasks. These could include placing a purchase requisition or a purchase order, receiving and inspecting the delivered goods or services, capturing the supplier invoices, which is the company's liability to the supplier, matching the unit quantity and price to the original PO, calculating the relevant taxes or withholding taxes, approving the charges for final payment by the company, and finally, recording the bank statement lines with all payments made to suppliers or employees. 02:04 Barney: Oracle Fusion Cloud: ERP's capacity to use cutting-edge technologies for effective operations is what distinguishes it from the competition. The true value is in the automation, which helps enterprises improve processes, increase efficiency, and get the latest insights and alerts. Let me give you some examples within P2P. We have something called Intelligent Document Recognition or IDR for short, which is a fully integrated invoice recognition solution. As you know, many suppliers send payables invoices electronically via email. With Oracle's cloud solution, IDR extracts invoice information from the emailed documents to create invoices and then imports them directly into Payables. Another interesting feature is the ability to calculate the trip distance in mileage expense entry by using the Oracle Maps Cloud service. For mileage expense types, on the Oracle Maps page, you can enter the start location, subsequent stops, and the end location. It's that easy. 03:09 Lois: Oh wow, that's pretty cool. I remember having to track my miles manually many years ago. What a nice feature. So, is creating an invoice the beginning of the P2P process? Barney: No, Lois. Invoicing is not the beginning but just one part of the larger parent P2P process. The P2P process can be broken into three key phases. These phases are set in a repeating loop and fine-tuned and improved with every cycle. The three phases are the Purchasing process, the Receiving process, and finally, the Payment process. 03:46 Barney: During the Purchasing process, purchase requisitions for goods and services are created and approved. Suppliers are evaluated and selected. And then, purchase orders are issued for the required goods and/or services. Next is the Receiving process, where goods and services are received. Receiving documents are then reviewed and logged for the goods. In the final Payment process, which includes the Invoice, Payment, and Reconciliation sub-processes, invoices are received and invoice processing is completed, recording the supplier's liability. Invoices are reconciled and cross-checked with the original purchase orders and goods receipts or receiving documents. This is called purchase order or receipt matching, and it ensures that the enterprises only pay for goods and services it has ordered and received. Errors are recorded and corrected, and approved invoices are paid, reducing the supplier's liability. Payments are then reconciled with bank statement lines. 04:47 Nikita: OK. So, there are multiple activities, like purchasing, receiving, and invoicing, which are part of the P2P process. But how do these activities flow with regard to the Oracle Fusion Cloud: ERP application? Barney: The Procure to Pay process spans multiple departments within an organization. And in the Oracle application, it covers different modules like purchasing, payables, cash management, and general ledger. Demand generation for goods or services can originate in the Manufacturing departments based on planned or actual orders, or by internal employee orders for goods or services that the business requires. 05:23 Barney: This demand gets converted into requisitions within the Purchasing department. Everything from the creation all the way to the authorization of these requisitions is performed within the Purchasing department. Once the requests have been authorized, the buyers or procurement agents consolidate the requests and convert them into a purchasing document, like a purchase order. Next, the process of receiving goods or services against the purchasing document is typically carried out by the employees requesting those goods or services or by the staff at the receiving location. 05:54 Nikita: And a receiving location could be a warehouse, for example, right? So there is a purchasing department processing purchased orders and another receiving department recording the receipt of goods. Barney: Exactly, Niki. And once the goods are received and recorded, the transaction flows into the Payables department within the finance business function. Supplier Invoice to Payment, which comes within the finance business function, touches internal as well as external parties involved with an organization. 06:23 Barney: For example, when talking about the process of expense reimbursement, employees are considered internal parties. In this process, employees record and submit expenses incurred on behalf of the organization and are reimbursed for the authorized items. For an external party, the process of recording invoices against goods or services used by the organization and the subsequent process of making payment to clear these invoices is also a key part of the Procure to Pay process. For example, organizations purchase assets like printers or furniture, which are recorded as part of the purchasing process. Oracle Assets is a fully integrated solution to track internal products and assets at internal or external sites, while providing the ability to capture financial transactions with back-office automation. 07:10 Barney: And then there is the Treasury department that some companies may call the Cash department, which, at periodic intervals, receives bank statements and reconciles the statement lines with payments made to suppliers. The key focus of the Treasury department is to determine the cash position and to assist in managing the cash forecasting process. These are just some activities of the Procure to Pay process that touch multiple departments within the business. 07:35 Lois: You mentioned expense reimbursement and making payments to external suppliers for goods received. How does this fit into the Oracle Financials Business Process Model? Barney: As we discussed, P2P involves multiple processes spanning procurement to cash, specifically payables invoice to cash. Let me list out the processes that are aligned with Oracle Financials business processes as part of the P2P process. First, we have the Expense Report to Reimbursement process that deals with getting business expenses reimbursed for employees and contract workers, also known as contingency workers. 08:13 Barney: The Supplier Invoice to Payment process deals with recording liability for purchases made by the organization directly from external parties and paying for those purchases. The Capture Tax process deals with applying transactional tax or withholding taxes based on the information entered in an invoice and invoice line level, and legislative requirements. The Bank Transaction to Cash Position process deals with matching bank statement lines to payments made to suppliers. Accountants working in the Treasury department can prepare the expected cash position based on the expected receipts and payments within that specific period. 08:51 Lois: Each of the Oracle business processes you mentioned seem to be aligned with the general flow of activities in a typical organization. What are the advantages of having such a streamlined P2P process? Barney: A streamlined and automated Procure to Pay process helps organizations remain compliant with supplier-related contractual terms and legislative tax requirements. It also helps them reduce the risk of fraud with risk migration controls in place and automation within the process. 09:18 Barney: It results in better supplier management in terms of sourcing and evaluating suppliers, and monitoring and controlling supplier invoice aging, resulting in timely payments being made to suppliers. The ability to capture supplier invoices from multiple channels, including scanning and online submission by suppliers to enable batch processing of payments, results in cost reduction for an organization and saves hours that would have been spent manually processing invoices and payments. Most importantly, a streamlined Procure to Pay process provides the ability to capture data at each stage, which helps with future decision-making. 09:56 Nikita: What are the job roles associated with the Procure to Pay business process? Barney: There are a few key job roles in the P2P business process. There's the employee job role, which identifies the person as an employee who can create a requisition and an expense report. The Procurement Agent job role is responsible for transactional aspects of procurement processing. The Expense Audit job role reviews and audits expense reports daily to ensure compliance with the company's reimbursement policy. The Accounts Payable Specialist job role enters invoices, ensuring accuracy, uniqueness, and completeness, and matches invoices to the correct purchase orders or receipts, all while making sure that the invoices comply with company policy. The Accounts Payables Supervisor job role oversees the activities of Accounts Payable Specialists, initiates and manages payment runs, and resolves non-data entry holds. And finally, the Cash Manager job role protects and develops the company's liquid assets, maximizing their use and return to the organization. 10:58 Lois: For an organization to have an optimized Procure to Pay process, I'm sure they need to track certain key performance indicators, right? Barney: Yes, and they do. Some of the KPIs that are tracked for the P2P process are Expenses vs. Budget, Invoice Payment Days, % Discount Taken, Time to Settlement, Time to Reconcile, and Payables Overdue Invoices. 11:20 Lois: Barney, earlier you spoke about how easy it is to raise expenses and use the Maps functionality. Are there other emerging technologies used by the ERP application in the Procure to Pay process? Barney: Yes Lois, Oracle Fusion Cloud: ERP uses the latest emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, digital assistants, and image scanning in different areas of the Procure to Pay process. Adaptive Intelligence models are used in the Payables module to calculate and recommend discounts for single payments. Intelligent Document Recognition is used to scan and automate the invoice creation process in Payables, incorporating the required reviews and approvals. Within the Expenses module, Digital Assistants are used to punch in expenses and submit them automatically. You can also click photos of receipts and process them to input the required expenses. 12:16 Working towards an Oracle Certification this year? Grab all the help you can get. Attend a cert prep live event in the Oracle University Learning Community. And once certified, don't forget to join our exclusive forum for Oracle certified users. If you're already an Oracle MyLearn user, go to MyLearn to join the community. You will need to log in first. If you've not yet accessed Oracle MyLearn, visit mylearn.oracle.com and create an account to get started. 12:47 Nikita: Welcome back. Barney, you mentioned that Payables is one of the starting points to capture or track assets in the application. Can you help us understand how this is built in to Oracle Fusion Cloud? Barney: In the Oracle Financials Business Process Model, Asset Acquisition to Retirement is a key process that covers all the main activities that occur during the life of an asset, anything from acquiring it to disposing it at the end of its useful life. There are many things a business will need to do with assets. Capture asset acquisition, record financial transactions, track asset movement for reporting and regulatory purposes, and so on. We can manage these assets and simplify fixed asset accounting tasks with the help of Oracle Fusion Assets. It has the ability to record leased assets in line with the requirements of the two new accounting standards. 13:37 Barney: Oracle Assets integrates with other modules like Payables, Subledger Accounting, and Projects. You can add assets and cost adjustments directly into Assets from invoice information in Payables. The Create Mass Additions for Assets process sends valid invoice line distributions and associated discounts from Payables to the Mass Additions interface table in Assets. You can then review the mass addition lines in Assets and determine whether to create assets from them. 14:03 Nikita: So, what are the different stages in the Asset Acquisition to Retirement life cycle? I'm sure the first one has to be acquiring the asset. Barney: You're absolutely right there, Niki. The Asset Acquisition to Retirement life cycle starts with the Asset Acquisition stage. A business can acquire an asset through the Procure to Pay life cycle and record the asset in the asset register. An asset can be acquired by purchasing it, leasing it, constructing/developing it (i.e. by the use of Oracle Fusion Projects), or by mergers or acquisitions. And by acquiring assets, we mean capturing and recording the purchase of assets from all business locations. 14:42 Barney: The next stage is Monitoring and Tracking. Once an asset has been created and added to the asset register, you can perform various activities during the asset's life cycle. These activities could be changing its category or financial details, transferring assets, i.e. from locations, or running or changing depreciation. Any finally, we have Retirement. When you sell an asset, or an asset is lost, or the asset reaches the end of its useful life, you must remove it from the asset register. 15:14 Lois: And before we let you go for today, remind us – what job roles perform the functions related to this life cycle, Barney? Barney: There are two main job roles involved in this process. One is the Asset Accountant, the basic user who performs all functions in the asset management module. Then there's also the Asset Accounting Manager who has much of the same access as the asset accountant, along with extra access in terms of reporting and running accounting processes. 15:40 Nikita: I think we've discussed these two important Oracle business processes quite thoroughly. Thank you so much, Barney, for taking us through them. Barney: Thanks for having me! Lois: Yes, thanks, Barney. This is a great introduction. Next week will be our final episode on the Oracle Financials Business Process Model, where we'll cover the Accounting Transformation and Budget to Report business processes. And don't forget to head over to mylearn.oracle.com to learn more about these processes and get certified. Until next time, this is Lois Houston… Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off! 16:13 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

7 Nov 202316min

Want to know about the key financial business processes that make up Invoice to Cash? Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, as well as Sr. Principal ERP Learning Strategist David Barnacle, are here to simplify this critical process flow for you. In this episode, they go over the entire Invoice to Cash process flow, which includes everything from the moment the invoice is created to the moment when the customer's debt (payment) is settled and reconciled with the bank statement. Oracle MyLearn: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, Parvathy Narayan, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Nikita: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I'm Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs. Lois: Hello everyone! In our last episode, we spoke about Enterprise Resource Planning business processes, particularly those related to Oracle Fusion Cloud: Financials, with our Sr. Principal ERP Learning Strategist David "Barney" Barnacle. We discussed how there are five business processes within the Oracle Cloud Financials Business Process Model. Today, Barney joins us once again to take us through the first of those business processes, the Invoice to Cash process. Nikita: Welcome back, Barney! 1:08 Barney: Hi Niki. Hi Lois. Nikita: Barney, what does the Invoice to Cash business process cover? Barney: Invoice to Cash is a child process of a parent life cycle commonly known as Order to Cash. Order to Cash includes all the steps involved in fulfilling customer orders, from order entry to delivery to the final customer payment. 01:31 Barney: Order processing can take many forms depending on the industry, product, and customer. It can range from delivering standard items that are directly shipped from stock to complex items, configurations (or structures), which can be fulfilled from multiple sources i.e. make, buy, or transfer. It can include processes such as drop shipments and internal orders. Certain businesses may process orders based on subscriptions only, which may or may not include fulfilment of items. If you're interested in learning more about these complex business subprocesses, I'd suggest visiting mylearn.oracle.com and looking for the business processes under Supply Chain Management (SCM), in particular Order Management Processing. 02:20 Barney: Here, in the business process for financials, we have simplified Order to Cash into two child subprocesses: Order to Shipment and Invoice to Cash. It is the second subprocess i.e. Invoice to Cash that uses financial products and covers customer billing (including the calculation of transaction tax), customer payments, also known as receipts, bank statements, reconciliation of receipts, and the ultimate creation of accounting entries for all transaction events in this billing process. 02:55 Lois: So, you're saying Invoice to Cash is just one part of the Order to Cash process. Barney: That's right, Lois. While the origin or source of a customer transaction can be multiple feeder systems (for example, Order Management, Projects, Subscription Management, and third-party or legacy billing systems), Invoice to Cash refers to an end-to-end process covering everything from the moment an invoice is created until the customer's debt is finally settled and reconciled with the bank statement. The real value for businesses lies in automating the process and getting insights and alerts from the Oracle Cloud applications to improve their overall profitability and cost savings. 03:38 Lois: Help me understand the flow of events, Barney. Because surely there are processes that occur before an invoice is raised, right? What are the processes covered in the larger Order to Cash cycle? Barney: You're absolutely right, Lois. Let's break it down further. Order to Cash is the parent business process. It starts in Order Management (with order capture and pricing) and ends in Cash Management (with the reconciliation of customer receipts). If we take a simple view of Order to Cash, we can use, as our example, ordering standard product items delivered directly to the customer from existing stock. We have two subprocesses here: Order to Shipment and Invoice to Cash. These processes use many different SaaS products. 04:25 Barney: The Order to Shipment subprocess starts with order capture by the order entry clerk, the salesperson, or directly input by the customer. The order captures essential attributes, such as items and quantities, required delivery dates, and financial contract terms, like payment terms, and so on. The pricing engine is called to create a sales price and then the global order promising check verifies supply of the items. Once the order is validated, submitted, and optionally approved, the order line passes on to order orchestration or fulfillment. 05:04 Barney: The order orchestration process drives scheduling and reservations. Then, within warehouses, the items are picked, packed, and shipped to the customer. Once the shipment is confirmed, the customer is invoiced based on contractual terms. Here, the second subprocess of Invoice to Cash takes over. The order orchestration process pushes the order attributes into the auto invoice interface tables. From there, the Billing Manager runs auto invoice to import customer invoices. This, in practice, will often be automated. The transactions will include the correct taxes as well as default accounts, and revenue will be recognized based on defined revenue recognition rules or events. 05:52 Nikita: Can I just interrupt, Barney? What do you mean by revenue recognition rules? Barney: Revenue recognition is an accounting principle that asserts that revenue must be recognized as it is earned. Let's look at this simply. The revenue recognition principle is a key component of an accrual-basis accounting. This accounting method recognizes revenue once it is considered earned, unlike the alternative cash-basis accounting, which recognizes revenue at the time cash is received or anytime cash changes hands. In the case of cash-based accounting, the revenue recognition principle is not applicable. 06:34 Barney: Revenue is generally recognized after a critical event occurs, like the product being delivered to the customer. Revenue recognition standards can vary based on a company's accounting method, geographical location, whether they are a public or private entity, and other factors. In essence, revenue recognition looks to answer when a business has earned its money. Typically, revenue is recognized after the performance obligations are considered fulfilled, and the currency amount is easily measurable to the company. A performance obligation is the promise to provide a distinct good or service to a customer. On the surface, it may seem simple, but a performance obligation being considered fulfilled can vary based on several factors. 07:19 Barney: Essentially, the revenue recognition principle means that companies' revenues are recognized when the service or product is considered delivered to the customer — not when the cash is received. Determining what constitutes a transaction can require more time and analysis than one might expect. To accurately recognize revenue, companies must pay attention to the five steps outlined in the various accounting standards and ensure they are interpreting them correctly. 07:47 Barney: For revenue recognition within our simple process flow, we could use an account receivables invoice and accounting rule to defer revenue, or we could pass the information over to the Revenue Management product to follow the steps of the relevant accounting standards and only recognize earned revenue when a performance obligation has been satisfied. Nikita: OK, I get it now. Thanks for that, Barney. 08:10 Barney: Great. So, getting back to our financial process, the invoice or invoices are either printed or electronically sent to the customer. The payment terms attached to each transaction will determine when full payment is due and may include early settlement discounts. Monthly statements sent to the customers will highlight account balances and any late or overdue transactions. Customers will send their payments, manually or electronically, and the company may also create automatic receipts (commonly known as direct debits) to transfer funds from customer bank accounts to the company's bank account on a regular monthly basis. 08:52 Barney: The receipt received will be applied to the open transactions (debit items such as invoices) and either clear or reduce the customer's account balances. The cashier will then ensure these receipts have all been correctly accounted in the company's bank account – a step called bank account reconciliation. The subledger accounting rules engine will ensure that at each transaction event (e.g., create invoices, adjust invoices, create receipts), the correct accounting is created and ultimately transferred to the general ledger as receivables journals. That means a full account record is created for each order line processed within the Order to Cash flow. 09:37 Barney: Finally, the Collections team monitors customer account balances on a regular basis and with various collection strategies and actions (such as sending dunning letters) aims to reduce Days Sales Outstanding and improve the company's cash inflow. 09:53 Lois: Let me make sure I get this. We have the larger life cycle, the Order to Cash process, which connects the various pillars of Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP, like Financials and Procurement. And within them, there are modules like Order Management, Receivables, Collections, Cash Management, and General Ledger. Barney: Exactly, Lois. Nikita: So, since the focus of this series is on Oracle Financials, we'd like to learn more about the processes under it. 10:19 Barney: OK, Niki. Oracle Cloud provides capabilities to streamline the Invoice to Cash business process, and Oracle Receivables Cloud is the cornerstone of the Invoice to Cash solution. This application helps you improve cash flow, increase efficiencies, and optimize customer relationships. It has user-friendly interfaces that you can leverage to efficiently manage the process. And you can proactively manage the entire customer billing cycle and process customer receipts. 10:51 Nikita: From what I understand, the Accounts Receivable Specialist seems to be an important role in the Order to Cash process. So, how does the Oracle application help Receivables Specialists work more efficiently? 11:02 Barney: Oracle Receivables has embedded business intelligence that offers summarized dashboards within the work areas, giving you or giving the receivables specialist an intuitive, simple, and modern user experience. Infolets highlight, in real-time, issues with the key processing steps, such as auto invoicing, receipt processing, etc., allowing receivables specialists to take effective action. Some of these errors can also be downloaded into a spreadsheet for efficient bulk correction of data. 11:40 Barney: Another interesting feature is social enterprise network, which can highlight issues within the receivables and collections team, leading to quicker adjustments or corrections of the customer account balances or transactions. There's also Oracle Bill Management, which provides a self-service approach to reduce customer inquiries. You can set up Bill Management to enable the customer to directly complete various receivables processes for themselves, such as reviewing outstanding transactions and credit memos, monitoring disputes, and more importantly, making online payments. 12:22 The Oracle University Learning Community is a great place for you to collaborate and learn with experts, peers, and practitioners. Grow your skills, inspire innovation, and celebrate your successes. The more you participate, the more recognition you can earn. All of your activities, from liking a post to answering questions and sharing with others, will help you earn badges and ranks, and be recognized within the community. If you're already an Oracle MyLearn user, go to MyLearn to join the community. You'll need to log in first. If you've not yet accessed Oracle MyLearn, visit mylearn.oracle.com and create an account to get started. 13:01 Nikita: Welcome back. So Barney, you spoke about how Invoice to Cash has several tasks within it, like invoicing customers, collecting payments, and so on. How does all of this come together in terms of the Oracle Cloud Financials Business Model? Barney: Invoice to Cash is an integral financial process within organizations and is broadly divided in our model into four subprocesses: Customer Invoice to Receipt, Capture Transactions, Customer Statement to Collection, and Bank Transaction to Position. Let's have a look at each of these in turn. 13:36 Barney: The Customer Invoice to Receipt subprocess includes several tasks. Everything from recording the invoice to be sent to customers for goods sold or services provided and addressing billing-related issues, if there are any, to recording customer receipts, making adjustments to outstanding amounts, posting receivables activities so that the Receivables subledger can be seamlessly closed, and finally using analysis and reporting tools to get deeper insights and drive better decision-making. 14:04 Lois: That's a lot of details that are being captured. Barney: Yes, Lois. Every minute detail that affects the financial status of an organization can be captured, like the Capture Taxes subprocess. This is the process of applying required taxes based on legislative requirements. It's based on the information entered within the invoice and invoice line level. This could be regarding customer ship to, bill to, product and tax classification codes, and so on. The system automatically applies the attributes and calculates the correct taxes at the invoice line level and then calculates the total taxes applicable to the whole invoice. 14:43 Barney: Then we have the Customer Statement to Collections subprocess, which includes sending statements to customers at periodic intervals, flagging delinquents, creating and assigning collection-related tasks to collection agents, recording and resolving disputes raised by customers, recording payments, and tracking and measuring KPIs to review the collection team's performance. And finally, the Bank Transaction to Cash Position subprocess deals with matching bank statement lines to payments received from customers. Accountants working in the Treasury Department can prepare the expected cash positions, based on the expected receipts and payments to be made within the specific time period. 15:26 Lois: OK, so we've established that the application captures a lot of details. But we also need to be able to extract this data to assess the financial health of the organization, right? So, when it comes to receivables activities, what are the key performance indicators for an organization? Barney: Yes, you're right there, Lois. KPIs are required to closely monitor and measure the performance of an organization. And to really optimize the Invoice to Cash process, the Receivables department in any organization will have certain KPIs they need to track. 16:01 Barney: Some critical ones we've already mentioned are Days Sales Outstanding or DSO, which measures the average number of days that a company takes to collect revenue after a sale has been made, Time to Settle, Percentage of Current Receivables, Average Invoice Age, % Disputed Invoices, Operational Cost Per Collection, Number of Delinquent Accounts, and Time to Reconcile. These are all important KPIs. All these KPIs are easily available in the Oracle application in a visual representation, like a graph or percentage, and can be viewed by management simply in a single dashboard. They can also be displayed in a user-designed format for greater efficiency. 16:49 Nikita: Thank you so much, Barney, for coming back to talk to us about the Invoice to Cash business process. Barney: No worries. Happy to be here. 16:56 Lois: We're really looking forward to having you back next week to tell us about the next two business processes, Procure to Pay and Asset Acquisition to Retirement. And if you want to learn more about these ERP business processes and get certified, visit mylearn.oracle.com. Until next time, this is Lois Houston… Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off! 17:18 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

31 Okt 202317min

Inside every successful corporation is a well-oiled financial team working to do what is in the best interest of the company. From the CFO to the finance intern, having a system of modern best practices and a comprehensive suite of financial solutions, properly utilized, is more important than ever before. Join hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Sr. Principal ERP Learning Strategist David Barnacle, as they introduce you to the Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning suite and the key business processes within it. Oracle MyLearn: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, Parvathy Narayan, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I'm Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor. Nikita: Hi everyone! A few weeks ago, we concluded our spotlight on HCM business processes. And today, we're going to move on to ERP business processes. ERP, as you may already know, is Enterprise Resource Planning. And to take us through this, we have David "Barney" Barnacle, our Sr. Principal ERP Learning Strategist. For over 20 years, Barney has successfully trained customers in the rapid configuration and effective use of Oracle Applications. Welcome Barney! We're so glad to have you here today. 01:10 Barney: Thank you! Happy to be here. Lois: In previous episodes this season, we've spoken about the business process training that Oracle has. But from an ERP point of view, can you briefly tell us what it is and why we have it? Barney: Sure, Lois. Inside every successful corporation is a well-oiled financial team working to do what is in the best interest of the company. From the CFO to the financial trainee, everybody within an agile, innovative enterprise will be using modern best practice processes within a complete and fully integrated suite of SaaS applications. That's why we have Oracle Business Process Training for Oracle Fusion Cloud: ERP. It's a powerful training solution that gives users and companies a solid understanding of how Oracle ERP solutions work together to ensure effective and efficient transaction processing. 02:06 Nikita: Now that we know why we have this training, let's get down to it. Barney, what is ERP? Barney: Enterprise Resource Planning or for short as it's known, ERP, is a system or a collection of systems that companies use to manage day-to-day business activities efficiently. The ERP system brings together different dimensions of businesses from financials, procurement, risk and compliance, to enterprise performance management, and Oracle Fusion ERP analytics. ERP systems tie together several business processes and seamlessly allow data to flow between them. By collecting an organization's shared transactional data from multiple sources, ERP systems eliminate data duplication and provide data integrity with a single source of truth. 03:00 Barney: Today, ERP systems are critical for managing thousands of businesses of all sizes and across all industries. For these companies, ERP is as indispensable as the electricity that keeps the lights on. Remember, simply, ERP is the vehicle for integrating people, processes, and technologies across a modern enterprise. 03:27 Lois: Barney, in the world of various ERP systems, how is the Oracle Cloud ERP application suite unique? And how is it structured? Barney: Thanks, Lois. Oracle Cloud ERP is a cloud-based SaaS (Software as a Service) application, or group of applications, that provides end-to-end business solutions. These solutions, in turn, enable businesses to significantly cut down costs, improve their process efficiencies, and enhance collaboration. Oracle Cloud ERP is classified into six different product families. We have Financial Management, Procurement, Project Management, Risk and Compliance, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), and finally Enterprise Resource Planning Analytics. 04:14 Lois: So as I understand it, we have Oracle Cloud ERP, a modern cloud-based software application, and then have Oracle Financials, Procurement, EPM, and so on within the Oracle Cloud ERP suite, right? Barney: Correct. That's right, Lois. Nikita: That's quite an interesting mix of product families. Can you tell us about each of these products, Barney? 04:35 Barney: Sure can. Let's start with Financials. Oracle Cloud Financials is a global financial platform that connects and automates your financial management processes, including payables, receivables, fixed assets, expenses, GL, and reporting, for a clear view into your total financial health. 04:56 Barney: Next is Oracle Cloud Procurement, an integrated source-to-settle suite that automates business processes, enables strategic sourcing, improves supplier relationship management, and simplifies buying. Then we have Project Management. Oracle Project Management helps you plan and track your projects, assign the right talent, balance capacity against demand, and scale resources up or down quickly as needs change. 05:27 Barney: Then there's Risk and Compliance. Oracle Cloud Risk and Compliance Management is a security and audit solution. It controls user access to your Oracle Cloud ERP financial data, monitors users' activity, and makes it easy to meet compliance regulations through automation. 05:45 Nikita: Interesting. And these pillars are connected to one another? Barney: Yes, Niki. One of the biggest advantages of choosing the Oracle Cloud ERP solution is its ability to integrate all the product offerings that come under it. Now, getting back to the product pillars in the ERP suite, we have Enterprise Performance Management. With this, you can model and plan across Finance, HR, Supply Chain, and Sales. You can streamline the financial close process and drive better decisions. 06:18 Barney: And closing out the list, we have ERP Analytics. Oracle Fusion ERP Analytics is a prebuilt cloud-native solution for Oracle Cloud ERP. It helps financial and procurement professionals uncover underlying drivers of profitability, improve the use of working capital, and control business expenditures. Oracle's unique application capabilities enable organizations to unify financial analytics across different departments. So those are the six product families that make up the Oracle Cloud ERP. 06:56 Lois: I think that's what all organizations want, right? A comprehensive solution to help them meet their business needs. But how do organizations that have legacy ERP systems and processes move to the Oracle Cloud ERP systems? Do they need to completely switch over? And what happens to the existing processes they've been following? Barney: Yes Lois, they can co-exist. But you can implement just one cloud product, such as expenses or revenue management, to enhance the existing or current business processes. You can then have several step-by-step projects to move different business processes to the cloud – until you are 100% cloud. 07:37 Nikita: So, within the ERP suite, we'd like to learn more about Oracle Cloud Financials. Can you tell us about the types of organizations that would benefit from using Oracle Cloud Financials? Barney: Sure, Niki. So like I was saying before, Oracle Cloud Financials gives you a complete view of the overall financial health of your organization by connecting data and process automation in payables, receivables, fixed assets, expenses, GL, and reporting. It also helps organizations respond quickly to an everchanging environment and deliver decisive insights as needed. It is a comprehensive global solution designed for organizations of every size and industry. 08:20 Lois: Barney, a typical organization will have various transactions and processes that have a direct impact on their financial balance, right? Everything from financial accounting, transaction processing, payment delivery, and cash reconciliation, to employee expense processing, and even asset management. How does Oracle Cloud Financials process all these activities or functions? 08:41 Barney: Good question, Lois. Oracle Cloud Financials has several modules to help businesses handle all the processes you've just mentioned. Let's say procuring items, creating invoices, and making payments to suppliers are the typical day-to-day activities of a manufacturing organization. In Oracle Cloud Financials, the process of invoice to payment is handled by Oracle Payables and Payment tasks, which provide streamlined and user-friendly interfaces for Payables professionals to efficiently manage the Supplier Invoice to Payment process. 09:18 Barney: Let me give you another example. Every organization will have employees submitting their expenses for approval and payout. These expense-related activities are handled by Oracle Expenses. Oracle Expenses gives your organization the tools it needs to effectively manage the travel and expenses process. You can simply start the whole process by uploading a copy of your expense receipt using the expenses mobile app. 09:46 Lois: So, it looks like every financial end-to-end process in an organization is represented in Oracle Financials. Barney: Yes. Let's take Oracle Receivables. It provides streamlined and user-friendly interfaces for Receivables professionals to efficiently manage the credit-to-cash process. You can use it to proactively manage the entire cycle of billing customers and processing customer payments. 10:11 Barney: When you deal with cash that needs to be received from customers in a very large organization, it's important that you understand these customers well and build a good relationship with them. And to do this, many organizations hire specialists called collection agents. Oracle Advanced Collections is designed for these collection agents. For anyone who doesn't know, collection agents are basically those responsible for working with late or nonpaying customers to resolve payment issues and remove non-payments. 10:43 Nikita: That can be quite problematic, right? I'm sure any delays in payment from customers would cause cash flow problems for a company. Barney: Exactly. And so Advanced Collections is the critical final step in the credit/billing-to-collections business process, where the aim is to reduce delinquent customers, encourage prompt customer payment, and minimize the company Days Sales Outstanding. For those who don't know, Days Sales Outstanding is the average number of days it takes a company to receive payments for a sale. 11:19 Did you know that Oracle University offers free courses on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure? You'll find training on everything from cloud computing, database, and security to artificial intelligence and machine learning, all of which is available free to subscribers. So, get going! Pick a course of your choice, get certified, join the Oracle University Learning Community, and network with your peers. If you're already an Oracle MyLearn user, go to MyLearn to begin your journey. If you have not yet accessed Oracle MyLearn, visit mylearn.oracle.com and create an account to get started. 11:58 Nikita: Welcome back. We were just going through the various modules within Oracle Financials. So far, we've covered Payables and Payments, Expenses, Receivables, and Advanced Collections. What other modules are there, Barney? Barney: We have Oracle Assets, which is a complete asset management solution. Nikita: So assets like property… equipment… Barney: Exactly. Yes, and Oracle Assets helps you maintain your assets accurately. It supports the end-to-end asset life cycle from asset acquisition to retirement, i.e. from capture to retire. Also, if you do not directly acquire or buy the assets outright, we have a product called Lease Accounting, which covers all the accounting entries for leased assets. 12:45 Nikita: Ok. And what else? Barney: We also have Oracle Cash Management, tax engines, subledger accounting, intercompany engines, and general ledger. Nikita: Can you quickly run us through these modules? Barney: Sure. Oracle Cash Management is a comprehensive business solution that helps you optimize enterprise-wide liquidity and control cash. Tax engine is used to calculate transactional taxes based on business, products, places, and country rules. For example, when to use sales tax as opposed to when to use value added tax or VAT. 13:19 Barney: Oracle Subledger Accounting is a powerful, rules-based accounting solution that provides consistent accounting treatment for financial transactions created across Oracle Cloud applications. The intercompany engine is used to automatically balance journals that are between different organizations. For example, a central management fee charged annually between the organization's headquarters and each of its subsidiaries. In the cloud, with intercompany, you can have up to three balancing segments. However, the primary balancing segment is still used to identify the company or fund holder. 13:59 Barney: Then we have Oracle General Ledger. Oracle General Ledger is the central repository of accounting information. It provides highly automated financial processing, effective management control, and real-time visibility into financial results. 14:16 Lois: Before you continue, Barney, can you tell us what a general ledger system does? How is it different from subledger accounting? Barney: Sure, Lois. The main purpose of a general ledger system is to record the financial activities of a whole company and produce financial and management reports to help people inside and outside the organization make decisions. 14:38 Barney: Subledger journals can provide the detail and a fully auditable path back to the source transaction that created the accounting entry. This single source of subledger accounting detailed data is often summarized into account balances when transferred across to general ledger. It is these summarized GL account balances that will drive real-time financial reporting using the various cloud reporting tools. 15:04 Lois: Ok. So, you've told us about the modules within the Oracle Cloud Financials suite that capture different types of transactions. For Oracle Fusion Cloud users, what's the quickest way to uncover business insights and deliver financial improvements to their enterprise? Barney: To identify underlying drivers of profitability, improve the use of working capital, and control business expenditures, we have Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP Analytics. This is an analytics-based, state-of-the-art, technology-driven tool that provides you with the organization's financial status at any given point. Financial Reporting and Analytics helps you speed up your decision-making process with graphical insights, configurable analytics dashboards, and event-based delivery of information so you can take targeted actions. 15:56 Lois: That's interesting. Thanks for that, Barney. That was a lot for me to take in, but it's very insightful. Nikita: Yes, it was. Getting back to some of the processes you mentioned, like the Expense Report process or the Supplier Invoice to Payment process, can you give us an overall picture of how these processes are fulfilled within the Oracle Cloud Financials function? 16:17 Barney: Absolutely. At Oracle, we can map these different processes to the Oracle Financials Business Process Model. This model refers to the end-to-end business processes enabled by Oracle applications to record financial data and derive reports for efficient and successful business performance. There are key business processes in this model. 16:42 Nikita: I know you're going to be joining us in upcoming episodes to talk about each of these business processes, but can you briefly tell us about them? Barney: Sure, Niki. Let's start with the process that records cash inflow into an enterprise. Invoice to Cash refers to the cycle of events captured in the system, starting with recording customer invoices for goods and services provided, processing customer receipts based on the terms of payment, and reconciling receipts with bank statements and customer account balances with the Account Receivables ledger balances. 17:15 Barney: Then, we have the major processes that cause an outflow of cash from the enterprise. Procure to Pay involves recording the journey of transactions, from requisitioning and procuring goods and services from the supplier to receiving them at their destination and the ultimate entering of supplier invoices and payments. Asset to Retirement empowers organizations to manage the entire financial cycle of assets, including acquisition, capitalization, depreciation, and the ultimate retirement. 17:46 Barney: Accounting Transformation is the process of converting transactions or activities from subledgers to journal entries to meet corporate needs and statutory or legal reporting. And finally, Budget to Report covers the entire process of creating budgets, capturing actuals, and conducting budget reporting and variance analysis. 18:08 Lois: Each of these business processes has users with various job roles working on the application, right? They'll be taking action… providing input… So how does Oracle Cloud Financials define these job roles in the application? Barney: Well, in small or medium-sized companies, the financial functions may be the responsibility of a single accountant. But in large organizations, there is going to be a financial team, where the job roles are specialized, often focused on a particular business task or function. 18:43 Barney: The responsibility for these roles are often grouped into three main categories. We have the Specialist or Clerk, who is responsible for a specific group of tasks. For example, creating payments or reconciling bank statements. Then we have the Supervisor, who is responsible for managing the specialist executing the specific business tasks. And finally, we have the Managers or Manager, who is responsible for managing the team to meet company objectives. 19:15 Barney: When we're talking about the business processes I mentioned earlier, each of them are performed by different job roles. For example, for the Invoice to Cash business process, we have the Billing Specialist and Billing Managers, Collection Agents, and Cash Manager. For Procure to Pay, we have the Accounts Payable Specialist and Supervisor. Asset to Retirement, there's the Asset Accountant and Asset Accounting Manager. The Accounting Transformation business process is usually managed by any role assigned SLA privileges. And finally, for Budget to Reporting, we have the General Accountant and General Accounting Manager. 19:55 Nikita: Thank you so much, Barney, for giving us this thorough introduction to Oracle ERP, and particularly Oracle Financials Cloud. Barney: Thanks, Niki. It was a pleasure to be here. 20:05 Lois: We're looking forward to having you back on the podcast next week to talk about the first of the five main Financials business processes, the Invoice to Cash process flow. And to learn more about these business processes and get certified, visit mylearn.oracle.com. Until next time, this is Lois Houston… Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off! 20:27 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

24 Okt 202320min

Want to get on the AI train? Then this is the episode for you! Join Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Rohit Rahi, Vice President, CSS OU Cloud Delivery, as they explore Oracle University's new OCI AI Foundations course. They talk about what the course covers, who it's for, and the associated certification. Oracle MyLearn: mylearn.oracle.com/ Oracle University Learning Community: education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ Twitter: twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode.

17 Okt 202311min

Wouldn't it be great if you could practice your Oracle Cloud Apps implementation in a safe, controlled lab environment? Well, now you can! Join Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Bill Lawson, as they discuss the new Applied Learning for Fusion Cloud Applications Implementation projects, which provide practical use cases and business scenarios that you can work through to apply the concepts you've learned and expand your skills. Oracle MyLearn: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, Sujatha Kalahasthi Raju, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Nikita: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I'm Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs. Lois: Hello everyone! In our last episode, we spoke about HCM business processes and learned about the Talent Life Cycle. Today, we're going to take a look at some related training that's just launched in our Cloud Learning Subscriptions. This new training was developed based on requests from our customers and partners. You asked, and we listened. 00:58 Nikita: We're joined by Senior Director of Cloud Applications Product Management, Bill Lawson, who you've heard from before, and he will be telling us all about this exciting new program. Lois: Bill, we're so happy you're back with us today. So, as I mentioned, this new program was a direct result of customer and partner feedback. Can you tell us a little bit more about how that happened and what this new training is all about? 01:20 Bill: I'm happy to be back as well, Lois. And very excited to share details about the Applied Learning for Fusion Cloud Application Implementation projects that are now available. And you're correct. This was in direct response to requests we received from our customers and partners. As you're aware, we hold quarterly feedback sessions with some of our strategic partners and customers, and one thing we heard was the need to have some practical applications of concepts learned in our implementation courses. 01:46 Bill: So, we got our subject matter experts on the task and challenged them with creating some real-world scenarios that students can work through in our hands-on lab practice environments. In these scenarios, students will work their way through examples of some of the decisions and configurations that they and customers might need to go through in an implementation of Oracle Cloud Applications. It's a great way to expand your skills and apply the concepts you've learned in implementation classes in a safe, controlled lab environment. Then, you can take that back to your workplace and apply that knowledge in your own implementation projects. 02:19 Nikita: Wow, that's really cool, Bill. And how exciting that we're taking feedback directly from our customers and developing the training that they are asking for. Bill: Yes, Niki, it is. And we're planning to continue that listening program in our Oracle University Learning Community. We've launched an Idea Incubator and we're looking forward to hearing from our members about their content ideas and suggestions. Who knows what new types of courses will come out of that? 02:43 Lois: It's another great reason to join the Community for sure. Bill: Indeed, it is. Nikita: Ok, Bill, back to the Applied Learning for Fusion Cloud Application Implementations program. Who is this training best suited for? Bill: Well, Niki, it's really aimed at those people who are going to be actively involved in an Oracle Cloud Apps implementation. So, your solution consultants, implementers, administrators, project teams, etc. etc. 03:07 Nikita: And can you give us an example of what one of these projects looks like? Bill: I sure can, Niki. One of the new Applied Learning Implementation projects is centered around Fusion Enterprise Structures & General Ledger in the ERP space. In the project scenario, we follow a fictional company, which is a startup that has decided to implement Oracle Fusion Cloud Financials to streamline their business processes while taking advantage of the latest functionality Oracle Cloud Applications has to offer. The case study outlines the business requirements of the company and then provides a challenge to the learner. The student must determine how these requirements would be met within the application, complete the setup and configuration, and validate that they've done it correctly. 03:48 Lois: That's really neat. So essentially, it's mimicking a business scenario that you may come upon in a conference room pilot during an implementation and would have to configure using Fusion Applications. Bill: Right, Lois. Providing a practical business scenario based on the customers' requirements for the student to configure a solution in a safe practice environment. The student will be prepared to tackle the scenario based on the foundation of knowledge they've gained when they completed the implementation learning path training in the learning subscription or during their previous implementation experience. 04:22 Have an idea for a new course or learning opportunity? We'd love to hear it! Visit the Oracle University Learning Community and share your thoughts with us. Your suggestion could find a place in future development projects. If you're already an Oracle MyLearn user, go to MyLearn to join the community. You will need to log in first. If you've not yet accessed Oracle MyLearn, visit mylearn.oracle.com and create an account to get started. 04:51 Nikita: Welcome back. Ok, Bill, so the students do this setup. How do they know it was done correctly? What if they get stumped and don't know what to do? Bill: If they're completely stumped, then it's probably a good indication that they need to revisit the training and check that they understand the core concepts. But once they've completed the challenge, there will be a solution video in which our SME will walk through one of the possible solutions. Bear in mind, there may be more than one solution that is possible. We will show one possibility, but learners may opt for a different route when they approach the challenge. And that's ok. We want people to be able to explore the options and learn while they're doing so. 05:28 Lois: And all of this is done within MyLearn and the lab environments provided to our learning subscribers, right? Bill: That's correct, Lois. This content is available to our MyLearn subscribers. The projects are included as part of the Cloud Applications Implementation training. So, if you go to mylearn.oracle.com and search by the phrase "Applied Learning," you will find all the applicable learning. You can also search by "Implementer" to see the Implementation training that is available. Applied learning projects will be part of this implementation training. The content is available on a paid subscription basis only, but very well worth the investment if you're in the middle of an Oracle Cloud Apps implementation. If you already have a subscription, you can dive right in and give one of our projects a try. 06:12 Nikita: Bill, where are these Applied Learning scenarios found? Is it only for General Ledger? Bill: No, Niki, it's not. We've got Applied Learning projects available for 10 of our most popular product areas, such as General Ledger, Payables, Receivables, Project Management, Accounting Hub, Global Human Resources, Talent Management, Recruiting, Inventory, and Procurement. Lois: So, we're covering all the bases here – ERP, SCM, HCM… Bill: Exactly. 06:42 Lois: Is there anything else we should know about the Applied Learning program? Bill: Well funny you should ask, Lois, because one of the unique things we're doing with this new program is we're offering the opportunity to engage with other people who are completing the project via a discussion in the Oracle University Learning Community. Lois: You knew that was a loaded question, right? Bill: Haha, I sure did. You're the champion of our Community. So, in the Community, people can ask questions, share their solutions, and more. It's a great way to expand the learning experience and see how other people approached those same scenarios based on their knowledge and experience. 07:13 Nikita: And if people have ideas for other Applied Learning scenarios, what should they do? Bill: They can always suggest those in the Idea Incubator in the Community, Niki. Lois: Yep. The Community has a lot of great things to offer. If you're not a member, you should join today by accessing it via mylearn.oracle.com. 07:29 Nikita: Thank you so much, Bill, for coming back to talk to us about the Applied Learning program. I really think it's such a great new resource for our learners. Bill: I'm always happy to be here with you ladies. Thank you for having me. Lois: Thanks Bill. Ok, next week we've got another great topic lined up. If you followed along with some of the announcements at Oracle Cloud World, you'll know that we launched a new certification and training path centered around Artificial Intelligence. Next week, we'll be talking with Rohit Rahi to learn more about this free training that is available, in an episode we're calling AI for Everyone. You won't want to miss that. 08:03 Nikita: And if you want to learn more about these Applied Learning projects, visit mylearn.oracle.com. Lois: Right, Niki. So that's all for today. Until next time, this is Lois Houston… Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off! 08:15 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

10 Okt 20238min

In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham talk about the Talent Life Cycle with Cloud Delivery Lead Nigel Wiltshire. They discuss how organizations can nurture their employees' skills, help them set goals that align with business objectives, support their desired progression, and promote a happy work-life balance. Oracle MyLearn: mylearn.oracle.com Oracle University Learning Community: education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ Twitter: twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Lois: Hey there! Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I'm Lois Houston, Director of Product Innovation and Go to Market Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor. Niki: Hi everyone! Last week, we spoke about the Reward Life Cycle, which is the fourth life cycle in the overall HCM Business Process, with our Cloud Delivery Lead Nigel Wiltshire. Nigel is back with us today to talk about the last life cycle, Talent. 00:55 Lois: We're wrapping up this discussion on HCM life cycles today so if you've just joined us, be sure to check out the prior episodes this season as you'll want to get the full picture of the entire HCM business process flow. Hi Nigel! Thanks for agreeing to pop in one last time (this season that is!) to take us through these HCM business process life cycles. 01:16 Nigel: Thank you for having me again. Lois: So, let's get right down to business here. What is the Talent Life Cycle? Nigel: The Talent Life Cycle contains all the processes that serve to manage and promote an employee's career growth. Niki: And what are the processes that make up this life cycle? 01:30 Nigel: Well, Niki, there are four business processes that make up the Talent Life Cycle: Goal Setting to Performance, Talent Review to Succession, Career Planning to Development, and Employee Insight to Work Life Balance. The Goal Setting to Performance process covers the two main aspects of Talent Management: Performance Goals and Performance Reviews. 01:50 Nigel: The second process, Talent Review to Succession, allows for managers to review the overall performance and potential of each of their employees. This is to ascertain how the employees are progressing through their career and whether there are any steps that need to be taken to address any challenges that the employee may be having with their performance and/or potential. And on the flip side of that, whether there are any actions or recommendations for career progression for their higher performing employees. 02:15 Nigel: Now the Career Planning to Development process centers around the career progression and opportunities for the employee, and there are a couple of main activities that support this venture. The first is the Career Plan or Path, which is where the employee seeks out the roles that they are interested in pursuing, whether that is in the same field of work, a sideways move, or something completely different. To support this, the employee would create a Development Plan, with goals to support their desired progression. These goals can be designed to support their existing role, to help them pursue another role, or could simply be something personal, such as learning a new language, which is not necessarily related to their employment. 02:53 Nigel: The fourth and final process is Employee Insights to Work Life Balance. Happy employees are productive employees, in the same way that a happy workplace is one that employees are happy to get out of bed for in the morning. To promote this, organizations can invoke activities that support a happy work life balance. These activities could be Wellness Programs, Fun Competitions, Volunteering Projects, and Recognition Awards. 03:16 Lois: Circling back to the first of those processes, what relationship do performance goals have with performance reviews? Nigel: Although goals and performance reviews can be seen and operated independently, they are intrinsically linked. If you think about what an employee's performance review is designed to address, which is to evaluate the employee over a set period (usually a year), we have to consider what it is we are evaluating. In most organizations, this comes in the form of two elements: the employee's competencies and their goals. So, for each of the goals that are assigned to the employee, we have to consider whether they have achieved them to the satisfaction of the organization. 03:53 Niki: Now, where do these goals originate from? Nigel: They are often assigned to the employee through their management hierarchy, which ensures that the goals that the employee has to complete are in line with and support business objectives. Having said that, a lot of organizations allow employees to add their own goals, and as I mentioned previously, these goals could support their current role, a role they wish to pursue in the future, or indeed personal goals for their own growth. It's a combination of these that are subsequently evaluated alongside their competencies. 04:22 Lois: Ok, then. Nigel, you mentioned that another aspect of the employee's evaluation is their competencies. Can you please tell us a little bit more about these? How are they different from the employee's goals? Nigel: Absolutely. While a goal is there to support the growth of the business, employee competencies are designed to ensure the employee themselves are up to scratch, in terms of their job. So it will test for such things as their qualifications (e.g. Do they have an up-to-date qualification and/or license to do the job they do – such as a heavy goods vehicle licence for hauliers or maybe a level of language, whether it's spoken or written to support a translator role). However, that is only one side of the story. Competencies are also designed to ensure that the employee adheres to company standards, such as Communication Skills, Ability to Adapt, and Follows Company Values. Yes, you could say that these can also be a requirement for certain jobs (e.g. Communication Skills for instructors), but it is also something that would be needed to interact with other members within the organization at various levels, such as a basic level to interact with other employees, but a more advanced level when interacting with the Board of Directors. 05:29 Niki: Nigel, earlier you mentioned that performance reviews are conducted over a set period, and you said that it's an annual process. Are there any other times when an employee could be evaluated? Nigel: Of course. The annual or focal review is the one that most people recognize. However there are many types of reviews as well as many periods that a review could cover. For instance, some organizations have a half yearly review as well as the annual review, usually referred to as an interim review. 05:57 Nigel: Other review types may come in the form of PIPs or Personal Improvement Plans for poorly performing employees; Check Ins, used mostly for new employees within their first few months, but also for field operations where the employee and managers do not tend to see each other from one month to the next; and then we have Ad Hoc. These, as the name implies, happen as required, for whatever reason, and do not tend to have a specific time frame. They not used often though as most organizations like the review to be more structured. Now, the results from all of these are often taken forward to the main review, and serve as a guide to how the employee has fared over the year. The main advantage of interim reviews is that any development needs are identified early and can be addressed straight away. 06:39 Working towards an Oracle Certification this year? Grab all the help you can get! Attend a cert prep live event in the Oracle University Learning Community. And once you're certified, don't forget to visit our exclusive forum for Oracle-certified users. If you are already an Oracle MyLearn user, go to MyLearn to join the community. You will need to log in first. If you have not yet accessed Oracle MyLearn, visit mylearn.oracle.com and create an account to get started. 07:14 Niki: Welcome back! Nigel, what steps do organizations take to ensure they maintain operational integrity when they know key personnel are planning to leave, especially due to retirement? Nigel: Succession Planning is the practice where organizations develop employees to a point where they can move or be promoted to a position that is suddenly left vacant. This is especially critical for those positions that would leave the organization vulnerable and/or less able to operate adequately. 07:42 Nigel: Typically, each employee identified as a potential replacement will be given a ranking based on several factors, such as their Performance Score, their Potential, and Expected Readiness Time Frame. And a combination of these, as well as other factors, will rank the employee in terms of who is most suitable to take over, down to who is least likely to succeed the current incumbent. Of course, things change over time and these succession lists have to be constantly managed and altered accordingly. For instance, maybe one of the employees identified as a potential successor doesn't want to be considered or maybe one or two of them leave the organization, and as employees gain more experience, they move up or down the list relative to other potential successors. 08:23 Lois: I understand that employee suitability for a job or position can be based on how the managers within the organization perceive the employee's performance and potential. But that can be subjective, right? An organization could be in hot water if they rely on this approach alone. So, how does a system like Oracle Fusion Cloud help to show objectively, which Jobs and Positions an employee is suitable for, and how does it identify gaps in employee knowledge or experience? 08:52 Nigel: Wow, that's such a meaty question, Lois. OK, so many systems these days have functionality that allow employers to record what attributes are required by any potential employee, to fulfil a job or position successfully. These attributes include Competencies, Qualifications, Languages, Licences, and many more, and what they do is create Model Profiles, which are the list of attributes needed for the job or position. At the same time, organizations are able to record which attributes the employee already has, and these are called Person Profiles. 09:25 Nigel: By comparing one against the other, it is easy to identify whether an employee (or potential candidate if used with Recruiting) is suitable for a job and which attributes are missing that the employee does not have. Now the upshot of this is that not only can the employer slot the right person into the right job, but it can be used to identify what gaps the employee needs to plug, should they wish to pursue an alternative job type, or move up the chain of command. 09:48 Niki: Well, I think we've come to the end of our focus on HCM business process life cycles. Thank you so much, Nigel, for taking the time to be our guide through this journey. Nigel: Thanks for having me. I've had a great time with you two. 10:00 Lois: If you missed any of our earlier episodes this season, you should go back and check them out to get a broad view of these business processes. We've had one episode on Oracle's business process training in general and we also had Nigel with us these last few weeks, taking us through each HCM business process life cycle. So it's a great time for a refresher! We'll be taking a break from our business process training next week to look at some training that's just launched in our Cloud Learning Subscriptions. But more on that soon. Until then, this is Lois Houston… Niki: And Nikita Abraham, signing off! 10:37 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

3 Okt 202311min

In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham talk to Cloud Delivery Lead Nigel Wiltshire about the Reward Life Cycle, which centers around the compensation that is given to an employee, and how it is paid and processed. Compensation, in this case, is not restricted to the salary that is paid to an employee but includes bonuses, stocks, medical insurance, and other benefits. Oracle MyLearn: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Lois: Hi there! Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I'm Lois Houston, Director of Product Innovation and Go to Market Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor. Nikita: Hi everyone. Last week, we discussed the Employee Life Cycle, the key players involved, and the tasks that come under it. 00:47 Lois: Right, Niki. And if you missed any of the earlier episodes in this season, you'll want to catch up so you can get a full picture of the HCM business processes. Today, we're going to discuss the next HCM business process life cycle, the Reward Life Cycle, with our Cloud Delivery Lead Nigel Wiltshire. Hi Nigel, welcome back. Are you tired of talking to us yet? 01:09 Nigel: Hi Lois. Hi Niki. Haha! No, I'm never tired of discussing this topic. Nikita: So Nigel, let me start by asking the question of the day, what is the Reward Life Cycle? Nigel: Niki, if I was asked to describe the Reward Life Cycle in as few words as possible, it would be something along the lines of "The Employee's Total Worth." 01:26 Lois: OK. That's definitely a few words. What do you mean by that? Nigel: This life cycle centres on the compensation that is given to employees and how that compensation is processed and paid. Now, when I say compensation, I'm not just talking about the salary that is given to them for the job they do. This also includes other compensation such as bonuses, stock, and other incentives. 01:47 Nigel: It also encompasses any benefits that are afforded to the employee, which are often funded by the employer, such as Medical Insurance, Dental Insurance, Vacation, Income Protection, and many more. Like I was saying, these benefits are often paid for by the employer and are generally referred to as "Benefits in Kind," which, depending on country-specific legislation, are often taxable. Some benefits come with various levels of cover that the employee can opt into, such as to cover their spouse or family. These additional options often come with a requirement for the employee to contribute. This is why I referred to it as "The Employee's Total Worth." As an example, let's say an employee's base salary is US$60,000 per year. On top of this, they also receive bonuses that equate to US$20,000 per year, and have a benefits package paid for by the employer that is worth US$8000 per year. In essence, the employee's worth comes out at a whopping US$88,000 each and every year. 02:44 Nikita: OK, so bringing the conversation back to HR business processes, Nigel, how many processes make up the Reward Life Cycle? Nigel: There are four: Benefits to Payroll, Time Collection to Payroll, Reward Planning to Targeted Compensation, and Payroll to Payment. Lois: So, can you tell us a little more about each of these? 03:05 Nigel: Sure, Lois. The "Benefits to Payroll" process allows organizations to configure and manage benefit programs. As I was saying earlier, these could include Medical and Dental Insurance, Life and Income Insurance, Savings Schemes, and even the ability to purchase additional vacation time, over the core entitlement. A lot of these are country specific, but in general, they are options that an organization provides, and depending on the level of cover either bear the total cost, or require the employee to contribute to the costs. In the case where the employee needs to make contributions, these deductions are processed by payroll. The second process, "Time Collection to Payroll." This is the mechanism used to report the time that an employee has spent on various work-related activities. This could be regular time, overtime, time spent on specific projects, and even time spent for an absence from work, all of which could affect the amount of pay an employee receives. This again has to be passed to payroll for processing and payment or adjustment. Some organizations don't operate this way as their employees get a regular salary regardless of what they do during their working day, and sometimes this will depend on the legislation. Some employees may need to submit a time card in order to be paid, others may not and will just get paid their periodic pay regardless of how they spend their time. 04:22 Nigel: Now I want to talk a little about "Reward Planning to Targeted Compensation." If everyone got paid the same, regardless of the job they did or length of service and so on, life would be very simple for the people who have to work out how much to pay an employee. Alas, this is never going to be the case, and rightly so. That's why there has to be mechanisms in place to establish what a job and or/person is worth, which can be influenced by numerous factors. 04:46 Nikita: And what sort of factors are we talking about, Nigel? Nigel: A technical job would typically pay more than a non-technical job, managerial jobs would typically attract a higher salary than an individual contributor job, and so on. But it is very rarely as cut and dried as that because you could also take years of service and experience into account. This process takes into consideration that compensation is not just about Base Salary. It could encompass incentives, such as Bonus and Commission, which are awarded to individuals for various reasons, such the job they do or where they work, or even how the company is performing. 05:19 Nigel: And the final process is "Payroll to Payment." Essentially, this is the bit where we actually process all the compensation contributors, such as Salary, Benefits, Absences, and Time Cards, and work out the employee's periodic net pay, which we subsequently send to their bank as a direct deposit or issue a cheque. Now, that all sounds nice and simple, but actually, when using a payroll system, such as the one we have in the Oracle Cloud, there are a lot of configurations that have to occur for that process to do its thing and get the right amount to the right person. We're talking about Bank Accounts, Elements, Payroll Definitions, Payment Methods, Costing Structures, Balance Definitions, and many more. Then, of course, somebody has to push the button to start the process, cross their fingers that everything is configured as it should be, and breathe a sigh of relief when everything slots into place and every employee gets paid as expected. 06:16 The Oracle University Learning Community is a great place for you to collaborate and learn with experts, peers, and practitioners. Grow your skills, inspire innovation, and celebrate your successes. The more you participate, the more recognition you can earn. All of your activities, from liking a post to answering questions and sharing with others, will help you earn badges and ranks, and be recognised within the community. If you are already an Oracle MyLearn user, go to MyLearn to join the community. You will need to log in first. If you have not yet accessed Oracle MyLearn, visit mylearn.oracle.com and create an account to get started. 06:55 Nikita: Welcome back. Nigel, since you brought up Base Salary, let's talk about it a little more. How do employers determine how much someone gets paid? Nigel: Interesting question, Niki. There are many factors that influence the amount of salary that employees are paid. For some organisations, such as those tied to government and public service, salaries are typically laid down through official channels and there is very little to no scope for salary negotiations, and this is because the money is coming from public funds, such as taxes. So there has to be a strict structure for compensation levels and amounts. Having said that, there are some jobs within the government sector that do advertise salary ranges, so there is little wriggle room for negotiations based on the applicant's experience and knowledge. 07:40 Nigel: For a lot of privately-owned organisations, it tends to be more fluid and salary negotiations are more common. This is why you will often see jobs advertised with the phrase "Salary Negotiable" rather than the actual salary, or you will see the salary range on offer being displayed. Of course, the employer has an idea about the salary they would like to offer based on the job being advertised, and the applicant will already have an idea about what amount they would like, based on previous jobs, or research they have conducted. It's just a matter of how well the applicant can convince the company about how much they are worth. Of course, if the employee ends up asking for a ridiculous amount, the company will just walk away, so it would not be in the interest of the applicant to go into the conversation with an unrealistic expectation. 08:23 Lois: Nigel, I know some private organizations have a more structured approach to salary levels for each job. How do they set this up? Nigel: You're absolutely right, Lois. Some organizations use an evaluation system that allows them to score jobs and positions based on a series of criteria, such as Know How, Accountability, and Problem Solving. The overall score is then used to help set a salary, or salary range for the job. For instance, you would expect a managerial job to have a higher score for criteria such as Accountability than those jobs performed by employees within their team. However, it is not always so clear-cut. Let's say, for instance, that you have an individual contributor level job that is very technical. The scores for Know How and Problem Solving could be way higher than the manager job, so the overall score could end up being higher than the manager job, therefore attracting a higher salary. 09:14 Lois: Interesting. Speaking of salary, let's move on to the processing of payrolls. We know that different countries have different rules when it comes to the processing of many payroll items, like taxes, social security, and the absence adjustments. How do systems like Oracle Fusion Cloud deal with this, especially for global organizations? Nigel: This is achieved in just three words - Legislative Data Groups. And before you ask, let me expand on that. Lois: Yes, please! 09:41 Nigel: As you quite rightly pointed out, different countries (or legislations) calculate and process certain things differently. And the one that stands out the most is taxes. For example, in the US, there are different layers of taxation for salaries, the main ones being Federal and State. Compare that to somewhere like the UK, which only taxes salaries at one level, and we don't have different rules for the various counties within the UK. In addition to that, the amount the employee is taxed is usually tied to the level of income, so the more you are paid, the higher the tax rate. And, of course, these bandings are not the same across legislations. 10:16 Nigel: Now due to how complex the rules for these levies tend to be, and how frequently the rules can change, Oracle takes care of the configurations for you, through the quarterly product releases, and provides a way of accessing the right rules for the right legislation. We call them Legislative Data Groups. Having pre-set legislative rules makes it easy for organizations to configure many payroll items within the Oracle Cloud. By simply associating the appropriate Legislative Data Group with the relevant parts of the business, the system will automatically know how to process such things as taxes and social security for any employee who is employed in each part of the business. 10:54 Nikita: Sticking with Payroll for a bit, I know that in some organizations, employees are paid for the work they complete, including overtime, only after they have reported that information. What mechanisms do organizations typically have to allow employees to submit this information? Nigel: Funnily enough, although ultimately the payments are processed and paid through the payroll mechanisms, this question actually relates to time and labor. Some organizations will use time cards for the purpose of reporting time. This relates to the "Time Collection to Payroll" part of the HR business process. These days, with most systems, the onus is on the employee to report time, which then goes to their manager for approval, and ultimately ends up with Payroll for processing. 11:36 Lois: So, will employees have to remember to go into the system and complete or submit a time card each week? Nigel: It depends. For some organizations, yes the employee would need to do that, but for others, the system can be configured to retrieve the information from an external source, such as a card reader, a biometric scanner, or even a kiosk at the reception (or canteen) where employees can clock in and clock out using buttons, having first been identified using facial recognition. We are in the 21st century after all and technology has come a long way in the last few decades. 12:06 Nikita: Well, I think we've covered everything under the Reward Life Cycle. Thank you for joining us today, Nigel. We're learning so much from you. Nigel: Happy to be here with you guys. Lois: Don't forget to catch up on this season's previous episodes, including an overview of the entire business process training program offered by Oracle University and the prior HCM life cycles Nigel has shared with us. For more information about the HCM business processes, you can also visit mylearn.oracle.com. Next week, we'll cover the final HCM life cycle - Talent. Until then, this is Lois Houston… Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off! 12:45 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

26 Sep 202313min

During an employee's tenure in an organization, they may experience different situations or have varying demands—they may get promoted, apply for leave, or get transferred to another team, for instance. Clearly, hiring employees is just the tip of the iceberg. Managing them requires a lot more work. In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Cloud Delivery Lead Nigel Wiltshire, take a closer look at the Employee Life Cycle, which pertains to how employee information, separation, and absence are dealt with. Oracle MyLearn: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Lois: Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I'm Lois Houston, Director of Product Innovation and Go to Market Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor. Nikita: Hi everyone! Last week, we spoke about the Applicant Life Cycle, which is the first in the overall HCM business process life cycle, with our Cloud Delivery Lead Nigel Wiltshire. Nigel joins us once again today to talk about the second life cycle, the Employee. 00:54 Lois: Right. And since we're walking through HCM business processes, you might want to go back and listen to the last few episodes so you can get an idea of the big picture and the life cycles we've already discussed. Nigel, we're so glad you're back with us again this week. Thanks for agreeing to be our guide through this series. You know, I've never really thought about there being a "life cycle" for an employee. I'm an employee, but I just never really considered myself as part of a cycle. Can you tell us a little bit about how that's defined? 01:23 Nigel: Hi, and thank you once again for inviting me to participate. To put it very simply, the Employee Life Cycle continues from where the Applicant Life Cycle ends, and encompasses all the tasks that are performed against the employee from start to finish. Nikita: Now when you say, "start to finish," what exactly do you mean by that? Nigel: Well, the very last act performed in relation to an applicant is for Recruiting to pass the baton over to Human Resources, so that HR can officially create an employee record, and take care of all the needs and tasks associated with an employee. This will typically range from transferring or accepting all the relevant data from their applicant record, expanding that to include their Work Relationship, and managing their career changes. 02:04 Nikita: Sorry to interrupt, Nigel, but what is a "Work Relationship"? Nigel: For each employee, we need to create and maintain a relationship with the business. This serves a couple of purposes. Firstly, it establishes which legal entity they belong to. A legal entity is the governing body that takes care of all the legislative rules and laws that affect the employee, and from the HR perspective, it is going to control such things as employment laws, working time directives, absence entitlements, and taxation, to list just a few. Secondly, we need to provide the employee with an assignment. This will indicate what their remit is within the organization and will record such details as their Job, Department, Location, Work Hours, Grade, Salary, and much more. Many smaller organizations will operate in a single legal entity, so managing this is not a huge piece of the puzzle, but for larger organizations, especially those that operate globally, this is a major aspect of the company setup. 03:00 Lois: I hadn't really considered all of that before. Thanks for going through that, Nigel. So, now we have the employee on board. What processes does the Employee Life Cycle encompass? Nigel: Unlike the Applicant Life Cycle that we spoke about last week, which has only one process under it, there are three main processes in the Employee Life Cycle: Hire to Retire, Absence to Productivity, and Employee Separation to Workforce Analysis. 03:26 Nigel: Hire to Retire is the process that encompasses an employee's whole career in an organization, from when they are hired to when they decide to leave. Of course, within that time frame there are many changes that occur, such as promotions, transfers, and general assignment changes, like a change in work hours, salary, line manager, terminations, to name just a few. A major aspect of this is the need to manage and maintain the organization structure so that reporting lines can be established, and for many larger organizations, this is a regular occurrence and therefore a major job for someone. 04:00 Nikita: OK, so that's Hire to Retire. What's Absence to Productivity? Nigel: Absence to Productivity is the process where employees take time away from work, which would mostly be due to vacation or personal time off, but would also incorporate other types of absence such as sickness, maternity, paternity, and jury service, again to name just a few. This process provides the framework and mechanism to record such absences and to monitor entitlements. It also goes as far as analysing the impact on the business and its operational effectiveness. Of course, we can't always predict when somebody is going to be absent from work, but we can monitor trends and plan for an eventuality. Another aspect of this process comes from the "human" angle. For anybody that has been absent for a while due to illness, injury, or stress, there is a duty of care to help them return to work. This may involve finding the employee a different role within the organization, or simply to gradually introduce the employee back to work, maybe on a part time basis for a couple of weeks. 04:59 Nigel: The third and final process in the Employee Life Cycle is Employee Separation to Workforce Analysis. Now, although employee terminations are very much part of the "Hire to Retire" process, there is a much more robust and complex process that is usually put into place. So, you shouldn't really think of it as simply the employee leaving and being replaced. Lois: What do you mean by that, Nigel? 05:20 Nigel: Lois, the manner in which the employee leaves is quite important. For instance, many organizations issue their employees with equipment, such as laptops and mobile phones, especially with a lot of employees working from home. So, we need a process that makes it quite clear as to how and when that will be returned. Lois: They could also have security badges and keys that need to be returned. Nigel: Exactly. And to deal with this, many organizations adopt an off-boarding process, which on the face of it is almost the reverse of the onboarding process the employee may well have been through. 05:49 Nikita: OK, that makes sense. And what happens after the employee leaves? Nigel: What happens? We are left with a gap in the workforce, and this vacancy may need to be filled. So, we would initiate a recruitment campaign and the Applicant Life Cycle would be triggered. Now, before a decision is made, many organizations go through a period of analysis to establish whether the employee does in fact need to be replaced. In some cases, it would be a "no brainer" based on the job the employee was performing, but in others it may be that a simple reorganization would fill the gap and negate the need to hire a new employee. So, like I said, it's not often a simple case of employee leaves, employee gets replaced. 06:31 Have an idea for a new course or learning opportunity? We'd love to hear it! Visit the Oracle University Learning Community and share your thoughts with us. Your suggestion could find a place in future development projects. If you are already an Oracle MyLearn user, go to MyLearn to join the community. You will need to log in first. If you have not yet accessed Oracle MyLearn, visit mylearn.oracle.com and create an account to get started. 07:00 Nikita: Welcome back. Nigel, you'd mentioned that the hiring of an employee in included in the "Hire to Retire" process. But why would hiring an employee be part of this life cycle? Surely, that's part of the Applicant Life Cycle, right? Nigel: Yeah, I can see how that could be confusing. It really boils down to an organization's processes. A lot of larger organizations will have a dedicated recruitment team who will most likely use an applicant tracking system to manage their recruitment campaigns. And as I was saying earlier, the final act would be to hand over the successful application to the HR team, who will take it from there. In that regard, the "onboarding" of the employee, which could be seen as part of the Applicant Life Cycle, is often set and monitored by the HR team. What we also have to consider is that smaller organizations may not have the luxury of having a recruitment team, nor have the resources at their disposal, such as an applicant tracking system. Therefore, the whole process of recruiting is swallowed up within the HR team's process. However, the fundamentals will be the same: recruit, onboard employee, manage employment, terminate, etc. 08:04 Lois: Let's move on to some more specifics about an employee record. For instance, some organizations recognize and measure employee seniority. Why do employers do this and how does it affect the employee? Nigel: Great question, Lois. Measuring seniority is a way for the employer to keep track of how long an employee has been in a given situation. This mostly involves measuring the number of years and months from when the employee is hired. The reason why they do this can be varied, but a couple of examples of this would be things like bonuses and vacation, i.e., the amount that you are entitled to could depend on how long you have been with the organization. Some organizations also like to track when the employee started so that they can recognize loyalty and provide the employee with a thank you gift at certain increments such as 5, 10, 25 years. 08:50 Nikita: So, other than measuring seniority from the employee's start date, are there any other times an organization would start counting? Nigel: Absolutely. Some organizations like to know how long somebody has been in a particular role. For example, an employee may have been at the company for 25 years (so that would be one continuous seniority period), and within that time they may have moved jobs two or three times, therefore, additional periods of seniority would be measured for each role performed. 09:17 Nigel: In addition to that, some organizations recognize previous service as part of the employee's seniority. For example, let's say the employee has recently joined the organization. You would think that their seniority would be quite low, but they also served 10 years with the organization previously, which is also being taken into account. Now the impact could be that their entitlements, bonuses, and so on are set at the level of a 10-year employee, instead of an employee who has literally just joined the organization. 09:44 Lois: So, bridging their service to include previous employment there. That makes sense. OK, I'd like to explore one of the other processes you mentioned a little further – Employee Separation to Workforce Analysis. In particular, the Workforce Analysis part. Can you tell us what this is and why it's so important? Nigel: For an organization to be effective, we need to protect its operational capabilities. This can come in many forms, including equipment maintenance, fire and emergency procedures, and also staffing levels. No point having equipment if there's nobody to operate it, right? 10:19 Nigel: So, workforce analysis is a process that will allow the organization to establish the optimal numbers to run each part of the business effectively and efficiently. It also goes some way to work out how the organization should be structured so that they can deploy employees for optimal productivity. The reason why this process is associated with Employee Separation, is to allow for the analysis of "why" people are leaving. Of course, there will be a certain amount of attrition based on reasons like retirement and redundancies, which, in the main, can be predicted, but what about the ad hoc leavers? It's a good idea to identify why they are leaving as it may highlight certain flaws in the organization, its processes, or even its management structure, which can be addressed and hopefully, plugged. A lot of organizations achieve this by conducting exit interviews as part of the employee's off-boarding process. 11:08 Nigel: This process can also be closely linked to the Absence processes so that we can monitor why people are absent. Now, I'm not talking about absences due to entitlement, such as vacation, or absences that can't be predicted, such as jury service or bereavement. I'm mostly referring to absences due to sickness. Again, it's not always possible to predict these, but it's possible to spot trends, and cater to these accordingly. For instance, most people tend to catch a cold and flu during the winter months. Therefore, if this is the case with your organization, steps can be taken to ensure the company remains operational, which may involve being prepared to hire temporary staff. It is also possible to see from the data, how the virus is spreading across the organization and to put measures in place, such as the provision of hand sanitizer. 11:52 Nikita: On the face of it, it sounds like there are a ton of tasks that need to be performed just to keep an employee's record up to date. Surely this is not all done by one person. Nigel: I guess that would depend on the size of the organization and the complexity of the processes they adopt, but generally, there are three main roles that play their part in the Employee Life Cycle. First and foremost, we have the HR Specialist. This person is an expert who has the skills, knowledge, and experience to maintain employee records and ensure that all necessary processes are launched, monitored, and run as smoothly as possible. They are the intermediary between the employee and the business, and ensure everybody is happy. 12:29 Lois: So they're a generalist who does everything? Nigel: There are some processes that require a little more specialized knowledge and skills, so it is not uncommon to have specific HR Specialists looking after specific parts of the employee record. A classic example of this is the Payroll Administrator whose knowledge of payroll is very specialized. 12:48 Nigel: Then there's the employee's Line Manager. Over the last couple of decades, line managers have increasingly become more involved with the management and maintenance of employee records. Of course, they would not have the knowledge and years of experience that an HR Specialist would have, but would perform simple tasks such as approving an employee vacation request or interviewing potential employees. Over the years, as more and more people become savvy with technology, we have seen this role become more and more involved, to the point where some of the HR tasks are now the responsibility of the line manager, such as initiating promotions, transfers, terminations, salary changes, and many more. This frees up a lot of the HR Specialist's time to concentrate on more specialized tasks. 13:31 Nigel: And last but certainly not least, the Employee themselves take some responsibility. At the end of the day, HR mostly centers around employee data. Therefore, very much like the line manager role, the employee increasingly is required to take responsibility for that data. Therefore, it is not uncommon these days for employees to enter and update certain data, such as change of address, addition of emergency contacts, absence requests and withdrawals, and many more tasks, which, again, frees up the HR Specialist's time for more complex tasks. 14:00 Lois: Like I inferred at the beginning, there's certainly a lot more to this life cycle than it appears on the surface. We just show up to do our work, but there's a lot happening behind the scenes to track and manage our employment. We're not even aware of this sometimes. Nigel: Exactly, Lois. 14:16 Nikita: Thank you, Nigel, for your insights into the Employee Life Cycle. To learn more about HCM business processes, visit mylearn.oracle.com. Lois: Yes, and you should definitely consider catching up on the previous episodes of this season so you'll get the full picture of the business processes for HCM. And don't forget to join us again next week, where we will be introducing the Reward Life Cycle. So much good stuff. Until then, this is Lois Houston… Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off! 14:45 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

19 Sep 202315min