We have been hearing about AI in many different ways and technology pioneers have been slowly introducing AI in our daily lives.  When it comes to Fusion Applications, Oracle has invested in built-in AI capabilities across all platforms and Supply Chain area is not an exception.

In this blog, I would like to discuss the newly designed Product Management Redwood Experience and a few AI capabilities that comes out of of the box.

The documentation and release notes can be found here: https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/readiness/scm/25b/plm25b/25B-plm-wn-f37106.htm

A new navigator an enhanced user experience

There is a new icon ,”Product Management,” that is available under Product Management.

Product Management Icon

This will take the experience to the newly designed landing page

The page is designed in the new Redwood Experience and it has 12 pinned actions for easy access.  Users can personalize the actions list by clicking on View all Actions link (green arrow) and adding the desired actions to the short list (red arrow)

I have tested the actions and the new design, and I would like to say that the experience is very seamless even some of the pages are still not on Redwood.  The application will open a new browser tab if the action is on the classic fusion page.

One new terminology I came across is the usage of “Commercial Items” the classic Browse Items and Manage Items pages are not refereed as Browse Commercial Items and Commercial Items. They will be opened in classical pages.

Saved System Searches and the Navigator

Oracle Fusion Applications allowed users to save their searches, but they were not shareable.  Now, the new Redwood Experience is enabling the users to do so.  There is a navigator on the left hand side that a user can pin or call on demand from the bottom toolbar.  In the Example below a user is creating a search for all items assigned to a specific organization and if they have structures.  This could be a useful search for a Manufacturer Engineer. So instead of each Engineer creating such search, one cane save this search and it cane become a systemwide search.

After this is saved it becomes part of the navigator for easy access and convenience. In the screenshot below please see the pin icon, the bottom navigator and the added search to the menu

What are the AI Capabilities?

There are two features that I would like to address that I found quite useful.

AI Assist on coming up with the Item formatted description

This is a built in AI Assist feature in the Item Management screen.  When the user is in the item management screen, there is an AI Assist icon that will pop up a Generative AI page.

Please see how Oracle has read the item attribution and created a great text to describe the items with features and capabilities. User has the option to accept this, edit this, and change attribution and regenerate the description.  In my past experience, I have not had many clients using the formatted description, but with this feature, I can see this being used widely.

AI Assist on creating and maintaining manufacturers

At Perficient we do not manufacture but in this hypothetical use case, I will create Perficient as the manufacturer.  Please not the nicely improved navigation and newly built manufacturer user interface.  Once I filled the manufacturer field, I can leave all blank, I can fill out manually or I can click on the AI Assist button

Oracle AI Assist will bring all information about the Manufacturer in a matter of seconds.  This is very powerful. For one, it brings efficiency, no one has to enter anything manually. Second, if the description and other information doesn’t sound right, the person creating the manufacturing can go an check their website to make sure that the manufacturer is correctly identified.

Conclusion

The new Product Management landing page and user interface will co-exist with the existing Product Information Management landing page.  There are various improvements and AI capabilities using the newly designed Product Management landing page. I think this newly designed pages is a great opportunity to bring the user community to Redwood Experience and start taking advantage or built-in AI capabilities.

Contact Mehmet Erisen at Perficient for more introspection of this functionality, and how Perficient and Oracle Fusion Cloud can digitalize and modernize your ERP platform.

Join Perficient at Kscope25 in Grapevine, Texas, from June 15-19, 2025! As a premier educational conference for Oracle technology users, Kscope25 promises an unparalleled experience with over 250 technical sessions, hands-on training, and all-day symposiums. This event is a unique opportunity to connect with Oracle experts, learn from industry leaders, and discover innovative solutions to your most pressing challenges.

At Perficient, we are proud to be an Oracle partner with over two decades of experience in delivering comprehensive Oracle solutions. Our expertise spans across enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), human capital management (HCM), enterprise performance management (EPM), analytics, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). We have successfully implemented more than 3,000 Oracle solutions for clients across key industries, helping them achieve faster time-to-value and improved operational efficiency.

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I have been writing about the Redwood Experience with Supply Chain Management, especially with the Inventory Management. Oracle has gone all-in with Redwood Experience in Inventory Management in 25B.

The 25 Inventory Management readiness documentation lists all new features and how to use them, so I will not repeat this greatly written document: https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/readiness/scm/25b/inv25b/index.html

For the previous features in Redwood, please consider visiting the Readiness documentation: https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/readiness/scm-all.html

This page is my personal favorite since it provides easy to find features and documentation along with that.

 1. Why?

You may be asking the question: why is the Redwood so hot and why do I have to transform?

If you are an Oracle customer or you have been in Oracle space for a while (I have been in the space for almost three decades), you know that once Oracle sets a vision and starts delivering new technology it becomes the future.  We have witnessed this when Oracle moved the business applications from 10.7 Character mode to 10SC (Smart Client) 10NCA (Network Architecture). We went from character mode to GUI.  It wasn’t easy and quick, but it happened. Then we moved from major releases in EBS and got used to the Self Service architecture.

Oracle delivered the Fusion Applications long time ago and we have witnessed that each quarterly release has added more functionality.  Since 2024 Oracle has been improving user interface and adding mobility to the Inventory Management pages, but the most radical improvements have happened in 25A and 25B.  Now, almost 100% of the Inventory Management is in Redwood and it’s the next generation of Cloud applications.

Redwood brings better usability and better user interface that I explained in my past blog https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/05/30/starting-redwood-experience-with-25a-inventory-management/, but it also opens the door for Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Oracle is expected to release major AI improvements in 25C that  I plan to write a blog to talk about. Redwood Experience is a prerequisite for all cool AI technology to work.  Agentic AI features or AI Agents will be part of the Fusion Applications which is a topic for another blog.

So, while majority of the screens are optional, why not get ahead of the game and start adopting?

2. How

You may be asking the question: what actions do I need to take to use Redwood

Read Documentation.  In Customer Connect, we are seeing many questions from the Oracle Community about Redwood pages not populating items or screens are coming out blank.  Please see this documentation for the important considerations

https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/readiness/scm/25a/inv25a/25A-inventory-wn-t65792.htm

By the way, if you have not registered to Oracle Customer Connect, I highly recommend, so you can get in contact with the rest of your peer Oracle Community members and Oracle ACEs like myself who can possibly respond to your questions: https://community.oracle.com/customerconnect/

Then please see the Profile options for the new features. You will have to flip the profile options at site level from No to Yes, so that the features are enabled.

The documents I previously mentioned have the profile option names and the navigation is to use the task bar from the Functional Setup Manager and search for Manage Administrative Profile Values.

3. What

You may be asking the question: what Redwood Pages I should use first

Adoption is very critical when changing the user experience. Change Management becomes critical migrating from traditional cloud pages to the newly designed Redwood Pages.  What I would recommend is to first enable the configuration pages, so that the internal Oracle team and business analysts have a feel of the Redwood Experience.

Then there are a few pages that users can be beneficial that I mentioned in my prior blog: https://blogs.perficient.com/2025/05/30/starting-redwood-experience-with-25a-inventory-management/

One bold move is to flip all features to Redwood and start testing internally first in a lower pod.  Oracle has designed this, so companies have time to take on as much as they can during the course of an unidentified period of time. As of today, Oracle has not announced when the Redwood Experience will be mandatory.  Most pages are possible to switch back and forth, but please read the feature’s release note to see if there is a not that will explicitly say that once it’s turned on, there is not a path to go back.

In conclusion, Oracle Fusion Application’s future is in Redwood Experience and built in AI, so I recommend that you try to adapt and use.

Contact Mehmet Erisen at Perficient for more introspection of this functionality, and how Perficient and Oracle Fusion Cloud can digitalize and modernize your ERP platform.

Oracle has delivered many features in Redwood Experience as of 25A. The purpose of this blog is to give a taste of a few Redwood pages and provide a recommendation to migrate to Redwood Experience on select pages to ease the transition and adoption. The pages I’ll cover in this blog are:

• Item Quantities (Manage Item Quantities)
• Inventory Transactions (Review Completed Transactions)
• Lot and Serial Numbers (Manage Lots and Manage Serials)
• Review Item Supply and Demand (Review Item Supply and Demand)

*names in parenthesis are the traditional cloud menu entries

Important Step before you start

Oracle has documented the Important actions to be taken before the Redwood enablement in 25A readiness notes.  We recommend that you read and follow this documentation for successful roll out https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/readiness/scm/25a/inv25a/25A-inventory-wn-t65792.htm This document also has a list of newly designed Redwood pages that you can pick and chose for your company. I wanted to cover a few that seems to be a good start with Redwood enablement.  

Item Quantities

“Manage Item Quantities” is one of the most visited pages in Oracle Fusion Inventory Management.  It’s a very functional page that one can see on hand quantities as well as incoming stock and stock in receiving.  The page also allows various actions and provides additional information.  I’ll share a few screenshots of the user interface to explain the look and feel of the Redwood Pages. The traditional page The page gave great functionality with the lack of exporting the results.  Also, the nodes in the page caused users to drill down multiple levels, for example from Item to Subinventory and Locator, to LOT number and project and task.  This multi-node architecture was good to see the information but prevented users from seeing all data in one place and exporting it. The Redwood Experience “Item Quantities” page takes the “Manage Item Quantities” page to the next level.  Immediately, the user will enjoy a more modern responsive experience.  The data is displayed in a tabular format The Redwood Experience gives the user a flexible layout. Easily add remove filters, follow the deep link to the Lot or Serial number, see the on hand quantities as well as other measures such as available to transact, available to reserve, inbound in receiving quantities all in one line. This is a huge improvement compared to the traditional Manage Item Quantities page. The Redwood Experience pages are user friendly and support download of the “on hand quantities” without needing additional reporting. In this case, I’m downloading all items that are in my inventory organization by clicking the export button. Clicking the Inbound deep link will show the user inbound details. Clicking the Lot under item Control will take the user to the Lot information page.   Please note that the user is now at the lot details page.   After testing the Redwood Item Quantities page, I was very pleased with the improvements:

1. Seamless navigation to various pages within the same user interface
2. Ability to export the tabular data (functionality highly sought after by users)
3. All information in one place, no nodes, no drilling
4. Additional functionality of directly creating subinventory transfers, transer orders, miscellaneous transactions and more

  One caveat I observed on this page is that the item description cannot be added at this time to Redwood Experience, but it is available if the user clicks on the item number.  There is also a need to scroll down to the last record, so the export includes all results. After carefully reviewing the new Redwood Experience, and testing the page thoroughly, I believe that this is one of the Redwood Pages that can be enabled to transition from traditional user interface to the Redwood Experience.

Inventory Transactions

This page with Redwood Experience replaces the Completed Transactions page.  Once again, it’s another Redwood Page that is easy to adopt and use.  It has all the bells and whistles of the traditional cloud page and more. What I like about the Redwood Experience is that it is so easy to add and remove columns.  One can quickly scroll through the available columns and check or uncheck multiple columns at a time, and use the Control+F (Find) feature of the browser.   Another improvement is that the user can share the saved searches with others leveraging the filter save tool. The one has been on the wish list for many users.

Lot and Serial Numbers

The newly designed Lot and Serial Numbers Redwood page is also a great way to start the Redwood Experience with one caveat.  If you frequently jump to Lot/Serial transactions or on hand quantities from the manage Lot/Serial pages, this feature is yet not available as of 25A in Redwood Experience.

Review Item Supply and Demand

Another easy to transform Redwood page is the Item Supply and Demand page.  All functionality is the same, but Redwood Experience has additional columns such as supply/demand quantity in separate columns, Party, Work Order Description, Shipping Priority and Created by to give the user better information. User acceptance and adoption comes with time, so the sooner the transition begins, the more successful the implementations will go. Perficient can help you with your transition from traditional Fusion or legacy on-prem applications to the SCM Redwood experience. When you are ready to take the first step and you’re looking for some advice, contact us. Our strategy is to craft a path for our clients that will make the transition as seamless as possible to the user community and their support staff.

Contact Mehmet Erisen at Perficient for more introspection of this functionality, and how Perficient and Oracle Fusion Cloud can digitalize and modernize your ERP platform.

After highlighting the key benefits of the AI Assistant for enterprise analytics in my previous blog post, I am sharing here a demo of what it looks like to use the AI Assistant. The video below demonstrates how a persona interested in understanding enterprise projects may quickly  find answers to their typical everyday questions. The information requested includes profitability, project analysis, cost management, and timecard reporting.
A Perficient Demo of AI Assistant for Project Analytics

What to Watch Out For

With the right upfront configuration in place, the AI assistant, native to Oracle Analytics, can transform how various levels of the workforce find the insights they need to be successful in their tasks. Here are a few things that make a difference when configuring the AI Assistant.

• Multiple Subject Areas: When enterprise data consists of several subject areas, for example Projects, Receivables, Payables, Procurement, etc., performing Q&A with the AI Assistant across multiple subject areas simultaneously is not currently possible. What the AI Assistant does in this situation is prompt for the subject area to use for the response. That is not an issue when the information requested is from a single subject area. However, there are situations when we want to simultaneously gain insights across two or more subject areas. This can be handled by preparing a combined subject area that contains the key relevant information from other underlying subject areas. As a result, the AI Assistant interfaces with a single subject area that consists of all the transaction facts and conformed dimensions across the various transactional data sets. With a little semantic model adjustments this is an achievable solution.
• Be selective on what is included in AI prompts: Enterprise semantic models typically have a lot of information that may not be relevant for an AI chat interface. Therefore, excluding any fields from being included in an AI prompt improves performance, accuracy, and sometimes even reduces the processing cost incurred by AI when leveraging external LLMs. Dimension codes, identifiers, keys, and audit columns are some examples of things to exclude. The Oracle Analytics AI Assistant comes with a fine-grained configuration that enables selecting the fields to include in AI prompts.
• Metadata Enrichment with Synonyms: Use synonyms on ambiguous fields, for example to clarify what a date field represents (Is it the transaction creation date or the date it was invoiced on?). Another example of when synonyms are useful is when there is a need to enable proper interpretation of internal organization-specific terms. The AI Assistant enables setting up synonyms on individual columns to improve it’s level of understanding.
• Indexing Data: For an enhanced user experience, I recommend identifying which data elements are worth indexing. This means the AI LLM will be made aware of the information stored in these fields that you chose while setting up the AI Assistant. This is an upfront one-time activity. The more information you equip the AI Assistant with, the smarter it gets when interpreting and responding to questions.

For guidance on how to get started with enabling GenAI for your enterprise data analytics, reach out to mazen.manasseh@perficient.com.

In the third and final blog post of this three-part Solution Highlight series featuring a proven leader in defense-grade, high assurance cyber security solutions, the topic is Salesforce and Oracle Cloud integration. If you missed the two previous blog posts in the series, I encourage you to read the Solution Highlight – Oracle Revenue Management / SSP – Part 1, authored by my colleague Jeff Davis. He shared our client’s journey to automate its complex and manual revenue allocation processes. To round out the series, read Solution Highlight – Oracle Fusion Global SCM and Manufacturing – Part 2.

About Our Client: a trailblazer in the cyber security space, our client needed the ability to integrate Salesforce and Oracle Fusion to process Sales Orders and manage sellable items.

Challenge

• Item management without security
• Handling of additional product types and complicated attribution
• Sales Order Management for various business requirements
• Updating Salesforce with fulfillment information for better customer service

Solution

Improved Item Management integration by adding logic to Salesforce and expanding Product Management footprint

As a digital consultancy, we have the ability to work across multiple business units internally as one team to deliver a suitable solution for our client. In this solution, Perficient has engaged teams from three separate business units: Oracle, Salesforce and Cloud and API Consulting.

Oracle Fusion Product Management provides robust item management capabilities for item management.   In this engagement, we introduced a new family or items and improved attribution updates through the integration.  Key highlights include:

• Item Classes for Security: Item Classes improve Product Management security. By creating new item classes and custom roles, we implemented a secure item management capability for the client
• Item Classes for attribution: With the use of Extentisible Flexfield, we have added product family attribution to the item master
• Item Templates: We have improved the Item Management by including new Item Templates that requires separate attribution for revenue management and also for manufacturing and order fulfillment
• Additional Logic in Boomi Interface: Our technical team worked with our client and functional architects to create logic, and our Salesforce team assisted at the Salesforce end for item creation and synchronization, so that the items in Product Management drives proper Revenue Management functionality

Enhanced Order Management Fulfillment and Integration to Salesforce

Our client had implemented a simple Sales Order integration and out of the box Order Orchestration to process the sales orders.  With revenue in play, Order Fulfillment requirements have become for complicated to be supported with the current solution. Key highlights of our solution include:

• Improved Order Orchestration: Oracle Order Orchestration (DOO) is the key workflow engine processing the Sales Order Fulfillment process. Our Oracle team has worked internally to created multiple DOOs to handle different scenarios
• Improved Integration Logic: With the help of our Boomi development team and Salesforce consultants, we were able to improve the logic in creating the sales orders and writing back and forth between Salesforce and Oracle to update the Order Creation and Order Fulfilment activities

Benefits

• Secure Product Management – Ensuring only authorized users to update product information

• Flexible Order Fulfillment – Enablement of various order fulfillment scenarios as well as feeding Revenue Management

• Effective and Accurate Item Management – Using Item Templates, Item Classes makes item management more accurate and more efficient.
• Flexible Order Fulfillment – the solution can handle various fulfillment scenarios to support multiple business requirement

Oracle Fusion Order Management and Product Management can work together to fulfill customer Sales Orders that turns into profits for corporations, hence critical component of every business.

This solution is particularly effective for companies looking to user multiple technology stacks and still using Oracle Fusion applications as their backbone ERP and SCM platforms.

Let me know if you’d like a deeper dive into any of these features!

Asking questions about data has been part of Oracle Analytics through the homepage search bar for several years now. It did that with Natural Language Processing (NLP) to respond to questions with various automatically generated visualizations. What has been introduced since late 2024 is the capability to leverage Large Language Models (LLM) to respond to user questions and commands from within a Workbook. This brings a much-enhanced experience, thanks to the evolution of language processing from classic NLP models to LLMs. The newer feature is the AI Assistant, and while it was earlier only available to larger OAC deployments, with the May 2025 update, it has now been made available to all OAC instances!

If you’re considering a solution that leverages Gen AI for data analytics, the AI Assistant is a good fit for enterprise-wide deployments. I will explain why.

• Leverages an enterprise semantic layer: What I like most about how AI Assistant works is that it reuses the same data model and metadata that are already in place and caters for various types of reporting and analytical needs. AI Assistant adds another channel for user interaction with data, without the risks of data and metadata redundancy. As a result, no matter whether creating reports manually or leveraging AI, everyone across the organization remains consistent in using the same KPI definitions, the same entity relationships and the same dimensional rollup structures for reporting.
• Data Governance: This is along the same lines as my first point, but I want to stress the importance of controls when it comes to bringing the power of LLMs to data. There are many ways of leveraging Gen AI with data and some are native to the data management platforms themselves. However, implementing Gen AI data querying solutions directly within the data layer requires a closer look at security aspects of the implementation. Who will be able to get answers on certain topics? And if the topic is applicable to the one asking, how much information are they allowed to know?

The AI Assistant simply follows the same object and row level security controls that are enforced by the semantic data model.

• What about agility? Yes, governed analytics is very important. But how can people innovate and explore more effective solutions to business challenges without the ability to interact with the data that comes along with these challenges. The AI Assistant works not only with the common enterprise data model, but with individually prepared data sets as well. As a result, the same AI interface caters to questions asked about both enterprise data as well as departmental or individualized data sets.
• Tunability and Flexibility: Enabling the AI Assistant for organizational data, while relatively an easy task, does allow for a tailored setup. The purpose of tuning the setup is to increase the levels of reliability and accuracy. The flexibility comes into play when directing the LLM on what information to take into consideration when generating responses. And this can be done through a fine-tuning mechanism of designating which data entities and/or fields of data within these entities, can be considered.
• Support for data indexing, in addition to metadata: When tuning the AI Assistant setup, three options are available to pick from, down to the field level: Don’t Index, Index Metadata Only, and Index. With the Index option, we can include information about the actual data in a particular field so the AI Assistant is aware of that information. This can be useful, for example, for a Project Type field so the LLM is informed of the various possible values for Project Type. Consequently, the AI Assistant provides more relevant responses to questions that include specific project types as part of the prompt.
• Which LLM to use? LLMs continue to evolve, and it seems that there will always be a better, more efficient and more accurate LLM to switch to. Oracle has made the setup for the AI Assistant open, to an extent, in that it can accommodate external LLMs, besides the built-in LLM that is deployed and managed by Oracle. At this time, if not using the built-in LLM, we have the option of using an Open AI model via the Open AI API. Why may you want to use the built-in LLM vs an Open AI model?
  • The embedded LLM is focused on the analytical data that is part of your environment. So it’s more accurate in that it is less prone to hallucinations. However, this approach doesn’t provide flexibility in terms of access to external knowledge.
  • External LLMs include public knowledge (depending on what knowledge an LLM is trained on) in addition to the analytical data that is specific to your environment. This normally allows AI Assistant to have better responses when the questions asked are broad and require public knowledge to tie into the specific data elements housed in one system. Think for example about geographical facts, statistics, weather, business corporations’ information, etc. These are public information and can help in responding to analytical questions within the context of an organization’s data.
  • If the intent is to use an LLM but avoid the inclusion of external knowledge when generating responses, there is the option to restrict the LLM so it limits responses based on organizational data only. This approach leverages the reasoning capabilities of models without compromising the source of information for the responses.
• The Human Factor: AI Assistant factors in the human aspect of leveraging LLMs for analytics. Having a conversation with data through natural language is to the most part straight forward when dealing with less complex data sets. This is because, in the case, the responses are more deterministic. As the data model gets more complex, there will be more opportunities for misunderstanding and missed connections between what’s on one’s mind versus an AI generated response, let alone a visual one. This is why the AI Assistant has the capability for an end user to adjust the responses to better align with their preferences, without reiterating prompts and elongated back and forth conversations. These adjustments can be easily applied with button clicks, for example to change a visual appearance or change/add a filter or column, all within a chat window. And whatever visualizations the AI Assistant produces, can be added to a dashboard for further adjustments and future reference.

In the next post, I will mention a few things to watch out for when implementing AI Assistant. I will also demo what it looks like to use AI Assistant for project management.

When it comes to manufacturing, companies (OEM) require services from their manufacturing partners to help with the production of finished and semi-finished products.  There are two known solutions that Oracle Fusion SCM suite offers: Outside Processing (OSP) and Contract Manufacturing.  Both solutions involve a third-party vendor and a service component to either help complete a work order, fulfill a sales order, or fulfill subassembly demand. Both solutions serve a purpose and are quite powerful. Before I jump into the comparison, here’s a textbook definition of both solutions:

OSP:

OSP is the process of outsourcing a portion of the work order that is being done in house. For example, a steel shop that can cut and weld steel to manufacture frames may send the frames to a paint shop (vendor) to get painted. The steel shop then receives the painted frames in house and perhaps performs a few more value-added steps to complete the work order.  The paint portion of this work order is considered an outside job.  Companies may prefer outside processing for various reasons. The steel manufacturer may not be interested in installing a paint booth and employing painters, or the company may have a paint booth but it’s backlogged or is down. Specialization may be required. In all these scenarios, a vendor is needed to help.

Contract Manufacturing:

Contract Manufacturing is to (optionally) provide materials to a vendor and expect the vendor to produce assemblies and send them to external or internal customers.  Typically, the company ships raw materials and/or subassemblies to their vendor and manages stock in their warehouse.  With contract manufacturing, the vendor is in complete control of manufacturing process and is supposed to update and complete work orders or communicate back the process.  The OEM usually has owned stock at the vendor location and tracks in its books.

The one-million-dollar question; which one to pick?

In most cases the “textbook” response can be straightforward. In some cases, companies that are using production steps from a vendor as one of the operations in their in-house work orders use the OSP solution. It’s straightforward and quite easy to set up. Read this blog for OSP treatment advice in Cost Management.

Contract Manufacturing may be used directly to fulfill back-to-back sales orders, or to fulfill the Supply Planning generated subassembly transfer orders and work orders.  Two drawbacks to Contract Manufacturing (as of Release 25A), is that the second portion of the solution can only be accomplished by Supply Planning. Contract Manufacturing is a robust solution, but it requires vendors to actively participate providing feedback on inventory levels, or updating the production progress in Oracle Fusion.

There are use cases where companies may use a vendor to produce subassemblies, but would like to create manual work orders, manage the inventory, and want a less complicated solution.  In this case, the OSP solution can work beautifully simulating a Contract Manufacturing solution.

Based on the business requirements, the OEM may choose to go with OSP.  Let’s assume that the inventory sent to the vendor for Contract Manufacturing is only sent when new assemblies are required and there isn’t an opportunity to electronically integrate through webservices and communication is with emails or with other correspondence.

For this OEM, it is feasible to create a Work Center in Oracle Fusion Manufacturing for its vendor, automatically create service purchase orders, and have dedicated supply and completion subinventories.  Inventory Management could be a little challenging dedicating the raw material for contract manufacturer use only, but not unmanageable.  In this simple scenario, the OEM doesn’t have to go through a complex setup to use Contract Manufacturing, and they can go with the OSP solution.

There are various use cases and potential solutions using Oracle Supply Planning, Inventory Management, and min-max planning, Oracle Manufacturing, Inventory and Procurement, and the Supplier Portal to fulfill various manufacturing scenarios.

Contact Mehmet Erisen at Perficient for more introspection of this functionality, and how Perficient and Oracle Fusion Cloud can digitalize and modernize your ERP platform.

In the second blog post of this three-part Solution Highlight series featuring a proven leader in defense-grade, high assurance cyber security solutions, the topic is Salesforce and Oracle Cloud integration. If you missed the other blog posts in the series, I encourage you to read the Solution Highlight – Oracle Revenue Management / SSP – Part 1, authored by my colleague Jeff Davis. He shared our client’s journey to automate its complex and manual revenue allocation processes. To round out the series, read Solution Highlight – Oracle Fusion and Salesforce – Part 3.

About Our Client: a trailblazer in the cyber security space, our client needed the ability to integrate Salesforce and Oracle Fusion to process Sales Orders and manage sellable items.

Challenge

• Different Sales Order Fulfilment techniques based on the item type and country
• Global fulfillment with multiple countries (Business Units)
• Contract Manufacturing for Subassemblies

Customized Order Orchestration for various fulfillment scenarios

After analyzing the requirements, Perficient has customized the Order Orchestration to handle multiple fulfillment scenarios.

Key highlights include:

• Routed to different orchestration flows: Order Lines has been assigned to the requested orchestration trough the Salesforce Integration
• Wait Steps: Added wait steps based on business events for the Revenue Management requirements

Supply Chain Financial Orchestration for Intercompany Accounting

One of the requirements in the overall solution to create intercompany buy and sell transactions, in other words “internal drop ship” fulfillment.  We used Supply Chain Financial Orchestration and Cost and Receipt accounting custom mappings sets and accounting rules to fulfill this requirements.

Key Highlights include:

• Build the Intercompany Trading model with Internal Customers and Suppliers and build entity relationship
• Create the Supply Chain Orchestration Rules and Flows
• Use of Subledger accounting to drive intercompany accounting

Outside Processing for Contract Manufacturing

Our client used a contract manufacturer for the subassemblies, but they didn’t have the supply planning module. After analyzing their requirements and Oracle footprint, we successfully implemented OSP (Outside Process) flow for their contract manufacturing solution.

Please refer to the blog that explains the decision process for Outside Processing and Contract Manufacturing:

Outside Processing vs Contract Manufacturing

Benefits

• Flexible Order Fulfillment – the solution can handle various fulfillment scenarios to support multiple business requirement
• Flexible Intercompany Accounting transactions – Oracle Supply Chain Financial Orchestration can handle various rules and flows between different Business Units to give flexibility to corporations doing international business
• Fast, but thorough implementation – Modelling a simpler OSP approach enabled us to implement the solution in a very short timespan making it quite effective and efficient for the client
• This solution is particularly effective for companies looking to user multiple technology stacks and still using Oracle Fusion applications as their backbone ERP and SCM platforms.

Let me know if you’d like a deeper dive into any of these features!

In the first blog post of this three-part Solution Highlight series featuring a proven leader in defense-grade, high assurance cyber security solutions, I will cover Oracle Revenue Management.  My colleague, Mehmet Erisen will share his views on Global Supply Chain Management including Manufacturing with OSP and intercompany order fulfillment across business units featuring Oracle Supply Chain Management. We’ll round out the series with the third and final blog post focused on Salesforce to Order Cloud integration. 

About Our Client: a trailblazer in the cyber security space, our client needed the ability to automate its complex and manual revenue allocation processes. 

Challenge

• Manual revenue recognition processes leading to errors and delays 

• Difficulty in complying with ASC 606 / IFRS 15 standards 

• Lack of real-time visibility into revenue reporting 

Solution

Implemented Oracle Revenue Management – Managing Bundles and Stand-alone Selling Price (SSP)  

Oracle Fusion ERP provides robust functionality for managing and automating the implementation of product bundles and determining the SSP for revenue recognition under ASC 606 and IFRS 15 standards. Key highlights include: 

• Revenue Management: Automates revenue processing tasks, minimizing manual interventions, allowing organizations to comply efficiently and consistently with the ASC 606 and IFRS 15 core principles 

• Bundling Capabilities: Allows seamless configuration and management of product/service bundles with clear pricing structures 

• Automation and Scalability: Automates complex revenue allocation processes, improving efficiency and scalability 

• Real-time Analytics: Provides insights into sales trends and SSP analysis, enabling data-driven pricing strategies 

Benefits

• Reduced Manual Effort – Eliminated spreadsheet-based tracking 

• Improved Accuracy – Minimized revenue leakage and misreporting 

• Faster Close Cycles – Automated recognition speeds up month-end close 

• Regulatory Compliance – Ensured adherence to ASC 606 / IFRS 15 

• Enhanced Visibility – Real-time insights into revenue performance 

Oracle Revenue Management Cloud enables organizations to automate revenue recognition, reduce compliance risks, and gain real-time financial insights. This solution delivers value for companies with complex revenue streams, such as SaaS, manufacturing, and professional services. 

This solution is particularly effective for companies looking to streamline revenue recognition while maintaining compliance and operational efficiency.  

Let me know if you’d like a deeper dive into any of these features! 

When it comes to cycle counting, the first thing that comes to mind is ABC classifications of the items and then a cycle count program to count items throughout the year on a continuous basis.

There is nothing wrong with the ABC classifications if the organization is mature enough with its items and the classification criteria is going to be somewhat stable during the year. For example, the classification criteria is the on-hand quantities, that classification is only good at the time of creation. Three months later, the classification could be different. What if the company adds new items and starts transacting? There are a few challenges with the traditional ABC Classifications.

Category-based Cycle Counts

Oracle recently rolled out Category-based cycle counts in Oracle Fusion. In my opinion, it’s a powerful tool that could easily replace the ABC model.  I believe that the Category-based Cycle Counts has various advantages over ABC Classification:

• If all items are the same for cycle counting purposes, use an existing catalog, or see if any of the other catalogs can be used
• If none of the existing catalogs work, then create a Cycle Count Catalog
• Assign your items to the catalog: in our experience, this approach is more intuitive for most companies than performing the ABC classifications.
• Create a Category-based cycle count and let Oracle create counts based on the categories

The clear advantage with this approach is the flexibility of adding items and changing the item’s classification or category at any given time without cumbersome setups and IT work.

Another added benefit is that Oracle Fusion Cycle base can be used to perform highly accurate counts, if performing manual counts.

I will cover the newly improved Cycle Count pages with Redwood Experience in my next blog.  As a preview of that blog, Oracle is not improving direct manual classification and that may make the usage of ABC Classification attractive again.

This new approach to perform Cycle Counts in Oracle Fusion Supply Chain is a powerful tool worth exploring.

Contact Mehmet Erisen at Perficient for more introspection of this functionality, and how Perficient and Oracle Fusion Cloud can digitalize and modernize your ERP platform.

If you are a Game of Thrones fan, you are probably familiar with the “winter is coming” phrase.  When it comes to Oracle Fusion, the Redwood experience has been coming for years, but now it’s almost here.

Oracle is in the process of overhauling the whole fusion suite with what they call the “Redwood Experience.” The newly designed Redwood pages are not only responsive and more powerful than their ancestors, but they bring great capability to the table.

• Redwood pages are built for the future. They are all AI-ready and some come with pre-built AI capabilities.
• They are geared toward a “Journey Guide” concept, so enterprise-level software implementations are no longer full of “technical jargon.”
• The new AI Studio and the Visual Studio give Oracle Fusion clients the ability to modify the application for their business needs.

How to Move Forward with the Redwood Experience

Adopting to Redwood is not a straightforward task.  Every quarterly release, Oracle will add more and more pages with the Redwood design, but how do you adopt and take on to the Redwood experience and explore AI opportunities?

1. First, deploy the setup screens where Redwood experience is available.
2. Second, review quarterly updates and decide what screens are mature enough to be deployed.
3. Third, review is the new design is beginning new functionality or lacking any functionality. For instance, Oracle Work Definition Redwood pages are bringing new functionality, whereas the newly designed Order Management pages won’t support certain flows.  Having said that, Order Management screens brings so much when in comes to AI capabilities, if the “not yet available” features is not a business requirement, moving to the Redwood experience will bring efficiency in customer service and much better user experience.
4. Fourth, have a game plan to roll out with your pace. With the cloud, you are in total control of how and when you roll out the SCM pages. According to Oracle, there isn’t yet a definitive timeframe that Oracle will make the Redwood pages mandatory (04/2025).  Please note that some of the pages are already in play and some made have been mandatory.

User acceptance and adoption comes with time, so the sooner the transition begins, the more successful the implementations will go. Perficient can help you with your transition from traditional Fusion or legacy on-prem applications to the SCM Redwood experience. When you are ready to take the first step and you’re looking for some advice, contact us. Our strategy is to craft a path for our clients that will make the transition as seamless as possible to the user community and their support staff.

New modern looking newly designed Manage Manufacturers Redwood Experience with built-in AI Assist

Below are the Supply Chain features Oracle has released from release 24D to 25B. (2024 Q3- 2025 Q2) only for Inventory Management and yet it is an overwhelming list.  Please stay tuned for our Redwood series that will be talking about select features.