The trip was quick, but I enjoyed getting a quick taste of Collaborate ’10. Thanks to all those who attended my presentation bright and early on Monday morning. I have uploaded the slides from my presentation here for reference: Finally Federal! Exploring Projects Release 12.1.
I was able to catch the FedSig meeting where I got my first chance to see the Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) product live. The presentation included a demonstration of core R12 Advance Procurement Suite (APS) functionality with the CLM features integrated in. I thought the CLM demo team did a good job and certainly were well-versed in Federal (including DoD) Contracting business processes. For anyone interested in CLM, be sure to get up to speed on the core R12 APS functionality available, which you could start doing now. That will serve as a good baseline for understanding the additional features that the CLM product provides when available. There is a good amount of documentation on R12 APS functionality available online and feel free to check out my Collaborate ’09 Presentation on the APS functionality I thought would be most relevant to the Federal Community. CLM is said to be available “Calendar Year 2010″, when R12.1.3 is released. The 12.1 Release Content Documents have been updated to include 12.1.3 features, which makes me think 12.1.3 may not be too far off, although the Procurement RCD doesn’t include anything about CLM.
I also attended another Projects Federal Accounting features session by Neeraj Garg of Project Partners, where I picked up a few pieces of info that I hadn’t figured out yet on the R12.1 projects functionality. He did a great job.
It was evident from the Cliff Godwin Oracle Apps Strategy Session & the Financials Road Map Session, that Oracle is going to start turning up the pressure to upgrade from 11i10. Extended support for 11i10 ends in 2013 and Oracle is strongly suggesting to get moving on the R12 upgrade planning/execution.
Another quick nugget: there are a few new pieces of Federal functionality planned for 12.1.3 as documented in the updated Financials 12.1 RCD (Note: 561580.1). It looks like the Federal Year-End process is being enhanced to better support Pre-Closing Entries and some enhancements to the CCR integration functionality are included.
