It’s All About the Tools

It has been many years since I was in grade school, but I still remember one of the most important lessons learned at that very early age. “You can’t complete the work if you don’t bring your tools!” There was one specific teacher that started the school year with that statement and I heard her repeat it several more times when classmates would forget to bring a pencil and notepad for taking notes. It was followed by a small lecture on how an electrician or a plumber are worthless if they show up to work without their tools. The same concept applies to maintaining and getting the most value out of your Oracle SaaS applications. At Apps Associates, we leverage several tools to help our customers get the most value out of their applications. There are three of those tools I will discuss that help all of us be more productive and efficient.

Reports Catalog

Building custom reports can be time consuming and can equate to going over budget on projects due to unknowns in terms of the types and quantity of reports various staffing and leadership levels require. Access to a catalog of already built reports can greatly reduce your investment in reporting. Over several years, Apps Associates has been helping customers develop custom reports. During that process, Apps Associates has built a list of commonly requested reports and dashboards. The Reports Catalog consists of over 170 reports and a handful of dashboards covering Oracle Cloud ERP, SCM, and HCM. Leveraging Apps Associates’ Reports Catalog can decrease costs for implementing Oracle SaaS applications and the ongoing care and feeding of the applications. Reports Catalog is one tool in the Apps Associates toolbox and one that can be leveraged by customers to help increase the value of their investment in Oracle SaaS applications.

Additional details of Reports Catalog can be found in the following data sheet, click here.

WatchDog

A modern car has information panels to report on current status of the vehicle. To dig in deeper to understand what some of the status lights and messages mean, it takes diagnostic tools which car mechanics have. There are diagnostic tools available for the general public to purchase, but it takes experience to use them to their full potential. WatchDog is that diagnostic tool for Oracle SaaS applications. Apps Associates created the tool and carries the deep experience to use it efficiently.

In a recent customer engagement, WatchDog was executed as a very first step in the support process. The output was analyzed and several actionable items discovered including several Sales Orders with processing errors, Auto Invoice errors, unprocessed and errors in Material Transactions, errors in Order Headers and Lines, PO errors, and pricing errors to site a few. All items that impact the bottom line. The analysis went on with several actionable items in General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Fixed Assets, and Cash Management.

Car owners want to get the most out of their cars through proper diagnostics. The same concept applies to your Oracle applications. WatchDog is the tool to help get the most out of your Oracle applications. WatchDog is a tool with versions for Oracle Cloud (ERP, SCM, HCM, System Administration) and Oracle E-Business Suite. Further details can be found in the following data sheet, click here.

Automated Testing

Over the years I have heard many people echo the statement, “If you are not moving forward, you are moving backward.” It is like a boat. If the motor is turned off, you will still be moving in one direction or another and that direction will be dictated by the water movement and not necessarily the direction you really intend to go. One of the great benefits of Oracle SaaS applications is the continual improvements. Every quarter there are fixes and improvements made to the Oracle cloud applications which help businesses stay up to date on the current features and functionality. Keep the motor running through application of the quarterly updates. To ensure the quarterly updates are providing the expected results, testing the updates in a nonproduction POD is critical.

Who wants to spend extra time testing? I don’t know anyone that celebrates the opportunity to do testing. It is the task that continuously gets bumped to the bottom of the list. Bumped down to the point that it can get overlooked. Apps Associates provides a service known as Release Management for handling the Oracle quarterly updates in a proactive manner. One of the best features of Release Management is automated testing. Ease the burden of testing by using a tool to do testing for you and also ease the burden by shortening the testing timeline through automation. Full regression testing of the quarterly updates can be completed in less time and fewer resources. Your team is able to maintain their focus on other high value tasks. In GxP/validated environments, the benefits of automated testing are even greater. GxP/validated environments take additional efforts to complete testing which doubles the effectiveness of automated testing.

Application Managed Services at Apps Associates can help you efficiently test updates through automation. More details can be found in the following data sheet, click here.

In summary, three of the tools Apps Associates has available to help you get the most value out of your investment in Oracle SaaS applications include Reports Catalog, WatchDog, and automated testing. These tools focus on good reporting, complete diagnostics, and efficient testing through automation.

What’s in your toolbox? Increase the value in your investment in Oracle SaaS applications by adding tools from Apps Associates to your toolbox.