Marcia D. Michalik
Starkey Labs, Inc.
An implementation of iReceivables and iPayment
Agenda
• Overview of Functionality
• iReceivables and iPayment Setups
• Tips and Tricks
• Lessons Learned
About Starkey
• Starkey is the world’s largest manufacturer of custom hearing devices; we strive to provide the ‘human touch’ to hearing health care
• Starkey employs about 4,000 people worldwide
• We are located in 33 countries, with HQ in Minneapolis, MN
About our Customers• Starkey distributes its products through hearing care
professionals; our customers are not end users
• Our customers’ profiles ranges from smaller ‘mom and pop’ shops to larger multi-location operations or ‘buying groups’
• Larger customers can have hundreds of invoices each
month; each order is
invoiced separately
About our Oracle Footprint
• Starkey has been using the Oracle applications since 1994
• We use Financials, Manufacturing, Engineering, Inventory, Purchasing, WIP, BOM, Cost
• iReceivables and iPayment were introduced as Phase I of a larger project to migrate AR and OM off a legacy system
• iReceivables is also being used for internal inquiry by salespeople, the Credit department, and customer service reps (they have no ability to transact)
Basic Functionality
• iReceivables gives customers the ability to:
– View account balance and aging
– invoices and credits
– Match credits to invoices
– Print copies of invoices and credits
• iPayment provides the ability to pay online
• Both are completely integrated with AR
iReceivables
Primary Screens: SEARCH
• Search by customer number, name, contact name, phone number, address or by specific transaction number
• If an account has multiple addresses, all will be displayed
Primary Screens: HOME
•Use Personalization functionality to create a custom look
Starkey’s HOME screen
Removed reference to Disputes, Discounts, Credit Requests
Added links to StatementPDF files, User Help Guide
Can add notes to ourCustomers as needed.
Primary Screens: ACCOUNT/Detail
Primary Screens: TRANSACTION
iReceivable Setups
• Minimal functional setup required
– Profile Options
• FND: View Object Max Fetch Size
• Currency:Negative Format
• OIR: Apply Credits
– Many technical activities to set up secured access to the apps through the Internet
– Primary activity was defining external users
iPayment
iPayment screens
• Account Detail screen has ‘shortcut’ to pay entire account balance
iPayment screens
• A Quick Payment utilizes the last payment method that the customer used as a default for this payment
iPayment screens
• The Advanced Payment screen allows the customer to enter a new credit card or bank account or chose a previously-saved payment method
iPayment screens
• The customer receives a confirmation when their payment has been accepted.
Payment Process
• Customer makes online payment in iReceivables; authorization is realtime and a code is returned
• The last-used payment method will default, but a new credit card or bank account can be entered instead
• The Automatic Remittance program batches payments made through iReceivables and performs additional validations
• The iPayment scheduler program transmit the batch to the processor for settlement
• This same program will report whether receipts were successfully settled or if there are issues to be addressed
iPayment Setups
• iPayment Payment Administrator (web-based) setups for security, system setups, payee setups
• Profile Options– OIR: Save Payment Instrument Information
– OIR: Maximum Future Payment Days Allowed
– OIR: Verify Credit Card Details
– AR: Mask Bank Account Numbers
• Receipt classes– Automatic Receipt class with a payment method for credit
cards and a method for ACH payments
iPayment Setups (Cont.)
• Document categories and sequencing
• Credit card accounts within a ‘Credit Card’ bank
• Payment Method at Customer and Site level
• Setups may differ depending on configuration:
– Use a Gateway or go direct to a Processor
– Need to do ACH as well as credit card processing
– Need to do inbound and outbound transactions
About our implementation
Tips ‘N Tricks
• Identify a technical resource to become the expert with personalizations in iReceivables. There is a LOT you can do with personalizations
• Set your profile option (Currency: Negative Format) correctly so that negative numbers have the negative sign, not brackets, to facilitate exporting to Excel
• Set the profile option (FND: View Object Max Fetch Size) so that all transactions can be viewed on a single page rather than scrolling through pages
Lessons Learned• Setup of external users is done by the Party number
assigned to a contact. This process may be complex depending on your customer structure. (We customized the lookup to assist with this.)
Lessons Learned (Cont.)
• The way transactions are shown can be misleading. For instance, below are two open payments. Both show a Remaining Amount of zero; the first one has the entire amount left to be applied, the second one has only $8 that hasn’t been applied.
Lessons Learned (Cont.)
• ‘Apply Credits’ functionality is not easy to use
The following example demonstrates the application of several credit memos to several open invoices…
Apply Credits Process – Initialize
• Sort by User Name
• Select transactions
Apply Credits Process – Step 1
• Select the credits you wish to use
• Go to the next step
Apply Credits Process – Step 2
• Select the invoices you wish to use
• Go to the next step
Apply Credits Process - Error
• It can be complicated to figure out how to ‘equalize’
Apply Credits – Step 3
• Reduced the amount of the invoice to match the credits
• May have to back-track through steps and de-select credits or invoices
Apply Credits – Confirmation
• Confirmation can be printed
Lessons Learned (Cont.)
• iPayment - technical configuration between Oracle, our processing provider and our network group took significantly longer than expected.
• In addition to our own testing, we had to pass connectivity and data testing performed by the processor
• We had to pass a strict security audit required by VISA/MC, performed by a third party, to maintain PCI compliance; this was done at our expense and audits are ongoing
• iPayment is being used more widely with iStore or custom OM packages than with iReceivables; Oracle support on this integration was limited
Lessons Learned (Cont.)
• Be prepared for customers calling with technical questions about accessibility (browser versions, for instance) and be prepared to route them appropriately
• Also be prepared to handle the ‘I forgot my password’calls
• A phased roll-out allowed us to work out the kinks with a select group of good customers before we opened it up to additional customers (still in the process)
In Conclusion
• Overall, setups were minimal
• Implementation required more technical resources than a standard financial application implementation
• There is a lot you can do with personalizations!
• Its hard to hide issues when the user is your customer
• Be prepared to support this new group of users who have no familiarity with the Oracle applications
Thank you!