The Challenge of Email Uncertainty in Oracle ERP

In the fast-paced business world, reliable communication is the lifeblood of efficient operations. For organizations leveraging the power of Oracle EBS (E-Business Suite) and Oracle Cloud Fusion, the seamless delivery of critical business documents—be they invoices, purchase orders, or other essential communications with partners—is paramount. However, the standard email functionality within these robust ERP systems often leaves a critical gap: the uncertainty of whether your message truly arrived and was engaged with. This lack of visibility can lead to duplicated efforts, delayed processes, and a general sense of unease.

Imagine sending out month-end financial reports from Oracle EBS or critical workflow approvals from Oracle Cloud, only to wonder if they reached the intended recipients. Did they land in their inbox, get caught in a spam filter, or encounter a delivery error? Without concrete answers, valuable time is wasted on follow-ups and troubleshooting.

Navigating the Complexities of Oracle Emailing

While Oracle EBS and Oracle Cloud offer robust functionalities, their native output options for document delivery, including email, can present several challenges that hinder efficient communication and operational visibility. Oracle Cloud’s standard output options may have limitations such as:

• Limited control over print (i.e, email, print, and no print) destinations and configurations.
• Difficulty in automating complex distribution workflows.
• Email subject and body are often static and based on the Business Unit.
• Limited distribution options, potentially leading to increased manual intervention and delays.

It’s also a common misconception that if Oracle reports an email as “Complete,” “Success,” or “Sent,” it automatically means the email was successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox (Schrödinger’s Email). This assumption can lead to false confidence and a lack of proactive follow-up on critical communications.

Another challenge is Microsoft’s forthcoming limitations on outbound sending and complex OCI email requirements (and limitations).

Enter AventX Email Tracker, a solution designed to bridge this visibility gap. It empowers Oracle EBS and Oracle Cloud users with the ability to gain deep insights into the delivery status of their emails, providing enhanced control over critical communications and ultimately boosting internal productivity and streamlining workflows.

AventX Email Tracker: Clarity in Every Sent Email

AventX Email Tracker significantly leaps forward in email delivery management for your Oracle ERP environment. It moves beyond the basic “sent” status, offering comprehensive tracking that provides a clear picture of your email’s journey. With AventX, you gain access to crucial information at each stage of the delivery process, including:

• Confirmation of receipt by the email server: Know that your email successfully reached its initial destination.
• Inbox placement: Understand if your email landed directly in the recipient’s inbox, avoiding potential delays or missed communications due to spam filters.
• Open tracking: See if and when the recipient opened your email, providing insight into engagement.
• Click tracking: For emails containing links, track which links were clicked and when, offering valuable data on recipient interaction with shared information.
• Bounce and non-delivery notifications: Receive immediate alerts if an email fails to be delivered, allowing for swift corrective action.

This detailed tracking eliminates the guesswork associated with standard email, providing tangible evidence of communication delivery and engagement.

The Power of Oracle Data Integration: Context is King

A key strength of AventX Email Tracker lies in its deep and seamless integration with your existing Oracle data, transforming raw email delivery information into actionable business intelligence. By leveraging crucial identifiers such as the Oracle EBS Request ID or the Oracle Cloud ESS Process ID, AventX enriches the email tracking data with invaluable context, directly linking email activity to specific email recipients, documents, and processes within your ERP.

Consider the implications of this integration for managing invoices. When a batch of customer invoices is generated and distributed via email from Oracle EBS, AventX doesn’t just tell you if the emails were sent. It ties the delivery status of each invoice directly back to the unique Request ID of the invoice generation process. This means if a customer claims they haven’t received their invoice, your accounts receivable team can instantly pinpoint the exact instance of the invoice generation within EBS and check the corresponding email delivery status in AventX, all using the same identifier. They can see if the email was delivered, opened, or if a bounce occurred, allowing for immediate troubleshooting and resending if necessary—potentially even before a customer follows up. This proactive approach can significantly improve your Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) and enhance customer satisfaction.

Similarly, when purchase orders are dispatched to vendors from Oracle Cloud Fusion, AventX tracks their journey and associates each PO delivery with the specific ESS Process ID of that PO creation instance. If a vendor claims they haven’t received the PO, your procurement team can quickly ascertain whether the notification was successfully delivered and opened, directly referencing the relevant ESS Process ID. They can identify delivery failures, investigate potential issues with the email system, and resend the PO promptly, preventing delays in your supply chain and ensuring timely fulfillment of orders.

Furthermore, this integrated data can be leveraged for more insightful internal reporting and analysis. Imagine being able to track the delivery success rates of specific Oracle modules or business processes. By monitoring AventX data, you can identify areas where communication breakdowns might be occurring, allowing for targeted improvements to your system configurations or communication protocols. This ability to contextualize email delivery within the broader Oracle landscape provides a level of visibility and control that standard email functionality simply cannot offer. The inherent link between the email activity and the originating Oracle process transforms email tracking from a reactive troubleshooting tool into a proactive instrument for optimizing workflows and ensuring the reliable flow of information across your organization.

Why AventX Email Tracker is Essential for Oracle Users

Implementing AventX Email Tracker offers significant advantages for organizations relying on Oracle EBS and Oracle Cloud for their core operations:

• Deeper Insights into External Communications: Gain unprecedented visibility into the delivery and engagement of your critical emails containing invoices and purchase orders, directly linked to your Oracle processes.
• Enhanced Control over Customer & Vendor Interactions: Proactively manage email delivery, troubleshoot issues efficiently within the context of your Oracle environment, and ensure important documents reach your external partners reliably.
• Improved Productivity in External Processes: Eliminate the uncertainty of email delivery, reduce time spent on follow-ups with customers and vendors, and streamline external communication workflows related to invoicing and procurement.
  Leverage Existing Oracle Data for External Communication Management: Contextualize email delivery within your familiar Oracle environment using Request and ESS Process IDs for seamless tracking and analysis of communications with customers and vendors.

Ready to unlock deeper email insights and gain enhanced control over your Oracle ERP communications? Discover how AventX Email Tracker can transform your workflows and boost productivity.

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Organizations increasingly rely on automated email communications from platforms such as Oracle EBS and Oracle Fusion Cloud for essential business processes. Recent updates and forthcoming changes to Exchange Online introduce new outbound email limitations, specifically the (Per Mailbox) External Recipient Rate Limit (ERRL) and the Tenant External Recipient Rate Limit (TERRL).

As highlighted in the STR Software blog post “Solving Microsoft 365 Rate Limits when Sending from Oracle EBS and Oracle Fusion Cloud,” these limits can pose significant challenges for entities that generate high volumes of automated emails. This post aims to provide Oracle EBS and Fusion Cloud users with a comprehensive understanding of these evolving restrictions and to outline practical strategies for managing their automated email sending to maintain operational continuity.

Understanding the New Microsoft 365 Recipient Rate Limits: What Oracle Users Need to Know

Microsoft has implemented new measures to manage the usage and prevent abuse of Exchange Online resources, impacting how organizations send email, particularly to external recipients.

As of January 6, 2026, Microsoft has canceled the implementation of the ERRL. Microsoft’s Recipient Rate Limit and Tenant-level External Recipient Rate Limit documented in Exchange Online limits remain unchanged.

STR Software will leave this post for historical purposes only.

Potential Bottlenecks and Challenges

Hitting the Limit

The introduction of the MERRL means that all messages sent outbound to external recipients from a mailbox count against the mailbox’s quota. This includes individual senders, including shared mailboxes and mail-enabled groups (as an example, this can include email addresses such as “accounting”@domain.com and “donotreply”@domain.com).

While, the introduction of TERRL means that all messages sent outbound to external recipients from the tenant are counted against the quota.

These limits are applicable regardless of whether they originate from Exchange Online mailboxes directly, on-premises systems like Oracle EBS, or internet-connected applications like Oracle Fusion Cloud. If automated Oracle systems generate a high volume of external emails, the tenant is at risk of exceeding its daily sending limit.

If these limits or quotas are hit, emails will be blocked from sending and your senders (mailboxes) will receive Non-Delivery Receipts (NDRs) with the error code 550 5.7.233. This disruption can severely impact the timely delivery of crucial business documents.

Double-Counting

Furthermore, there is a potential risk of double-counting external-bound emails if they are routed out of Exchange Online for processing by third-party services (e.g., email signature or archiving solutions) and then routed back into Exchange Online before being sent to the final external recipient. While Microsoft acknowledges this and is investigating alternatives, it currently advises that such messages might be counted more than once against the ERRLs.

Other Considerations

It is also important to reiterate that Exchange Online is not designed to accommodate bulk-mailing scenarios. Relying solely on Exchange Online for high-volume automated emails from Oracle systems can inherently lead to these rate limitations being encountered.

Finally, misconfigurations in hybrid environments, such as certificate mismatches with on-premises gateways, can sometimes lead to external emails being incorrectly attributed to the sending tenant and thus counted against the ERRLs.

Strategies for Oracle Users to Navigate Microsoft 365 Email Limits

Proactive planning and adopting appropriate strategies are essential for Oracle EBS and Cloud users to manage the new Microsoft 365 email-sending limits effectively.

Optimizing Email Sending from Oracle Systems

• Implement batching and scheduling: Configure Oracle systems to send automated emails in batches and schedule them throughout the day to avoid large, sudden spikes in outbound volume.
• Prioritize critical communications: Identify essential automated emails and potentially delay sending less time-sensitive notifications.
• Implement monitoring and alerting: Establish mechanisms to track the volume of outbound emails from Oracle systems to proactively monitor usage against the MERRL and TERRL.
• Review and optimize email frequency: Evaluate the necessity and frequency of automated reports and notifications sent to external recipients.
• Consolidate notifications: Where feasible, consolidate multiple individual notifications into a single, more comprehensive communication to reduce the overall number of external emails.

Consider Alternatives

Consider utilizing Oracle add-ons designed to handle large-volume bulk sending. STR Software’s AventX is designed to provide a comprehensive document and report delivery solution for Oracle EBS and Oracle Fusion Cloud. One of the solution’s many benefits is the ability to send your email off of Microsoft 365, bypassing the rate limits for high-volume senders and offering more reliable delivery of critical business documents from Oracle systems.

Additionally, AventX provides advanced features such as email grouping (to consolidate messages), detailed tracking of email delivery status (bounces, spam complaints, opens, etc.), and more.

Managing Shared Mailboxes and Service Accounts

• Recognize that emails sent from shared mailboxes, email-enabled groups, and room mailboxes contribute to the ERRLs.
• Assess the volume of external emails sent from such non-licensed mailboxes.
• If high-volume sending to external recipients is necessary from a service account, consider utilizing a licensed mailbox with optimized sending patterns or exploring the use of add-ons.

Monitoring and Troubleshooting

• Regularly monitor the “Tenant Outbound External Recipients” report in the EAC to stay informed about the tenant’s TERRL usage.
• Utilize the `Get-LimitsEnforcementStatus` PowerShell cmdlet for automated monitoring of the TERRL status.
• Understand the NDR error code 550 5.7.233, which indicates that the tenant has exceeded its daily external recipient rate limit. Establish internal processes for addressing and potentially resending failed communications.

Conclusion: Planning for Sustainable Automated Email Communication

For Oracle EBS and Oracle Fusion Cloud users, a thorough understanding and proactive management of the new Microsoft 365 email limits are crucial for ensuring the smooth operation of automated business processes. By assessing current email-sending patterns, implementing optimization strategies, and considering alternatives like AventX, organizations can mitigate the risks associated with these limits and maintain effective external communication. It is essential to remain aware of the evolving nature of cloud service limitations and to continuously monitor and adapt email-sending practices accordingly.

Furthermore, exploring solutions like AventX can provide valuable additional functionality, such as insights into email delivery with detailed tracking of bounces, spam reports, and recipient engagement.

Oracle Cloud (Fusion) is a powerful ERP solution that streamlines various business processes. However, when it comes to sending business documents like invoices, purchase orders, and contracts, organizations often face significant challenges. These challenges can hinder efficiency, increase costs, and compromise data security.

The Common Hurdles

• Integration Complexity:
  • Diverse Recipient Systems: Businesses often interact with various systems, each with unique data formats and protocols. Integrating Oracle Cloud with these systems can be complex and time-consuming.
  • Customization Requirements: Tailoring document formats to specific recipient needs can require extensive customization and testing.
• Security Concerns:
  • Data Privacy: Ensuring the confidentiality and security of sensitive financial information is paramount. Implementing robust security measures, such as encryption and access controls, is crucial.
  • Compliance Adherence: Complying with industry-specific regulations (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) and maintaining audit trails can be challenging.
• Error Handling and Reconciliation:
  • Data Validation: Ensuring data accuracy and consistency is vital to avoid errors and delays in processing.
  • Error Resolution: Implementing efficient error handling and resolution processes is essential to minimize disruptions.
  • Reconciliation: Matching sent documents with their corresponding records in Oracle Cloud can be complex, especially for large volumes of transactions.
• Scalability and Performance:
  • High Volume Processing: Handling large volumes of documents efficiently can be demanding, requiring optimized integration processes and robust infrastructure.
  • Peak Load Management: Managing peak periods of document exchange requires careful planning and resource allocation.
• Document Formatting and Customization:
  • Customization Needs: Tailoring documents to individual preferences or contractual obligations can be time-consuming.

AventX: The Solution to Your Document Delivery Woes

AventX for Oracle Cloud is a powerful solution designed to address these challenges head-on. By automating and streamlining the document delivery process, AventX offers a range of benefits:

• Seamless Integration: AventX seamlessly integrates with Oracle Cloud, eliminating the need for complex custom integrations.
• Versatile Connectivity: It supports a wide range of recipient systems and protocols, ensuring compatibility with diverse business environments.
• Robust Security Features: AventX incorporates advanced security measures, including encryption, access controls, and audit trails, to safeguard sensitive data.
• Compliance Adherence: It helps organizations comply with industry regulations by providing compliant delivery devices and security management.
• Real-time Monitoring: It provides real-time monitoring and alerts for errors and exceptions, enabling timely resolution.
• Advanced Reporting: Detailed reports and analytics help track document delivery, identify issues, and reconcile transactions.
• Scalable Architecture: AventX is designed to efficiently handle high volumes of documents, adapting to changing business needs.
• Optimized Performance: It leverages advanced technologies to maximize performance and minimize processing time.
• Template-Based Approach: It utilizes templates to streamline document generation, reducing manual effort and ensuring consistency.
• Automated Attachment Gathering: AventX automatically extracts and adds any required document attachments to the delivery, ensuring recipients receive all the necessary details.

By leveraging AventX, organizations can:

• Improve Efficiency: Automate document delivery, reduce manual effort, and accelerate business processes.
• Enhance Accuracy: Minimize errors and ensure data accuracy through automated validation and error handling.
• Strengthen Security: Protect sensitive data with robust security measures and compliance controls.
• Gain Visibility: Monitor document delivery in real-time and generate insightful reports for analysis.
• Optimize Resource Utilization: Scale the solution to meet changing business needs and optimize resource allocation.

By understanding the challenges associated with document delivery in Oracle Cloud and implementing a solution like AventX, organizations can significantly improve their operational efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance security. By taking the necessary steps to address these challenges, businesses can unlock the full potential of Oracle Cloud and achieve greater success.

Learn how Equinix Accelerated Document Delivery and Reporting with AventX for Oracle Cloud »

When it comes to managing purchase orders (POs) in Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), staying on top of the acceptance status can be a meticulous process. The traditional manual methods of tracking and updating PO statuses can be time-consuming and prone to errors. The AventX for Oracle EBS Email Email Tracker Module with Accept/Reject Tracking provides a new, faster way to empower businesses to seamlessly update PO acceptance statuses based on a user’s interaction with a PO email.

Enhancing Oracle EBS PO Delivery and Management

The AventX solution enhances organizations’ handling of PO creation, delivery, and acceptance tracking. With its Email Tracker Module and Accept/Reject Tracking capabilities, AventX brings automation, accuracy, and convenience to the forefront of PO management. Let’s delve into the key benefits that this integration offers:

1. Effortless Creation of PO Output and Email with Tracking Components

At its core, AventX simplifies the creation of PO output emails by gathering necessary PO attachments, creating the final PO output, and creating the email. With the Email tracker module, AventX also incorporates essential tracking components. These components include links that can be intuitively displayed as buttons for “Accept” and “Reject.” This user-friendly email ensures that suppliers can swiftly and easily interact with the email to communicate their acceptance or rejection of the PO.

2. Real-time Tracking of Email Delivery and Interactions

The integration’s prowess extends to tracking the entire email delivery process. Through AventX’s robust functionality, businesses can monitor the status of email deliveries, as well as track open and other click interactions within the email. This real-time tracking keeps businesses informed and empowers users to take timely action based on supplier engagement—or lack thereof.

3. Automated Oracle EBS Status Updates upon User Interaction

One of the standout features of AventX and the Email Tracker Module is its ability to update the PO status in Oracle EBS automatically. When a supplier clicks on a specific link (the “Accept” button) within the email—AventX triggers an automatic update in Oracle. This means that the PO status is seamlessly changed to “Accepted,” eliminating the need for manual intervention and reducing the risk of errors.

4. Simplified Supplier Interaction and Confirmation

Upon clicking the “Accept” link, suppliers are directed to a confirmation page. This page can be any valid webpage on your organization’s website, providing flexibility and convenience. Whether it’s a specially crafted page or even your company’s homepage, this approach ensures that suppliers receive a clear confirmation of their interaction, enhancing transparency and trust.

5. Comprehensive Tracking and Insights

AventX doesn’t stop at updating PO statuses – it also empowers users to gain insights into their document statuses. The AventX Delivery Status Form allows users to query and retrieve information about their POs effortlessly. This visibility enhances decision-making and provides a comprehensive overview of various purchase orders’ statuses.

Seamless Integration and Automation: How It Works

The integration’s workflow involves strategic automation to ensure smooth PO status updates:

1. Supplier Interaction: Suppliers interact with the PO email, clicking on the “Accept” or “Reject” buttons based on their decision.
2. Automatic Update Trigger: AventX’s sophisticated tracking registers email delivery and the user’s open or click.
3. Oracle EBS Update: A database trigger, thoughtfully designed by STR Software, initiates an Oracle EBS PO Record update to mark the Supplier’s Acceptance.

The Power of Automation: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Beyond

By embracing AventX’s Email Tracker Module and the Accept/Reject Tracking integration, businesses unlock a world of benefits:

• Time Savings: Manual PO status updates become a thing of the past, freeing up valuable time for more strategic tasks, including follow-up with suppliers who did not accept a PO.
• Error Reduction: Automation minimizes the risk of human errors, ensuring accurate and consistent PO status updates.
• Enhanced Supplier Relations: Swift updates and clear confirmations bolster supplier trust and strengthen relationships.
• Clear Visibility: The AventX Delivery Status Form provides a one-stop hub for tracking the status of multiple POs.

Elevate Your Oracle EBS PO Management

The AventX for Oracle EBS Email Tracker Module and Accept/Reject Tracking integration revolutionize PO management for EBS users. With AventX, businesses empower themselves to effortlessly track and update PO acceptance statuses, enhancing supplier relations and streamlining operations. Remember, your Oracle EBS PO status management doesn’t have to be complicated – AventX makes it as simple as a single click.

Are you a high-volume sender who relies on Microsoft 365 Exchange Server to transmit critical business documents from Oracle EBS and Oracle Cloud ERP? If so, you may have encountered a significant challenge: Microsoft 365 rate limits on email sending. Sending many emails can result in delays and disruptions, affecting the timely delivery of crucial messages—invoices, purchase orders, and more—to your recipients.

Here’s a summary of the critical limits; a full list can be viewed at the link above.

• Recipient Rate Limit: A user can send emails to a maximum of 10,000 recipients daily. If this limit is reached, sending messages will be blocked until 24 hours have passed and the number of recipients sent to drops below the limit.
• Message Rate Limit: A user can send emails at a rate of 30 messages per minute. Excess messages will be throttled and sent in the following minutes if this limit is exceeded. Exchange Online is not recommended for bulk-mailing scenarios.

Think of the email delivery process as a complex highway system. Your emails are like cars, traveling from the source (Oracle EBS or Oracle Cloud) to the destination (your recipients’ inbox). Microsoft 365 rate limits can be likened to traffic jams that slow down the flow of your emails.

Solving the Rate Limit Problem with AventX

Thankfully, there’s a solution that can put an end to these limitations and enhance your email delivery process. Introducing AventX for Oracle EBS and AventX for Oracle Cloud, featuring the powerful Email Tracking module.

AventX is designed to bypass Microsoft 365 rate limits and streamline the delivery of your emails. How does it work? The module harnesses the capabilities of AventX as an email service provider (ESP) to send emails from Oracle EBS and Oracle Cloud. As the emails are transmitted, the system captures comprehensive delivery data, providing real-time insights into the status of each email.

Most importantly, the solution does not implement any substantial rate limits to the number of emails you can send per hour or day. Thus, ensuring that your critical Invoice, Purchase Orders, and other documents are sent on time!

Revisiting the traffic jam analogy, AventX Email Tracking acts as a real-time GPS, guiding your emails around these roadblocks and providing your own dedicated route. With this powerful tool, you can avoid delays and ensure your emails reach their destination efficiently.

The Power of Real-Time Insights

Imagine having access to real-time data on the status of your critical business emails. With AventX Email Tracking, you gain full visibility into the delivery process. When an email is sent, you can monitor its journey until it reaches its destination. If, for any reason, an email is not received by the intended recipient, you will know promptly. This allows you to take swift action and ensure your messages reach their target audience without delay. And, if there is an error, you can react quickly to resolve the issue and resend the important message.

If you are a high-volume sender relying on Microsoft 365 Exchange Server to send critical business documents from Oracle EBS and Oracle Fusion Cloud, AventX is tailor-made for you. Whether you’re handling invoices, purchase orders, or other essential communications, this solution ensures the smooth transmission of your messages without being constrained by Microsoft 365 rate limits.

Say goodbye to delays and failed messages, and ensure your emails reach their intended recipients promptly. Embrace AventX Email Tracking today and witness a seamless email delivery experience like never before. Your high-volume sending process and critical business document delivery will become a streamlined highway of communication, ensuring your vital messages arrive at their destination without detours or disruptions.

How TMEIC and Other Customers are Using AventX to Improve Delivery Options and Speed Up Workflows

Most companies using AventX are doing so to automate the transmission or delivery (email, fax, print, network/cloud archive) of purchase orders, invoices, and other critical documents in batches. While batch is the most common use case, some of our customers deliver documents with AventX interactively from Submit Request, some use it from a workflow, and others use it from various places throughout the document creation and review process.

One handy technique some clients use is the AventX Standalone Interactive Delivery Form or—as our friends at TMEIC refer to it—the AventX Magic Button.

Dennis Collins, a Senior ERP Business Analyst for TMEIC Corporation, has shared this anecdote with us many times in the past on the phone and at COLLABORATE shows; we were finally able to catch and document his remarks when he presented “Delivering EBS Documents That Require a Digital Signature” at the OATUG Forum Online in April (2020). (Full Presentation | Dennis’ Comments start at 26:22)

We’re sharing all this because we were working with another customer recently on an interesting situation. They wanted the ability to send purchase orders to multiple email and fax destinations quickly from the Oracle EBS Purchasing module, something you can’t do with out-of-the-box functionality. While they, like TMEIC, were struggling with purchase orders, the reality is that this can be implemented in almost any area of Oracle EBS.

Solving customer challenges with the Magic Button

The challenge this client was facing was that Oracle EBS doesn’t allow for multiple supplier, employee, or hard-coded email addresses when emailing purchase orders from the PO Approval workflow. In addition, they needed to be able to submit purchase orders for distribution from several other areas within the Oracle Purchasing module.

They had an idea to improve their processes by using the AventX software’s Magic Button and adding it to the Purchase Order Header Form, instead of the Purchase Order Creation Form. This was because most of the purchase orders are created automatically and would allow the users to deliver the po via email without closing the PO entry form.

They gave it a shot and it worked great!

How their process looks now

1. The user goes to the Purchase Order Summary screen, creates a query for the purchase order, and display the results.

2. The user highlights the desired PO and clicks the Magic Button that was added to the Oracle Menu.

3. Up pops the AventX Interactive Delivery form, which allows users to interactively send documents to (nearly) an unlimited number of email, fax, printer, and archive destinations.

What’s next?

Seeing the benefits that the AventX Magic Button for the Purchase Order Summary screen provided this client’s users sparked even more ideas on how to give them quick access to other forms they use constantly.

Their next thought centered around how to speed up access to the delivery status of previously submitted purchase orders. They added two more buttons to the Oracle Menu.

1. Button to pop the AventX Delivery Status Form, which allows users to check on the status of transmitted documents.

2. Button to pop the AventX WebManager, which can be used to quickly resend purchase orders.
   

In the end, users are thrilled because they are saving a great deal of time by not having to navigate around Oracle EBS to find the information they need. These three buttons quickly give them what they need when they need it most, which is pretty neat to hear and see!

Why your supplier portal may be doing more harm than good

But what about the human beings on the other end? Your suppliers.

Put yourself in their shoes—

• “Oh, great. Another login to remember.”
• “Didn’t I already create this account?”
• “I just need the Purchase Order.”
• “Where is the ‘upload’ button?”

And we aren’t the only ones that feel this way. Others have written about how suppliers feel about portals and how portals are causing companies headaches.

Portals aren’t exactly a breeze on your end, either. Onboarding new suppliers can be an infuriating and time-consuming process. And there’s nothing better than sending out 25-page, 4MB PowerPoint files with how-to information, troubleshooting with top suppliers struggling to get the hang of the portal, talking customers through the password reset process. These things aren’t fun for either side.

Not to mention that some suppliers will outright refuse to use them—they’re too much of a burden to manage.

But your company loves the transparency that supplier portals offer. You know when a purchase order was received and accepted. You *might* even be able to send order acknowledgements directly from your ERP without having to upload them into the portal manually.

At the end of the day, it may make it easier for you and your company. But, forcing suppliers to do the work of managing your purchase orders—in your portal—could prevent your orders from being first in line.

Order Fulfillment at its Finest

Here’s a fairly common scenario: A busy order processing team, who typically relies on email, receives 20 POs into their inbox. Ten of those POs come directly into the email inbox as HTML or PDF Purchase Orders. The other ten come into the inbox from a vendor portal. Guess which orders are more likely to be processed first? If your order is for a hot item in short supply, that could leave you stuck in Backorder City!

So you ask, “Is there some sort of middle ground where I can get this transparency but not put my suppliers through the wringer?” I’m so glad you asked…

Simplified PO Processing for Suppliers

For your suppliers, it makes it easy for them to get what they need to quickly process and deliver your orders. Setting them up for success sets YOU up for a great relationship!

Procurement Software: How do we get Just-In-Time Inventory?

By enhancing your ERP, not replacing it, alternatives to potentially complex and burdensome Procurement Software can provide the core functionality organizations need to operate effectively.

AventX for Oracle EBS (and other ERP systems like SAP, JD Edwards, and more) can provide Purchasing teams with an automated delivery tool that tracks your emailed purchase orders. Advanced logic makes AventX configurable to meet your delivery needs, while implementing embedded tracking mechanisms into your emailed POs, providing you with detailed delivery insights like “delivered,” “opened,” “clicked,” “accepted,” “rejected,” and even “bounced.”

As an alternative to your clunky portals, AventX satisfies your purchasing users’ need to ensure their purchase orders are received and makes it extremely easy for suppliers to trigger the fulfillment request.

Say goodbye to your vendor portal and hello to a better supplier experience!

Note: This guide can be applied to more than Oracle EBS. This technique will also work with SAP, JD Edwards, and even homegrown, UNIX-based systems.

“Did you get my email?”

We’ve covered this topic in the past, in a particularly fun post titled “Oracle Email Delivery — Why Schrödinger’s Cat Matters.”
Business Users of Oracle (and other ERPs) often lack insight into the status of their emailed invoices. They get sent via batch delivery, or even individually, but you have no idea if the recipient opened the invoice. At a more fundamental level, you don’t know if the email was even delivered.

So what do you do?

• Pick up the phone and call to find out?
• Fire off another email from your mailbox to inquire?

These both sound like great options, but more than likely, you probably just hang tight hoping the payment comes in. Until it doesn’t. Then you’re forced to follow up with the customer when the payment is already late.

What is the Order-To-Cash process? And how can it be improved?

The Order-to-Cash process is a series of steps that looks something like this:

1. Accept Customer Order
2. Fulfill Sales Order
3. Deliver Product / Service
4. Create & Send Invoice
5. Collect Payment
6. Reconcile Invoice

Look back at that list. ☝️

How many of those steps in the process do you have control over? How many do you rely on the customer for?

That’s right. There’s only one step in the cycle that you can’t control. Step 5: Collect Payment.

Not surprisingly, this one step is usually the step that takes the longest. So how can we speed up time-to-payment?

1 Simple Way to Improve the Order-To-Cash Process

B2B Email Delivery Tracking

Throughout the year, your AR team will spend countless hours on the phone or sending simple emails JUST to find out if the intended recipient even got the email with the invoice.

Oracle EBS’s native functionality is excellent for getting simple documents out quickly. However, it lacks the in-depth insights your team needs to manage those outbound documents—like critical invoices—effectively.

By delivering Oracle email through a third-party email delivery service (such as MailGun or SparkPost) you can easily track the status of your emailed documents and files. The service will then allow you to see when an email was received, if (and when) it was opened, or if the file bounced for some reason.

With these insights, your accounting team will be able to conduct more focused follow-up and even hold customers accountable to defined payment terms.

AventX can share detailed status information—such as open, click, accept/reject,
& bounce data—directly inside Oracle for your emailed invoices, POs, & and more.

Reducing the Payment Bottleneck

As you are already aware, receiving payment for goods or services is usually the most time-consuming step in the Order-To-Cash process. And, unfortunately, it involves a lot of waiting.

Our best tip to improve the time to payment is to track email deliveries with a third-party delivery service—instead of native functionality (likely your companies own email server connected to Oracle). You can even take it a step further by integrating the service with Oracle through an automation tool. Automation tools, like AventX, can display delivery status information directly in Oracle and provide even more functionality to AR teams to help manage the invoicing process, trigger Oracle workflows, and simplify manual tasks.

If you’re interested in exploring how we can streamline the Order-To-Cash Process, send us a message.

In a simplistic form, Schrödinger stated that if you place a cat in a box, then sealed the box closed for a period of time, you essentially would not know if the cat was dead or alive until the box was opened.

Sending emails—like your time-sensitive invoices and POs—from Oracle’s Delivery Manager is pretty much the same.  While Oracle may report that your email was a “Success,” you really have no idea whatsoever whether it reached its destination.

Did someone on the other end really receive that invoice keeping your company’s cash flow moving? Did the intended recipient really lay eyes on your PO ensuring that your organization will have the items needed to function properly?

Is Schrödinger’s cat alive or not? 

Did you get my email?

Because of this lack of insight from Oracle’s “Success” status, senders are, unfortunately, stuck waiting to see if their invoices get paid. However, the whole time the email was never delivered—it was caught in a spam filter or it bounced back to a mailbox that is not monitored.

When the invoice doesn’t get paid on time, senders are required to pick up the phone and call your customer to ensure everything is ok with the payment. The customer says, “I never received the invoice.” Now the employee has to manually resend the invoice via email or, even worse, print the invoice and send it via snail mail to the customer. Then your invoicing department has to constantly check with the customer to ensure the invoice was received.

Unfortunately, this process can take up hours of following up with customers and resending emails while resulting in a delayed payment.

A similar scenario can arise for POs. If your PO doesn’t get delivered your operation can come to standstill while the PO is resent.

So what can you do about it?

Fortunately for your invoices and other important documents, and apologies to the cat, advanced tracking methodologies now exist so you access the status of your emailed document at nearly any point in time.

By delivering your documents through AventX, you can embed tracking mechanisms to any outbound email you send through Oracle EBS. This technology allows the sender to know with a large degree of accuracy whether the email was received, if it bounced (and why!), and if it was clicked or opened.

This level of detail allows Accounts Receivable Managers to monitor invoice delivery proactively and, ultimately, deliver better cash flow to the organization.

By accessing insights into which invoices did not reach their destinations or, more importantly, which invoices were ignored, your AR team can be more targeted with their follow up to your customer.

Supplementing Oracle with AventX delivery technology allows AR teams to be more informed about every email delivery and more targeted with their follow up to customers regarding missing or late payments.

It also provides the information you need to maintain a more accurate email database. By reporting bounced emails with detailed information, you can ensure that you have an accurate email address for every invoice.

So, before you fire off your next customer invoice or purchase order, consider what that “Success” status really means. There’s a chance you’ll be following up in a day or two to confirm that it was received. But with the right technology in place, you’ll know more about your email delivery than Schrödinger knew about his cats.