1. TCA (Trading Community Architecture) in R12 and Beyond
Presenter: Malik Aziz

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. What is TCA and its Background
A Trading Community is…
The participants in a community and their relationship to one another
Competitor
Employee
Partner
Customer / Organization
Supplier
Competitor of
Partner of
Employee of
Supplier of

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. TCA Data Model AR (Customer) Organizations (Organization) AP/PO
(Supplier)
Old Model
John, XYZ Inc
ABC Co.
John, XYZ Inc
Party: ABC Co.
Party: John, XYZ Inc.
Customer of
TCA Model
Supplier of *
* Not currently implemented. Planned for R12: Supplier tables move to TCA Model

11. Old Model for Customers
TCA Data Model
Old Model for Customers
TCA Model

12. 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

13. 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, addresses, etc.
Location: a physical place.
Relationship: establishes the relationship between any two parties.

14. 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

15. 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.

16. TCA Data Model: Contact Point Concept
Contact Point - An identifier for a method of contact (e.g., telephone, , 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.

17. 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.

18. 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

19. TCA Data Model: Visualization
PARTY
SITE
Bill to
Ship to
Division Of
PARTY
SITE
PARTY
SITE
Bill to
Ship to
Bill to
Ship to
Account
Account
Account
And we can create Account Relationships between each account so that one party can be billed and ship to another party…or so that one of the division parties can place an order and take advantage of the pricing agreement established at the parent party level.
Acct
Site
Acct
Site
Acct
Site
Bill to, Ship to
Bill to, Ship to
Bill to, Ship to

20. 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.

21. 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

22. TCA Integration

23. TCA in R12 New trading entities Banks & Bank Branches Suppliers
Legal Entity

24. TCA in R12: Leveraging centralized data model
Payments -%
Global Tax
Payables
Purchasing
Cash Management
Governments,
“Geographies”, Authorities, etc
Party Information
Banks and Branches
Suppliers
Trading Community Architecture
Oracle Fusion Middleware
ERP
CRM
3rd Party

25. TCA in R12: Bank Account Model
Trading Community Architecture (TCA)
Cash Management
Payables
Bank
Receivables
Bank Branch
Bank Account
Payroll
Treasury

26. 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)

27. TCA in R12: Bank Account Model
Pay invoices from different OUs with 1 instruction
OU A
OU B
OU C
Bank
Single Payment Instruction
Invoices
Payments
Sub Ledger Accounting
New Payments Module
New Bank Module
New Bank & Credit Card Features

28. 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

29. 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, 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

30. 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).

31. TCA in R12: Supplier Data Mapping

32. 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

33. 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).

34. 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

35. 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

36. Q & A Questions? Contact : malik@rocklandsolutions.com