COLLABORATE Item Creation and Maintenance Made Easy With

Form Personalizations, SharePoint and More4Apps Whitepaper

Kristin Piskulic
Centric Group, Inc.
Abstract:
Our company recently completed a project to migrate from an old AS400 based ERP system to Oracle
R12.1.3 for our largest business unit. This project encompassed moving item data to 30 inventory
organizations + MSTR Org + Validation Org including over 18K items being converted. End users were
overwhelmed by the number of screen touches that were needed to set-up and maintain the items at
each inventory organization. By implementing various DFFs, form personalizations, a database trigger
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and an in-house MS SharePoint solution alongside a 3 party tool by More4Apps we have enabled our
users to take control of new item setups and item maintenance.

Items
With our conversion from the AS400 based ERP system, we had over 18,000 unique items being
converted. These items were set up across our 30 inventory organizations. Items were all configured for
the MAS Master organization, Validation organization and the various inventory organizations which
resulted in over 80,000 item-organization setups. In the old system, each item-unit-of-measure (UOM)
had a unique item number; in the new system those multiple items became 1 item with multiple UOMs.
Our company decided to also implement Oracle planning and forecasting, which meant the item setup
planning data at each inventory organization now mattered.

Initial Reaction by our End Users Prior to Go-Live

Our initial session with the end users over training on item setups and maintenance took place a few
months prior to Go-Live. This meeting proved to be rougher than expected. Needless to say, when we
showed them the screens they would have to touch and the expected number of times they would have to
update a single item-organization combination, the task seemed clunky and overwhelming. Mass
changes for item maintenance scared them even more. We identified the areas we needed to address
with respect to the item setups and maintenance based on our configuration of inventory that would result
in the most pain and the most time spent. Those areas included the following:
1. End users would have to alter both the Cost of Goods Sold and the Sales Account which is
st
nd
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derived from the organization setup and an item product code (this is tied to our 1 , 2 , 3 and
th
5 segments of the GL string) for each item/org combination
2. Set-up as many as 8 categories for each new item (most at the Master level, a few at the
organization level)
3. Enter both the UPC/GTIN
4. Maintain planner codes at the organization level
5. Freight Class code this was an attribute that is built based on the different UOMs for each item.
This string of data was extracted and built from the AS400 system and inserted with the item load
for each item. These strings were complex and would be difficult to key into the system for each
item.

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Examples:
[832|60|FOOD ITEMS|][825|60|FOOD ITEMS|][600|60|FOOD ITEMS|][100|60|FOOD
ITEMS|][EA|65|EACHES (FOOD & SHAMPOO ITEMS)|]
[CS|60|FOOD ITEMS|][EA|65|EACHES (FOOD & SHAMPOO ITEMS)|]
6. Default Receiving Sub-Inventory for specific organizations
7. Mass item updates

Solution Initial Needs

After meeting with our users, we also discovered the need to streamline and simplify setting up new
items. With the current migration, there were several items identified that would need to be created very
soon after Go-Live and could not be brought in from the old system. The current process to request and
create a new item entailed an MS Excel spreadsheet passed among several groups. It was deemed
cumbersome and faulty. We needed a better process to streamline the entering of new items into Oracle
while still obtaining all the information needed from each area of business.
Mass data changes and maintenance was another initial need for our company soon after Go-Live.
Primarily to handle those last minute production changes.
Ideally the final solution would address both the creation and maintenance of inventory items. We
needed a tool that would streamline our processes and be straight forward and easy for the end user to
manage and run. The end goal for our end users meant not having to engage our software development
group for item updates or item creation as well as keeping the screen touches to a minimum.

Solution Options
We looked at several different solutions from developing tools in-house, form personalizations, nightly
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jobs, database triggers and 3 party solutions to ease the burden of item setups and maintenance. Our
final solution(s) must be flexible and not allow bad data into the system. One of the primary goals was to
allow the end user to update a lot of data without having to involve software development. Would this be
an in-house developed tool or externally purchased product? There were pros/cons with both of these
options.
Starting down the list of maintenance items that we identified prior, we started brainstorming options for
the solution(s). Form personalizations, nightly concurrent requests, triggers are solutions we could easily
develop in-house and would accomplish many of the new item maintenance updates that were needed
such as the COGS and Sales Account GL strings. Adding a new required DFF for the product code upon
item creation, allowed the implementation of a database trigger to automatically derive the COGS and
Sales Account strings. A database trigger was also used for the creation of the categories for each new
item. Forms personalization handled the validation of UPC numbers and forced the entry of several fields
to uppercase when necessary. Using a new lookup based on inventory organization, we were able to
create a nightly concurrent program to update the default receiving sub-inventory. And, the potentially
long and cumbersome freight class string that our users really expressed concern over, would be built
nightly by another concurrent request program.
The two items on our list that turned out to be the most difficult to accomplish were the mass item updates
and creation of new items. One of our team members had prior experience with a custom solution to feed
in item updates through use of an excel template. However, the validation and entry was subject to a lot

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of failure points. There were also issues as the tool was not flexible enough to handle different field
updates easily. We still continued down the path of the home grown solution thinking it was the best way
to create and update items the easiest.
It wasnt until we started digging deeper into the current business process of adding new items did we
start thinking outside the box for a solution. As the complexity of the excel spreadsheet solution was
growing, more thought was moving into the idea of automating the handoff of the item creation question
form. The brainstorming process began and a mockup utility was created in MS Access to display the
possibility of automating the item creation input to the various groups in the company before the item
would be loaded into the system. This utility established a predefined workflow for each new item being
requested and would notify the individual groups when it was their turn to add in the new item data
relative to their area. It kept track of new item requests in an organized manner. No items would be
loaded into Oracle unless all data areas for that item had been completed.
As we started getting estimates back from our development team on a utility of some sort to load and
update items, we found the quotes were much higher than expected and the concern was still the
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flexibility of the tool. We began looking into 3 party tools to assist in the validation and import of
changes to items in Oracle. The hope was to find a ready-made solution that was flexible.

Solution Mass Item Updates and Item Creation

We found a product called Item Wizard by More4Apps to handle the item updates and initial item
creation. This tool worked from MS Excel and appeared to have a very flexible user interface to allow the
user to pick and choose which fields needed to be updated. It also used standard Oracle APIs and the
standard Oracle validation as well as Oracle data dependencies between fields. The design solution we
ended up with came from the ease of use of this tool and the fact that it works in MS Excel. After testing
out this product, we knew it would be the answer to our biggest issue of mass item updates and mass
item creation by our end users.
Item Wizard turned out to have a simple setup to our Oracle servers as well as no client setup needed for
our end users. It integrated with the Oracle sign in and the individual user responsibilities in Oracle. It
also allowed for the item updates and item creation data to be submitted to the concurrent manager via a
simple click of the button. The end user would even be able to view the results of the item
update/creation job from the screen in MS Excel / Item Wizard.
After working with Item Wizard, we were then able to formalize our requirements for the item creation
workflow tool that we had previously created a mock up for in MS Access (for gathering information on
new item setups across our groups). Now, we knew if we could get the tool to handle the updates from
various groups in the company and be able to create the extract of the data in the proper MS Excel
format, that we would have the solution to our biggest issue.
We ended up finalizing our workflow tool requirements and using MS Sharepoint as the tool of choice to
implement it. This tool allowed any purchasing agent to initiate the addition of a new item to our
inventory. Once the item was requested, it initiated a workflow by emailing the respective department
upon the completion of each step of item creation information gathering. This workflow was passed
between 5-6 groups for information before the item was ready to be loaded into Oracle. Once all the data
was entered from each area, the item administrator was able to extract the new items in a specific MS
Excel format. The extracted data is simply cut and pasted into the template created in Item Wizard and
the data can then be validated prior to load. Once the data passes the validations, the job is submitted

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from Item Wizard to import the items into inventory. The end user is able to view the item import job after
it has finished checking for any errors or warnings similar to the Requests form in Oracle.

Product Use Today / Examples

Today our users are managing all their own new item requests as well as the majority of the data updates
with minimal development staff intervention. In addition, we found with Item Wizard, another tool came
with it called Item Extension Wizard. This tool allowed us to do other item related data updates such as
adding UOMs to each item or setting up customer item cross references. We have since incorporated it
as well to our new item setup process.
Since we have implemented these solutions, the end users have executed multiple mass item updates
using Item Wizard updating as many as 30K items. They have updated numerous categories, planning
attributes, UOM updates, item cross reference updates, customer item cross reference updates, and
more. The end users have created over 1000 items to date. All of these were completed without
intervention of the development staff.
The combined solution encompassing our company built item creation request system alongside the Item
Wizard and Item Extension Wizard has proven to be a very efficient and low maintenance solution.
Currently, the majority of all mass item updates are handled using both Item Wizard / Item Extension
Wizard with only a handful of users needed to make those changes.

Conclusion
Oracle eBusiness offers many options and tools to maintain the data integrity. By using various triggers,
DFFs, backend processes, and form personalizations, we were able to solve many of the potentially time
consuming item maintenance tasks. We found we had to be flexible and creative while always keeping
the end goal in mind: Making item maintenance and creation easier for our end users. When all other
options were exhausted or proved to be costly, we had to look outside of our known set of tools. We
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ended up finding a stronger solution by combining an in-house tool and a 3 party tool, Item Wizard. All
while streamlining and improving an existing process.
With the solutions we implemented, we saved our end users hours of frustration, hours of maintenance
and gave them more ownership of their data. The solutions have proven to put the majority of the
updates in the hands of the end users and out of the hands of the development staff.

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