Oracle EBS: Overcome Excel Reporting Limitations for Clearer Decision-Making

Staying On-prem with EBS? Here’s How to get Cloud-level Results Without Migrating

Every day, finance leaders make critical decisions that steer business forward. Yet, the constant struggle with incomplete or outdated data hinders their ability to steer the course. In fact, a study from insightsoftware and Hanover Research has found that struggling with data inaccuracy is one of finance leaders’ top three challenges, and it severely limits visibility into their organizations. Visibility is key. Without it, finance leaders don’t have what they need to achieve success.

Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) serves as a cornerstone for financial management in organizations of all sizes. Although Oracle EBS offers robust capabilities in core financial processes, the system's on-premises architecture and legacy design can present unique challenges when it comes to Excel reporting.

Compared to newer, cloud-based ERP systems, Oracle EBS may require more specialized tools and processes to extract and transform data into a format suitable for Excel analysis. This can increase the time and effort required for financial reporting, particularly for complex or ad-hoc analyses. How can you increase visibility into your Oracle EBS data when you’re bogged down by challenges like these that leave you relying on your IT department for answers to your critical questions?

What to do When Excel Isn’t Enough

If you’re still basing your decisions off static Excel reports, you’re limiting your ability to see an accurate view of your organization. And Oracle EBS's data structure, while efficient for transactional processing, can introduce complexities for analytical reporting. For example, the need to join multiple tables to derive insights adds additional steps to the process that make it easy to miss certain details. Additionally, the range of built-in reporting tools and their integration with Excel may differ from those found in newer ERP solutions. These factors can influence the ease and efficiency with which finance teams can generate Excel-based reports to support decision making.

Oracle EBS features certain reports out-of-the-box, but they don’t cover the entire breadth of your organization’s needs–when leadership has a question only a custom report can answer, it requires technical knowledge, leaving you no choice but to send the report to IT to build. Because your IT department must prioritize your organization’s critical infrastructure first, you may need to wait days before the report is ready. As essential as Excel is to finance, it simply isn’t enough to fulfill every reporting need.

Other shortcomings of Excel-based reporting include:

• Difficulty connecting to Oracle EBS data

• Lack of operational insights

• Error-prone data entry

• Time-consuming manual processes

• Requirement of technical knowledge to build reports from scratch

• Lack of customization

When you manually export data into Excel, processes are not only time consuming, but are also prone to human error. When you’re left double checking information you’ve exported or input manually, it cuts into valuable time you could be spending on the type of analysis that drives future-facing business decisions.

Leap Over Excel Hurdles

As skilled as they are, the IT department doesn’t have the type of business context you do. You know what challenges your department faces intimately, so you know exactly what information will be important to highlight in your report. When you’re able to generate reports yourself, you can make sure to present the exact information you and your leadership needs to drive the business forward. But how do you get started?

An automated, integrated Oracle EBS reporting tool can bridge the gap between the legacy system and the efficiency of cloud environments. By automating data extraction, transformation, and loading into Excel, these tools can significantly reduce manual effort and errors, mirroring the speed and accuracy benefits of cloud-based solutions. Moreover, they can often incorporate advanced analytics and visualization capabilities, allowing for deeper insights and more informed decision-making.

Unlock the Power of Your Data with Wands

Insightsoftware’s Wands is a reporting tool that connects directly to Oracle EBS. With Wands, build refreshable reports with real-time data you can drill down on, all without having to understand Oracle’s row and column sets in FSG. Support and accelerate your daily reporting activities with easy access to your EBS data in Excel. With Wands, unlock the power of your data with accurate insights to ensure reliable information that improves business outcomes. You can also discover trends and deeper insight into the data to get a leg up on the competition.

Improve your data culture by bridging data literacy gaps with intuitive tools that anyone on your team can use by:

• Staying in Excel, finance’s tool of choice

• Gaining access to pre-built templates and business views

• Attaining self-service with an easy-to-use interface without having to migrate to the cloud

• Never serving your stakeholders stale data

Excel is finance’s favorite application for a reason – by offering unprecedented detail and versatility, you can leverage your Oracle EBS data to generate reports and answer key business questions. But Excel on its own has its shortcomings. With Wands, you can make the best of Excel, but with real-time, refreshable, and customizable reports with information straight from Oracle.

Ready to learn more? Watch our on-demand webinar on how to overcome Excel reporting limitations.