Overview

Overview of In-Memory Cost Management

Oracle In-Memory Cost Management provides tools for a full approach to maximizing profit margins by enabling near real-time insight into all aspects of cost management in Discrete and Process Industries. In-Memory Cost Managements extreme performance is possible because of the technical innovations within Oracle engineered systems, including smart scans, flash cache, and high-bandwidth low-latency InfiniBand networking.

Cost accountants, finance, and operations managers can use In-Memory Cost Management to quickly perform what-if simulations on complex cost data and instantly visualize the impact of changes to their business. Specifically optimized for Oracle engineered systems, In-Memory Cost Management provides a suite of solutions to perform complex cost analyses, identify optimal profit margins, and perform cost planning and forecasting so that companies can make decisions in time to capture the highest possible profits, safeguard current margins and identify optimal future margins, streamline financial overview across the supply chain, and increase financial close efficiency.

When analyzing large volumes of data and performing complex queries from multiple tables, performance can be severely degraded using traditional disk based technology. Businesses require faster access to information to make reliable decisions for their organization. In-memory processing enables organizations to have immediate access to simulation results and improve query performance by using multidimensional databases, or data cubes (multidimensional extensions). This enables businesses to adapt to continuously changing market needs to efficiently manage the supply chain. Oracle In-Memory Cost Management uses the following architecture and technical systems:

• Oracle Exadata Database delivers extreme performance for all types of database workloads including Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), Batch, Data Warehousing (DW), and consolidation of mixed workloads.

• Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Business Intelligence delivers fast performance for business intelligence and planning applications.

• Oracle Exalogic consists of software, firmware, and hardware for deploying Oracle applications, Fusion Middleware. Exalogic improves performance without requiring code changes.

• Oracle Hyperion Smart View provides a common interface designed for E-Business Suite Management enabling you to view, import, manipulate, distribute, and share data in Microsoft Office Excel.

  Costing Management and Where-Used engines are run on an Exadata-X3 machine. A Smartview Provider servlet is deployed in Exalytics Weblogic server which interacts with the Cost Management Engine through Java Database Connectivity (JDBC).

• Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) delivers a set of tools for reporting, query and analysis, online analytical processing, and dashboards.

In-Memory Cost Management provides a set of tools leveraging cost impact simulations, profit analysis, and cost comparisons.

• Cost Impact Simulator (CIS)

  Simulations show the impact of product cost variations from bills of materials, routings, resources, overheads, batches, and recipes. The Cost Impact Simulator is used for analyzing the impact on Inventory, WIP, In Transit, Cost of Goods Sold values - and gross profit margins originating from cost changes to items, resources, and overheads. You have the ability to perform comprehensive what-if analysis on complex multi level bills of materials, routings, formulas, batches, and recipes in near real-time. This tool replaces the manual labor intensive process of translating the impact of cost changes into the price list. You can investigate the impact of a cost change by identifying the cost components and supplying its new cost; and the tool provides you with the all the items affected by this change and provides the new costs for these items. See: Overview of Cost Impact Simulations, Oracle In-Memory Cost Management for Discrete Industries User's Guide, and Overview of Process Cost Impact Simulations

• Gross Profit Analyzer (GPA)

  The Gross Profit Analyzer uses Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) technology. There are two methods for invoking the GPA. You can navigate from CIS to analyze the downstream impacts of changes to costs on Cost of Goods Sold and margins (actual, planned, and forecasted). You can also navigate directly to GPA from the Navigator to analyze actual versus simulated COGS and margins. See: Overview of Analyzing Gross Profits

• Cost Comparison Tool

  The comparison tool provides detailed cost elemental comparison and deviations across entities and multiple locations. Cost changes impact product margins and price. You can investigate deviations and take corrective actions to mitigate cost overruns. You can compare cost structures, cost based bills of material, routing costs of finished goods, recipes, and formulas in a side by side view. See: Overview of Cost Comparisons

Edge Deployment for Multiple Instances

In-Memory Cost Management supports multiple Oracle E-Business instances by pulling data from all instances and importing calculations made from the data back into all instances - Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL). Data synchronization from E-Business applications to In-Memory Cost Management is provided by working in the background. You can:

• Extract historical and incremental data (new records created).

• Transform the initial load to the point where the ETL process started.

• Load and propagate the ongoing changes in data in the source EBS instance to a target In-Memory Cost Management instance.

Ongoing transactional data is moved continuously from E-Business applications to the In-Memory Cost Management instance on Exadata. This enables In-Memory Cost Management to always work on current data.

Oracle Data Pump is used for the initial load in transferring the historical data, and providing a server-side infrastructure for fast data and metadata movement between Oracle databases. Data Pump automatically manages multiple parallel streams of unload and load for maximum throughput.

Ongoing data changes are replicated using Oracle Golden Gate for real-time data integration. This application performs transactional change data capture, data replication, transformations, and verification between operational and analytical enterprise systems enabling high-speed, high volume comparison between instances.

A concurrent request program, Write Back Simulation from CMI to EBS, is used to bring back selective simulation data from In-Memory Cost Management to E-Business applications. See:

• Write Back Simulation from CMI to EBS

• Oracle In-Memory Cost Management Installation and Configuration Guide, Note Number 1662342.1 on My Oracle Support (support.oracle.com)