In May 2022, DSP, the UK's Leading Oracle Partner acquired Claremont to further expand their Oracle expertise. 
The NT uses Oracle E-Business Suite as its CRM System to manage member transactions. Our Managed Services team reduced the support backlog of incidents, problems, and changes in the NT’s CRM system.
Claremont has provided a solution capable of booking, managing, maintaining and analysing Unite Students’ complete property portfolio, allowing them to significantly differentiate themselves from their competitors.
Stonewater chose DSP to consolidate and migrate their assets to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with an Oracle EBS Cloud Deployment, leading to a significantly reduced TCO.What to expect from an Oracle HCM E-Business Suite upgrade from 12.1 to 12.2
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Many E-Business clients are considering an Oracle E-Business Suite upgrade from 12.1 to 12.2. This is due to premier support expiring in December 2021. EBS 12.2 has several major technical enhancements but little has been said about the functionality. Geoff Pitcher is one of Claremont’s Oracle HCM Functional Consultant and has delved into the functionality of 12.2 to identify what is different in this new module for HCM users.
New HCM Functionality Highlights
- Self Service pages adopt a Cloud style look and feel
- Professional Forms look and feel remain unchanged
- Additional HCM functionality delivered over progressive RUP releases
- Enterprise Command Centres
- Technology changes supporting a significant reduction in system downtime
How Long Does 12.1 Have Left?
From December 2021 Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 will go out of Premier Support, which will end developments on this release. While Release 12.2 has been around since 2013 there are still many customers yet to make the move from Release 12.1.
Some Release 12.1 users have chosen to go down a path of implementing HCM Cloud Applications. A 12.2 upgrade represents a more agile step forward from 12.1. Premier Support has been guaranteed through to 2031, which along with Oracle’s commitment to their continuous innovation program, will continue to receive new and improved functionality with regular releases over the next decade.
What Is Visibly Changing For 12.2 Users?
There are some easily configurable profile options to update the R12.2 Homepage style for users when they login to Oracle E-Business Suite Release R12.2. It is much more welcoming than the old Homepage, has easily configurable ‘Function Icons’, and an ‘Announcement’ section providing site-level updates and effectively mirrors the ‘Cloud’ look and feel.
To understand just how different the interaction is for users, below one can see the advanced changes that R12.2 brings with a. modern look and feel and a more visual interface.
What Additions Will HCM Users Find After A 12.2 Upgrade?
Over the past 6 years, as we have planned and performed upgrade projects with our customers, we have closely monitored each Release Update Pack (RUP) for useful additional functionality. It has been clear to see that over this period the 12.2 HCM modules have gained many more useful new features in this period than 12.1. Oracle has consistently focused on the Oracle Learning Management (OLM) module, with a suite of new features spanning the last few years of RUP updates. Click Here to read about all the latest Release Update Pack (RUP) for Oracle E-Business 12.2.
Oracle Time and Labour (OTL) has similarly received an “Enhanced Retrieval Dashboard” and much improved “Time Entry Upload” mechanism. There are new features across the Core HR and Self-Service HR (SSHR) modules that are widely used by our customers.
The “Analyse and Review Retro Pay Entries using New Interface” suggests a useful new addition for Payroll Teams. This would be functionality to review in greater depth as part of earlier migration cycles, to confirm a requirement and effort to implement as a parallel or subsequent exercise to the upgrade itself.
THE POWER OF ENTERPRISE COMMAND CENTRES
What do Enterprise Command Centres (ECCs) Provide for HCM?
There are now many out of the box dashboards and reports provided with ECC across the Oracle suite of modules, however, HCM has been blessed with just the one at this point, a People Search. This does provide a useful HR report with various analytic and graphic capabilities, however, whilst ECC offers HCM this glimpse of the rich functionality already available in Financials, it begs the question if it is worth it, taking into account the additional hardware requirements. This may be one to watch rather than rush into just now.