Oracle Treasury Addresses Regulatory Concerns

The latest version of Oracle Treasury—developed in conjunction with Oracle's Treasury customer advisory group—offers significant enhancements in regulatory compliance; straight-through processing (STP); and flexible, real-time cash positions and forecasting.

Additional validation levels for payment processing and more preconfigured business roles help enforce common separation of duties while addressing issues of fraud prevention and risk control. The application also expands support of FAS 133 and IAS 39, two major accounting standards for treasurers. Expansion to existing STP capabilities, beyond foreign exchange and intercompany transactions, includes money market transactions. This is good news for companies that purchase or issue debt by using discounted securities such as CDs or commercial paper, because information about those transactions is automatically fed into Oracle Treasury. Positioning and forecasting capabilities have been enhanced, to allow companies to view cash flows in multiple dimensions, enabling them to make better investment and borrowing decisions.

Is Postponement Right for Your Company?

You don't have to be a supply chain expert to know that it's expensive to hold finished-goods inventory. But how can you reduce inventory and still satisfy customer demand? One innovative response is postponement, or "delayed differentiation."

According to a study by Oracle, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (CGE&Y), and APICS (the American Production and Inventory Control Society), an impressive 91 percent of companies that implement postponement strategies are realizing significant improvements in customer satisfaction, lower inventory costs, and more-accurate demand forecasting. But nearly half of the responding companies have not implemented postponement strategies, because of lack of knowledge of postponement benefits and associated costs, perceived technology limitations, and ineffective business alignment.

The idea behind postponement is to delay the manufacturing, assembling, or packaging of products until actual customer demand is known. Postponement also involves the implementation of inventory strategies that allow companies to hold the right inventory at the right place in the right form. And the benefits? Improved order fill rates, reduced lead times, wider product offerings, and higher profitability.

For a full copy of the joint study, "The Adaptive Supply Chain: Postponement for Profitability," and to learn how Oracle and CGE&Y can help businesses develop successful postponement strategies, visit oracle.com/start/index.html Keyword: postponement.

Oracle Earns 17th Security Evaluation

Oracle recently completed two more independent security evaluations, extending the total to 17. Oracle has completed the International Common Criteria (ISO 15408) security evaluation at Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4, the most rigorous assessment for commercially available software.

"In today's global marketplace, where viruses and worms can spread throughout the world with increasing ease, we can no longer afford to patch our way to better security," says Mary Ann Davidson, Oracle's chief security officer.

"All vendors say their products are secure. The only confidence anyone has that a product does what it says it does in security is to have someone other than the vendor validate the security. That's what evaluations do," says Davidson. "Licensed third-party labs vet our security claims against an international standard for security. Plus, customers who are required to purchase evaluated products—some U.S. Department of Defense customers—can use the latest version of Oracle, now that it's been evaluated."

Deloitte Rolls Out Solutions Based on Oracle Application Server 10g

Deloitte, a leading professional services firm, has developed proprietary solutions based on Oracle Application Server 10g. The firm's solutions fall into two broad categories: integration and portals.

The integration solutions will showcase how Oracle Application Server 10g can enable organizations to collaborate more easily with business partners. Aimed primarily at high tech, Deloitte's integration solutions consist of prebuilt business flows that result in faster implementation and collaboration. The solution automates, monitors, and optimizes order management, inventory management, and shipping software from disparate vendors.

Deloitte's portal solutions based on Oracle Application Server 10g help companies in the life sciences and consumer packaged goods industries better monitor and manage key business indicators. Horizontal solutions that will support a wide variety of industries are also in development.

Oracle Application Server 10g Gets Backing from Leading ISVs

Leading independent software vendors (ISVs) are providing solutions based on Oracle Application Server 10g. A growing list of more than 1,500 ISVs includes companies in business integration, content management, systems management, and wireless, and they support industries including financial services, life sciences, and manufacturing.

Analysts have praised the depth and breadth of ISVs supporting Oracle Application Server 10g. "Successful vendors will offer comprehensive solutions that support vertical market needs as well as important horizontal functions," says Steve Garone, chief analyst and managing partner at The AlignIT Group. "The growing number of partners supporting Oracle Application Server 10g is proof of Oracle's commitment to partner retention and enablement."

Oracle and Vodafone to Mobilize the Enterprise

Oracle and Vodafone together are offering enterprise customers integrated mobility solutions based on Oracle 10g and Vodafone Network Services. Through this initiative, enterprise customers will be able to offer field workers, such as sales staff or service engineers, mobile access to key business systems.

In 2003, the technology was tested in pilot programs in healthcare, government, utilities, and media. One pilot customer, Scottish Water, used the technology to connect call centers with field engineers, allowing real-time scheduling and management of service calls (with Oracle TeleService and Oracle Field Service applications). Equity Technology (Sweden), ID Systeme, and Franhofer and Damstadt Echo (Germany) have also signed up for the service.

Oracle University Offerings Support Sarbanes-Oxley

With 86 percent of companies expecting to streamline and reduce the cost of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance this year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers*, executives, controllers, and internal auditors are evaluating a variety of tools to help. One tool is Oracle Internal Controls Manager, which documents and tests internal controls and monitors ongoing regulatory compliance. To support this product, Oracle University is launching online and classroom training for Oracle Internal Controls Manager. The online class, available now, targets implementation team members, consultants, technical professionals, and end users. In a one-hour session, students learn about the product and its role in meeting existing and evolving legislative regulations.

Oracle University's classroom offering on Oracle Internal Controls Manager is a two-day course designed to train students on successfully implementing and using the product. Targeting implementation team members, consultants, and technical professionals, the course gives students an overview of corporate governance and teaches them how to set up and structure Oracle Internal Controls Manager and how to import, upload, and associate all levels of processes, risks, and controls and set up audit procedures and assessments. The classroom offering will be available in Oracle University education centers by early this year.

*PWC statistic