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Financial Statement Presentation Changes

Theresa Hickman — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:32:52 PST

On March 10, 2010, FASB and IASB came to an agreement on financial statement presentation. They have been discussing changes for some time, such as displaying more lines items and moving certain line items from equity to the P&L, and now it seems they have finally come to a joint decision and put it in writing.

I recently learned that there will be a trend to book nothing to equity and to convey everything in the P&L to take away any facility for companies to hide losses from its shareholders, investors, etc. (I'm exaggerating when I say book nothing to equity. Obviously, those items that already live there, such as stocks and dividends, would stay there.) But accounts like your CTA (Cumulative Translation Adjustment account) used to plug the gain or loss from equity translation would move from the equity section to your expense section. The rationale is that when you run translation, you're doing so for a subsidiary that you own, or simply put, it's a foriegn investment. Thus, the gains/losses of that foriegn investment should be itemized on your P&L and not buried in equity.

The FASB will include changes in financial statement presentation in its Exposure Draft that is planned for issuance at the end of April 2010.

Companies will be required to adopt the financial statement presentation provisions retroactively. Yes, that means companies will need to apply these changes to previously issued financial statements.

The FASB Summary of Board Decisions can be found at
"fasb.org".

java.util.ConcurrentModificationException when serializing non thread-safe maps

cristobal.soto@oracle.com — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:50:28 PST

We have got some questions related to exceptions thrown during a map serialization like the following one (in this example, for a LRUMap):

java.util.ConcurrentModificationException
at org.apache.commons.collections.SequencedHashMap$OrderedIterator.next(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.commons.collections.LRUMap.writeExternal(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeExternalData(ObjectOutputStream.java(Compiled Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeOrdinaryObject(ObjectOutputStream.java(Compiled Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject0(ObjectOutputStream.java(Compiled Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.defaultWriteFields(ObjectOutputStream.java(Inlined Compiled
Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeSerialData(ObjectOutputStream.java(Compiled Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeOrdinaryObject(ObjectOutputStream.java(Compiled Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject0(ObjectOutputStream.java(Compiled Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.defaultWriteFields(ObjectOutputStream.java(Inlined Compiled
Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeSerialData(ObjectOutputStream.java(Compiled Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeOrdinaryObject(ObjectOutputStream.java(Compiled Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject0(ObjectOutputStream.java(Compiled Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.defaultWriteFields(ObjectOutputStream.java(Inlined Compiled
Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeSerialData(ObjectOutputStream.java(Compiled Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeOrdinaryObject(ObjectOutputStream.java(Compiled Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject0(ObjectOutputStream.java(Compiled Code))
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject(ObjectOutputStream.java(Compiled Code))
at com.tangosol.util.ExternalizableHelper.writeSerializable(ExternalizableHelper.java(Inlined
Compiled Code))
at com.tangosol.util.ExternalizableHelper.writeObjectInternal(ExternalizableHelper.java(Compiled Code))
at com.tangosol.util.ExternalizableHelper.serializeInternal(ExternalizableHelper.java(Compiled Code))
at com.tangosol.util.ExternalizableHelper.toBinary(ExternalizableHelper.java(Inlined
Compiled Code))
at com.tangosol.util.ExternalizableHelper.toBinary(ExternalizableHelper.java(Inlined
Compiled Code))
at com.tangosol.coherence.servlet.TraditionalHttpSessionModel$OptimizedHolder.serializeValue(Traditiona
lHttpSessionModel.java(Inlined Compiled Code))
at com.tangosol.coherence.servlet.TraditionalHttpSessionModel$OptimizedHolder.getBinary(TraditionalHttp
SessionModel.java(Compiled Code))

This is caused because LRUMap is not thread safe, so if another thread is modifying the content of that same map while serialization is in progress, then the ConcurrentModificationException will be thrown. Also, the map must be synchronized. Other structures like java.util.HashMap are not thread safe too.

To avoid this kind of problems, it is recommended to use a thread-safe and synchronized map such as java.util.Map, java.util.Hashtable or com.tangosol.util.SafeHashMap. You may also need to use the synchronizedMap(Map) method from Class java.util.Collections.

IT Optimization Plan Pays Off For UK Retailer

Brian Dayton — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:49:02 PST

I caught this article in ComputerworldUK yesterday. The headline talks about UK-based supermarket chain Morrisons is increasing their IT spend...OK, sounds good. Even nicer that Oracle is a big part of that.

But what caught my eye were three things:

1) Morrison's truly has a long term strategy for IT. In this case, modernizing and optimizing how they use IT for business advantage.

2) Even in a tough economic climate, Morrison's views IT investments as contributing to and improving the bottom line. Specifically, "The investment in IT contributed to a 21 percent increase in Morrison's underlying profit.."

3) The phased, 3-year "Optimization Plan" took a holistic approach to their business--from CRM and Supply Chain systems to the underlying application infrastructure. On the infrastructure front, adopting a more flexible Service-Oriented Architecture enabled them to be more agile and adapt their business and Identity Management helped with sometimes mundane (but costly) issues like lost passwords and being able to document who has access to what.

Things don't always turn out so rosy. And I know it was a long and difficult process...but it's nice to see a happy ending every once in a while.

Web 2.0 for the SOA Partner Community - part 2: twitter & wiki & delicious

Jürgen Kress — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:35:05 PST

Web 2.0 Twitter & Videos & Delicious

We launched some additional web 2.0 features – make sure you will use them to promote your services and offerings!

Twitter: http://twitter.com/soacommunity

Become a follower of our community! If you want us the re-tweet hashtag your tweets with #soacommunity or send them to us @soacommunity

Videos http://wiki.oracle.com/videos

You want to promote your Videos? Want so share how you install SOA Suite 11g our your SOA experience? At wiki.oracle.com we created a collections:

SOA & Oracle Partner Network... Make sure that you add your videos

Delicious: http://delicious.com/soacommunity tag your bookmarks with "soacommunity" and we will add this bookmark automatically to the soa community list!

In Which We Demystify A Few Docupresentment Settings And Learn the Ethos of the Author

Andy Little — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:48:51 PST

It's no secret that Docupresentment (part of the Oracle Documaker suite) is powerful tool for integrating on-demand and interactive applications for publishing with the Oracle Documaker framework. It's also no secret there are are many details with respect to the configuration of Docupresentment that can elude even the most erudite of of techies. To be sure, Docupresentment will work for you right out of the box, and in most cases will suit your needs without toying with a configuration file. But, where's the adventure in that?

With this inaugural post to That's The Way, I'm going to introduce myself, and what my aim is with this blog. If you didn't figure it out already by checking out my profile, my name is Andy and I've been with Oracle (nee Skywire Software nee Docucorp nee Formmaker) since the formative years of 1998. Strangely, it doesn't seem that long ago, but it's certainly a lifetime in the age of technology. I recall running a BBS from my parent's basement on a 1200 baud modem, and the trepidation and sweaty-palmed excitement of upgrading to the power and speed of 2400 baud! Fine, I'll admit that perhaps I'm inflating the experience a bit, but I was kid! This is the stuff of War Games and King's Quest I and the demise of TI-99 4/A. Exciting times. So fast-forward a bit and I'm 12 years into a career in the world of document automation and publishing working for the best (IMHO) software company on the planet.

With That's The Way I hope to shed a little light and peek under the covers of some of the more interesting aspects of implementations involving the tech space within the Oracle Insurance Global Business Unit (IGBU), which includes Oracle Documaker, Rating & Underwriting, and Policy Administration to name a few. I may delve off course a bit, and you'll likely get a dose of humor (at least in my mind) but I hope you'll glean at least a tidbit of usefulness with each post. Feel free to comment as I'm a fairly conversant guy and happy to talk -- it's stopping the talking that's the hard part...

So, back to our regularly-scheduled post, already in progress. By this time you've visited Oracle's E-Delivery site and acquired your properly-licensed version of Oracle Documaker. Wait -- you didn't find it? Understandable -- navigating the voluminous download library within Oracle can be a daunting task. It's pretty simple once you’ve done it a few times. Login to the e-delivery site, and accept the license terms and restrictions. Then, you’ll be able to select the Oracle Insurance Applications product pack and your appropriate platform.

Click Go and you’ll see a list of applicable products, and you’ll click on Oracle Documaker Media Pack (as I went to press with this article the version is 11.4):

Finally, click the Download button next to Docupresentment (again, version at press time is 2.2 p5).

This should give you a ZIP file that contains the installation packages for the Docupresentment Server and Client, cryptically named IDSServer22P05W32.exe and IDSClient22P05W32.exe.

At this time, I’d like to take a little detour and explain that the world of Oracle, like most technical companies, is rife with acronyms. One of the reasons Skywire Software was a appealing to Oracle was our use of many acronyms, including the occasional use of multiple acronyms with the same meaning. I apologize in advance and will try to point these out along the way.

Here’s your first sticky note to go along with that:

IDS = Internet Document Server = Docupresentment

Once you’ve completed the installation, you’ll have a shiny new Docupresentment server and client, and if you installed the default location it will be living in c:\docserv. Unix users, I’m one of you! You’ll find it by default in ~/docupresentment/docserv. Forging onward with the meat of this post is learning about some special configuration options. By now you’ve read the documentation included with the download (specifically ids_book.pdf) which goes into some detail of the rubric of the configuration file and in fact there’s even a handy utility that provides an interface to the configuration file (see Running IDSConfig in the documentation). But who wants to deal with a configuration utility when we have the tools and technology to edit the file <gasp> by hand!

I shall now proceed with the standard Information Technology Under the Hood Disclaimer: Please remember to back up any files before you make changes. I am not responsible for any havoc you may wreak!

Go to your installation directory, and locate your docserv.xml file. Open it in your favorite XML editor. I happen to be fond of Notepad++ with the XML Tools plugin. Almost immediately you will behold the splendor of the configuration file. Just take a moment and let that sink in. Ok – moving on. If you reviewed the documentation you know that inside the root <configuration> node there are multiple <section> nodes, each containing a specific group of settings. Let’s take a look at <section name=”DocumentServer”>:

There are a few entries I’d like to discuss. First, <entry name=”StartCommand”>. This should be pretty self-explanatory; it’s the name of the executable that’s run when you fire up Docupresentment. Immediately following that is <entry name=”StartArguments”> and as you might imagine these are the arguments passed to the executable. A few things to point out:

The –Dids.configuration=docserv.xml parameter specifies the name of your configuration file.
The –Dlogging.configuration=logconf.xml parameter specifies the name of your logging configuration file (this uses log4j so bone up on that before you delve here).
The -Djava.endorsed.dirs=lib/endorsed parameter specifies the path where 3rd party Java libraries can be located for use with Docupresentment. More on that in another post.
The <entry name=”Instances”> allows you to specify the number of instances of Docupresentment that will be started. By default this is two, and generally two instances per CPU is adequate, however you will always need to perform load testing to determine the sweet spot based on your hardware and types of transactions. You may have many, many more instances than 2.

Time for a sidebar on instances. An instance is nothing more than a separate process of Docupresentment. The Docupresentment service that you fire up with docserver.bat or docserver.sh actually starts a watchdog process, which is then responsible for starting up the actual Docupresentment processes. Each of these act independently from one another, so if one crashes, it does not affect any others. In the case of a crashed process, the watchdog will start up another instance so the number of configured instances are always running. Bottom line: instance = Docupresentment process.

And now, finally, to the settings which gave me pause on an not-too-long-ago implementation! Docupresentment includes a feature that watches configuration files (such as docserv.xml and logconf.xml) and will automatically restart its instances to load the changes. You can configure the time that Docupresentment waits to check these files using the setting <entry name=”FileWatchTimeMillis”>. By default the number is 12000ms, or 12 seconds. You can save yourself a few CPU cycles by extending this time, or by disabling the check altogether by setting the value to 0. This may or may not be appropriate for your environment; if you have 100% uptime requirements then you probably don’t want to bring down an entire set of processes just to accept a new configuration value, so it’s best to leave this somewhere between 12 seconds to a few minutes. Another point to keep in mind: if you are using Documaker real-time processing under Docupresentment the Master Resource Library (MRL) files and INI options are cached, and if you need to affect a change, you’ll have to “restart” Docupresentment. Touching the docserv.xml file is an easy way to do this (other methods including using the RSS request, but that’s another post).

The next item up: <entry name=”FilePurgeTimeSeconds”>. You may already know that the Docupresentment system can generate many temporary files based on certain request types that are processed through the system. What you may not know is how those files are cleaned up. There are many rules in Docupresentment that cause the creation of temporary files. When these files are created, Docupresentment writes an entry into a properties file called the file cache. This file contains the name, creation date, and expiration time of each temporary file created by each instance of Docupresentment. Periodically Docupresentment will check the file cache to determine if there are files that are past the expiration time, not unlike that block of cheese festering away in the back of my refrigerator. However, unlike my ‘fridge cleaning tendencies, Docupresentment is quick to remove files that are past their expiration time. You, my friend, have the power to control how often Docupresentment inspects the file cache. Simply set the value for <entry name=”FilePurgeTimeSeconds”> to the number of seconds appropriate for your requirements and you’re set. Note that file purging happens on a separate thread from normal request processing, so this shouldn’t interfere with response times unless the CPU happens to be really taxed at the point of cache processing.

Finally, after all of this, we get to the final setting I’m going to address in this post: <entry name=”FilePurgeList”>. The default is “filecache.properties”. This establishes the root name for the Docupresentment file cache that I mentioned previously. Docupresentment creates a separate cache file for each instance based on this setting. If you have two instances, you’ll see two files created: filecache.properties.1 and filecache.properties.2. Feel free to open these up and check them out.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this first foray into the configuration file of Docupresentment. If you did enjoy it, feel free to drop a comment, I welcome feedback. If you have ideas for other posts you’d like to see, please do let me know. You can reach me at charles.little@oracle.com.

‘Til next time!

###

New Whitepaper: Planning Your E-Business Suite Upgrade from Release 11i to 12.1

Steven Chan — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:22:16 PST

[Editor: This guest article has been contributed by Anne Carlson]

Premier Support for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i ends in November 2010. At Oracle OpenWorld last fall, it was standing room only at several EBS upgrade sessions. Responding to the increased interest in upgrades, I set to work on a new Release 12.1 version of our popular whitepaper, Best Practices for Adopting E-Business Suite, Release 12 (Note 580299.1).

Here is that new whitepaper, which features the latest Release 12.1 upgrade planning advice from Oracle's Support, Consulting, Development and IT organizations:

Planning Your E-Business Suite Upgrade from 11i to Release 12.1 (Note 987516.1)

The paper is directed at IT professionals who are planning, managing, or running a Release 12.1 upgrade project. After briefly reviewing the Release 12.1 value proposition, the paper launches into specific upgrade planning tips to help you:

Oracle CRM in the UK- Gartner CRM Summit 2010

divya.malik — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:46:09 PST

We are now headed to the UK to co-sponsor and participate in the Gartner Customer Relationship Management Summit 2010 on the 16th and 17th of March in London.

Oracle CRM Vice President Mark Woollen will be presenting on Tuesday, 16 March 2010 from 15:20-15:50 on CRM is dead, long live CRM? Everyone is saying the world has changed and with it a new set of acronyms/buzzwords/vendors etc have appeared. What does this really mean for CRM software? Is it Dead or Alive? Listen to Mark’s view from Oracle and its customers. Location- Westbourne 2, Level –1.

Also stop by the Oracle booth at the demogrounds. The event looks promising with some great content from the Gartner analysts and from what the Gartner folks just told me, the event is oversold.

And the weather in London town? As expected…slight showers on Monday with a high of 49 degrees F and partly cloudy on Tuesday, with a high of 50 degrees F.

UPK & Tutor Customer Roundtable Discussions

beth.renstrom@oracle.com — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:24:17 PST

UPK & Tutor Developers are a creative bunch and we hear from lots of customers using our tools in a variety of ways that bring value to their organizations. A large retail organization uses UPK to teach cash handling skills at each of their stores, a national packaging company uses it for their phone system training. A university's technical team uses UPK to capture customizations that are being made to their HCM and FIN applications, building a library of topics purely for the technical team around how customizations were done including who requested them and why. When it comes time to upgrade, it's easy for them to determine if a customization needs to be carried forward and if so, they know exactly how it was done previously.

Almost every customer has a story, and we've captured some of them via our quarterly UPK & Tutor Customer Roundtable iSeminar series and we continue to add more. Click this link to hear how customers like you are using UPK & Tutor in their organizations. Who knows, you may pick up some new tricks to wow your colleagues and management!

Exposing Beehive Portlets in WebCenter

Tridib Samanta — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:57:26 PST

Installing Oracle Beehive Portlets

Installing Oracle Beehive Portlets on Oracle WebCenter Portal

Customizing Oracle Beehive Portlets

links for 2010-03-12

Bob Rhubart — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:02:53 PST

Roddy Rodstein: Oracle VM 2.2 SAN, iSCSI and NFS Back-end Storage Configurations

The latest chapter in Roddy Rodstein's "Underground Oracle VM Manual."

(tags: oraclevm virtualiztion oracle otn)

Value of Certification Proven Again

Paul Sorensen — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:03:53 PST

Hi Everyone,

A recent article in Certification Magazine spells out the value of certification IT professionals and article provides some detailed insight on the state of the economy and what it means to IT professionals. A few of the key findings (among many) by Certification Magazine:

Even in this tough economy, IT worker salaries grew at about 9%.
Many respondents reported that they received raises after earning a new certification.
Many people reported that they had earned one or two new credentials within the last year.
Salaries for more entry-level certifications was stagnant over the last year or so.

I encourage you to take a look at the article. It is very encouraging to see that companies and individuals still recognize and value the hard work that goes in to getting certified.

Thank you,

Defining Social Media Terms

David Dorf — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:33:16 PST

As I talk about social in the context of retail, I sometimes get tripped up on different terms. I know what I mean, but the audience may have something else in mind. So I decided to see if I could find some well accepted definitions for common terms. While there are definitions on the Internet, I'm not sure they are well accepted. After reviewing several, here's what I came up with:

Social Network: a structure of individuals and groups connected together by commonality.
That seems pretty straightforward. A group of friends, co-workers, music fans, etc. The key here is that they have something in common that connects them.

Social Media: Internet channels that support the collaborative publishing of information by and for social networks.
The key here is to differentiate between traditional one-way media, and conversational social media. When its social its two-way, allowing both the publishing and consuming of information. Examples are blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Social Marketing: the use of social media for marketing, public relations, and customer service.
Wikipedia actually includes "selling" here but I think that's separate from marketing, as you'll see further down below. Most people look at social media as entertainment, but the marketing angle adds business value. This is where retailers discover and engage customers to build a relationship.

Social Merchandising: the integration of social media and product discovery.
Whereas marketing is focused more on brand image, customer engagement, and promotions, merchandising is more directly trying to convert browsers into purchases. This includes deciding what customers want, often by asking the social network, and deciding how to position products to the social network.

Social Selling: the incorporation of e-commerce into social media.
While on a social media site, social selling enables the purchasing of goods/services in the user's context, without leaving the social media channel. If a user clicks on an advertisement and is taken to an e-commerce site, then that's really just web advertising and not social selling.

Well, do these terms and definitions make sense? Let me know what you think.

WCI Analytics Installation / Configuration Support Webinar

brian.harrison — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:34:03 PST

Based on the success of the OAM / WCI integration webinar, the second in our series of Technical Support "brown bag" webinars will be delivered on Tuesday, March 30 at 8AM Pacific Daylight Time.

Please review the details below, if you would like to attend the webinar, please take a moment to send an email to the address provided for registration and you will be enrolled in the meeting.

What are the best practices for installing and configuring Analytics for the WebCenter Interaction (formerly "ALUI") Portal Application?

What are some of the most common failures that occur in this implementation and what can be done to correct these common issues?

What are the most common reasons for the tables to be "empty" when I try to produce utilization reports?

These are just some of the main areas that will be covered in this one hour webinar which will demonstrate the WCI Analytics installation and configuration in action.
Our demonstration will focus on areas where Technical Support sees the largest numbers of customer questions become support incidents in an effort to
help avoid the need to create an incident to get the implementation working properly in the customer environment. We will demonstrate the most recent version of WCI Analytics (10.3.0.1) for this presentation, but naturally specific issues known to specific versions will be covered as well.

Please join us for what we know will be a valuable and relevant learning session.

If you would like to attend this session please send an email to WCIWEBINAR_US@ORACLE.COM indicating your interest, and we will respond to you with a meeting invitation including all of the required access information.

Learn how Oracle storage efficiencies can help your budget

jenny.gelhausen — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:52:33 PST

Mark Your Calendar!
Live Webcast: Next Generation Storage Management Solutions
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 9:00am PT or your local time

Please plan to join us for this webcast where Forrester senior analyst Andrew Reichman will discuss

the pillars of storage efficiency,

how to measure and improve it, and

how this can help your business immediately alleviate budget pressures.

Joining Mr. Reichman are Phil Stephenson, Senior Principal Product Manager at Oracle, and Matthew Baier, Oracle Product Director, who will explain to you the next generation storage capabilities available in Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Exadata.

Calendario Formación Partners Febrero-Mayo 2010.

almudena.martin.gomez@oracle.com — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:51:31 PST

PROGRAMA FORMACION PARTNERS

Talleres FMW

iSeminars DB

Bootcamps DB&FMW

Si deseas descargarte el calendario completo en PDF haz click aqui

El equipo de Alianzas & Canal de Oracle a diseñado un Programa de Formación Gratuita exclusivo para Partners.

Este calendario incluye diferentes seminarios y cursos que cubren tanto el área Comercial como Técnica de FMW (SOA, E2.0, IdM, BI) y DB & Options.

Como Novedad, presentamos los Nuevos Bootcamps impartidos por Partners especialistas que le ayudaran a conseguir las especializaciones del nuevo programa de OPN a un precio realmente competitivo (250€ persona y día).

Para más información haga click aqui

Going home now :-)

Mike Dietrich — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:25:06 PST

3 weeks of traveling through Asia and Australia - nearly 500 customers and partners in 8 workshops in Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shenzhen, Singapore, Melbourne, Perth and Manila. Great people in all places, many interesting discussions, several new reference prospects for Oracle Database 11g Release 2 - YOU should upgrade as well pretty soon :-)

But now it's time to go home. We are a bit exhausted but we really enjoyed it talking to and with you. And I'd suppose we'll meet again the sooner or later.

Thanks to everybody - and special thanks to the local colleagues and especially to Abe-san, Kota-san, Blair Layton and Shaheen Ismail for taking care on us, organizing our workshops and the whole setup!!!

Workshop in Manila, Philppines

Mike Dietrich — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:13:29 PST

Thanks a lot to everybody for attending today in the Oracle Office in Manila. It was (actually it still is as we are still running the workshop at the moment) a pleasure for us - and great fun, too :-)
And, as always, please download the most recent version of the slides from here:
http://apex.oracle.com/folien
Use the keyword (Schluesselwort): upgrade112

Let us and the local colleagues from Oracle know once you have upgraded successfully - and don't wait too long - 10.2 goes out of Premier Support end of July this year - that's only 4.5 months to go.

Creating the Completely Customized World Just for YOU

divya.malik — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:43:52 PST

OK so not a customized world, but do you know what goes into creating that customized web store front for you? How do you get those additional offers from vendors when you call in for service or when you are browsing a storefront.

This is what is has been happening behind the scenes.

When a customer calls in a contact center for service, at the end of the conversation, they are offered a new product, or service. But what just transpired was that the CRM system that was in place had routed the call to the right agent, the agent got the pop up screen with the customer information, and the call request was handled. Then came the decision point to cross-sell and up-sell, The agent got some recommended offers that were created based on analyzed data (this data had been put into a data warehouse, modeled, profiled and rules were implemented e.g.. People with profile X like product Y). But with this system, what happens is that analytics can be applied to a very small subset.

Now comes Real Time Decisioning (RTD), this helps companies make optimal decisions in the context of transactional systems. It enables companies to improve business processes with real time intelligence on every single transaction. RTD is like a service plug-in that you put at the back of your transactional systems and that you ping to get a recommendation. It listens to business process flows and data moving through the process, getting all that data, processes all that you can do with that data, and gives out out various offers. It takes a process centric view of analytics rather than just a data centric view. It continuously observes and learns from ever-changing customer behavior and applies those insights to providing real-time decisions and recommendations at any customer touch point.

At Oracle we define Real Time Decisioning as “ The solution that addresses a business issue faced by all organizations : how to make accurate decisions, using the most up to date information, in real time…consistently and in large volumes”.

Here is a video on recommendation engines that are benefiting from real time decisioning today and see how it is helping online vendors.

We've Been Busy: World Tour 2010

Brian Dayton — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:17:40 PST

Right after Oracle OpenWorld 2009 we went right into planning for our 2010 World Tour. An ambitious 90+ city tour visiting cities on every continent.

The Oracle Applications Strategy Update Tour started January 19th and is in full swing right now. We've put some heavy hitters on the road. If you didn't get a chance to see Steve Miranda, Senior Vice President of Oracle Application Development in Tokyo, Anthony Lye, Senior Vice President of Oracle CRM Development in New Delhi or Sonny Singh, Senior Vice President of Oracle Industries Business Unit in Stockholm don't worry...we're not done yet.

The theme, Smart Strategies: Your Roadmap to the Future is a nod to the fact that everyone needs to be smart about what's going on in their business and industry right now. But just as important---how to make sure that you're on the course to where you need to be down the road. Get the big picture and key trends in "The New Normal" of today's business climate and drill down and find out about the latest and greatest innovations in Oracle Applications.

Check out http://www.oracle.com/events/applicationstour/index.html for an upcoming tour date near you. Pictures, feedback, summaries and learnings from the tour to come soon.