Whats New in Oracle 12.0 i Procurement

3.1. Oracle iProcurement

3.1.1. Overview
Oracle iProcurement is the self-service requisitioning application that controls employee
spending. It is a key component of Oracle Advanced Procurement, the integrated suite
that dramatically cuts all supply management costs.
Release 12 of Oracle iProcurement is focused on three key themes:
• Improved Content Management
• Advancements in Requester Driven Procurement
• User Interface Upgrades
Release 12 significantly improves the content management process with features such as
online catalog authoring, difference summaries for catalog changes, and a new and
improved catalog security model. This release also contains much advancement in
requester driven functionality by allowing requesters to suggest negotiation events when
ordering goods as well as providing tolerance rules to automatically process minor
changes without buyer involvement. Finally, numerous user interface upgrades such as
multiple search results layouts, multiple favorites lists were integrated into iProcurement
to make the ordering process more intuitive and provide more flexibility for the
requesters.

3.1.2. Features

3.1.2.1. Enhanced Catalog Authoring
Release 12 enhances the catalog management process by providing online authoring
capability for iProcurement catalog administrators. Online catalog authoring
complements the existing batch upload process. While batch upload is optimized for
large data upload, the online authoring is optimized for making small and quick updates to catalog content. Increasingly, content management has become a collaborative process between the buying and supplying organizations. Many enterprises now outsource the content authoring responsibilities to suppliers or third party vendors. This creates a need for suppliers to be able to view, create and maintain their content on behalf of the buying organization.
Through Release 12 of Oracle iSupplier Portal, suppliers can now author their own
content either via file upload or online. Self-service authoring supports industry standard formats for upload mode including OAG XML, cXML, CIF and text files. Any supplierauthored
content is subject to buyer approval before it is made available to requesters.
For additional details on Supplier Self-service Catalog Authoring, refer to the Oracle
iSupplier Portal Release Content Document. .
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3.1.2.2. Difference Summary for Catalog Changes
Release 12 eases the catalog change management process by providing a Difference
Summary between new catalog content and the last approved version.
When suppliers and/or catalog administrators make changes to catalog data, Release 12
provides a Difference Summary highlighting the changes. This allows users to easily
review and verify their changes prior to submission. Users can sort and drill down on the
summary to view additional information as well as export changes to a spreadsheet to
further manipulate the data. Similarly, buyers can also access the Difference Summary
when reviewing changes submitted from a supplier or catalog administrator. The
summary gives the buyer a clear snapshot into the requested changes, so they can
judiciously accept or reject the changes.

3.1.2.3. Unified Catalog
With Release 12, Oracle iProcurement and Oracle Purchasing now have a single shared
catalog data model. The converged catalog combines the best features of both previous
models, and provides a number of significant capabilities and benefits:
• Catalogs are automatically and perpetually up-to-date and based on real-time data.
The extractor process is no longer required to maintain the catalog. Instead,
approved content is instantly available to iProcurement requesters
• Support for extensible base and category attributes to enhance the product data
catalog. Oracle iProcurement customers can now define base and category attributes
for their specific needs
• Support for price breaks based on quantity, shipping organization and effective date
range

3.1.2.4. Approval, Revision Control and Archive for Catalog Data
Release 12 now provides approval, revision control and archival capability for catalog
data.
Catalog data is now stored in the form of Global Blanket Agreements, allowing users to
leverage Purchasing Approval hierarchy, Revision Control and Archival capabilities for
agreements. Customers can now leverage the purchasing approval hierarchy to configure
catalog approvals to suit their business needs. Following the approval of catalog data, the
document revision version is incremented as needed, and the previous revision of the
agreement is archived.
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3.1.2.5. Content Security
Release 12 expands catalog content security, providing more precise control of what
users can see in the catalog.
Enterprises that manage a large set of goods and services in their procurement system
need control of what content requesters can access—based on their responsibilities,
geographical locations, etc. Release 12 offers a configurable content security model that
introduces the concept of Content Zones to give administrators finer and more flexible
access control. Content Zones are segments of catalog content that administrators can
define based on supplier, supplier site and category. In addition, the administrator can
use inclusionary or exclusionary rules to determine whether certain items should be
included or excluded from a specified Content Zone. For example, an administrator can
define an ‘Industrial Supplies, North America’ Content Zone; this content zone includes
content from supplier ‘Industrial Depot’, supplier site ‘North America’ but excludes
content from category ‘Power Supplies’.
Once the administrator has defined a content zone, he can secure it by assigning it to one
or more operating units. Optionally, the administrator can also determine which
responsibilities in the selected operating units are eligible to access content in this content
zone. The administrator can also define Punchout, Transparent Punchout, and
Informational content zones.
Once the content zone is defined, the administrator can create a store, and assign one or
more content zones to that store. Similarly, the administrator can also assign Smart
Forms to the store to capture non-catalog requests appropriate to that store.

3.1.2.6. Advanced Approval Support
Release 12 of Oracle iProcurement further expands and enhances integration with the
Oracle Approvals Management product. This integration gives enterprises even more
flexibility to configure their business approval processes. Key enhancements include:
3.1.2.6.1. Position Hierarchy based Approvals
Position based hierarchies allow organizations the flexibility to create reporting
structures that remain stable regardless of personnel changes. Enterprises already
using position hierarchies via Oracle Approval Management can immediately
leverage those hierarchies for the requisition approvals process.

3.1.2.6.2. Parallel Approvals
The Parallel Approvals functionality gives enterprises the option to speed up the
approvals process by routing a requisition to multiple approvers simultaneously.
3.1.2.6.3. Support for FYI Notifications
Certain individuals or business roles need to be kept informed of purchases and
decisions, but do not necessarily need to take action against that notification. Release
12 provides new functionality to allow certain individuals or roles to review the
purchases, but do not require any response from the recipient.
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3.1.2.6.4. Graphical Display of Approval Chain
Release 12 provides requesters and approvers with a simple and intuitive graphical
view of the approval chain and requisition status for a given requisition.

3.1.2.7. Enhanced Requester Driven Change Order Management
Release 12 enhances touchless buying by optionally processing non-significant order
changes without requiring change approval.
Existing Oracle iProcurement functionality allows requesters to make changes to the
requisition even after it has been converted into a purchase order. These changes are
conditionally routed through the requester’s approval hierarchy based on tolerance values
setup for each of the changed attributes. However, the change request is always routed to
the buyer for approval.
To better automate this process Release 12 introduces tolerances and options into the
Requester Change Order workflow to determine whether the buyer needs to approve a
given change.
Release 12 also leverages this functionality to automate the processing of supplierinitiated
purchasing changes. The system processes changes that fall within defined
tolerances without buyer approval, and routes change requests that fall outside those
boundaries to the buyer for approval. Optionally, administrators can define tolerances to
indicate when a supplier-initiated change should be routed to the requester instead of the
buyer for approval.

3.1.2.8. Requester Directed Sourcing
Release 12 allows requesters to suggest a sourcing event, when they believe such an
event is needed.
Because the requester is often most familiar with the product or service being ordered, he
should be able to indicate whether a negotiation event is needed. For example, the
requester may be aware that for a large order, the company should be able to negotiate
more favorable prices or terms. With the requester-directed sourcing capability in
Release 12, requesters can indicate their preferences for sourcing a given requisition line.
The buyer can then review the request and proceed with the appropriate sourcing steps.

3.1.2.9. Support for Multiple Favorite Lists
Release 12 of Oracle iProcurement introduces Multiple Favorite Lists.
Users can easily organize items by adding them into separate favorite lists, instead of one
large list. This greatly speeds browsing and ordering process by allowing requesters to
quickly choose items from any one of the saved Favorite Lists.

3.1.2.10. Confirm Receipt Enhancements
Some organizations hold invoice payments until receipts are created for 3-way matched
purchase orders. For these organizations, the timely creation of receipts impacts payment
timeliness and ultimately supplier relationships.
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New in Release 12 are Confirm Receipt Notification Reminders that will be sent to the
requester whenever invoices are matched to purchase orders in Accounts Payable. Upon
receiving the notifications, requesters may:
• Review the order information and any invoices matched to their orders
• Create a receipt for the amount that was invoiced
Release 12 also continues to support Notification Reminders based on the requisition
need-by date, as well as fully or partially receiving goods or services.

3.1.2.11. Multiple Search Result Layouts
Release 12 incorporates the latest usability study feedback into iProcurement, revising
user interface models to improve the shopping experience. In this release, iProcurement
users can choose to display shopping search results in either an updated Paragraph search
result display format or the Grid display format.
The Grid format presents item information in a table to show more information on a page
and allow quick row-to-row comparisons. The refreshed Paragraph format provides
better alignment of item attributes and allows the truncation of long descriptions.
In addition, Release 12 substantially updates the Item Detail and Item Compare screens to
make them easier to read. These combined UI changes help requesters find information
and make purchasing decisions faster, with fewer clicks required to perform key actions.

3.1.2.12. List of Value Enhancements

Release 12 makes List of Value (LOV) functionality easier to use with the addition of
sorting capabilities, more LOV search criteria, and displaying additional information
about list of values.
Requesters use List of Values (LOV) frequently to find the correct approvers, locations,
and suppliers etc. In this release, new LOV functionalities are introduced to allow users
to more easily find the desired values. Key enhancements include:
• Sorting capability - Users can sort on the results returned from the LOVs
• Additional search criteria - Users can search for the values in the LOVs using new
search criteria customized for each LOV
• Additional information displayed - Additional information is displayed wherever
appropriate to provide relevant information

3.1.2.13. Contractor Support in iProcurement
Release 12 allows contractors to use iProcurement in the same manner as employees.
Now contractors can be set up as requesters and/or approvers. Given the appropriate
level of functional security, contractors can now have the ability to perform all the same
functions as the employees in iProcurement.

3.1.2.14. Work Confirmation Support
In large-scale projects, the supplier may periodically request payment as work progresses
and as certain deliverables or milestones are achieved. Oracle iSupplier Portal
streamlines the work certification and payment authorization process. Once the Supplier
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submits an online work confirmation, the request is automatically routed for approval to
those who are qualified to certify the work. The list of approvers can include certain
roles (such as project manager, buyer or engineer) that are familiar with the work
deliverables. To ensure accurate and timely payments, the system can optionally
generate an automatic invoice once the work confirmation is approved.
Internal users within the buying organization can also generate work confirmations. The
requester or project manager can initiate work confirmations within iProcurement, as well
as view and respond to work confirmations that require their approval.
For additional details on Complex Work, please refer to the Oracle Purchasing and Oracle
Services Procurement Release Content Document.
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