Oracle has announced the availability of its PeopleSoft Enterprise Supply Chain Management 9.0 and PeopleSoft Enterprise Supplier Relationship Management 9.0. The latest release could enable customers to improve business processes, better manage supplier relationships and simplify compliance with government and industry regulations.

"After participating in the beta program, we are eager to use the new capabilities in PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0, especially XML Publisher," said Kentucky Community and Technical College System Lead Systems Analyst Patrick Wells. "This release has the potential to deliver improved usability, increased productivity and streamline business processes which is always of great interest to our organization."

PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0 provides enhancements that increase the agility and add efficiency to the procurement of both goods and services. New features  facilitate the day-to-day management of partner relationships and expand business process flexibility.

For example, new capabilities in PeopleSoft Enterprise eProcurement 9.0, such as amount-only requisitions and off-catalog requests, simplify the procure-to-pay process for both procurement organizations and their suppliers. New features in PeopleSoft Enterprise Services Procurement 9.0 extend efficiencies beyond the enterprise by providing functionality directly to service coordinators in supplier organizations, reducing administrative overhead and simplifying payment. For direct materials categories, this latest release provides new mappings for key supply chain transactions needed to simplify document exchange formats for manufacturers and distributors.

With this latest release, organizations can improve supplier relationships through objective and timely measurement of supplier performance. PeopleSoft Enterprise Supply Chain Management 9.0 and PeopleSoft Enterprise Supplier Relationship Management 9.0 provide a rich set of key performance indicators in the Supplier Relationship Management dashboard. The embedded role-based metrics align information with job function to provide the right information, to the right supply manager, at the right time.

For example, PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0 includes monthly business unit- level summaries of requisitions, purchase orders and receipts, which make it easier to manage approvals and track spending. In addition, PeopleSoft Enterprise Supply Chain Management 9.0 delivers new features to help proactively manage supplier Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Enhanced SLA monitoring capabilities and automated SLA violation notifications help to ensure service levels remain within acceptable levels, maximizing operational efficiency and improve margins.

Organizations face increasing pressure to comply with complex industry and government regulations from Sarbanes-Oxley, to Federal Acquisition Requirements (FAR), to new Federal regulations from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). PeopleSoft Enterprise Supply Chain Management 9.0 and PeopleSoft Enterprise Supplier Relationship Management 9.0 provide a portfolio of tools to help organizations comply through tighter controls and documentation of partner and supplier relationships.

PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0 enables organizations to automatically screen customer, vendor and partner data against the OFAC Specially Designated Nationals list to ensure business is conducted only with compliant parties. In addition, PeopleSoft Enterprise Order Management 9.0 includes a new holds management workbench that facilitates Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and mitigates risk with enhanced credit management capabilities that govern and document who can access, edit and release credit holds.

To help customers maximize existing software investments, PeopleSoft Enterprise Supply Chain Management 9.0 and PeopleSoft Enterprise Supplier Relationship Management 9.0 have been integrated with Oracle Fusion Middleware including Oracle Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) Process Manager and Oracle XML Publisher. These integrations give customers a comprehensive, standards-based platform to address the challenges of disparate technologies and applications.