New Tech for Oracle Cloud ERP
Organizations are looking to automate routine processes and leverage the power of AI and new technologies to do so. With the release of digital assistant technology and its subsequent widespread use, users are more comfortable than ever with using AI and digital assistant tools on a daily basis. Voice technology from virtual private assistants (VPAs) such as the Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple’s Siri have become common fixtures in users’ homes, cars, and pockets. With this increased expectation of convenience and ease of use, enterprise organizations are progressively turning to more automated systems in order to foster greater compliance amongst their employees when it comes to timely and accurate expense entry and approval.
For ERP users live on Oracle Cloud, the Expense Digital Assistant can be a worthwhile tool to explore and implement. This new tool will enable the user to make expense reporting submission, along with adding any supporting references, more efficient. Below, we’ll explore the capabilities of the Oracle Cloud ERP Expense Assistant.
Overview: What is the Expense Assistant
In Oracle Cloud ERP, the Expenses Digital Assistant skill is the AI powered chatbot feature that is designed to learn and improve upon the text conversational experience by learning and adapting to the needs and feedback of the user.
As a collective and knowledge-sharing tool designed for learning, over time, the Expenses Digital Assistant will improve the usability and processing effort required to create expense reports and other expense-related requests. Especially when it comes to repetitive and/or frequently submitted reports, the Expense Digital Assistant will learn and eventually be able to recognize the users’ intention and be able to submit the report with little to no effort from the user. This can be very useful for organizations where employees have many expenses to report due to frequent travel or other circumstances.
Oracle offers mobile apps to users so that they can interact with Digital Assistants on the go. The Expenses Digital assistant goes beyond just having chatbot capabilities and can be equipped with multiple skills that cover a range of domains and tasks from one singular interface. As the one-stop-shop option for expense-related tasks, there’s no need to search for a specific chatbot that supports a singular task or service. Instead, the Expense Digital Assistant is the mobile, single point of contact for all of your employees.
Who Should Use the Expense Assistant
For corporations and organizations already using Cloud ERP, leveraging the power of the Expense Digital Assistant is fairly straightforward. The Expense Digital Assistant is included in the ERP product SKU, and is available out-of-the-box to the Cloud ERP customers. If customers have a desire to extend the out-of-the-box Expense Digital Assistant capabilities or to build new digital assistants, customers would then need to purchase the Oracle Digital Assistant Platform for SaaS SKU.
As mentioned, organizations that are likely to see the most value and use from implementing the Expense Digital Assistant are companies with a large number of employees completing travel and accruing frequent business expenses which will need to be reported. For medium to large organizations dealing with many expenses, compliance with expense reporting can be tricky.
Oftentimes, timely and accurate expense reporting can be challenging to achieve. Incentivizing employees to complete expense entry on time is oftentimes a frequently used strategy to encourage policy compliance, but oftentimes the same results can be achieved by increasing ease of use. Reducing the steps required to complete an expense report and making it quick and easy to do on mobile devices can increase employee compliance and lead to more reports entered correctly and on time.
With the Expenses Assistant, if there are expenses that haven’t been submitted, the mobile application can prompt users to submit the required report, as well as send notifications to managers regarding missed expense reports. If employees are out of office the Expense Assistant can send email notifications to managers who can then complete expense reports on behalf of their direct reports. With this automated notification feature, finance and accounting departments will save time when they no longer need to track down employees who have not submitted expense reports on time, and increased compliance can result in better cash forecasting and reporting capabilities.
Implementing the Cloud ERP Expense Digital Assistant
When it comes to implementing and setting up the ERP Expense Digital Assistant, you’ll need to enable the Oracle Fusion Applications Digital Assistant by using the guide in the “Getting Started with Oracle Digital Assistant for Cloud Applications” document. You should identify specific users within your organization you’d like to assign roles and specified access to the Digital Assistant, such as service developers, service administrators, or service business users.
The setup and implementation of the Expense Assistant will require customers to have the correct security requirements in place, as well as mobile capabilities already in place. Though this can be a potential barrier to entry for some customers, Elire’s team of experienced Cloud ERP consultants are here to help and many organizations will find value in the ease and efficiency of reporting expenses.
Reach out to [email protected] to set up a time to discuss your organization’s unique needs and learn more about Elire’s Oracle ERP Consulting Services. We’re here to help problem-solve and aid your organization in getting the most ROI out of your Cloud investment. In the meantime, subscribe to our Cloud Newsletter here and get the latest in Cloud news delivered right to your inbox.
About the Experts:
Jason McCabe is the Oracle Cloud ERP Practice lead for Elire, responsible for managing all clients using Oracle Cloud ERP Applications. Jason delivers ERP solutions for clients looking to strategically align business strategy and organizational objectives through cloud-based application implementations.
Octavio Pedregal serves as a Cloud ERP Managing Consultant. He specializes in financial implementations and is responsible for implementing, maintaining, and coordinating with all clients using Oracle ERP Applications. Octavio has a long professional history and experience with a diverse client base. He works with clients to provide appropriate solutions based on their unique situations and needs.
