Introduction
Oracle Cloud Applications Suite is the complete cloud applications suite with embedded artificial intelligence that brings consistent processes and a single source of truth across the business functions – from enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, and human capital management to advertising and customer experience. Oracle Fusion Applications with a unified data model provides modular, flexible, service-enabled enterprise applications for building, managing, and tracking solutions for your finance, human resources, supply chain, manufacturing, customer service, and marketing needs.
Fusion Cloud Applications (“FA”) provides two reporting options tailored for different business needs and user personas to support effective business decision making.
1) Embedded Fusion Cloud Applications Reporting Tools
The table below provides the embedded reporting tool options within Fusion Cloud Applications. Note that these are intended for reporting purposes and not recommended for large data extraction. For more details refer to the blog on Fusion Cloud Applications data extraction options and guidelines.
| # | Embedded Reporting Tool within FA | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Self-service and operational transactional reporting |
|
| 2 |
Business Intelligence Publisher / Analytics Publisher (“BIP”) |
Generation of formatted reports in PDF, Excel, Word etc. |
| 3 |
Financial statements, regulatory reports |
|
| 4 |
Excel-based to interactively analyze balances and define reports. |
|
| 5 | Express Reports (Applicable only for Sales Cloud) | The Express Reports tool simplifies the creation of reports with charts for sales managers, salespeople, and sales administrators. |
2) Fusion Data Intelligence (“FDI”) – Pre-built analytics for Fusion Cloud Applications
This blog outlines reporting options and features available for your Fusion Cloud Applications implementation to help architects, business analysts, and implementation teams select the most suitable reporting solution for their business needs.
Embedded reporting options versus FDI
The table below gives a high-level comparison between the embedded reporting options within Fusion Cloud Applications versus Fusion Data Intelligence.
| Feature | Embedded Reporting Tools within FA | Fusion Data Intelligence |
|---|---|---|
| Use Cases |
Day-to-day operational and statutory reporting |
Strategic, enterprise analytics and decision support |
| Deployment |
Embedded within Fusion Cloud Applications |
Separate analytics/data cloud, integrated with SaaS |
| Data Source |
Live transactional data from Fusion apps |
Replicated, curated data for analytics |
| Data Scope |
Operational, financial, and transactional |
Cross-app, longitudinal, historical, external blend |
| Typical Users |
Business users, analysts, IT |
Data analysts, business leaders, data scientists |
| Key Tools |
Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence, Oracle Analytics Publisher / Business Intelligence Publisher, Financial Reporting, Smart View, Dashboards |
Pre-built KPI’s using Oracle Analytics Cloud |
| Reporting Capability |
Real-time, operational and financial |
Advanced analytics, trending, benchmarking |
| Customization |
Limited, within transaction model |
High, with data pipelines and semantic model |
| Complex Analytics |
Basic to moderate (depends on tool) |
Advanced: ML, AI, cross-source analysis |
| External Data Integration |
Limited |
Robust, external data blending |
| Security Model |
Inherits Fusion application security |
Separate, mapped security; supports row/column level |
| Licensing |
Included within Fusion Cloud Applications |
Separate subscription/licensing required |
Considerations to choose Embedded Reporting Option vs FDI?
| Feature | Embedded Reporting Option | FDI |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-built content |
Predefined subject areas with 9000+ reportable objects |
3000+ metrics, dashboards, AI models |
| Security framework |
Role based access tied to transactional data security |
Role based access integrated with Fusion Cloud Applications |
| Performance |
Instant refresh of dashboards and analyses upon transaction updates/creates |
Optimized for large-scale data analysis but doesn’t offer real-time data. |
| Customization |
Custom reports and dashboards within Fusion Cloud Applications |
Extensible with custom/external data and Machine Language models. |
| Real-Time (Online) |
Yes |
No |
| External Data Support |
No |
Yes |
| Artificial Intelligence / Machine Language |
No |
Yes |
| Enterprise Scalability |
Only Operational Data |
Yes |
When to Combine FDI and FA Embedded tools?
Combining FDI and Embedded reporting tools can be beneficial when organizations need both operational and strategic insights:
- Operational Monitoring + Strategic Analysis: Use embedded options for real-time monitoring of transactions while leveraging FDI for long-term trend analysis and forecasting.
- Data Validation: FDI includes validation capabilities that compare its aggregated data against OTBI’s transactional data to ensure accuracy
- Comprehensive Reporting: Embedded tools can handle immediate reporting needs while FDI supports advanced analytics like profitability analysis or predictive modeling
General Guidelines
- Limit report size and complexity to avoid impacting the application performance.
- Avoid blending external data with embedded reporting tools.
- Avoid OTBI and BIP for historical data analysis.
- Review the BIP best practices for SaaS environments support article. Note that tuning custom BIP reports is your responsibility.
- Avoid using BIP for data extraction from Fusion Cloud Applications as BIP is intended for reporting use.
- Avoid BIP for synchronous and near real-time integrations. Refer to blog for details.
- Enable the standard OTBI usage and BIP Audit in all Fusion Cloud Application instances to pro-actively monitor.
- Plan your FDI data refresh and schedules based on your business requirements and standard scheduling requirements from FDI.
- Plan your resources for initial setup & configuration of FDI
Conclusion
The purpose of this blog is to help you better understand reporting options available for your Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications implementation and to guide you in choosing the right options based on your business requirements. To summarize, Embedded reporting in Fusion Cloud Applications excels for operational, real-time reporting needs, leveraging robust security and ease of use. For complex analytics, cross-system reporting, or blending with external data, consider combining external solutions such as Fusion Data Intelligence (FDI) which comes with pre-built purpose built analytics with Fusion Cloud Applications.