Why upgrade to R12.1 ???

Latest Release (R12.1) of Oracle E-Business Suite Helps Reduce Costs, Improve Controls

Expanded support for shared services was introduced in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 and continues with the latest release. Release 12.1 offers additional capabilities for supporting shared service centers (an increasingly important option for reducing administrative costs), improving transaction-processing efficiency, and addressing higher levels of regulatory scrutiny.
With shared services, global organizations establish a central department, often in a country chosen for its low labor costs, to process financial transactions for all business units and geographical locations. “CFOs and other C-level executives continue to say consolidation, centralization, and standardization are their top priorities. These goals are top of mind and influence their IT projects,” says Amrita Mehrok, director of financials product strategy at Oracle.
To address these demands, Oracle E-Business Suite offers an architecture that enables businesses to run finance operations centrally to enforce enterprisewide standards and achieve global visibility."

As globalization shifts work around the world, companies must address the different accounting, tax, and reporting requirements of the countries in which they operate. For example, most organizations with foreign subsidiaries find themselves preparing consolidated financial statements according to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) or U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), as well as statutory reports to meet local requirements." Mehrok explains. "Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Release 12.1 delivers configurable rules engines that keep you current with legal requirements and makes sure those requirements are applied consistently across the enterprise."
Other features that support shared services include

• Multi-Organization Access Control (MOAC enables shared services personnel to enter transactions, process data, view information, and run reports on behalf of other divisions or business units within the enterprise. Users no longer need to switch responsibilities to enter invoices, view consolidated requisitions, perform collection tasks, and receive or drop-ship goods for multiple operating units.
• Oracle E-Business Tax is a comprehensive infrastructure for managing transaction tax rules and transactions. The automation of tax processing through a central integrated engine improves the efficiency of your shared services organization and reduces errors. Your shared services staff can leverage the central setup and maintenance of tax rules by your tax or accounting personnel. An internal (or multi-entity) subscription model allows the tax rules to be shared across legal entities, along with the ability to apply business rules that enforce company wide tax content.
• Payments and collections can be processed more efficiently in a shared services environment with the centralized payment engine and bank account model in Oracle E-Business Suite Financials. The highly configurable centralized engine enables straight-through processing based on industry-standard protocols, with a dashboard for process visibility and management.
• The payment engine and bank model together enable a shared service center to make a single payment run spanning operating units, currencies, payment methods, and bank accounts. According to Mehrok, this dramatically increases the efficiency of a company's finance operations by reducing the number of payment files sent to the bank

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