OTM stands for Oracle Transportation Management and it is a software product designed to automate various logistics business processes like receiving orders from source ERP systems for freight consolidation, optimizing routes and shipping costs, sending tender requests to service providers(carriers), receiving shipment tracking revents from carriers, recieving and processing invoices from carriers, allocate freight costs to orders, and similar other functions which we will further discuss in future posts.

This product is designed such a way that it can be easily configured and customized by IT Consultants for various client specific business needs with minimal technical expertise. IT Technical consultants would need basic Oracle SQL and XML knowledge for customizing the product and Functional consultants would need basic logistics domain knowledge to configure(setup) the product based on the documentation and use cases provided by Oracle. Latest OTM SaaS versions make it easier for clients to just focus on core business configurations to fast track product implementation timelines while Oracle provides necessary infrastructure and application maintainance for all the standard (out of the box) OTM features.

OTM application has a typical three tier architecture. It has web tier, app tier and oracle database as third tier. These three components can be installed on separate servers (Linux/Windows) or they may be installed on the same server. Usually for lower environment like DEV or TEST they are installed on same server.

At a high level, this OTM product can be installed with below software:

1. Install Oracle Enterprise Linux - Operating System on the base servers. Note that OTM can be installed either on Linux server or Windows Server.

There are several ways of bringing in data into OTM system. Below are some of the methods:

• via XML that follows Glog XML schema posted from a middleware applications like Oracle SOA, webMethods, Mulesoft, etc
• Manaul XML uploads by OTM users
• CSV Uploads
• DB.XML Uploads
• REST-API Calls
• HTTP Post Requests from programming languages like PLSQL, etc

XML Inbound Integrations:

Most common way of receiving OTM Inbound data is via XML files from middleware applications. OTM can read XML files which are in the format specified by GlogXML Schema(OTM Standard XML Schema). You can download this schema from :

OTM system can generate outbound XML data for any business object like ‘Order Release’, ‘Shipment’ etc either manually(using Send Interface Transmission action) or programmatically using same action from OTM Agent(workflow). We will discuss about OTM Agents in further posts.

For generating outbound XMLs from OTM you may follow below steps:

1. Define an Out XML profile.

Business Process Automation > Power Data > Integration > Out XML Profiles.

Standard OTM XML for any object might have lot of data that might not be necessary or relevant to send it to the external systems. Also the file size for a complete XML would be in MB( for example Shipment XML might be 2 MB). In order to avoid generation of huge files and to control what data we generate in outbound XML we need to define an Out XML profile.

Purchase Order

PO record will have the basic details like source location, destination location, INCO terms, Item number, Qty etc. Note that PO might not have exact weight/volume details that might be required for planning orders. Usually POs are created in the ERP systems well ahead of time and sent to OTM.

PO tables:

OB_ORDER_BASE - PO Header
OB_REFNUM - PO Header Reference number details
OB_REMARK - PO Header remarks
OB_ORDER_BASE_STATUS - PO Header status values
OB_INVOLVED_PARTY - PO involved party details
OB_LINE - PO Line
OB_LINE_REFNUM - PO Line reference numbers
OB_LINE_REMARK - PO Line level remarks
OB_LINE_STATUS - PO Line level status values

Note: These posts are numbered to cover a typical end to end transaction flow that happens in OTM at a very high level.

01 - Domain, Items, Locations, and Equipment

02 - Itinerary

03 - Service Provider and Rates

04 - Business Numbers, Planning Parameter

05 - Bulk Plan

06 - Tender process

07 - Invoicing

08 - Voucher Allocation

Below is a typical OTM end to end flow in it’s most simple/vanilla usage. Readers can explore more on each of the below topics and use this as starting point to understand basic OTM configurations using OTM Help documentation.

Note: This post is continuation to topic: 01 and these configurations are specific to business scenario mentioned in that post. Link below to that post for quick reference:

01 - Domain, Items, Locations, and Equipment

Business Numbers:

OTM has default numbering for all business data objects like the one shown below for shipment - 01001.

To change this to a specific number requested by business, we can do below:

Note: This post is continuation to topic: 01 and these configurations are specific to business scenario mentioned in that post. Link below to that post for quick reference:

01 - Domain, Items, Locations, and Equipment

Bulk Plan:

Create a new purchase order/order base record:

Order Management > Purchase Order > Order Base > New >Enter below data:

Order Base ID= PO2018051001

Order Configuration=ONE_TO_ONE

Item ID= ITEMA01

Source Location ID= DC_TCRP

Note: This post is continuation to topic: 01 and these configurations are specific to business scenario mentioned in that post. Link below to that post for quick reference:

01 - Domain, Items, Locations, and Equipment

Tender Process

When shipments are created, note that status on these shipments is SECURE RESOURCES_NOT STARTED.

At this point, we need to notify carrier about the shipment information like pickup time and location. This can be done using:

Note: This post is continuation to topic: 01 and these configurations are specific to business scenario mentioned in that post. Link below to that post for quick reference:

01 - Domain, Items, Locations, and Equipment

Invoicing

Once Shipment execution is completed, carrier sends invoice and OTM can:

• Match invoice to shipment based on MATCH rule

• Approve Invoice based on Invoice APPROVAL rule

• Allocate shipment costs to related order releases/POs based on weight or volume