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

Competitor of

Partner of

Partner

Customer / Organization

Employee

Employee of

Supplier of

Supplier

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
Oracle E-Business Suite Application Families*

Sales

Service

Marketing Financials

HR

3rd Party Systems

TCA Enabling Infrastructure

Common Party UI, DQM, D&B Integration, APIs

TCA Data Model

HZ Schema

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

Old Model

AR (Customer)
John, XYZ Inc

Organizations (Organization)
ABC Co.

AP/PO (Supplier)
John, XYZ Inc

TCA Model

Party: ABC Co.

Customer of Supplier of *

Party: John, XYZ Inc.

* 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, youre 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 youve 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, groups or 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 customers purchases and payments. Stores details about a customer relationship between a 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 relationship between 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 SITE
Bill to Ship to

Division Of

PARTY

PARTY
Bill to Ship to

SITE

Bill to Ship to

Account
Acct Site

Account
Acct Site

Account
Acct Site

Bill to, Ship to

Bill to, Ship to

Bill to, Ship to

SITE

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 APIs 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

Payables Purchasing Suppliers Global Tax Governments, Geographies, Authorities, etc Payments Party Information Cash Management Banks and Branches

Trading Community Architecture

Oracle Fusion Middleware

ERP

CRM

3rd Party

TCA in R12: Bank Account Model

Trading Community Architecture (TCA) Cash Management

Bank

Payables

Receivables Bank Branch Bank Account Payroll Treasury

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

Pay invoices from different OUs with 1 instruction New Payments Module New Bank Module
New Bank & Credit Card Features
OU B

OU A

Payments OU C Single Payment Instruction Bank

Invoices

Sub Ledger Accounting

TCA in R12: Bank Account Model 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 partys 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