TCA (Trading Community

Architecture) in R12 and Beyond

Presenter: Malik Aziz
Presenter Introduction

• Malik Aziz, Rockland System Solutions

– 15 Years of experience in Financials and Supply Chain
– 12+ Years of experience in implementation of Oracle eBusiness Suite
and Oracle Certified Professional (OCP)
– Numerous Oracle ERP Implementation projects varying in size
– Currently with BCGOV as Solution Architect / Oracle Apps Specialist
Presenter Introduction

• Rockland System Solutions

– Specializes in ERP and application integration.
– Core competencies include:
• Management consulting and business advisory services
• Project management services
• Architecture services
• ERP implementation services
• Data warehouse solutions
• System integration services
• Business analysis and design services
Agenda

• Trading Community Architecture (TCA)

– What is TCA and its background
– TCA data model and its components
– TCA in R12 and beyond
– Why TCA matters
– Q&A
What is TCA and its Background

• A Trading Community is…

– The participants in a community and their relationship to one another

Competitor of Partner of
Competitor Partner

Customer /
Organization

Employee of Supplier of
Employee Supplier
What is TCA and its Background

• TCA = Trading Community Architecture

• Provides a single, universal definition of trading partners
across applications and job function
• TCA is an Data Model – it is not a Module
Oracle E-Business Suite Application Families*

3rd Party
Systems
Sales Service Marketing Financials HR

TCA Enabling Infrastructure

Common Party UI, DQM, D&B Integration, APIs

TCA Data Model

HZ Schema
What is TCA and its Background

A Trading Community Architecture…

• is a way to understand who our trading partners interact
with inside and outside the enterprise.
• puts a foundation in place for a trading partner model
– Linking Suppliers and Customers
– Online Marketplace
– Shared Service Centers
What is TCA and its Background

How did TCA come about?

• First introduced in 11i
– Introduction of Oracle CRM application
– Requirement for a common customer model for all Oracle Applications
• Model evolved from working with ERP and CRM teams to
create a view of the customer base which supports all flows
throughout the E-Business Suite
• To support both B2B and B2C business models.
• Re-architected to enable future support for entire trading
Community
What is TCA and its Background

Guiding Principles of TCA

• Create a central repository for the entire E-Business Suite to
store information relating to all members of a trading
community versus separate tables for each member
– Prospects, Customers, Contacts, Employees, Partners, Distributors,
Suppliers, Banks, etc.
• Record complex business relationships between Trading
Community entities (including 3rd party relationships)
• Support all business models, industries, and geographies
TCA Data Model

AR Organizations AP/PO
Old Model (Customer) (Organization) (Supplier)

John, XYZ Inc ABC Co. John, XYZ Inc

Customer of
Party: Party:
TCA Model
ABC Co. Supplier of * John, XYZ Inc.

* Not currently implemented. Planned for R12:

Supplier tables move to TCA Model
TCA Data Model

Old Model for

Customers TCA Model
TCA Data Model: Implications

• As we move towards the new TCA for all the tables, if you
have someone who is a customer and a supplier, you’re going
to have to rationalize their definition. This means that you will
now have one definition for that participant.
• Now you know that this customer owes you $X, while as a
supplier, you are trying to pay them $Y
• If you’ve done any custom reporting or programming you may
need to re-work as underlying data model has changed
TCA Data Model: Major components

• Party: defined as people, organizations, groups

or relationships. Represents the participants in the Trading
Community.
• Account: defined as a financial roll-up point.
• Contact point: defined as any electronic point that
you could use as a contact. For example, telephones,
URLs, email addresses, etc.
• Location: a physical place.
• Relationship: establishes the relationship between
any two parties.
TCA Data Model: Party Concept

• A party is an entity/participant that can enter into a business

relationship
– Person: A unique individual (dead or alive) of interest to the user.
– Organization: A legal entity recognized by some government authority.
– Group: A combination of two or more people, organizations or groups.
– Relationship: User-definable link between two parties, regardless
of type.
• A Party can belong to an unlimited number of relationships.
• No duplication of entities
TCA Data Model: Account Concept

• The financial roll-up point to track a customer’s purchases

and payments.
• Stores details about a customer relationship between
a Party and your business.
• A Party may have one or more Customer Accounts.
• Because a party and accounts are separate entities,
no need to duplicate parties
– Customer Account Sites: A Party Site that is used within the context
of a Customer Account (e.g., for billing or shipping purposes).
– Customer Account Contacts: A Party Contact that is used
in the context of a Customer Account.
TCA Data Model: Contact Point
Concept
• Contact Point - An identifier for a method of contact
(e.g., telephone, email, URL, fax, cell phone etc.)
This can be applied to:
– A Party (person, organization, group or relationship)
– A Site or Location
– A Party at a Site or Location
– An entity may have one or more Contact Points.
TCA Data Model: Location Concept

• Location - A physical place, usually with an address.

– Any number of location types. (e.g., bill-to, ship-to, mail-to).
– No duplication of address
– Maintain Customer History per address
– Maintain Important Install Base info
• Party Site
– Links a Party with a Location and describes the usage of that Location
(e.g., mailing address, billing address, home address, etc.).
– Parties may be associated to one or more Locations and any one
location may have one or more uses.
TCA Data Model: Relationship
Concept
• Relationship – Associates any two parties.
– John is a customer of ABC Co.
– John is a supplier to ABC Co.
– TD Bank is a Competitor of Royal Bank
– TD Brokerage is a Division of TD Bank
• Has a Role – Specifies the nature of the relationship
between parties (e.g., bill to, pay to, member of, contact at,
married to, Division of, Employee of).
– Indicates the nature of the relationship
– Tracks relationship history
TCA Data Model: Visualization
PARTY Bill to
SITE Ship to

Division Of

PARTY
PARTY

SITE
SITE

Bill to Bill to

Ship to Ship to

Account Account Account

Acct
Site

Acct

Acct
Site

Site

Bill to, Ship to Bill to, Ship to Bill to, Ship to

TCA Data Model: Parties vs.
Accounts
• From an application perspective, one of the most important
things to understand about the TCA model is that the concept
of “customer” is separated into two layers: The Party layer
and the Account layer.
• When CRM applications refer to “Customer” they are
referring to the Party Layer.
• On the other hand, when ERP applications refer to
“Customer” they are referring to the Account Layer.
• Thus, confusion arises because both are using the word
“Customer” to refer to two different things.
Other Features of TCA

• Public API’s for data manipulation of TCA tables

• Common Party User Interface Components
• Hierarchy Model
• Bulk Import of customer data and D&B Integration
• DQM for duplicate prevention
• Party and Account Merge
TCA Integration
TCA in R12

• New trading entities

– Banks & Bank Branches
– Suppliers
– Legal Entity
TCA in R12: Leveraging centralized
data model

Global Tax Payments

Payables Cash
Purchasing Governments, Party Management
“Geographies”, Information
Suppliers Banks and
Authorities, etc Branches

Trading
Community
Architecture

Oracle Fusion Middleware

ERP CRM 3rd Party

TCA in R12: Bank Account Model

Trading Community
Cash Management
Architecture (TCA)

Bank Payables

Receivables
Bank Branch Bank Account

Payroll

Treasury
TCA in R12

New Bank Account Model

• Central place to define internal bank accounts
– Keep track of all bank accounts in one place
– Explicitly grant account access to multiple operating units/functions
and users
• Multi-Org Access
– In the new model, bank accounts are owned by Legal Entities with the
option to grant account use to Operating Unit (Payables, Receivables),
Legal Entity (Treasury), Business Group (Payroll)
TCA in R12: Bank Account Model
Pay invoices from different OUs with 1 instruction

• New Payments Module

OU A
• New Bank Module
• New Bank & Credit Card Features

OU B

Payments
OU C Single Payment Bank
Instruction

Sub Ledger
Accounting
Invoices
TCA in R12: Bank Account
Model Benefits
• Reduce number of access points to manage bank accounts
– Centralized user interface
• Improve visibility and control of bank accounts
– Multi-org access control
• Simplify bank reconciliation
– Single bank statement can be reconciled across multiple
Operating Units
• Increase percentage of automatically reconciled transactions
– Bank account level reconciliation parameters add flexibility
TCA in R12: Supplier Representation

• Supplier organizations are in TCA

• Terms of doing business with the supplier are
in Purchasing / Payables
• Supplier organization, address, contact, phone, email
etc. are all in TCA
• Employees are already in TCA, Payables using the same
employee records in TCA
• New supplier maintenance UI using TCA UI components
TCA in R12: Benefits of Supplier
Representation
• Single repository for suppliers data
• AR/AP netting
• Oracle Payments serves as a payment data repository on top
of the Trading Community Architecture (TCA) data model. The
TCA model holds the party information. Oracle Payments then
stores all of the party’s payment information and its payment
instruments (including credit cards, debit cards, customer
bank accounts, and supplier bank accounts).
TCA in R12: Supplier Data Mapping
TCA in R12: Legal Entities

• Legal entity is created as a party of party type ORGANIZATION or

PERSON
• An establishment is created as a party of party type
ORGANIZATION.
• TCA creates a new classification category called “Business
Function”. It is used mainly to model what business functions a
party can perform in E-Business Suite
• For modeling legal entities and establishments in TCA, classification
code “Legal Entity” and “Establishment” are created under the
“Business Function” class category.
• An establishment is created as a party and always link to a party
that is classified as a legal entity through the relationship model
TCA in R12: Integration with HRMS

• TCA creates the global view of person

• TCA enables you to store person Information at a corporate
level
• Person is stored as party in TCA
• Comprehensive duplicate person check when entering a new
person – Across the business group
• Propagate some information entered in one business group to
the record in the other business group
• PER_ALL_PEOPLE_F.PARTY_ID is a foreign key to the
HZ_PARTIES table, an integral part of Oracle's "Trading
Community Architecture" (TCA).
Why TCA Matters: What you get

• Architecture to model your customers and other trading

partners as you see best for your business
• Architecture that will grow with your requirements
• Features to maintain extremely reliable customer information
(e.g. ABC Co. is now sure that their supplier John of XYZ Inc is
the same person as their customer, John of XYZ Inc)
• Glue that ties several E-Business Suite flows in a seamless way
• Customer Data Integration solution even if you are not
running a single E-Business Suite module
• Platform that can play a key role in your IT landscape for
Master Data Management
Why TCA Matters: What you have to do

• Take a close look at how you do business and how your

business processes are most efficiently performed
• Ask questions about how you should model customer
information e.g. which entities should be modeled as parties;
when should you create an account; should you create
multiple accounts for some parties; should you create
multiple billing sites for an account; should you create
account relationships
• Even if you are implementing few modules of E-Business Suite
to start with, keep in mind the bigger picture about customer
information
Q&A

• Questions?

• Contact :
• malik@rocklandsolutions.com
• Ali@rocklandsolutions.com