Oracle EPM Cloud Digital Assistant – Chatbots
Author: Rahul Sharma | Director, EPM Practice | Accelalpha
Author: Pavan Gummanur | Principal Consultant, EPM Practice | Accelalpha
The finance function is playing a key role in accelerating operational and strategic decision making. Financial analysts in the office of the CFO are finding ways to remove bottlenecks so they can collect information faster. To build a more agile finance department, organizations are deploying tools like intelligent performance management (IPM), machine learning, and predictive analytics. One of the latest additions to this list of tools is chatbots. Across industries, chatbots and messaging apps are increasingly becoming the preferred methods of communication for certain types of transactions. Research1 shows that 56% of businesses say they have a positive ROI from messaging and 58% say it reduces costs.
In the Oracle EPM world, Oracle has recently introduced chatbots, also known as the Oracle digital assistant for EPM. These chatbots are intelligent and conversational; they are changing the way users interact with EPM. Think of chatbot as a computer program that processes written or spoken human conversation, allowing users to interact with digital devices as if they are chatting with a real person. Chatbots can now react differently depending on the context of the conversation, they adapt to user behaviors, and these digital assistants can be trained to be even smarter!
What the digital assistant (chatbot) can do in Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close (FCCS)
There are quite a few tasks that can be accomplished using chatbots for FCCS. They include:
- Data Tasks: FCCS users can quickly view the data for an account for a point of view (POV) that they specify. There is no need to go through the process of creating a smart view sheet. In chatbots, users can simply ask their question by typing it in. For example, “What is the net income for Jan 2022?”. A drill down on a specific dimension can be done by typing in “POV” and then clicking on the dimension needed. Similarly, data can be updated using the following command “Change <account> to <amount>, increase <account> by <amount>”
- Running Consolidations: To run consolidations just type in Consolidate. View and update POV can be done before running the consolidation, by typing in POV, and then following along as the chatbot shows the options on the screen.
- Running Rules: Rules can be run by entering “Calculate rule <rule name>”
- Journal Tasks: Journal tasks can be accessed by entering “Show all journals” and then following along the options that the assistant shows. For example, clicking on approve journals, or post to do journal posting
- Close Tasks: Close tasks can be accessed by typing in “Close Status” or “Show me the close” and then just keep selecting the options. For example, click late to see all close tasks that are late, click today to see all close tasks due today.
How to set up the digital assistant (chatbot) for Oracle FCCS?
An Oracle digital assistant subscription and an Oracle FCCS instance are needed to use the EPM digital assistant for FCCS. The digital assistant must be set up as an individual service. After that, you can see the EPM skills for FCCS by following the steps for “Pull and extend the EPM digital assistant skills”. Users can also customize the skills by importing metadata and ensuring that the metadata can be seen in the skill. Finally, users need to set up the channels to access the chatbots.
Currently, the digital assistant is certified to work with Oracle web channel, Microsoft Teams, and Slack. There are additional configuration steps required like setting up authentication etc. Though all these steps may seem quite involved, there is detailed configuration documentation available that can be accessed here2.