Case for Unisource Energy Upgrade - Upgrade the Financial and Supply Chain Modules

Overview

The purpose of this document is to describe the requirements to upgrade the Financial and Supply Chain Modules of the current E-Business system used at Unisource Energy. The types of applications used and the hardware required to implement them are also described here. One of the most important aspects is who will be using these applications and how will these people will benefit with this upgrade. The employees and staff members are the heart of any organization. The company will greatly benefit from this upgrade because the heart will be more efficient and productive.

Application Systems

The main application is Oracle's E-Business Suite system. Currently Unisource Energy has version 11.5.7. This version is no longer supported by Oracle. This needs to be upgraded to version 12.0.6 simply to have the support and resources of Oracle. As well as the support, version 12 has new features that make the customization of the old version obsolete. In fact, much of the customizations done in prior versions are currently part of the core modules of the application.

This upgrade will affect two main business areas: Financial and Supply Chain. Within these two modules are several areas that will benefit greatly from this upgrade. For the Financial modules, the benefits are:

• E-mail approvals of payment registers improves the efficiency of audits. AP will no longer have to send this e-mail daily. Also resolves Audit concerns with the accrual process.

• The preliminary payment register sent to Treasury will minimize the manual intervention in that process.

• Replace recurring templates with Invoice Import Interface or Quick Invoices. This will allow ease in changing invoice amounts as opposed to deleting the recurring template and creating a brand new one.

• Increases SOX controls around journal entries – approval history and supporting work documents attached online.

• Allows Financial Accounting to spend time on more valuable tasks – saves between 8 and 23 hrs/month (96-276 hrs/year).

• Uses new core application programming interfaces (APIs) instead of custom code.

• Reduces custom business areas and views to obtain GL Transaction Detail.

• Helps ensure a more consistent process.

The benefits of upgrading the Supply Chain modules are:

• Eliminate customizations and use MRP out-of-the-box applications.

• Allows more flexible setting of inventory levels (safety stock) and item information for each location.

• Allows in-transit inventory to be tracked