Getting visibility of your E-Business Suite usage data

Over the last year, the licensing team at Inoapps has been working with our Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) customers to give them visibility of their application usage. You can of course find your usage data by navigating the application menus in your live environment, but if you want to holistically visualize your data, a report is the way to go.

Our findings have really helped our customers streamline their licensing and the results have sometimes been surprising. Here’s what we’ve most often found:

• Users with active logins who left the business months ago
• Existing users with responsibilities they should not have
• Users who have moved roles but retained access to their old responsibilities
• Seasonal, contract users who retain access even though their contracts won’t renew for many months
• Usage of applications that were never purchased
• Usage of applications that have been terminated

These kinds of scenarios throw up clear issues, including:

Security

• It’s always a risk when users have visibility of, or access to, parts of an application they should not. We often see this when people change roles within the business and with retirees or leavers.
• Segregation of duties is also important, from both a licensing perspective and for ensuring the appropriateness of task vs role among multiple employees or departments. This reduces your security risks and misappropriation of business-critical data.
• It’s likewise a risk if users are able to log in to your systems when they’re no longer employed by you, or are only employed for a few months of the year, as we see in leisure industries.

Compliance

• If responsibilities are allocated in error, you can end up with licensable usage that pushes you over your purchased quantities, or usage you aren’t licensed for at all.
• If your business has stopped using an application and relinquished the licensing but responsibilities and users remain, you may still be liable for the license cost. Remember that the majority of EBS is usually licensed by Application User, which translates as individuals authorized by you to use applications, regardless of whether they are or not.

There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to keeping track of an application user population and the ongoing housekeeping needed to maintain accurate user visibility can easily fall off the radar.

Ready to move forward with clarity?

If you’re ready to get on top of your EBS usage data, you’re in the right place. Our report will give you a holistic view of your EBS consumption, and it won’t put any burden on your application teams. The only thing we need is an Active User Report from your production system and a view of your purchased licenses. That’s it.

In return, the usage report will give you what you need for:

The report provides you with a holistic view of your EBS consumption, which you can manipulate and filter any way you like:

• Want to know if access for UserA has been removed? Our report will show if they still have an available login.
• Want to know if UserB can access Financials data?  Our report will show you exactly what responsibilities UserB has.
• Concerned you may be over or under licensed?  Our report will give you the usage figures to compare to your existing licensing. This means you can see, at a glance, how many licenses you need, based purely on usage.

Would you like to know more? Our first steps would be to sign an NDA to protect mutual confidentiality. Then send us your Active User Report and most recent support renewal…and that’s it, let us do the rest. Find out more about the offer here, and get ready to declutter!