TCA (Trading Community Architecture) in R12 and Beyond

Presenter Introduction

• Malik Aziz, Rockland System Solutions– 15 Years of experience in Financials and Supply Chain – 12+ Years of experience in implementation of Oracle eBusiness Suite

and Oracle Certified Professional (OCP)– Numerous Oracle ERP Implementation projects varying in size– Currently with BCGOV as Solution Architect / Oracle Apps Specialist

Presenter Introduction

• Rockland System Solutions– Specializes in ERP and application integration.– Core competencies include:

• Management consulting and business advisory services• Project management services• Architecture services• ERP implementation services• Data warehouse solutions• System integration services• Business analysis and design services

Agenda

• Trading Community Architecture (TCA) – What is TCA and its background– TCA data model and its components – TCA in R12 and beyond– Why TCA matters – Q&A

What is TCA and its Background

• A Trading Community is…– The participants in a community and their relationship to one another

Competitor

Employee

Partner

Customer /Organization

Supplier

Competitor of Partner of

Employee of Supplier of

What is TCA and its Background

• TCA = Trading Community Architecture• Provides a single, universal definition of trading partners

across applications and job function• TCA is an Data Model – it is not a Module

TCA Data ModelHZ Schema

TCA Enabling InfrastructureCommon Party UI, DQM, D&B Integration, APIs

Sales Service Marketing Financials HR

Oracle E-Business Suite Application Families*

3rd PartySystems

What is TCA and its Background

A Trading Community Architecture…• is a way to understand who our trading partners interact

with inside and outside the enterprise.• puts a foundation in place for a trading partner model

– Linking Suppliers and Customers– Online Marketplace– Shared Service Centers

What is TCA and its Background

How did TCA come about?• First introduced in 11i

– Introduction of Oracle CRM application– Requirement for a common customer model for all Oracle

Applications

• Model evolved from working with ERP and CRM teams to create a view of the customer base which supports all flows throughout the E-Business Suite

• To support both B2B and B2C business models. • Re-architected to enable future support for entire trading

Community

What is TCA and its Background

Guiding Principles of TCA• Create a central repository for the entire E-Business Suite to

store information relating to all members of a trading community versus separate tables for each member– Prospects, Customers, Contacts, Employees, Partners, Distributors,

Suppliers, Banks, etc.

• Record complex business relationships between Trading Community entities (including 3rd party relationships)

• Support all business models, industries, and geographies

TCA Data Model

Organizations(Organization)

AR(Customer)

John, XYZ Inc ABC Co.

Party:ABC Co.

Party: John, XYZ Inc.

Old Model

TCA Model

AP/PO(Supplier)

John, XYZ Inc

Customer of

Supplier of *

* Not currently implemented. Planned for R12: Supplier tables move to TCA Model

TCA Data Model

Old Model for Customers TCA Model

TCA Data Model: Implications

• As we move towards the new TCA for all the tables, if you have someone who is a customer and a supplier, you’re going to have to rationalize their definition. This means that you will now have one definition for that participant.

• Now you know that this customer owes you $X, while as a supplier, you are trying to pay them $Y

• If you’ve done any custom reporting or programming you may need to re-work as underlying data model has changed

TCA Data Model: Major components

• Party: defined as people, organizations, groupsor relationships. Represents the participants in the Trading Community.

• Account: defined as a financial roll-up point.• Contact point: defined as any electronic point that

you could use as a contact. For example, telephones,URLs, email addresses, etc.

• Location: a physical place. • Relationship: establishes the relationship between

any two parties.

TCA Data Model: Party Concept

• A party is an entity/participant that can enter into a business relationship– Person: A unique individual (dead or alive) of interest to the user.– Organization: A legal entity recognized by some government

authority.– Group: A combination of two or more people, organizations or groups.– Relationship: User-definable link between two parties, regardless

of type. • A Party can belong to an unlimited number of relationships.• No duplication of entities

TCA Data Model: Account Concept

• The financial roll-up point to track a customer’s purchasesand payments.

• Stores details about a customer relationship betweena Party and your business.

• A Party may have one or more Customer Accounts.• Because a party and accounts are separate entities,

no need to duplicate parties – Customer Account Sites: A Party Site that is used within the context

of a Customer Account (e.g., for billing or shipping purposes).– Customer Account Contacts: A Party Contact that is used

in the context of a Customer Account.

TCA Data Model: Contact Point Concept

• Contact Point - An identifier for a method of contact(e.g., telephone, email, URL, fax, cell phone etc.)This can be applied to:– A Party (person, organization, group or relationship)– A Site or Location– A Party at a Site or Location– An entity may have one or more Contact Points.

TCA Data Model: Location Concept

• Location - A physical place, usually with an address.– Any number of location types. (e.g., bill-to, ship-to, mail-to).– No duplication of address– Maintain Customer History per address– Maintain Important Install Base info

• Party Site– Links a Party with a Location and describes the usage of that Location

(e.g., mailing address, billing address, home address, etc.). – Parties may be associated to one or more Locations and any one

location may have one or more uses.

TCA Data Model: Relationship Concept

• Relationship – Associates any two parties.– John is a customer of ABC Co.– John is a supplier to ABC Co.– TD Bank is a Competitor of Royal Bank– TD Brokerage is a Division of TD Bank

• Has a Role – Specifies the nature of the relationshipbetween parties (e.g., bill to, pay to, member of, contact at, married to, Division of, Employee of).– Indicates the nature of the relationship – Tracks relationship history

TCA Data Model: Visualization

PARTY

SITEP

AR

TY

SIT

E

PA

RT

Y

SIT

E

Bill to

Ship to

Division Of

Bill to

Ship to

Bill to

Ship to

Account Account Account

Bill to, Ship to Bill to, Ship to Bill to, Ship to

Acc

t

Sit

e

Acc

t

Sit

e

Acc

t

Sit

e

TCA Data Model: Parties vs. Accounts• From an application perspective, one of the most important

things to understand about the TCA model is that the concept of “customer” is separated into two layers: The Party layer and the Account layer.

• When CRM applications refer to “Customer” they are referring to the Party Layer.

• On the other hand, when ERP applications refer to “Customer” they are referring to the Account Layer.

• Thus, confusion arises because both are using the word “Customer” to refer to two different things.

Other Features of TCA

• Public API’s for data manipulation of TCA tables• Common Party User Interface Components• Hierarchy Model • Bulk Import of customer data and D&B Integration• DQM for duplicate prevention• Party and Account Merge

TCA Integration

TCA in R12

• New trading entities– Banks & Bank Branches – Suppliers– Legal Entity

TCA in R12: Leveraging centralized data model

Oracle Fusion MiddlewareOracle Fusion Middleware

Trading Community Architecture

Trading Community Architecture

ERPERP CRMCRM 3rd Party3rd Party

PayablesPayablesPurchasingPurchasing

Global Tax PaymentsPayments

Suppliers

Governments,“Geographies”,Authorities, etc

Party Information

Cash Management

Banks and Branches

TCA in R12: Bank Account Model

Bank

Bank Branch Bank Account

Trading Community Architecture (TCA)

Cash Management

Treasury

Payables

Receivables

Payroll

TCA in R12

New Bank Account Model• Central place to define internal bank accounts

– Keep track of all bank accounts in one place – Explicitly grant account access to multiple operating units/functions

and users

• Multi-Org Access – In the new model, bank accounts are owned by Legal Entities with the

option to grant account use to Operating Unit (Payables, Receivables), Legal Entity (Treasury), Business Group (Payroll)

TCA in R12: Bank Account Model

OU A

OU B

OU C BankSingle Payment Instruction

Invoices

Payments

Sub Ledger Sub Ledger AccountingAccountingSub Ledger Sub Ledger AccountingAccounting

• New Payments Module• New Bank Module

• New Bank & Credit Card Features

Pay invoices from different OUs with 1 instruction

TCA in R12: Bank AccountModel Benefits

• Reduce number of access points to manage bank accounts– Centralized user interface

• Improve visibility and control of bank accounts– Multi-org access control

• Simplify bank reconciliation– Single bank statement can be reconciled across multiple

Operating Units

• Increase percentage of automatically reconciled transactions – Bank account level reconciliation parameters add flexibility

TCA in R12: Supplier Representation

• Supplier organizations are in TCA• Terms of doing business with the supplier are

in Purchasing / Payables• Supplier organization, address, contact, phone, email

etc. are all in TCA• Employees are already in TCA, Payables using the same

employee records in TCA• New supplier maintenance UI using TCA UI components

TCA in R12: Benefits of Supplier Representation

• Single repository for suppliers data• AR/AP netting • Oracle Payments serves as a payment data repository on top

of the Trading Community Architecture (TCA) data model. The TCA model holds the party information. Oracle Payments then stores all of the party’s payment information and its payment instruments (including credit cards, debit cards, customer bank accounts, and supplier bank accounts).

TCA in R12: Supplier Data Mapping

TCA in R12: Legal Entities

• Legal entity is created as a party of party type ORGANIZATION or PERSON

• An establishment is created as a party of party type ORGANIZATION.

• TCA creates a new classification category called “Business Function”. It is used mainly to model what business functions a party can perform in E-Business Suite

• For modeling legal entities and establishments in TCA, classification code “Legal Entity” and “Establishment” are created under the “Business Function” class category.

• An establishment is created as a party and always link to a party that is classified as a legal entity through the relationship model

TCA in R12: Integration with HRMS

• TCA creates the global view of person• TCA enables you to store person Information at a corporate

level • Person is stored as party in TCA• Comprehensive duplicate person check when entering a new

person – Across the business group• Propagate some information entered in one business group

to the record in the other business group • PER_ALL_PEOPLE_F.PARTY_ID is a foreign key to the

HZ_PARTIES table, an integral part of Oracle's "Trading Community Architecture" (TCA).

Why TCA Matters: What you get

• Architecture to model your customers and other trading partners as you see best for your business

• Architecture that will grow with your requirements• Features to maintain extremely reliable customer information

(e.g. ABC Co. is now sure that their supplier John of XYZ Inc is the same person as their customer, John of XYZ Inc)

• Glue that ties several E-Business Suite flows in a seamless way• Customer Data Integration solution even if you are not

running a single E-Business Suite module• Platform that can play a key role in your IT landscape for

Master Data Management

Why TCA Matters: What you have to do

• Take a close look at how you do business and how your business processes are most efficiently performed

• Ask questions about how you should model customer information e.g. which entities should be modeled as parties; when should you create an account; should you create multiple accounts for some parties; should you create multiple billing sites for an account; should you create account relationships

• Even if you are implementing few modules of E-Business Suite to start with, keep in mind the bigger picture about customer information