Why use Oracle Services Procurement?

If you look at the purchase basis, then yes, services can be bought using Base Purchasing/iProc itself.
What Services Procurement(SP) provides in this area is more organized buying.
You can directly say in a requisition that you intend to buy $1000 worth of services, in Proc/iProc, you
have to put 1000 in Qty, and the Price gets defaulted to 1 USD, giving the total as $1000. Not much of a
value, I will say, but it makes more sense to have a requisition to not say Qty when you are buying an
amount!
However, the real advantage of SP is in the area of Contingent labour buy. You can buy contingent
labour using SP in a very structured way, do a vendor screening, initiate hiring liked to a
PO(automatically- previously u needed to add the PO details manually on the Employee). It has seeded
interface with OTL, using which time sheet entries get imported to automatically create the receipts
against the PO(once the time sheets are approved) and initiate billing
It really is about managing contingent labor. the details can also be fed to Projects if used for allocation.
It also allows you to use i procurement to initiate the request and the hire can also be entered into HR as
a contingent worker.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oracle Procurement Contracts:

Automation & Compliance

The new Oracle Procurement Contracts will help reduce risk throughout

the
contract cycle. It will standardize contract creation, streamline authoring
and negotiation and increase control with workflow-driven approvals.
Customers can use the application's change management capabilities to track
variances from standard terms, manage support documents, and compare changes
between revisions. Oracle Procurement Contracts will also automate alerts
for
contract renewal and create an audit trail to eliminate costly 'evergreen'
agreements.
Features of the new Oracle Procurement Contracts product will include:
* Terms and Conditions Library - A library of sophisticated terms and
conditions will give legal departments and buying organizations a
powerful tool to create reusable terms and conditions.
* Contract Authoring - Users can search for and select appropriate
terms
and conditions or templates, specify deliverables and attach
documents.
Users can choose to invoke the Contract Expert to apply the correct
clauses based on the user's responses together with other business
document data.
* Contract Deliverables and Compliance - Users will be allowed to
author
and add contract deliverables and monitor compliance. Oracle
Procurement Contracts will automatically send out notifications to

remind buyers and suppliers of outstanding deliverables.

Together

with
Oracle Daily Business Intelligence, purchasing professionals can get
the information needed to help ensure that the right discounts are
applied and eliminate overcharging by suppliers.
Oracle Services Procurement: Addressing All Service Categories
Oracle Services Procurement will help organizations control all types of
services expenditures and cover all services categories, including general
business, legal, agencies and contingent workers. Oracle Services
Procurement
can save companies money by enabling them to enforce corporate services
procurement policies, and will provide a flexible framework that procurement
managers can use to normalize services rates, eliminate over-billing errors
and enforce contract terms.
"Because we're a government-owned, contractor-operated organization,
purchases are scrutinized for value and supplier fairness," said Gary
Concannon, business technology manager at Sandia National Laboratories.
"Oracle Contracts Procurement coupled with Oracle iSupplier Portal will
provide us the tools to manage and collaborate with our suppliers on open
purchase orders and service requisitions. Our use of Oracle is instrumental
in helping us source the most effective deal at the best value."
Features of the new Oracle Services Procurement product will
include:
* New Service Line Types - Line types reflect the unique
characteristics of services. With Oracle Services Procurement, Oracle is
introducing three new line types that enable companies to purchase, receive
and match to invoices based on amounts rather than quantity.
* Preferred Supplier Management - To optimize use of preferred
suppliers, organizations can define approved suppliers based on service
category.
Service requests will always be sourced from the most recent contract
to help ensure the most up to date rates and terms are reflected on
purchase orders.
* Supplier Collaboration - Oracle Services Procurement allow suppliers
to manage their profiles including specific service commodity capabilities,
view and respond to buyer negotiation documents, view existing purchase
orders and drill to related timecards, invoices, payments and submit invoices
online. They can also create automatic alerts on the status of purchase
order consumption.
Both products were developed with extensive input from Oracle's
purchasing
Customer Advisory Board, a group of leading companies, spanning multiple
industries, from around the world. "We made a long-term investment to weave
contracts and services procurement into our integrated procurement family
because customers told us that these complex disciplines needed to become
part
of the way they did business, not separate procurement silos," said Dave
Stephens, vice president of Oracle Procurement.

Oracle's Advanced Procurement suite of applications helps customers

managethe entire procure-to-pay business process for categories of goods and
services on a single platform. This enables organizations to make more
informed procurement decisions, mitigate purchase agreement risk, and above
all, save money. The two new applications represent a significant expansion
of Oracle Advanced Procurement products, which also include Oracle
Purchasing,
Oracle iProcurement, Oracle iSupplier Portal, Oracle Sourcing and Oracle
Daily
Business Intelligence.