ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE RELEASE VALUE PROPOSITION Release 12.1 Order Management Prepared by E-Business Suite Product Management and Strategy

Last Updated: April 9, 2009

Version: 1.3

Copyright © 2009 Oracle Corporation All Rights Reserved

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 Release Value Proposition ii

Table of Contents

1. Disclaimer________________________________________________________________________ 1

2. Introduction ______________________________________________________________________ 2

2.1. Purpose of Document _________________________________________________________________ 2

3. Order Management Release 12.1 Value Proposition ______________________________________ 3

3.1. Improve Order Management Productivity _______________________________________________ 3

3.2. Improve Customer Experience _________________________________________________________ 3

3.3. Reduce Order Management Costs ______________________________________________________ 4

4. What’s New in Oracle Order Management______________________________________________ 5

4.1. Achieve the Perfect Order _____________________________________________________________ 5 4.1.1. Item Orderability____________________________________________________________________________ 5 4.1.2. Improved Item Substitution____________________________________________________________________ 5 4.1.3. Cascading Changes __________________________________________________________________________ 5

4.2. Improve Customer Experience _________________________________________________________ 6 4.2.1. Customer Acceptance ________________________________________________________________________ 6 4.2.2. Secure Credit Card Support ___________________________________________________________________ 7

4.3. Reduce Order Management Costs ______________________________________________________ 7 4.3.1. Shared Services _____________________________________________________________________________ 7 4.3.2. Improved Workflow Automation _______________________________________________________________ 7 4.3.3. Improved Productivity in Order Creation and Management ___________________________________________ 8

5. What’s New in Oracle Sales Contracts _________________________________________________ 9

5.1. Accelerate Sales Cycle ________________________________________________________________ 9 5.1.1. Faster Review of Contract Deviations from Standards _______________________________________________ 9 5.1.2. Microsoft Word Synchronization _______________________________________________________________ 9 5.1.3. Tailored Web-Store Sales Contract Creation _____________________________________________________ 10

5.2. Drive Contract Compliance___________________________________________________________ 10 5.2.1. Clause Usage Analysis ______________________________________________________________________ 10 5.2.2. Increase Contract Awareness and Usage_________________________________________________________ 10

5.3. Support Centralized Contract Organization _____________________________________________ 11 5.3.1. Global Sales Contracts Administration __________________________________________________________ 11 5.3.2. Improved Sales Contract Administration ________________________________________________________ 11 5.3.3. Improved Sales Contracts Search ______________________________________________________________ 11

6. What’s New in Oracle Configurator __________________________________________________ 12

6.1. Simplified Modeling _________________________________________________________________ 12 6.1.1. Improved Defaulting ________________________________________________________________________ 12 6.1.2. Improved Numeric Functionality ______________________________________________________________ 12 6.1.3. Automatic Addition of Optional Components_____________________________________________________ 13

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 Release Value Proposition iii

6.1.4. Changing a Feature’s Minimum or Maximum_____________________________________________________ 13

6.2. Improved End-user Experience _______________________________________________________ 13 6.2.1. Automatically Finishing Configurations _________________________________________________________ 13 6.2.2. Displaying Allowable Ranges for Numeric Inputs _________________________________________________ 14

7. What’s New in Oracle Advanced Pricing ______________________________________________ 15

7.1. Automate Price Publishing ___________________________________________________________ 15 7.1.1. Price Books _______________________________________________________________________________ 15

7.2. Reduce Pricing Maintenance Costs ____________________________________________________ 15 7.2.1. Customer Party Hierarchy integration with Oracle Trading Community Architecture ______________________ 15 7.2.2. Hierarchical Catalogs from Oracle PIM _________________________________________________________ 16

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 Release Value Proposition Purpose of Document 1

1. Disclaimer

This Release Value Proposition (RVP) describes the key benefits of select product features proposed for the specified release of the Oracle E-Business Suite. This document describes new or changed functionality between E-Business Suite 11i.10 and 12.1. It is intended solely to help you assess the business benefits and value of upgrading to the specified release of the Oracle E-Business Suite.

This document in any form, software or printed matter, contains proprietary information that is the exclusive property of Oracle. Your access to and use of this confidential material is subject to the terms and conditions of your Oracle Software License and Service Agreement, which has been executed and with which you agree to comply. This document and information contained herein may not be disclosed, copied, reproduced or distributed to anyone outside Oracle without prior written consent of Oracle. This document is not part of your license agreement nor can it be incorporated into any contractual agreement with Oracle or its subsidiaries or affiliates.

This document is for informational purposes only and is intended solely to assist you in planning for the implementation and upgrade of the product features described. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described in this document remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

Due to the nature of the product architecture, it may not be possible to safely include all features described in this document without risking significant destabilization of the code.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 Release Value Proposition Purpose of Document 2

2. Introduction

2.1. Purpose of Document

This document describes the value associated with the new features and enhancements that are planned for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 (inclusive of features and enhancement from Release 12). It is a roadmap that is intended to help you assess the business benefits of Release 12.1 and plan your information technology (IT) projects and investments.

The new features and enhancements included in this document are grouped by product. Our goal is to ensure that you leverage technology to its fullest to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your operations. Please note that the final release may not include every feature discussed in this document, and a specific feature may become part of a different application or have a different product name from that cited in this document.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 Release Value Proposition Improve Order Management Productivity 3

3. Order Management Release 12.1 Value Proposition

The order management process is one of the most visible components of your supply chain. Business success depends on the ability to attract and retain customers through continuously improving the customer buying experience. Customers, partners and employees need to be able to select the right products, negotiate the best prices and receive on-time deliveries. Improvements in pricing and perfect order fulfillment can significantly increase profitability. Capturing and fulfilling the perfect order requires guided selling, product configuration, cross and up sells, and orchestrating flawless fulfillment. You can no longer rely on disparate price management, configuration, order entry, contract management and fulfillment systems if you want to achieve global order visibility and world class customer service. Sales Contracts tools support sales representatives and contract administrators quickly authoring best-practice sales contracts that confirm to corporate standards, and automatically drive compliance within the sales process, without the need for expensive integrations or data re-entry. The Oracle Order Management solution ensures that all facets of the customer relationship are addressed in a collaborative, efficient, and accurate manner – a key success factor for customer retention and profitability in today’s business world.

Oracle E-Business Suite Order Management and Price Management Release 12.1 (inclusive of Release 12) are focused on the following key areas:

� Improve order management productivity

� Improve customer experience

� Reduce order management costs

3.1. Improve Order Management Productivity

For many years, companies have focused on lowering their operational costs through business process reengineering and lean enterprise initiatives. Similarly, companies are constantly searching for ways to improve productivity while entering, managing and fulfilling sales orders.

Companies are looking for a single, highly configurable and personable, user interface for all aspects of order management, starting from order entry to order fulfillment. Companies want the ability to automate order processes, relegating some to the background, where they execute but do not take up your time, freeing you to spend more time performing value added activities. Order management has introduced new capabilities and enhanced existing capabilities that dramatically improve order management productivity.

3.2. Improve Customer Experience

Customer expectations are on the rise; they expect no less than perfection. This is driving companies to strive towards an order management solution which can capture and fulfill the order perfectly. This requires getting the right product to the right place at the right time. There is a big payoff for companies that have mastered the "perfect order.” A three percent improvement in perfect order fulfillment translates to a one

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percent increase in profits, while a ten percent increase means an additional 50 cents in earnings per share (Source: AMR).

Not only do customers count on their orders to be perfect, but also they expect the buying experience to be easy, fast, and flexible. Information should be available at their fingertips, such as the latest price book. Ordering complex, configurable products should require a minimum number of clicks. Customers want flexibility on when and how they place and accept sales orders. Business success depends on the ability to attract and retain customers through continuously improving the customer buying experience.

3.3. Reduce Order Management Costs

Maintaining a competitive supply chain requires relentless reduction of costs. Lean initiatives which started in the manufacturing area are now being implemented across the enterprise. All non-value added processes and steps which can be eliminated will not only reduce costs but also increase your company’s agility. For example, pricing maintenance can be reduced by defining pricing rules at as high a level as possible. For example, it is much more efficient to define a discount once which can be applied to an entire product family than to define separate discounts for each and every product. The simplifications in Oracle Configurator, Advanced Pricing and Order Management setup and maintenance will both reduce order management costs and enhance the total ownership experience of these products.

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4. What’s New in Oracle Order Management

Whether customer expectations are met or missed has a serious impact on your customer service, and ultimately customer loyalty. Traditionally, customer service tasks revolve around the management of orders — the convergence of the sales and fulfillment cycles — where the “rubber meets the road”. With so much riding on this key process, your organization must continuously be looking for ways to revolutionize order management.

In Release 12.1, Oracle Order Management product delivers benefits in these focus areas.

� Achieve the perfect order

� Improve customer experience

� Reduce order management costs

4.1. Achieve the Perfect Order

Customer expectations are increasing. So much so, that they expect the “perfect” buying experience. There are many dimensions to getting everything right including delivering the correct product, to the correct place, at the correct time, in the correct condition, in the correct package, in the correct quantity, with the correct documentation, to the correct customer, with a correct invoice.

4.1.1. Item Orderability

Businesses need the ability to define which customers are allowed or disallowed to order which products, and the ability to apply this business logic when a customer sales order is created. For example, repair parts may be sold only to authorized dealers; video games may be sold only to customers who meet age requirements; and controlled drugs may only be sold to customers with a valid unexpired DEA license. In Release 12.1, item orderability ensures that companies are selling the right products to the right customers. Flexible rules can be defined which prohibit certain products and/or product categories from being sold to specific customers and/or customer classes.

4.1.2. Improved Item Substitution

More than ever companies need an agile supply chain that can quickly react to changes in supply or demand. A product’s supply can be unexpectedly disrupted due to quality issues in manufacturing, for example. Companies that can flexibly ship a substitute item will be able to still ship on-time to the customer. For companies aspiring to the “perfect order”, this is a key metric. Post-booking item substitution in Release 12.1 extends item substitution support later in the order cycle and allows planners to manually or the planning engine to automatically recommend an item substitution after a sales order has been booked.

4.1.3. Cascading Changes

On average, customers change sales orders over three times per order. When attributes of the order such as the bill-to or ship-to address, etc. are modified, it is a potentially

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error-prone process to require these attributes to be manually changed on each and every line. In Release 12, attributes can be modified on the sales order header, which are then automatically applied to all of the lines on a sales order. The automation of cascading changes from sales order header to lines will improve the number of orders entered, shipped and invoiced without errors and correspondingly result in more “perfect orders” for your customers.

4.1.3.1. Improved Internal Requisition/Internal Order Change Management As supply chains have become global, companies have consolidated the number of locations where they hold inventory, which has correspondingly increased the volume of inventory transfers within a company’s supply chain network. Internal requisitions are also generated by field service coordinators ordering spare parts within the internal inventory network, R&D organizations obtaining materials needed in the prototyping of new products, warehouse managers manually building shipments of material from one warehouse to another, and employees requesting material which is sourced internally. Since sales orders are changed on average 3.5 times before they are fulfilled, an efficient and automated change management process for requested internal transfers is also important. Automated internal requisition and internal sales order change management in Release 12.1 improves the communication and visibility of changes to internal transfer requests between the requesting and the fulfillment organizations. This reduces the number of stockouts due to a more accurate picture of how much and when the requested material will arrive.

4.1.3.2. Ability to create sales agreements from external/legacy systems

Public APIs for creating sales agreements allow you to create sales agreements from quotes and external sources and helping you achieve the perfect order.

4.2. Improve Customer Experience

Not only do customers count on their orders to be perfect, but they also expect the customer experience to be enjoyable, flexible, and secure. Flexibility includes several options in when and how they communicate their sales orders and acceptances. Companies who focus on improving the customer experience will see increased customer satisfaction and higher customer retention rates.

4.2.1. Customer Acceptance

In some industries and geographies, invoicing and/or revenue recognition for shipped goods are deferred until the customer formally accepts the material. For example, complex equipment may first be installed and tested before the customer accepts the product. Customer acceptance is a pervasive business practice in some regions, such as Asia Pacific. In Release 12, customer acceptance can be captured using a variety of channels, giving customers their choice of how they prefer to communicate their acceptance of a product. The customer may call or email a sales order administrator, enter the acceptance directly using the self-service user interface of the Order Information Portal, or perform the acceptance in another system (such as their own) and the acceptance will be imported. A product shipment may also be implicitly accepted automatically after a certain number of days. The ability to communicate customer acceptance using several channels enhances the customer experience.

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4.2.2. Secure Credit Card Support

Customers are very sensitive that the credit card information they give companies is secure. Misuse of customer’s payment information will severely impact customer satisfaction. The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council has enacted new standards such as requirements to protect cardholder data. In Release 12, credit card security has removed all sensitive payment information from Order Management tables to reduce the risk of payment data theft. By asking the cardholder to provide the Credit Card Verification Value during card-not-present transactions, a merchant can validate that a genuine card is being used during the transaction. Merchants using Credit Card Verification Value can expect to reduce their chargebacks by as much as 26 percent. Customer’s credit card security code such as the Credit Card Verification Value (CVV2) can be captured when creating a quote or sales order in Order Management.

4.3. Reduce Order Management Costs

Maintaining a competitive supply chain requires relentless reduction of costs. In the area of order management this includes lowering setup, maintenance, and order administration costs.

4.3.1. Shared Services

Shared Services provide a proven way for governments and businesses to gain better control of their finance operations and streamline redundant processing and systems. A Shared Services model of operations drives cost savings and increases information quality. Organizations are increasingly consolidating administrative tasks in Shared Service Centers as a way to focus on their core competencies, increase efficiencies, and better manage and access information. Additionally, they can cut operating costs by eliminating redundant processes, leveraging self-service, automating processes, and standardizing common business practices.

Increase the productivity of your shared service personnel with role-based access to various organizations in your corporate structure. In Release 12, Multiple Organization Access Control (MOAC) enables them to process transactions for different operating units without having to change responsibilities. For example, users no longer need to switch responsibilities in order to view, enter or mange customer’s sales orders. You control who can perform which tasks through security profiles that define each user’s access to a specified group of operating units.

4.3.2. Improved Workflow Automation

Order flows can stop due to outages or semantic errors. This can lead to a scramble to finish processing “stuck” orders as period end approaches. Automatic workflow validation in Release 12 validates modified workflows upfront when workflows are assigned to order and line types. In addition, retry activities in error will attempt to restart order and line flows stopped due to system outages or other transient error conditions. This significantly reduces the on-going maintenance cost to ensure that all sales orders are processed by period end.

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4.3.3. Improved Productivity in Order Creation and Management

Enhancements in Release 12.1 reduce time required to enter and maintain sales orders reduce overall order administration costs. The Quick Sales Order form has reached functional parity with the regular sales order form, making the Quick Sales Order form the form of choice for companies manually entering high volumes of sales orders. In addition, the ability to copy sales orders across operating unites reduces the need to manually enter sales orders from scratch. Create multiple copies of an order in one single operation.

Achieve granular control of order processing by the 17 new attributes for hold source criteria. Order workflows automatically restart when a hold is released. A new concurrent request to reprice order lines, based on several parameters, enables you to automate repricing requirements, reducing order management costs.

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5. What’s New in Oracle Sales Contracts

Managing contractual agreements and ensuring all business transactions comply with negotiated terms presents significant challenges, particularly as business relationships become more complex. Contract authoring and approval often remains a manual process without meaningful controls, thus exposing the company to unnecessary risk. Terms negotiations can be lengthy and unpredictable. Key stakeholders are unaware of negotiated terms since contracts are typically stored in disparate systems or filing cabinets throughout the enterprise. The resulting non-compliance may lead to costly disputes and strained customer relationships.

Oracle Sales Contracts supports sales representatives and contract administrators quickly authoring best-practice contracts that confirm to corporate standards, and automatically drive compliance within the sales process, without the need for expensive integrations or data re-entry.

In Release 12.1, Oracle Sales Contracts delivers benefits in these focus areas:

� Accelerate sales cycle

� Drive contract compliance

� Support centralized contract organization

5.1. Accelerate Sales Cycle

While corporate finance and contract administration are tasked with implementing strong corporate governance and revenue recognition policies, sales organizations are under constant pressure to close deals quickly and meet quarterly revenue targets. Companies need to reduce administrative tasks and time-to-contract, while ensuring that sales organizations leverage best practices and adhere to company policies.

5.1.1. Faster Review of Contract Deviations from Standards

Business terms like price, discount, payment terms etc. may be modified during contract negotiations, resulting in deviations from company standard policies. For example, a company may require special approvals for discounts more than 20%, or refund terms beyond thirty days. In Release 12, deviations in negotiated business terms are also reported in addition to clause deviations to ensure proper visibility during review and approvals. Business practice organizations can setup these policy rules and enforce them across the enterprise. The rules can be based on terms negotiated in the quote or sales order, user-defined variables, or responses to other questions asked during the contract authoring process. Contract Standards and Deviations are reported together with other clause deviations in a single report that can be included for approvals. This easy-to-read report which highlights non-standard terms and conditions for approvers can get the deal signed in time while also improving internal controls.

5.1.2. Microsoft Word Synchronization

Oracle Sales Contracts provides all the necessary tools for authoring contracts that conform to your corporate standards. However, it is often convenient to edit the contract

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offline in a word processor to work with the document in a familiar format and easily see changes (redlining). Release 11i10 allowed contract administrators or legal to download the contract into Rich Text Format (“RTF”) for editing and collaboration in Microsoft Word. In Release 12, Oracle Sales Contracts now supports Microsoft Word Synchronization including import of the Word document and the synchronization of the changes with the structured contract terms stored in the system. Modifications to the original contract can be reviewed before changes are accepted. Policy rules for mandatory and protected clauses are enforced during import, and all clauses modified in Word are marked as non-standard in the system. The Microsoft Word synchronization accelerates the contract collaboration process involving the sales representative, contract administrator, legal and customer.

5.1.3. Tailored Web-Store Sales Contract Creation

The checkout process in Oracle iStore can require the user of the web store to review and accept terms and conditions before placing the order. During checkout, it is often necessary to tailor the terms and conditions displayed depending on the items purchased by the user. For example, a web store for purchasing cellular phones and plans may need to display certain penalty and warranty clauses only when a cellular phone is purchased along with the plan. The Contract Expert tool released in Release 11i10 provides the ability to add required clauses to a contract based on the type of item being sold, or other business terms of the sales transaction. In Release 12, Contract Expert has been integrated to Oracle iStore to generate the appropriate terms and conditions based on the customer’s purchases. When the customer reviews terms and conditions during checkout, Contract Expert for iStore will determine the appropriate terms and conditions for the specific order being placed. This will expedite the sales process by avoiding the need to review and/or answer inquiries for terms and conditions that may not be applicable for the particular order.

5.2. Drive Contract Compliance

Contract administrators and legal personnel may author and negotiate a myriad of complex contracts each year. Maintaining corporate control on the terms for each sales contract can be a daunting task. Policy rules ensure the quality of the contract document and reduce the need for expensive legal or administrative oversight during the authoring process.

5.2.1. Clause Usage Analysis

Clause Usage Analysis can be performed by legal or finance to quickly identify all contracts that use certain language that is considered risky to accurately determine risk exposure. Identifying which clauses have been frequently modified may also help in revising them to be compliant with industry standards or enforcing tighter controls to avoid such modifications. Also, inquiries on which clauses have been frequently modified can be used to continually to improve the standard clause library.

5.2.2. Increase Contract Awareness and Usage

By providing your employees with simple, controlled access to specific contracts, you can build contract awareness. This, in turn, helps support employee usage and enforcement of contracts and enables proactive relationship management. For example, sales managers need easy access to all existing contract with a customer to identify new opportunities and negotiate better contracts. In Release 12, sales managers can Access

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Contracts from Oracle Sales using additional bins in the customer 360-degree view that displays all existing contracts with the customer and active sales agreements. Sales managers can also view the details of specific contracts, or access the signed contract document from the central repository.

5.3. Support Centralized Contract Organization

In order to standardize contract processes and effectively monitor and track contracts throughout their lifecycle, most best-in-class companies have created a global contracts organization which operates as a shared service center. Release 12 and 12.1 both support the ability for contract administrators to effectively search and manage all of the sales contracts throughout the enterprise.

5.3.1. Global Sales Contracts Administration

As companies form global contracting organizations, contract administrators increasingly need the ability to access all of the terms libraries and authored sales contracts across the entire enterprise. With Multi-Organization Access Control in Release 12, contract administrators can be granted access to multiple business units/regions within a single applications responsibility. This enables them to search and manage the contract terms library and/or authored contracts across different operating units without switching responsibilities. This enhancement will provide users in global contract organizations significant efficiency gains.

5.3.2. Improved Sales Contract Administration

The Release 12 Sales Contracts Workbench is a configurable portal that provides contract administrators easy access to all their contracts. Administrators can also use the workbench as a launch pad for all contract activities. The workbench provides relevant information in bins that can be personalized by the administrator to improve their productivity. For example, administrators can quickly access all their contracts that are currently in draft or pending approval. Expiring agreements with outstanding customer commitments can also be easily tracked. The workbench also allows administrators to view various business documents like quotes, orders, and sales agreements or open them for editing the contract terms.

5.3.3. Improved Sales Contracts Search

The most basic benefit of Contract Lifecycle Management systems versus the traditional filing cabinet approach to contract management is the improved visibility to all of the enterprise’s contracts. Business and legal users’ ability to effectively search through a contract repository is critical. In Release 12.1, Oracle Sales Contracts leverages Oracle’s Secure Enterprise Search to perform full-text queries in conjunction with structured data queries. Secure Enterprise Search provides flexibility to match user entered keywords to search both structured text, such as contract terms, and unstructured text, such as text contained in attached documents. Additional structured contract attributes may be used to further refine the search, and include: contract number, contract name, supplier/customer/party name, contract status, start date, and end date.

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6. What’s New in Oracle Configurator

Companies continue to look for ways to retain customers through one-to-one selling and improved customer intimacy using configurator solutions. They strive to effectively sell complex solutions in order to shorten sales order cycle times and reduce order errors. Companies also recognize the need to support guided selling – to lead their customers to the right solution. In order to address these ongoing market pressures companies are looking for leading edge constraint technologies that provide their end users with a rich, dynamic user experience while at the same time minimizing the maintenance cost of their configurator deployment and providing the ability to bring new product offerings to market quickly .

In Release 12.1, Oracle Configurator is delivering new constraint technologies in the form of the Fusion Configurator Engine that will deliver benefits in these focus areas:

� Simplified modeling

� Improved end-user experience

6.1. Simplified Modeling

The Fusion Configurator Engine provides a number of key new features that make the process of creation and maintenance of configuration models easier and more intuitive. These features enable model developers to simplify the increasing complexity of product offerings and ensure rapid time to market to leverage first mover advantage.

6.1.1. Improved Defaulting

Rule definition now allows classification of a rule as a default allowing additional flexibility in providing guidance to the end users and more quickly getting them to a complete and valid configuration. In addition to the pre-existing Default Rules model, developers can now also classify Logic Rules, Comparisons, and Statement Rules as being defaults.

Using the Rule Sequences model developers now also have the ability to specify a preferred order for executing default rules making it easier to design and build configuration models. This also provides greater control and predictability in the guidance of the end-user towards a set of desirable configurations. Default rules are enforced when possible and may be overridden by end-user selections, but this additional flexibility allows greater control over the starting configuration offered to the end users. End users are able to complete their configurations more quickly, resulting in valuable time savings.

6.1.2. Improved Numeric Functionality

The new constraint technology of the Fusion Configurator Engine employs the use of domains to identify valid ranges of inputs. For Numeric Rules, the domain of valid inputs are now propagated bi-directionally resulting in the rules being more efficient by using the most information possible as user selections are being made at runtime. As a result of this improved propagation the end-user arrives at a solution more quickly.

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From a model development perspective this has a number of key benefits:

� Circular propagation is prevented avoiding costly debugging and configuration rule rework on the part of model designers

� There is a much reduced need for repetitive contributes rules to express equations, saving time in model development

� Complications from intermediate values with Comparison Rules are avoided

The enhanced numeric capabilities also allow the Configuration Modeler to more easily translate business rules into Configurator rules.

6.1.3. Automatic Addition of Optional Components

Easily model complex system configurations and require less user intervention at runtime with the auto-instantiation. This new feature provides the ability for the component structure to be automatically created by constraints when required for a solution. In previous releases instantiation was initiated through a click from the end user or accomplished through a Configurator Extension. Now instantiation can be automatic and based on constraints, as part of the model, without configurator extensions.

6.1.4. Changing a Feature’s Minimum or Maximum

With the Fusion Configurator Engine it is now possible to dynamically change a feature’s minimum and maximum number of selections when certain options are selected at runtime.

6.2. Improved End-user Experience

The end-user experience is a critical component to enabling the configuration of complete, valid product offerings in a timely manner. In Release 12.1 of Oracle Configurator, a couple of key new features have been introduced to assist the runtime user.

6.2.1. Automatically Finishing Configurations

An important feature of the Fusion Configurator Engine is the ability to complete a configuration automatically which saves valuable time and greatly reduces the development and maintenance time of the Configuration Modeler by eliminating the necessity of custom extension code to perform complex configurations. This process, which end users can invoke at runtime by clicking the Finish button, is known as Auto-Complete. Auto-Complete is useful, for example, when end users care only about a subset of all available items and want to quickly create a valid and complete configuration. In this case, end users can manually select the options they care about, allow Auto-Complete to complete the configuration, and then either save and exit, or make further changes before exiting. The user can invoke Auto-completion at any time during a Configuration session.

The result of the Auto-complete process is determined by the modeler rules, defining preferences by:

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� Specifying a Sequence for Defaults and Search Decisions

� Indicating how you want Auto-Complete to provide values for unbound Numeric and Boolean Features

� Specifying minimum and maximum values for all Model nodes

6.2.2. Displaying Allowable Ranges for Numeric Inputs

End users can now see the valid input range for Numeric inputs using dynamic range display so that they are aware of the range of valid inputs, leading to fewer contradictions caused by the selection of inputs outside the valid range. Users can also see how other selections are dynamically impacting the valid ranges of numeric inputs.

The display of valid numeric input ranges, coupled with advanced numeric rule propagation, provides the end user with greater information, allowing them to create complete and valid configurations much more quickly, with fewer errors.

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7. What’s New in Oracle Advanced Pricing

Oracle Advanced Pricing is the application for maintaining and executing prices and discounts for contracts, orders and other transactions requiring pricing. It provides organizations with a single source pricing system servicing global and multiple channels. The flexible rules based engine and business focused user interfaces allows organizations to implement tailored pricing strategies to meet its varied pricing needs. Oracle Advanced Pricing is integrated with other Oracle E-Business Applications such as Order Management, Service Contracts, Quoting, Trade Management, and Purchasing.

In Release 12, Oracle Advanced Pricing delivers benefits in these focus areas:

� Automate price publishing

� Reduce pricing maintenance costs

7.1. Automate Price Publishing

With global markets and companies being able to source goods from any where around the world, openly publishing prices and discount matrices for goods and services has become common practice. Pulling this information out of your pricing system has been a necessary, yet costly customization.

7.1.1. Price Books

With Release 12, you will be able to reduce costly customizations for creating and distributing pricing information with Oracle Advanced Pricing’s Price Book functionality that automates price publishing. Prior to Release 12, there were no workarounds to enabling customers to create price books. Companies can now easily create and publish price books to customers and partners via on-line or xml. Price Books gives the user multiple parameters to select from to generate the price report. Companies can view the results of the generated price book before publishing or executing electronically. Price Books also supports Oracle XML Publisher that enables companies to tailor the Price Book to meet the companies’ presentation standards.

7.2. Reduce Pricing Maintenance Costs

Being able to create pricing at different levels in the customer and product hierarchies is a powerful differentiator for creating targeted pricing strategies. Yet as customer and product hierarchy definitions change, keeping pricing systems in sync with the latest definitions can be a maintenance nightmare. In Release 12, Oracle Advanced Pricing now integrates with the customer hierarchy and product hierarchies in Oracle thus always using the most current hierarchy definition and eliminating the need for double maintenance.

7.2.1. Customer Party Hierarchy integration with Oracle Trading Community Architecture

With acquisitions and buyers combining together to gain more purchasing power, companies create more complex pricing and discounting strategies at higher levels of

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customer hierarchies. Yet customer party definitions change frequently and keeping these definitions aligned with the pricing for these customers can be challenging and costly. In Release 12, Advanced Pricing now recognizes customer party hierarchies defined in Oracle Trading Community Architecture (TCA). This new feature significantly reduces maintenance costs in setting up data and reduces errors by looking at the master definition of TCA party information. Now qualifiers need only to be created at the parent party or any level below and Advanced Pricing will automatically apply pricing or discounting at any customers below this level. Also Advanced Pricing automatically looks at the most current TCA party hierarchy thus as the party definition changes in TCA, Advanced Pricing automatically has the most current customer party information.

7.2.2. Hierarchical Catalogs from Oracle PIM

With the proliferation of product data, companies are taking advantage of hierarchical catalogues in order to manage product information more effectively. Subsequently, companies are creating pricing and discounting strategies at various levels in the product hierarchy. In Release 12, it is now easier to create pricing or discounting at any level of the product hierarchy in Advanced Pricing. The Product Value LOV displays all categories for those category sets assigned. Advanced Pricing always looks at the most current definition of the catalog during price execution. Thus as product hierarchy catalogs change, Advanced Pricing will always used the most current definition and thus there is no data management or maintenance costs associated.