Oracle completes acquisition of Primavera!! Good or Bad

Charlie,



I’m not sure where you’re coming from here. I don’t think you are correct in your assertion that planning and scheduling activities will boil down into financial or accounting report. I also think that you’re wrong when you say it is also degrading for planning and scheduling job to be in a lower level as accounting or financial job.



What I think may be set to happen is that financial aspects become more tightly integrated with what we see as normal planning and scheduling. Far from downgrading a planners job, I can see the requirement for additional skills attracting additional status and additional money.



I also don’t understand why you see accountants as, apparently, lower down the food chain. My brother-in-law is an accountant, and while I’m doing very nicely, that guy writes his own cheques and is turning work away.



Accounting, financial work like everything else is what you make it, and if somebody wants to make it part of the work done by planning engineers, why not?



Chris Oggham

Gord,



I agree with your comments, but i find your empirical reference prejudice :). In addition, I believe that many companies do not yet have the maturity to realise the benefits of having an aligned project finance/corporate finance strategy, underpinned by well integrated software packages.



I believe the oracle aquasition will help the alignment if the P6 / Oracle, but the problem is most companies cannot afford oracle and are stuck with microsoft/SAP.



I think there is a danger of EPM tools failing as a whole if the integration is not made simpler and more importantly cheaper.

Financial reporting.



The incorporation of the accounting data to allow proper fiscal analysis of the Project. For example, our major Client combines (with great difficulty) the outputs from Primavera with those from SAP, to produce their high level business reports.

Gordon,

maybe I don’t understand you but planning means not only scheduling but also budgeting, isn’t it? Planning tools should include cost planning, monitoring and control. And of course I don’t mean accounting data that are always too late to be considered for management decisions.

What kind of cost tools do you mean?

I’ve noticed that with a lot of the Clients within my sector that the Project Management and Controls functions have started to become subsumed within the empires of Finance.



(Charlie, I’m only using the word empire in a figurative sense - please don’t go off on one)



Perhaps the one good thing that will come out of this Primavera / ORACLE arrangement, and the insidious growth of the remit of the Finance Directorates is a slightly better interface between the Planning and cost tools, which at the moment, with our end client, is a ball-ache.

My expectation is that Oracle will develop the current Primavera packages with the result that the functions of planning & scheduling (network analysis) will become increasingly a kind of shrivelled limb on the body of the great accounting body; after all, aren’t the people who have led the world into its current crisis with their ’creative’ accounting the real drivers of projects and so-called project management systems nowadays? Although this sounds pessimistic I have once heard a pessimist defined as a more-informed optimist!!



cheers,



Omar

Mike,



Agreed.



Chris Oggham

Hi All



To me the matter is of supreme indiference - Oracle have just bought a load rubbish - someone should have warned them.



Best regards



Mike Testro

Hi

Charly started this thread with a question: "Oracle completes acquisition of Primavera!! Good or Bad." Still I believe that this was good.

Charly, do you really believe that only a brick layer, a carpenter, a steel worker, or a civil engineer is able to create a plan or a schedule? What’s about Engineering, Purchasing (surprises by long lead items which are often others than expected at first), test strategies for (pre-)commissioning, due dates, cash flow, preparation of approvals, ...? Construction is very important but not all.

I totally agree with you: an accountant never will be able to plan because he is focussed on events which did happen and never will be able to look ahead. If I would have to do accounting, the company would be bankrupt very soon (assume, same if you would have to do it). But I must be aware of accounting issues.

Oracle knew that they are not able to create software for project management, that’s why they purchased Primavera. Still I’m quite optimistic.

Just my opinion.

Have a nice Sunday to all!

Dieter

there you are, we will never have a common ground, so as accountants, engineers, clerks, jockeys or whatever, "so leave ceasar what’s for ceasar", anyway there’s supposed to be a project manager to manage.

May I rephrase "so I think we will never have a common ground on this subject."



Cheers!

Guys,



We totally have different mindsets. Please respect one’s opinion. I am entitled to mine. We are looking at the mirror in different angles, so I don’t think we will never have a common ground on this subject.



I have nothing further.



In Friendship,

Ferdinand

Like I said "for as long as they have the ability to execute its concept. Planning is not an exclusive vocation".



Regarding the failure/suffering of projects, I think it’s the lookout of the Project Managers. Planners simply supports their objectives. As a protocol, we cannot step on their shoes and take the responsibility.



Cheers!

Ferdinand,



You may think twice if Engineers become Doctors or vice versa. I always believed that Planning is not an easy job (as you may think it is). Maybe you’re really good in what you’re doing and you find it easy, but not everybody got the same mentality.



So please, just leave Planning jobs to Planners, so that Projects will not suffer!



Or is it an advantage to Planners? so that there will always be jobs to fix?



cheers!

I don’t think so. The enterprise idea is actually one of the great feature of P5 and P6. Is it bad?



For me, I don’t really care if the accountants and administrative assistant will become planners and schedulers because everybody can be planners and schedulers for as long the have the ability to execute its concept. Planning is not an exclusive vocation.



Your phropecy will then soon come true with this Oracle stuff, and I am anticipating better enhancement and much more user-friendly Primavera program.

On the lighter side, once you acquire something, for sure it would always be for good or for the better. Maybe it would be bad cost-wise as it would entail higher software cost, but for sure there would be further enhancement on the program.



Just sharing.

Charly

First, it wasn’t a hedge fonds. In my opinion this was the best for further development.

Second integration to erp-software - e.g. accounting, master data, material management, ... - will improve.

Recently Oracle gave an example when they purchased Hyperion (controlling software) which was a big step ahead for this software for user interface, functions, and integration to other software - not only to Oracle but to SAP as well.

I’m quite optimistic.

Regards

Dieter