GTS Oracle Projects Competency

    GTS Oracle Projects Competency blossomed out of the Finance Competency, to meet the burgeoning needs of the construction industry that was thriving in the region. The competency has matured to a full-fledged unit delivering solutions to complex businesses. GTS has delivered Oracle Projects solutions to Construction, Property &Real Estate, Government and Oil & Gas sectors across a wide geography. Building on its expertise, GTS Projects competency has developed industry specific bolt-on solutions that complement the Oracle Projects suite of modules to mitigate the challenges posed by region and industry specific business processes. Today the team is comprised with Oracle certified consultants who are ready to face challenges offered by any type of Industry and the ability to offer business transformation by adopting the benchmarked best practices and a proven implementation methodology.

  • Specialization
    • Oracle Projects: Foundation, Costing and Billing
    • Oracle Project Management
    • Oracle Project Manufacturing
    • Oracle Project Contracts
    • Contract Management Solution( In house developed)
    • Cap-ex Budgeting Solution (In house developed)
  • Complex Engagements
    • Successful delivery of Oracle Project suite of modules in over 18 engagements in the Middle East and African region
    • Developed the Contract Management Solution for the Property &Real Estate and Construction industries for managing contracts, contract variation and automate the Payment Certification Process.
    • Delivered Oracle Projects Solution to Oil Tanking industry integration utilizing Oracle Project Manufacturing to meet the client’s unique business needs.
    • Implemented Cap-ex Budgeting solution for a diversified conglomerate with numerous business units. The integrated solution drives Project Budgeting out of centralized Cap-ex budget and driving Capital Projects and budget approvals integrated with Oracle Projects
  • Focus Areas
    • Gaining expertise in Fusion Implementations
    • Exploring Tendering and Estimation business process adaptation into Oracle Projects suite
    • Development of Industry specific solutions
  • Case in Point
  • Ewaan Global is one of Saudi Arabia’s emerging builders of quality homes for the country’s population. Ewaan undertakes large scale construction projects like its ongoing 2500+ Villa community. Considering the scale of operations of Ewaan, the business model has evolved to be that of a master contractor than that of being a mere real estate developer. The community development contracts comprise of building construction, infrastructure development, utility systems and landscaping. From a systems perspective Ewaan deployed Oracle EBS suite, upgraded to the latest version of R 12.1.3, for the functions of Finance and HRMS but the key operations function was still largely handled through standard office software.

  • Business Requirements With a view to systemize the function of the operations division, Ewaan entrusted GTS to implement a solution for its Project Procurement function using Oracle EBS modules to complement the existing Oracle core modules of Financials and HRMS. The Project Procurement function would entail implementing the Oracle Purchasing, Oracle Projects Costing and GTS' Contract Management System (CMS) to cater to the specific needs of contracting business which is the prime business function for Ewaan. The Pre-launch study identified some of the key gaps which needed to be addressed considering the specific business landscape of Ewaan:

    • Retention in lieu of Performance Bond functionality
    • Material payments to supplier to be recovered from contractor through system controlled process
    • Ad-hoc payments to contractor control
    • Payment certificate Approval through system workflow process
  • The Challenges and the Solution

    The Ewaan Project Procurement System implementation had its fair share of challenges and overcoming them, timely, contributed to the delivery of a successful system. The following impediments were faced during the project implementation by the project team and were mainly mitigated through redesigning project structure data, modifications in the Contract Management System, and building add-on functionalities.

    • Automated Deductions from Contractors for Material issued, based on Payments made to the Material Supplier Material Free Issue to the contractor is a general practice in contracting business in the region which has pertinent financial impact like better bulk pricing for the material, single sourcing to maintain design and quality uniformity etc. In Ewaan Material Free issue was priced as a part of the contract and this had to be recovered upon issue to the contractor from their subsequent Payment Certificate. From a system perspective this posed a complex transaction as the Purchase to Pay transaction cycle of one supplier (Material Supplier) need to be tagged to a payment being made for another supplier (the contractor). Also, the system driven accounting had to be tallied.

    • Huge number of Bill of Quantities (BoQ) in a Project It is common for large-scale construction to have extensive BoQ lists but for a repetitive construction like that of Villas the problem compounds. The BoQ that Ewaan issue to its contractors ranges from 10000 - 20000. Maintaining this in the EBS system was to be technical nightmare. GTS, with its relevant experience in the industry, advised Ewaan on a coding system based on the CSI cost coding structure and redesigned the Project structure by breaking down the entire development into right sized projects defined in the system though linked as a hierarchy to form a program for reporting purposes. GTS also redesigned its work completion recording forms to accommodate easy entry of percent complete figures against the extensive BoQ

    • Multiple Retention Management Ewaan had multiple retention types and each needed to be maintained and reported separately. GTS modified its CMS solution to deliver this feature.
  • Business Benefits
  • Ewaan achieved a redefined process with the new systems in place and started managing its Operations function transactions through the Oracle EBS system there by having significant gains in terms of cost and control in the following area:

    • Project Costing Monitoring reports delivered directly from Oracle system with almost zero preparation time
    • Reporting on a real time basis than a periodic 'prepared reports'
    • Effective Sub-contractor Management and Reporting from centralized system
    • Systemic control on Material Free Issue and recovery process
    • Real time, multiple Retention Monitoring
    • Efficient Percent complete recording for Complex and enormous BoQs
    • On-Account Payments and Other Charges monitoring

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