What are the Options available when it comes to providing Solutions ?

The responsibility of meeting the clients requirements lies with the Functional Consultants and the Subject Matter Experts in the field. Even though most of the requirements are well thought
of by the client at the very beginning.... it is not the end of the list in the real time scenario.... !
There are implementations where client changes or brings in new requirement just before the
Production... So Consultant has to be capable of handling the last minute requirements and
changes which may arise from the client.
The suggested measure to put an end to the clients requirements is by providing them a Cut
off Date , beyond which no requirements will be taken care.
But certain changes need to fit in to the implementation even if it arises after the cut off date,
else it would not make sense to the whole project..
Let us take an example to find out what i was speaking above...
Assume that Anil Passi Ltd ( Client ) has approaced Richary Byrom ( Consultant ) for
implementing oracle financials for his company. His company and operations are located in a
location assume some where in middle east, where there is no taxation worries. So Richard
Byrom made through and detail understanding of business and given all the best solutions and
implemented a perfect system for working... just before they are about to hit the production
date... Government has made that particular country in the middle east as Taxable with
immediate effect..... now what ever solutions which Richard Byrom provided were without
taking in to account taxations.... he cannot deny this new requirement, since without taxation
what ever figures that are getting recorded are of no use, since it is not the true state of
affairs of the business. So Richard Byrom has to carefully include the new requirements in to
the solutions desgined by him previously with immediate effect.. !
Now from the Consultant point of view, let us see what are the type of solutions that one should
adopt?
Solutions can be many types, for the sake of understanding, let us take the major categories
of solutions:

1) Best Business Practices - This is a standard solution given by oracle by default for many
common requirements faced by different industries
Example: Client requirement is that they spend many hours in preparing month end accrual
and closing entries and reversing the same in the next month beginning. How oracle can help
them? - For which Consultant can suggest them to use Recurring Journals and Auto reverse functionality which will result in reduction of Substantial time.

2) Work Arounds - Work arounds are nothing but making best use of all available oracle
functionalities to bring out a solution for the requirements. For providing Work arounds, one
must possess strong business skills, and know the limitations of oracle applications from the
front end.
Example - Client wants to make payments in Cash using oracle Payables module. But
whereas making payments in cash is not a seeded functionality provided by oracle. - For
which Consultant can suggest, to create a bank named CASH A/C without Cheque Numbers,
and use this bank when ever you want to make cash payments.

3) Customization - If a particular requirement is not taken care by Oracle applications with the
available functionalities, one can think of customizing the applications by altering or inserting
new coding in to it, so as to make it perform in the way in which clients want it. For performing
an Customization, sound technical knowledge and the knowledge on how oracle applications
is built needs to be known. Customizations are not mostly preferred since it involves the work
of technical consultants resulting in additional cost. And when you customize Oracle
Applications or the Database, you will loose the Support from oracle (i.e Metalink) !
Example - Client after looking at all the available standard forms which an end user will be
using for his day to day operations, wants that, there are too many unwanted fields that are
getting displayed at every form which will not be touched by the users. So he wants all other
fields which are non mandatory to disapper from the form.
For which a technical consultant can customize the form and disable the fields or hide the
fields with a default value.
When a consultant himself is not sure on how to treat a particular requirement, he can get in
touch with oracle support ( as a last option/hope ) to get thier feedbacks as well !