Overview of Oracle Projects

This chapter provides a brief overview of the Oracle Projects group of applications, including Oracle Project Costing, Oracle Project Billing, Oracle Project Resource Management, Oracle Project Management, Oracle Project Collaboration, Oracle Daily Business Intelligence for Projects, and Oracle Project Portfolio Analysis.

This chapter covers the following topics:

Overview of Oracle Projects

Overview of Oracle Projects

The applications that make up the Oracle Projects suite work together to provide a complete enterprise project management solution. They give you a flexible approach to defining and managing your projects and the people, schedules, deliverables, and finances associated with them.

At the aggregate level, enterprise project management involves the collection and coordination of corporate resources (such as people, money, and hard assets) to accomplish a predefined scope of work in a scheduled time frame and budget. Some enterprises only have projects that are internal in nature, such as projects that track time and costs related to marketing campaigns or infrastructure build-out programs for capital development. Alternatively, many enterprises are entirely project oriented: they derive their entire income stream from projects that provide client services. Oracle Projects includes billing functionality that enables these enterprises to generate project invoices of varying complexity for their clients.

The Oracle Projects application suite includes a variety of features central to the requirements of competent and efficient enterprise project management. It enables project managers to effectively oversee their projects, assess progress against predetermined milestones and budgets, staff their projects with appropriate talent, and quickly generate a wide variety of reports. It also helps virtual and globally distributed project teams to efficiently communicate, collaborate, and complete tasks.

Oracle Projects also gives corporate executives the ability to quickly see how projects are performing across the enterprise. It enables them to drill down to areas of geographical interest or product specialization to review projects that are potential problems or are in immediate need of additional attention.

Oracle Projects applications are designed to integrate with many other Oracle application suites (including Oracle HRMS, Oracle Financials, and Oracle Supply Chain applications) to provide an efficient information flow, facilitate a global sharing of resources, and provide robust intercompany accounting.

Oracle Projects consists of the following products:

Oracle Project Costing
Oracle Project Billing
Oracle Project Resource Management
Oracle Project Management
Oracle Project Collaboration
Oracle Daily Business Intelligence for Projects
Oracle Project Portfolio Analysis

The following sections provide detail information on each of these products.

Oracle Project Costing

Oracle Project Costing provides an integrated cost management solution for all projects and activities within an enterprise. With Project Costing you can manage costs across currency and organizational boundaries. Project Costing also acts as a central repository of project plans and transactions, processes project costs, and creates corresponding accounting entries to satisfy corporate finance requirements.

Project Costing gives operations managers and finance managers complete and timely access to project performance information and the resulting accounting impacts thereof. It also empowers line managers with timely, detailed cost information to monitor project performance in a productivity-enhancing format, and enables financial managers to track the total cost of running the business.

The key features of Oracle Project Costing are:

Versatile template-driven project definition
Multiple currency financial plan and budget creation
Diverse accrual and expenditure capture
Robust expenditure control, collection, and adjustment functionality, integrated with other Oracle applications
Powerful burdening functionality
Rule-based general ledger account functionality
Comprehensive reporting functionality with drilldown capability
Capable asset creation and CIP cost collection

Oracle Project Costing can be extended with Oracle Project Billing (see below) and is part of the Oracle Enterprise Project Management Suite, an integrated suite of internet applications designed to transform businesses to e-businesses.

For more information about Oracle Project Costing, see the Oracle Project Costing User Guide.

Oracle Project Billing

Oracle Project Billing enables enterprises to simplify customer invoicing, streamline corporate cash flow, and measure the profitability of contract projects. Using configurable accounting rules, Oracle Project Billing extends Oracle Project Costing functionality by processing actual costs, creating corresponding accounting entries for revenue accrual to satisfy corporate finance requirements, and creating customer invoices for project work. With Project Billing, project managers can review project invoices online and analyze project profitability, and accounting managers can see the corporate impact of project work.

The key features of Oracle Project Billing are:

Robust contract project creation functionality, enabling distinction between project types, revenue accrual and invoice methods, billing cycles, and contacts
Flexible agreements in multiple currencies with either hard or soft limits
Budgeting for revenue in multiple currencies, separately from cost
Organization-level and project-specific billing rate schedules and overrides
Versatile billing retention and tax functionality
Flexible revenue accrual calculation
Optional capability to create invoices using invoice methods differently from the way revenue is accrued
Optional capability, using Date-Effective Funds Consumption, to have revenue and invoice generation use the same logic to determine what funding to consume
Optional capability to apply receipts to an agreement as advance amounts, and reduce the balance on the advance when expenditure or event transactions are invoiced
Several powerful invoice management features, including holds, currency selection, and review/approve/release functionality
Robust adjustment functionality, including billable status change, selective recalculation and write-off management
Reports for unbilled receivables and unearned revenue
Integration between Oracle Project Billing and other Oracle applications

For more information about Oracle Project Billing, see the Oracle Project Billing User Guide.

Oracle Project Resource Management

Oracle Project Resource Management manages human resource deployment and capacity for project work. It enables efficient coordination of project resource needs, profitability, and organization utilization through the location and deployment of qualified resources to projects across the enterprise. Oracle Project Resource Management empowers key project stakeholders--such as project managers, resource managers, and staffing managers--to make better use of their single most critical asset: their people.

The key features of Oracle Project Resource Management are:

Comprehensive, shared resource repository with Oracle HRMS
Shared schedules and availability
Concise requirements definition
Targeted searches
Automated approval processing
Self-service staffing functions grouped by role
Global resource deployment
Actual and scheduled utilization
Project financial forecasts
Capture time and expense
Integration with the Oracle Projects Foundation

Oracle Project Resource Management enables enterprises to improve customer and employee satisfaction, maximize resource utilization and profitability, and increase competitive advantage.

For more information about Oracle Project Resource Management, see the Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide.

Oracle Project Management

Successful project management requires continuous decision-making in order to meet expected delivery and financial targets. Oracle Project Management gives project managers the visibility and control they need to deliver projects successfully and operate efficiently. It presents project managers with a comprehensive integration of the major elements of project management: plans, progress, issues, changes, documents, effort and cost, financial information, performance, and status reports.

With Oracle Project Management, project managers can proactively plan and forecast their projects, manage change and performance in real-time, focus on desired project outcomes rather than data management, and make better decisions with less effort.

Key features of Oracle Project Management are:

Integrated project planning and tracking
Issue and change management
Budget and forecast oversight
Real-time project performance management through visual status indicators for key performance areas and individual measures
Configurable project performance reporting packs periodically generated and distributed to recipients by e-mail
Robust project security and access
Intuitive and easily personalizable user interface
Integration with everyday Project Management tools

Oracle Project Management eliminates silos of information, enabling project managers to oversee workplans, resource assignments, financial forecasts, project accounting, communications to stakeholders, and collaborative execution of project work internal and external to the organization.

Project managers can periodically receive status information on project performance through e-mail notifications. The notification includes exceptions in performance enabling quick corrective action and the successful completion of the project.

In addition, project managers can view and archive for future reference, summary information and details on project performance without accessing the application. A reporting pack of such reports can be configured for content, layout, and output format. You can also have the reporting pack scheduled for generation and distribution by e-mail to recipients by named roles.

For more information about Oracle Project Management, see the Oracle Project Management User Guide.

Oracle Project Collaboration

Oracle Project Collaboration assists members of global or virtual project teams in the ongoing effort to review and complete project tasks by enabling them to collaborate and communicate with ease. Project teams can also include people from inside and outside an enterprise -- each requiring personalized access to project information. Oracle's integrated, collaborative system enables all relevant project stakeholders to share information, anytime and anywhere. With complete visibility to assigned tasks, issues, and deliverables, team members work together more efficiently, make more effective decisions, and deliver superior results faster.

Key features of Oracle Project Collaboration are:

Access to structured workspaces such as the Team Member Home page
Collaborate toward issue and change resolution by sharing information and assigning actions to appropriate people
Documentation of progress against assigned work
Management of documents and deliverables
Secure and intuitive user interface

Oracle Project Collaboration enables team members to leverage the information entered by project managers through Oracle Project Management.

For more information about Oracle Project Collaboration, see the Oracle Project Management User Guide.

Oracle Daily Business Intelligence for Projects

Oracle Daily Business Intelligence for Projects delivers aggregate and detail information about the projects in an enterprise directly to the people who need it. Executive managers can use Oracle Daily Business Intelligence for Projects to review information summaries in both graphic and tabular formats and drill down to specific projects and tasks as necessary.

Oracle Daily Business Intelligence for Projects is a comprehensive reporting solution that provides cross-project visibility to opportunity bookings, resource utilization, and profitability and activity analysis. Utilizing secure, role-based portals, it provides daily summaries of key metrics including revenue, cost, margin, bookings, backlog, and utilization.

Key features of Oracle Daily Business Intelligence for Projects are:

Simple setup and out-of-the-box reporting
Project profitability reporting through portal pages
Reporting of key performance indicators across the business cycle
HTML-based reports that display summary and trend information, and provide drill-down to detail information
Data access secured by organization and operating unit
Cross-project reporting in different reporting dimensions
Reporting for multiple calendar types -- enterprise, fiscal, and project
Display of information by year, quarter, month, and week periods
Comparison of current actual amounts to prior year, prior period, and budgets
Reporting by enterprise and functional currency

Oracle Daily Business Intelligence for Projects is a component of Oracle Daily Business Intelligence, a suite of reporting and analysis applications that provide a management-reporting layer for business users of the Oracle E-Business Suite.

For more information about Oracle Daily Business Intelligence for Projects, see the user and implementation guides for Oracle Daily Business Intelligence.

Oracle Project Portfolio Analysis

Oracle Project Portfolio Analysis leverages the rich project management functionality of Oracle Projects to facilitate evaluation and collection of projects in a portfolio. It uses financial criteria, strategic goals, and information on available funds to help you evaluate, prioritize, and select the right projects to match your business objectives. It enables you to standardize project funding decisions based on your business and financial objectives by defining weighted criteria and targets, such as return on investment, market fit, and technology risk

With this application you can leverage detailed and real-time project finances, including costs and revenue. Project Portfolio Analysis provides graphic charts to compare and rank new and continuing projects. You can also create and compare multiple what-if scenarios to understand the impact of changes to projects and finances.

Key features of Oracle Project Portfolio Analysis include:

Creation and management of portfolios made up of projects
Comprehensive portfolio analysis tools
Periodic and ad hoc planning cycles
Dynamic project weighting and scoring based upon defined selection criteria
Ability to create multiple project assessment scenarios for individual portfolios
Full range of portfolio analysis reports, charts, and graphs
Robust project portfolio approval workflow