Real-Time Supplier Collaboration Using Oracle Cloud CMK & OBN

Introduction

To keep pace with ever-evolving technological advancements and capabilities, customers want an intelligent supply chain having core supply chain functionality with real-time visibility and access to external data sources.

Setting up real-time B2B communication requires partner onboarding, integration tools, and file mappings and is often a hassle. What if you can achieve this with the standard out-of-the-box functionality of Oracle Cloud? Yes, welcome to the new digital era. Learn how one of our customers achieved real-time communication with its suppliers using Oracle Collaboration Messaging Framework (CMK) and Oracle Business Network (OBN) and managed their business better and faster.

Business Requirement

Before using the procurement module, users would buy required items directly online from Supplier websites for frequent purchases and then send an email to the Supplier to confirm the purchase. Our customer would create manual Payable invoices in Oracle Cloud Payables. This existing process was manual and time-consuming. Without a purchase order, there was no way to track goods bought from a Supplier. Tracking the payables invoice was very difficult, and the overall process was inefficient.

Approach

Jade Global did an assessment study of the requirements and existing processes. Our customer partnered with Jade to implement Oracle Cloud Applications for Procurement, Budget, and Intelligent Document Recognition (IDR) modules. For a better user experience, Jade suggested using the punchout feature (which would mimic the online shopping experience) to buy their products from a Supplier using Oracle Cloud Procurement

The following mandatory requirement from the Supplier was to receive the Approved POs in cXML format since they no longer accepted the paper/email forms of communication. To fulfill this requirement, we utilized the standard, out-of-the-box functionality offered by Oracle fusion CMK to electronically transmit PO documents in standard cXML formats.

Solution

CMK enables Oracle Cloud Supply Chain Management (SCM) to establish B2B collaboration messaging framework capabilities with trading partners. This was further networked with OBN to transmit the documents in cXML format.

CMK allows setting up outbound message processing and delivery methods for a business process, setting up a user-defined external message type definition, and customizing message transformation.

It allows inbound and outbound collaboration messages, managing collaboration messages, reprocessing undelivered messages, and exporting or importing collaboration messaging configuration data.

OBN is an open community for Oracle E-business Suite (EBS), Peoplesoft, Cloud Applications customers, and their trading partners.

It allows Self-service for trading partner registration and supports multiple communication protocols like HTTP/S, SMTP, etc. It will enable network communication of messages to trading partners, monitoring these transactions, and automatic re-send.

Provided below is the process flow chart depicting the solution using CMK and OBN:

Business Process

The buying process is as follows:

Users log onto the procurement cloud and punch out to the supplier’s website.

Punchouts enable employees to find and select their required items quickly and easily.

Users browse, select, choose, and add the required items to the cart. The cart submission will bring all the details like item, price, and quantity to Oracle Cloud Procurement and, in turn, create a purchase requisition in the procurement cloud.

Users then proceed with the submission of the requisition, followed by the appropriate approval process.

Next, the Procurement team then converts the approved requisitions into purchase orders.

Once the purchase order is approved, the system automatically sends the PO from the Oracle cloud solutions to OBN using the CMK in cXML format.

Next, OBN will transmit the cXML to the Supplier side OBN, which their internal order management systems will process to book the orders.

This concludes the buy side of the P2P process.

The payment side begins once the supplier sends the invoice copy as an email to the IDR server. The server stores the invoice as a PDF copy, irrespective of the format received from the supplier. Then it is imported as an AP invoice in fusion financials and is paid by the AP team, concluding the payment process.

Setup Steps for OBN and CMK

1. One-time setup in CMK.

Collaboration messaging service provider setup.

Set up B2B messaging trading partners.

Enable associated documents to be transmitted. E.g., PO and PO Change Order.

2. One-time Registration on OBN.

Add and Approve the trading partners on the OBN to receive the cXML documents.

3. Setup the supplier and site in Oracle Procurement Cloud to use CMK

Oracle Products Used

• Oracle Purchasing
• Oracle Payables
• Oracle GL
• Oracle Business Network (OBN)
• Collaboration Messaging Framework (CMK)

More about CMK

Document Types Supported by CMK

The Oracle Cloud Application supports the following business processes and documents

• Procure-to-Pay Business Process – Purchase  Order, Invoices, and Receipt.
• Order-to-Cash Business Process – ASN, Invoice, Acknowledgement, and Credit Note.
• Source-to-Pay – Order Forecasts and Supply Planning Data.

Standard Data Formats CMK Supports

• EDI
• cXML
• OAGIS
• UBL

Key Features Provided by CMK Include

• Centralized B2B Trading Partner Management.
• Support for Standard Data Formats and Delivery Methods.
• Pre-Built B2B Messages.
• Monitor B2B Message Processing. Analyze and Resolve Errors.
• Multiple Configuration Options to Manage Message Processing.
• Data Mapping.

Conclusion

With the CMK functionality, we successfully established B2B messaging capabilities with trading partners and network with OBN to seamlessly transmit the approved POs in the required cXML format. Suppliers can quickly process and book the orders once it reaches their internal order system from the OBN.

All this was achieved with minimal manual intervention, quicker processing time, and without any additional project implementation costs. This also eliminated the development and maintenance costs of integration solutions.

About Jade Global:

With 19+ years of Oracle ERP experience, Jade has been among the most trusted service providers. As a certified Oracle Cloud Implementation Partner, we specialize in accelerated and predictable implementation cycles, fueling up faster and definitive growth trajectories for organizations.