Oracle E-Business Suite – Is It Really Possible To Support It Remotely?

Well, let’s begin from philosophical introduction. It is probably moving into this direction, all the recent talks about offshore development, remote support, customization project outsourcing, BPO (business processes outsourcing). And the final result will be so-called radical compromise, meaning it is not a regular compromise, but rather something we do not know about. In order to predict the future form of Oracle Applications/Fusion support we have to look at the trends.

• Market Trends. When we see that traditional manufacturing is now outsourced to China, India, Brazil, Latin America, Mexico, South East Asia – we should question if traditional ERP support will stay in the local framework and model, when consultants go onsite, sit the day with corporate IT, CEO, Controller and key AR/AP people to design the MRP model. In fact – communication channel advances allow you to be present in the conference virtually and do not feel strong disadvantages of not being able to shake opponent hands. If you are in USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand – do you really care if get phone/skype/websession support, not peer-to-peer?

• Step-by-Step. Well, we have to be conservative in order to be profitable and mutually beneficial. Let’s start from small - assume that remote support and outsourcing are for Oracle E-Business Suite Extensions & Customizations, Oracle Report Builder design & development, plus typical customer support cases, when you as a client are OK to call 800 number

• International Challenge. This is when Oracle Applications has to be supported in their localized (multicurrency, local and regional taxation and language: Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Russian). This is definitely the obstacle, however we see more examples when company has employees from Argentina, Brazil, Haiti, Montreal, China sitting in the same office…

• Conclusion. Probably the most likely scenario will be the one when you will have to accept the conception of virtual reality.

Author: Andrew Karasev