This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates are logged below, with the most recent updates at the top.
| Date |
What's Changed |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 11 AUG 2017 |
Initial Document Creation |
This guide outlines the information you need to know about new or improved functionality in Oracle In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Release 17.3 and describes any tasks you might need to perform for the update. Each section includes a brief description of the feature, the steps you need to take to enable or begin using the feature, any tips or considerations that you should keep in mind, and the resources available to help you.
Security & New Features
We would like to remind you if your system has modified security structures you may need to advise your security administrator of new features you would like to take advantage of. To assist you Appendix A provides a listing of the new features and the security attributes needed to employ the new features when you have decided to implement them.
Give Us Feedback
We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content. Please send us your feedback at IMCMCS_help_ww_grp@oracle.com. Indicate you are inquiring or providing feedback regarding the In-Memory Cost Management Cloud What’s New for Release 17.3 in the body or title of the email.
This section gives you information to help you plan, deploy, and validate your update to this release. We make frequent additions to this document, so don’t forget to check back and get the latest information before your update starts.
Some of the new Release features are automatically available to users after the upgrade and some require action from the user, the company administrator, or Oracle.
The table below offers a quick view of the actions required to enable each of the Release 17.3 features.
| Action Required to Enable Feature |
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| Feature |
Automatically Available |
End User Action Required |
Administrator Action Required |
Oracle Service Request Required |
| Cost Planning |
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| Cost Impact Simulator |
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| Gross Profit Analyzer |
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| View impact on and Analyze Gross Profits |
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| Cost Comparison |
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| Backend Processes |
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| Administration |
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Oracle In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Service
Oracle In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Service (IMCMCS) is a new SaaS, subscription based, offering that provides a bottoms-up approach to maximizing profit margins by enabling near real-time insight into all aspects of cost management.
Cost accountants, managers and line of business owners in finance, operations, manufacturing and procurement can use Oracle In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Service to derive product costs, quickly perform cost-volume-benefit (Break-even-point), what-if simulations on complex cost data and visualize the impact of changes to their business.
Initial release of In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Service consists of following components:
- Cost Planning
- Cost Impact Simulator
- Gross Profit Analyzer
- Cost Comparison
- Background Processes
Cost Planning in this release enables organizations to derive cost-to-serve covering direct and indirect costs. Application allows setting up of costs from expenses incurred in entire supply chain from purchasing raw material and ‘Buy’ parts to fulfillment of Customer’s orders. Cost Planning provides capabilities to quickly and easily organize your source of costs; target items like purchased raw materials, resources and overheads and provides several allocation methods to define cost allocation strategy. Users can also upload and use demand forecasts and production plans to calculate future costs, margins and profits.
In Allocation Scope UI, user identifies the target items, resources and overheads for which the cost will be calculated. This UI provides flexible selection and categorization criteria to allow users to easily create a scope or group of items, resources and overheads. Users can create several different groups to identify items, resources and overheads that need cost calculations.
Allocation Scope UI provides following fields and selection criteria to easily organize your scopes:
- Name and Description
- Type supports: Items, Resources and Overheads
- Unit of Measure, Date to inactivate the Allocation Scope and Status (Draft, Validated, Error)
In Scope details section users can define multiple lines to create target list:
- Attribute Type: Organization, Sub Inventory, Item Category, Item, Cost Group, Cost Type, Item Sub Element, Project and Task
- Include range: From and To fields
- Exclude range: From and To fields
Steps to Enable
Log an SR with Oracle Cloud Operations to create a user with Cost Planner role.
Tips and Considerations
Create allocation scopes using cost types to group difficult to categorize items.
Key Resources
- Please see the My Oracle Support Document Id: DOC ID 2266681.1
- For more details please see chapter on Cost Planning in Oracle® In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Service User's Guide - Part No. E76506-01
Create allocation pools to group sources of your costs. Users can use both actual and budget journals from one or more financial systems. Additionally, users can also specify ad hoc amounts to make manual adjustments. Allocation Pools UI provides several filtering and categorization criteria to help easily segregate source accounts. Users have the flexibility to create several different allocation pools to group similar sources.
Allocation Pool UI provides following fields and selection criteria to easily organize your pools:
- Source Types: Actual Account Balances, Budget Accounts and Ad-hoc values
- Systems: (E-Business Suite, Other systems)
- Ledgers: All Ledgers imported into IMCMCS database
- Users can set a date on which the Pool will be inactive
In Pool details section users can define multiple lines of sources:
- Line type: Manual or Ad hoc, Actual or Budget
- Description: A Description for the line
- Account Range with Account From and Account To
- Amount and how much to allocate
- User can enable and disable individual lines
Steps to Enable
Log an SR with Oracle Cloud Operations to create a user with Cost Planner role.
Tips and Considerations
Use an Ad hoc pool for greater flexibility with the allocation line types.
Key Resources
- Please see the My Oracle Support Document Id: DOC ID 2266681.1
- For more details please see chapter on Cost Planning in Oracle® In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Service User's Guide - Part No. E76506-01
Allocation Rules enable users to define allocation methodology for individual or group of cost and sub elements. Each allocation rule further includes a scope, pool, allocation percentage and several other criteria that bind pool and scope. Using a Pool or not using a Pool in a rule allows users to influence selection of Cost Drivers. Cost Drivers allow users to select criteria to allocate a pool or pools across the scope. User is allowed to choose from a set of pre-seeded cost drivers and driver methods.
Allocation Rules UI provides following fields and selection criteria to easily organize your scopes:
- Name and Description
- Date to deactivate the Allocation Rule
- Cost Element: (Material, Material Overhead; Routing Related: Resource, Overhead and Outside Processing; Non-Routing Related: Resource, Overhead and Outside Processing and Fixed)
- Sub Element (based on customer setup)
- Basis Type (Item, Lot, Resource Unit, Resource Value and Total Value)
- Allocation Scope, Scope Type, Allocation Pool, Pool Type, Allocation percentage
Cost Drivers: (Pool based cost drivers - Volume, Value, Contribution Margin, Planned Volume, Planned Value and Planned Contribution Margin; Non-pool based cost drivers - Price List, Quote, Purchase Order, Receipt, Landed Cost and Invoices)
- Function (Applies only to non-pool cost drivers): (Minimum, Maximum, Average, First, Last)
- Unit Cost Method: (Average Volume, Planned Volume)
- Unit Cost Plan, Driver Plan and Price List
Log an SR with Oracle Cloud Operations to create a user with Cost Planner role.
Tips and Considerations
Raw material and outside processing resources will use non-pool based cost drivers
Key Resources
- Please see the My Oracle Support Document Id: DOC ID 2266681.1
- For more details please see chapter on Cost Planning in Oracle® In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Service User's Guide - Part No. E76506-01
A Cost Plan is a combination of Allocations Pool, Allocation Scope and Allocation Rules. Using Cost Plan UI users can create as many alternate cost scenario, as they feel necessary, to help them model their diverse supply chain combinations. When defining Cost Plans users can input the time horizon that cost planning engine will use to output costs for future period.
These cost plans are then executed by Cost Plan Engine to calculate costs for raw material, resources, overheads included in the cost plan over a user selected time horizon. Once leaf node costs are calculated costs are rolled up for higher-level intermediate and finished goods.
Cost Plan UI provides following fields and selection criteria:
- Name and Description
- Basis Cost Type: (Seeded: Frozen, Pending, Average, FIFO and LIFO, and any simulation that have been created)
- Currency, Currency Conversion Type and, Currency Conversion Date
- Time Horizon with From and To date
- Status: (Draft, Finished, Error)
In Cost Plan Rules section users can define multiple rules using:
- Allocation Rule
- Allocation Scope
- Allocation Pool, Allocation Percentage, Date Range with From and To
- Driver Date Range with From and To
- Mark Up Percentage
User has access to several parameters that allow them to further fine tune the selection of intermediate and finished goods that should be included in cost rollup calculations when cost plan is executed.
- Assignment Set
- Buy Cost Type,
- Lot Size Option: (Use Existing Lot Size, Use Factor of Standard Lot Size and Specify Lot Size)
- Lot Size Setting
- Include Unimplemented ECOs
- Include Engineering Bills
- Include Configs with Closed Orders
- Config Order Start Date
- Alternate Bill
- Alternate Routing
- Effective Date
Log an SR with Oracle Cloud Operations to create a user with Cost Planner role.
Tips and Considerations
Use the copy plan feature to easily replicate a plan for other periods.
Key Resources
- Please see the My Oracle Support Document Id: DOC ID 2266681.1
- For more details please see chapter on Cost Planning in Oracle® In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Service User's Guide - Part No. E76506-01
Once the cost plan run is completed users can use several features under Cost Analyzer to review the future costs. This release provides several spreadsheet based, easy to use reports that allow users to do cost-volume-profit analysis, drill down from top level allocations at Organization level to leaf node level costs like purchased items and machine operation costs.
From these spreadsheets users can run what-if simulations to evaluate change impacts across the business. Further they can model the impact on margins and profits.
- Break-Even Point Analysis
- Organization Summary
- Item Summary
- Item Cost Details
- Item Cost Structure Details
- Resource Summary
- Resource Details
- Overhead Summary
- Overhead Details
Cost Planning allows fixed costs allocations; the product provides the detailed break-even point and contribution margin analysis of products.
Analyze the Cost of Goods Manufactured (COGM) and the contribution margin for all organizations, providing a view of cost saving areas
Analyze details for each item in a cost plan month for planned, actual and current costs
Analyze planned item cost detail and COGM schedule for an item in a planned month.
Analyze cost element details of an item in a plan month, including the entire bill of materials and routing costs.
Analyze resource rates planned across organizations and a plan month.
Analyze cost details of a planned resource and the cost of the impacted items.
Analyze overhead rates planned across organizations in a plan month.
Analyze cost details of a planned overhead and the cost of the impacted items.
Steps to Enable
- Log an SR with Oracle Cloud Operations to create a user with Cost Planner role.
- Have the administrator grant relevant organization access to the user.
Tips and Considerations
Users can evaluate a cost plan against multiple production plans.
Key Resources
- Please see the My Oracle Support Document Id: DOC ID 2266681.1
- For more details please see chapter on Cost Planning in Oracle® In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Service User's Guide - Part No. E76506-01
In this release, users can create what-if simulations to model changes in cost and evaluate the impact on costs, valuations, margins and profits in real-time. User can also create simulations on top costs derived in cost plans.
In Cost Impact Simulator users create simulations in spreadsheet based UI. Simulations show the impact of product cost variations on bills of materials, formulae, recipes, routings, resources, and overheads. The Cost Impact Simulator also shows the impact on valuations of Inventory, Manufacturing shop floor and in-transit goods. Further analysis is possible on impacts to current and forecasted demand, Cost of Goods Sold and gross margins and profits in real-time.
While creating simulation users need to enter following mandatory fields:
- Entity Type: (Item, Resource, Overhead)
- Entity Name (Code of Item, Resource or Overhead) and Organization
- Cost Type: (Seeded cost types, user defined cost types and any simulations that have been created)
For Process Manufacturing simulations users need to enter following mandatory fields:
- Entity Type: (Item, Resource)
- Entity Name (Code for Item or Resource) and Legal Entity
- Cost Type: (Seeded cost types, user defined cost types and any simulations that have been created)
From the Cost Details screen users can make edits to following fields:
- Qty Per Assembly
- Resource Usage and
- Rate or Amount
From the Cost Details screen for Process manufacturing, users can make edits to following fields:
- Formula Quantity
- Scrap Factor
- Resource Usage and
- Rate or Amount
User has access to several parameters that allow them to further fine tune the selection of intermediate and finished goods that should be included in cost rollup calculations when cost plan is executed.
- Assignment Set
- Buy Cost Type
- Lot Size Option: (Use Existing Lot Size, Use Factor of Standard Lot Size and Specify Lot Size)
- Lot Size Setting
- Include Unimplemented ECOs
- Include Engineering Bills
- Include Configs with Closed Orders
- Config Order Start Date
- Alternate Bill
- Alternate Routing and
- Effective Date
Steps to Enable
- Log an SR with Oracle Cloud Operations to create a user with Cost Simulator role.
- Have the administrator grant relevant organization access to the user.
Tips and Considerations
Users can build on top of existing simulations by using past simulations as the basis of a new simulation.
Users can build simulations to compare a make v/s buy strategy by choosing appropriate sourcing rules in the parameter screen.
To easily trace the cost impact in a complex cost structure, users can drill down through the highlighted row.
Key Resources
- Please see the My Oracle Support Document Id: DOC ID 2266681.1
- For more details please see chapter on Cost Impact Simulator in Oracle® In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Service User's Guide - Part No. E76506-01
In this release, Gross Profit Analyzer allows users to slice and dice and do multi-dimension analysis on current and future gross margins and profits. Gross Profit Analyzer uses Analytics Cloud Service (ACS) technology to provide multi-dimensional slice-and-dice capability. There are two functional flows for invoking the Gross Profit Analyzer. Users can navigate to Gross Profit Analyzer to analyze the impact of costs derived from cost plans or after simulating a change in cost in Cost Impact Simulator. Having either made changes to costs or having derived new costs of components, ingredients, resources or, overheads, users will use Gross Profit Analyzer to evaluate the impact of cost changes on actual, planned, and forecasted cost of goods sold, gross margins and gross profits.
Users can also navigate directly to Gross Profit Analyzer from the Navigator to slice-and-dice and analyze current and forecasted gross margins and, gross profits.
Gross Profit Analyzer provides an interface to import demand forecast data and allows users to evaluate the impact of cost changes to future margins and gross profits.
In this release, following dimensions are supported:
- Customer
- Geographic Regions
- Sales Organization
- Sales Channels
- Sales Orders
- Product
- Product Category
- Currency and
- Time
Steps to Enable
- Log an SR with Oracle Cloud Operations to create a user with Profitability Analyzer role.
- Have the administrator grant relevant organization access to the user.
Tips and Considerations
Users can use the save customization feature of the BI cloud service to save various filters to be applied on the Gross Profit Analysis dashboards. They can also setup these filters to be defaulted every time they launch the dashboard so that they only see data that is most relevant to them.
Key Resources
- Please see the My Oracle Support Document Id: DOC ID 2266681.1
- For more details please see chapter on Gross Profit Analyzer in Oracle® In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Service User's Guide - Part No. E76506-01
In this release, Cost Comparison provides the ability to compare detailed indented assembly and recipe costs across different periods, cost types, simulations, cost plans, manufacturing plants and organizations. Indented details of cost structure are presented in a spreadsheet based UI with side-by-side view to highlight similarities and difference in the two selected items. Cost Comparison enables you to view costed bills and recipes and associated elements, investigate differences, and take actions on costs impacting profitability.
Cost Comparison search allows users to find items by filtering on following fields:
- Item Code
- Item Description
- Organization
- Cost Type
- Simulation Code
Following additional field are available in Process Manufacturing UI:
- Legal Entity
- Calendar and
- Period
Steps to Enable
- Log an SR with Oracle Cloud Operations to create a user with Cost Simulator role.
- Have the administrator grant relevant organization access to the user.
Tips and Considerations
To focus on the source of a cost difference, drill down through the highlighted lines of cost. Use Excel features such as freeze panes and split to navigate the cost comparison more efficiently. Zoom out of the top row to navigate to previous screen, which can be the cost comparison search or the view summary.
Key Resources
- Please see the My Oracle Support Document Id: DOC ID 2266681.1
- For more details please see chapter on Cost Comparison in Oracle® In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Service User's Guide - Part No. E76506-01
Several background processes have been included in this release. These background processes can be submitted from the Administration UI. Following processes are available:
- Calculate Actual COGM (Discrete)
- Calculate Gross Profit for Cost Impact Simulator (Discrete)
- Calculate Gross Profit for Cost Impact Simulator (Process)
- Create Cost Hierarchy (Process)
- Create Product Category Hierarchy
- Create Territory Hierarchy
- Create Time Dimension
- Generate Key-Flexfield Views
- IMCM Full Process Cost Rollup
- Import Price Lists
- Import Supply/ Demand for Cost Planning (Discrete)
- In-Memory Cost Planning Engine (Discrete)
- Incremental Margin Load (Discrete)
- Incremental Margin Load (Process)
- Incremental Margin Load for Planned Orders (Discrete)
- Incremental Margin Load for Planned Orders (Process)
- Margin Load for Cost Plans (Discrete)
- Purge Cost Plan (Discrete)
- Purge Margin Data
- Purge Simulation (Discrete)
- Purge Simulation (Process)
- Simulation Margin Load (Discrete)
- Simulations Margin Load (Process)
- Validate Cost Planning Scopes (Discrete)
Steps to Enable
Log an SR with Oracle Cloud Operations to create a user with Background Jobs role.
Key Resources
- Please see the My Oracle Support Document Id: DOC ID 2266681.1
- For more details please see chapter on Administration
- For complete details please see chapter on Administration and Setup in Oracle® In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Service User's Guide - Part No. E76506-01
Administration section provides UI that allow users to perform various admin related tasks.
In this release, Configuration UI allows users to set default values and configure the application with following parameters:
Discrete Cost Parameters
- Category Set: (from category data loaded to IMCMCS database)
- Currency Conversion Type: (from currency data loaded to IMCMCS database)
- Include Phantom Costs and
- Quantity Precision
Process Cost Parameters
- Use Substitute Items (Yes, Period start date as effective date, Yes, Period end date as effective date and, No)
- Compute Ingredient Cost (Yes, In Detail, Yes, In Summary and, No)
- Costing Validity Rules
- Full Cost Rollup Parallel Degree
Profitability
- Product Catalog Category Set: (from category data loaded to IMCMCS database)
- Margin Load Parallel Degree
- Margin Load Start Date
- Simulation Margin Duration (months)
Cost Planning
- Planning Engine Parallel Degree
- Default Selling Price List: (from price list data loaded to IMCMCS database)
Diagnosis
- Debug Enabled
- Debug Level: (Statement, Procedure, Event, Exception, Error, Unexpected)
Background Process Scheduler
- Status
- Interval (seconds)
Steps to Enable
Log an SR with Oracle Cloud Operations to create a user with Administrator role.
Tips and Considerations
Users should make sure that they have chosen the appropriate values for historical margin data import (Margin Load Start Date) and for simulated margin calculation (Simulation Margin Duration) to satisfy their historical analysis requirements.
Key Resources
- Please see the My Oracle Support Document Id: DOC ID 2266681.1
- For more details please see chapter on Administration in Oracle® In-Memory Cost Management Cloud Service User's Guide - Part No. E76506-01.
Appendix A: Function Security Privileges and Aggregate Privileges
Pre-defined roles have been provided for access to the Oracle In-Memory Cost Management Cloud functions. The roles and the functions they have access to are described below. A user can be assigned one or more roles.
NOTE: In order to assign roles to users, customers will need to contact Oracle Cloud Operations.
Table A-1 Roles for Oracle In-Memory Cost Management Cloud
| Role Name and Code |
Functions |
|---|---|
| Background Jobs Role CMI_BACKGROUND_JOB_ROLE |
This role grants a user complete access to the Background jobs tab of the Administration page. On this page, the user will be able to schedule, submit and search for background processes. |
| Integrator CMI_INTEGRATOR_ROLE |
This role grants a user complete access to the published Rest APIs for In-Memory Cost Management Cloud. |
| Cost Planner CMI_PLANNING_ROLE |
This role grants a user complete access to the Cost Planning & Allocations and Cost Plan Analyzer functions. |
| Profitability Analyzer CMI_PROFITABILITY_ROLE |
This role grants a user complete access to the Gross Profit Analyzer and Impact on Gross Profit functions. |
| Cost Simulator CMI_SIMULATOR_ROLE |
This role grants a user complete access to the Cost Simulation and Cost Comparison functions. |
| Administrator CMI_ADMIN_ROLE |
This role grants a user administrative access to the application. The administrator will have complete access to all functions of the application. This includes all the tabs (Background Process, Security and Configuration) of the Administration page through which the administrator will be able to manage background processed, organization access and application setup. |
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