One of key features in OTM (Oracle Transportation Management) is its rates engine. You can setup OTM rates engine into different model. These are the key tips you can use to build your rating model.

TL and LTL Base

The 2 most common rate types are TL (Truck Load) and (Less than Truck Load). You need to have the majority of masterdata to complete these 2 rates model from end to end. The basic masterdata required are:

• Service Provider
• Equipment for TL
• LTL rating by weight or volume

Testing and Building

With this 2 rate models, you can cover up to 70% of rates out there. The next steps are to setup the processes for these 2 rates model. These processes are grouped by:

• Update of masterdata
• Loading of rates
• Testing of rates
• Expiry and updates of rates

If you are new to OTM, do focus on these basic rate model and know the rate processes well yourself. This will helps your build your confidence before you add more rates model. The processes are the most difficult for users understand and self service in OTM. Follow these steps and you will be rewarded!

OTM (Oracle Transportation Management) Shipment Management module have a shipment planning feature which allows you to optimise your load. However, there is a catch that is not known to users. The optimisation is as good as your masterdata. These are some quick tips to have a basic optimisation in shipment planning.

Basic Optimisation

For basic optimisation, you will need the following conditions to get it up and running.

• Assume a constant settings
• Obtain a base masterdata

Basic optimisation rule will require some constant settings. The common constant setting to use is time. You will need to assume your shipment planning without time constraint or configuration. With this assumption, you can focus on a base masterdata set. This set of masterdata will consist of :

• Rates
• Itinerary
• Equipment
• Transport Modes

Advanced Optimisation

The basic optimisation provides the minimum start point for all shipment planning. Advanced optimisation will restore the time duration as a factor for your optimisation. The additional masterdata will include :

• Distance
• Transit Time
• Package count
• Routes Information

You can provide shipment planning in OTM into two key flavors

• Basic optimisation
• Advanced optimisation

The options will determine the amount of masterdata required. Subsequently, this translates to your project scope, time and efforts. If you are new to OTM shipment planning, do go for basic optimisation configuration. This will help you familiarise with the base masterdata. Only then, you can tackle the advanced one.

Dates format are a nightmare for application if you are handling a global system. Most application provide a certain level of configuration for user preference. OTM (Oracle Transportation Management) is one such application that allows you to configure date format for users. However, this can be quite painful because the date format can vary in each module. These are the OTM portions where you should take note.

OTM Date Configuration

You can configure date format with user preference. The user preference can also be superseded by the preference in contact module. Some of the OTM fields are in date type. There is also attribute date fields as placeholder. Report parameters date format can be overwritten by date format in report library.

Dates to Take Note

You will find many painful points when you are using character field for dates. This can be in the form of refnum or integration xml. Many of the reports required dates filter. You may want to consider the usage of date field for these filter instead of character data type. You will find a lot of conversion format between to_char and to_date in your report query.

Whether you are upgrading or migrating, the impact on date format is very huge. OTM is one such application with flexibility on date format usage. This caused a challenging task for technical team who will be maintaining a global system. Should you standardise your date format instead?

If you are familiar with OTM (Oracle Transportation Management), you will be overwhelm with the features. Thus, you may want quick way to jumpstart your solution configuration? There are some quick tips that comes with standard OTM solutions.

Basic Start

OTM comes with many default settings that you can quickly use for your setup and testing. Below are 3 basic modules that are used.

1. Masterdata, the basic setup is itinerary, service provider, dummy rates and locations.
2. Order Management, create your first orders with the locations.
3. Shipment Management, you can easily plan your order into shipment with default settings.

Troubleshooting

The default vanilla OTM is the easiest to setup. There is only a few areas that can go wrong. The most common mistakes usually occurs in shipment planning.

• Itinerary settings does not match the masterdata setup.
• Rates setup does not match order transport and mode profile.
• Bulk plan time emphasis is a constraint for your order pickup and delivery dates. You can set it to NONE constraint instead.

Configurations can be easily setup for vanilla OTM with the above basic settings. This is very useful for migration or upgrade purposes to test that OTM are setup properly.

Templates design is a common solution in many Cloud applications. After all, why do you need to reinvent the wheel? This approach is also commonly used in OTM (Oracle Transportation Management). While there are advantages to the template, this approach also have certain drawbacks.

Template Quick Guides

The type of templates will determine how duration of your customer onboarding. You can follow these quick guides in your templates approach.

• Keep your templates to less than 8.
• Look to data auto assignment rules.
• Collect enough masterdata but not too much of it.
• Prefill templates data as much as possible.
• Use API to automate data collection in templates.
• Provide auto validation checks.

Things to Avoid

Templates have some drawbacks which we need to take note and mitigate.

• Do not over invest in your templates. It is a means to an end.
• Templates cover common scenarios. Remember to provide options to templates design.
• If there are a constant increase of your templates, look to refactoring and harmonise your templates.

Using templates in OTM greatly speed up your customer onboarding time. However, templates are just a tool and should not complicate your OTM configuration.

The slowness of OTM screen loading is a known issue. This is worst in Asia with some offices having lower internet speed and network. As a result, OTM is not suitable for deployment for such areas. Have you ever wonder how to solve it? A common approach is to increase the server CPU or network bandwidth. You may even try to upgrade the user laptop or proposed faster browser.

Root Cause

The root cause is due to the SQL used to generate the screen. You can turn on your logs and include the SQL option for the log file. Get the SQL used in the slow screen and run explain plan for it. From the results, you will notice the root cause is caused by the usage of sub tables like status and refnum.

Simple Ways to Fix

Before you go and upgrade your server and network, you can try the following simple ways to improve the screen loading.

1. Reduce usage of status and refnums in screenset.
2. Use VPD. This will constraint the query data.
3. Add domain name in Screenset criterion.

If you have any other good ideas to speed up the screen loading, drop me a DM.