Oracle Releases Enterprise Supply Chain Products for PeopleSoft -- ADTmag

Oracle Releases Enterprise Supply Chain Products for PeopleSoft

By Matthew Schwartz, Enterprise Systems
October 5, 2005

Oracle yesterday released PeopleSoft Enterprise Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) 8.9 and PeopleSoft Enterprise Supply Chain Management (SCM) 8.9. Oracle says this new release represents a launching plan for Oracle Project Fusion, providing customers with new functionality and a clear path to the next generation of enterprise applications.

PeopleSoft Enterprise Supplier Contract Management rounds out the PeopleSoft SRM footprint, giving customers a closed-loop platform for managing sourcing and compliance, says Tim Minahan, VP of Global Supply Management Research at The Aberdeen Group.

Customers will benefit from PeopleSoft SRM 8.9 in three ways, Oracle says. First, customers can exploit more savings opportunities by using sourcing optimization and total cost modeling to source from suppliers that provide the best combination of cost, quality, risk and innovation. Second, customers can improve bottom-line results by converting negotiated savings into realized savings with Supplier Contract Management. Finally, customers are able to maximize business process effectiveness by leveraging built-in procurement best practices, enjoying greater control over services spending and broader adoption via simplified requisitioning.

At the heart of Oracle's PeopleSoft SRM 8.9 is PeopleSoft Supplier Contract Management, the enterprise application that enables customers to create and enforce better supplier contracts. Customers can standardize contract processes, reduce time-to-contract and drive contract compliance. Organizations can standardize contract processes across the enterprise by leveraging a centralized clause library, authoring tools and comprehensive contract policies. Organizations can lower risk by reducing time to contract with flexible workflow, formal amendment processing and parallel negotiation of legal and commercial terms. Finally, organizations can enforce contract compliance throughout the procure-to-pay process via a centralized contract repository, full visibility into all contract terms and integration of supplier contracts throughout the procure-to-pay process.

PeopleSoft Enterprise SCM 8.9 contains many significant enhancements focused on deepening functionality, according to Oracle. Industry enhancements built on best practices help organizations automate end-to-end business processes and better respond to changing customer demands against fulfillment operations. Oracle has invested in PeopleSoft Enterprise SCM 8.9 to help improve implementations, operations, upgrades and usability of the applications, in an effort to provide customers with a superior ownership experience, the company claims. The defined installation, configuration and integration path for PeopleSoft Enterprise SCM 8.9 will ease management across the entire lifecycle of the application, Oracle adds.