Procurement 26A Updates
Hello,
Each quarter I sift through the Oracle notes and highlight the changes that I find most impactful for my clients. This list is not the full list of Oracle readiness materials, just a curated list of the ones I’m most excited about.
Want these roundups by email each quarter? Ping me at mgibby@hcg.com.
Breaking news: ALL SCM pages—Inventory, Procurement, Manufacturing, etc—must target Redwood adoption by 27A. We expect, but cannot confirm in writing, that this will be similar to RSSP, where the Classic pages will remain available after 27A but without any bug support or SR support for any issues; but clients should make plans to move assuming that this will not be the case. “Better safe than sorry.”
External Purchase Price Agent—a built in Agent from Oracle (means there is no cost to use it) that explains and helps you resolve issues with the import and processing as well as creating mappings. I see this as a powerful tool to make the EPP module more accessible for users that are concerned about how to handle those issues and set up data.
Contracts gets a big overhaul! Last year, this team moved to report to Procurement instead of CX and the move is paying off in spades. First off, it’s now in Redwood! Searching and creating contracts is both available in Redwood.
In Redwood, you now get access to Access Groups, a new security concept that is significantly easier to implement and manage than the traditional security model.
You also now have the ability to go from a Requisition to a Contract to a PO, a flow that was sorely lacking and now makes Contracts much more properly connected—the only part missing is the ability to update BPA’s like EPP, but this is big progress.
Rounding it off is a new Contract AI Advisor, which will let you chat and ask questions about the contract and the terms from within the contract. All around, a big release for Contracts and exciting times ahead!
REST APIs
In the past, “functional” teams often ignored REST details, but it’s becoming an integral part of our lives for a few reasons.
- Oracle tools like Visual Builder Add in for Excel (VBAFE) let you use Excel to create and modify Oracle configuration and transaction through REST, an incredibly valuable tool for consultants and clients
- AI Agents use REST to create and modify transactions; and you can test the endpoints first in VBAFE.
- As Oracle moves to Redwood, where pages are built on REST data, all fields will need to be available via REST
This means the list of new and modified REST sources will only grow over the coming year. There are new targets entirely, like purchase agreement acknowledgements, supplier configuration, contract type LOV and negotiation awards. Others get modified, like requisition line replacement.
Redwood-style Procurement Notifications
More notifications are moving to Redwood, which is a good thing. They are easier to edit, and in many cases, mean we can now edit notifications that weren’t editable before. Read the list here: Oracle Docs
Requisition Improvements
There are a few big items in Requisition Land! The most exciting is Best-Fit Category Recommendations! This leverages BPA Lines and PO Lines and the power of AI to estimate what category is the best fit for a requisition. In theory, this removes a lot of pressure from requesters. In practice, it does mean you need good historical data to choose from; and it will be self affirming, because it builds on the history, so it’s own selections will reinforce that for the future. I recommend you review the existing data and audit PO’s in the future to make sure the data stays clean. Setup includes a job to categorize your history, and the biggest change management is to remind users that the button is grayed out until they type their description and hit tab to exit the description field. Oracle Docs
Another neat one: in Classic, users could see budget details when they got a budget failure check, but in RSSP this was missing. Now, Oracle has added back in the budget details! Oracle Docs
Another neat one is a tighter integration of Contracts and Requisitions. Now, a Requisition Line can go to a Contract and show the status as being in Contracting. There are also updates for ability to see PO approvers directly from the requisition, all of which should lead to better understanding and fewer questions. Oracle Docs
For healthcare, a big new feature is the ability to connect directly to GHX’s Marketplace. The setup process is simple, and users can still start with guided buying in your local catalog but the GHX catalog results, enriched with details, is right there for users. Oracle Docs
A few more honorable mentions
-Now BPA Priority extends to Shopping Lists (if you opt in)
-View history even on a Draft requisition
-Non catalog requisitions no longer require a Requested Delivery Date (for requesters who don’t want to tell you when they want something but will still be mad if it takes too long to arrive by their unspecified date)
-Sort your Search Results by Description
-Header level PO Discounts
-Notify buyers of reassignment of req lines
-More easily switch a non catalog req line to a catalog item during req processing
-Search by Barcode if you are scanning items to order them outside of PAR
-See charge account segment descriptions (no more memorizing numbers)
-Distribute project costs if you have an active funding pattern
-Supplier Registration and Profile Change Request configuration pages are now in Redwood with one neat addition: You can set a Welcome and Success message directly from configuration instead of customizing in VBS
Inventory 26A Updates
- Cycle Count Analysis Advisor — I’d love to take credit for talking frequently about the value of counting based on inaccuracies; one of my first blog posts was about cycle count culture and suggested flipping the script; instead of counting just by dollar value, count the items that were inaccurate most. I often leave clients with a report to show these details; but now Oracle has baked this logic in to an AI Agent. Great idea, and I strongly recommend using it. In the long run, I don’t know if this really replaces reporting. Agents are good at handling smaller volumes of data. If you want to analyze data over multiple orgs or months, a report is still a great option. Additionally, a great next step for this agent would be modifying it so it can generate the cycle count changes for you, changing classes, or manually creating count schedules. Oracle Docs
- Inventory Aging Advisor — This agent helps you quickly take a few different slices of your slow moving inventory. Technically, a task that is still well suited for a report or dashboard, but it’s neat how it lets you drill in and ask more questions. Also a neat idea to build the “scrapping” transaction in to the agent itself, but it’s just generating an interorganization movement request. This generates a pick ticket and that’s all good, but when the items gets deliver to the other org, you need a business process for them to know what to do with it, and they will have to do the adjustment out at that point. Seems like another area ripe for a custom agent to really suit your business processes. Oracle Docs
- Stock Location Advisor — this does some things that aren’t obvious from the name alone. For starters, it will quickly tell you where the item is in other locations, incase you can’t find it for a pick. Then, you can both create a cycle count for an item, or just create an adjustment transaction. This reduces several steps that an operator may have had to perform into a single agent where they can interact in a chat format. Neat use of AI Agents! Oracle Docs
- Count lot & serial in quantity-tracked PAR locations – counting in a quantity tracked PAR location is new enough, but Oracle has enhanced this to include lot and serial. At this point it’s getting close to min max inventory but without needing to do transactions on each item, and I wish Oracle would uptake my idea to simply combine the two features and stop treating them as separate. They could call it “PAR+” or “minipar”. Oracle Docs
- Review Min-Max & PAR before updating current values – It’s easier than ever to get suggestions from Oracle about better min-max or par values, comparing their suggestion to your current levels, and overriding them before publishing. If you are still doing this the old way, you are losing time! Oracle Docs
- Lot-specific UOM conversions – two years ago, I filed a list of 12 ideas related to handling dual uom and substitution better. This idea already existed, but I supported it and related it to my list, because lot specific uom conversions would be so meaningful for true dual uom control. Glad to see Oracle delivering on ideas from Idea Lab! Oracle Docs
Honorable Mentions include
- Kanban shortages/stockouts are now listed with a warning icon on Item Shortages page
- Purge cycle count schedules (per cycle count)
- Item description visible on Item Quantities
- Release pick waves by Sales Order Type
- Create intra-org transfer requests without selecting source subinventory
- Capture lot/serial at receiving —This is huge for clients that use 2 step receiving, where you have a receipt and then a later putaway. Previously you had to wait for the putaway to indicate lot or serial, now you can do it at the receiving step. Oracle Docs
- Document Output Preferences – Now you can specify where different types of documents go, which is a big time saver compared to selecting the printer each time! Oracle lists this twice, once for paper docs like receipt travelers: Oracle Docs and once for label documents like stickers: Oracle Docs
- Receipt Creation AI Agent – Easily paste a list of receipts to perform, including contents of an email, and the agent will parse and create the receipts for you. You can still keep the classic page and the Receipt Confirmation process, this is just another avenue to simplify the receiving process for end users that find it frustrating. Easy to implement! Oracle Docs