In March I published a blog article to introduce Oracle Cloud Success Navigator (“CSN”). CSN is a new component in the Oracle toolbox and targets helping client who are in production in the cloud. However, I’ve been exploring how CSN can people projects move to the cloud.
In the previous article I demonstrated how CSN provided most comprehensive set of requirements I’ve seen associated with an ERP project- 120% more than I had seen on an average real life ERP project. The example was for managing expenses in an organistion.
What are the business benefits that CSN can identify?
Let’s get back to CSN where we left off. As with most AI tools we can expect subsequent follow up ideas to be prompted and CSN was no exception:
“do you want to explore how these use cases map to specific features or business benefits? “
This is invaluable when compiling a business case. To this end CSN tabulated the use cases and identified the benefits as follows:
| USE CASE | BUSINESS BENEFIT |
| Employee Expense Submission | Streamlines expense capture, reduces manual paperwork, and improves employee satisfaction. |
| Manager Approval Workflow | Ensures accountability, speeds up approvals, and enforces policy compliance. |
| Policy Compliance Checks | Reduces risk of policy violations and fraud, ensuring regulatory and internal compliance. |
| Receipt Capture and Attachment | Simplifies audit trails, reduces lost receipts, and supports faster reimbursement. |
| Mileage and Per Diem Calculations | Automates calculations, reduces errors, and ensures fair, consistent reimbursements. |
| Integration with Corporate Cards | Minimizes manual entry, improves accuracy, and accelerates reconciliation. |
| Audit and Fraud Detection | Proactively identifies suspicious activity, reducing financial risk and audit costs. |
| Reimbursement Processing | Accelerates payments to employees, improving morale and reducing administrative overhead. |
| Multi-currency and Tax Handling | Supports global operations, ensures accurate tax treatment, and simplifies cross-border expenses. |
| Analytics and Reporting | Provides actionable insights, enables spend control, and supports strategic decision-making. |
This re-enforces the benefits we identify in the business case that such a new system brings such as reducing errors, reducing financial risk and providing actionable insights. What is invaluable, is that CSN provides the traceability between benefits and the features of the system. I for one will be using CSN on my next project where we will build a business case
Process Maps as well…
One of the other areas of deep work on a project that migrates ERP to the cloud is business process mapping. I always make a strong argument that the underlying processes dont fundamentally change when moving to the cloud. Yes, its likely that different people will perform certain activity or that some activities can be automated and performed by the system. However, it is rare that we would change the commercial structure of the organisation or the financial regulations unless the ERP project was part of a larger M&A change. As an example, this is a process map that CSN provides for expense management:
This process map is ideal for a level 3 process map and the process control documentation that is often delivered as part of the project. Again, a clear example of CSN speeding up delivery.
And now test cases…
The above process flow is perfect to provide a map for testing. To this end CSN goes even deeper and provides a list of test conditions for expenses:
| S.NO. | TEST CASE ID | SEQUENCE ID | TEST CASE | TEST CASE DESCRIPTION | MODULE |
| 1 | TC_EXP_001 | 01 | Submit Valid Expense Report | Employee submits a valid expense report with all required fields and receipts | ERP Expenses |
| 2 | TC_EXP_002 | 02 | Submit Expense Report with Missing Required Fields | Employee attempts to submit an expense report missing required fields | ERP Expenses |
| 3 | TC_EXP_003 | 03 | Submit Expense Report Exceeding Policy Limit | Employee submits an expense report exceeding company policy limits | ERP Expenses |
| 4 | TC_EXP_004 | 04 | Submit Expense Report with Invalid Receipt Format | Employee attaches an invalid receipt format | ERP Expenses |
| 5 | TC_EXP_005 | 05 | Submit Expense Report with Multiple Currencies | Employee submits expenses in multiple currencies | ERP Expenses |
| 6 | TC_EXP_006 | 06 | Submit Expense Report with Maximum Number of Lines | Employee submits an expense report with the maximum allowed lines | ERP Expenses |
| 7 | TC_EXP_007 | 07 | Submit Duplicate Expense Report | Employee submits a duplicate expense report | ERP Expenses |
further still, CSN actually provides the functional test scripts for us:
Test Case ID: TC_EXP_001
Test Case Title: Submit Valid Expense Report
Fusion Process Step: Employee Expense Submission
Role: Employee
Test Steps:
- Log in as Employee
- Navigate to Expenses > Create Expense Report
- Enter all required fields (date, amount, expense type, description)
- Attach valid receipt (PDF/JPG)
- Submit the expense report
Expected Results:
Expense report is submitted successfully and appears in the employee’s submitted reports list.
Summary
As with all Artificial Intelligence tools, CSN is only as good as the training it has received. However, CSN is trained on the user manuals of the Oracle cloud system and provides a comprehensive insight into how each area of the system is documented and tested.
