Oracle Projects to Primavera Contract Management Integration

Problem

A large regional health organization, which manages a great number of capital projects through a central Project Management Office and includes planners, project managers, project administrators and accountants, was using a number of different control software systems, all of which worked independently of each other. The monthly reconciliation process became frustrating and overwhelming, and the production of reports for stakeholders became a tedious task, to the point that accountants performing these reconciliations were unable to carry out their normal, everyday project management tasks. The primary project control systems used were Oracle Financials for cost control and Primavera Contract Management (formerly known as Expedition) for contract management. Microsoft Excel was used to manually reconcile the systems from a financial perspective.

Solution

Emerald Associates worked with the company's Oracle Financials consultants and together evaluated a number of different options to reduce the burden of reconciling these systems. These options included data warehousing, creation of an integrated system, or the abandoning of one of the primary systems and working exclusively with the other. The solution which was recommended and accepted by the company was to rollout the project costing module of Oracle Financials and integrate it to Primavera Contract Management. Emerald Associates wrote the interface program, which transferred Expedition projects, WBS elements, budgets, forecasts and commitments to Oracle Financials. Project financial reporting for stakeholders was then produced from Oracle Financials.

ROI

This integrated solution greatly reduced reconciliation requirements, automated many of the transactions that previously had to be performed by hand, and eliminated double entry. For accounting purposes, it allowed for more flexible and timely cross-project reporting. An additional advantage to this solution was that it permitted project managers and accountants to work in the separate systems in which they were most comfortable, while still providing reconciliation and the necessary information to all stakeholders.

Emerald’s Experience

As mentioned, Emerald performed this integration for a large regional health organization which has over 16,000 employees and an annual operating budget of $1.3B. This integration was also performed on a large capital project in Vancouver for a construction and engineering group.