Management Intelligence for Legacy ERP
Old systems don’t fail loudly. They fail late.
For manufacturers and distributors across MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa running Oracle E-Business Suite 11i, 12.0 or 12.1. Your system records every transaction correctly and still can’t tell you what last month cost you. We don’t replace it. We make it answer.
No downtime, no new licences, no year-long project.
Others sell the upgrade. We say you don’t have to.
The cost isn’t just the long manual effort by a department. It’s the gap between the event and the decision.
The system records every transaction correctly. Getting a management view out of it takes days of exports, Excel and corrections, and by the time the view is ready, it describes a business that has already moved.
Days to weeks
Between an event in the business and management seeing it.
By hand
Exports, reconciliations and fixes before every management pack.
Already moved
Prices, exchange rates, sales mix and stock, by the time the numbers arrive.
The month, as it runs now
Period close. Someone exports from the system. Someone else rebuilds the pack in Excel, because the pack the system produces doesn’t match the one the board reads. A number looks wrong, so it’s traced back by hand. The file goes round for corrections. By the board date the pack is right, and it is describing a month that ended five weeks ago. Every decision taken in between was taken without it.
Oracle has moved on. Your system hasn’t.
Every Oracle E-Business Suite release before 12.2 now sits in Sustaining Support: no new patches, no new fixes. Businesses still running those releases are offered one answer, a costly upgrade, or a replacement, and most consultants have moved on with Oracle.
It’s worth knowing who gets paid for what.
Oracle and its large partners
Paid for
Upgrades and cloud migrations. They do them well.
Where that leaves you
Nothing is sold to you until you're ready to move.
Oracle support firms
Paid for
Keeping the system running, which they do.
Where that leaves you
The system stays up. The reporting stays manual.
Dashboard consultants
Paid for
The dashboard layer.
Where that leaves you
It draws whatever it's handed, and it's handed data prepared by hand.
AI software vendors
Paid for
New software.
Where that leaves you
The pitch starts with replacing what you have.
Everyone in this market is paid for the migration. We’re paid for the years before it.
We don’t replace the system. We make it answer.
Your system already holds everything. What it lacks is a map of where each number lives, how it’s calculated, and which of those calculations finance has quietly been correcting by hand for years. We build that map once, against your actual chart of accounts and your actual reporting, and check it line by line against the pack finance already produces. After that, every new report is built on a map that exists. That is why this takes weeks rather than a year, and why the second request costs a fraction of the first.
Phase one: get the numbers right.
Diagnostic
The health of your data, before any commitment.
Mapping
Your management pack rebuilt from the system and checked against finance's own.
Automation
P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, sales and inventory, produced without the manual work.
Phase two: put them to work.
Reporting
Margin, cost, volume and cash in front of you before the decision, not after it.
Analysis
Distributors, receivables, people cost and procurement.
Planning
Forecasting, scenarios, and questions asked of your own numbers, inside your own system, with nothing replaced.
We found the Diagnostic by doing the work.
A franchise beverage bottler in North Africa, running Oracle EBS 11i: three companies, two reporting currencies, one of the oldest Oracle versions still in production anywhere. We built the full management pack out of the system and then checked it against finance’s own workbook, tab by tab, until every figure agreed.
Agreeing took longer than building. Transactions had been posted after year end. Periods had been left open. Journals had been entered twice. None of it was visible in the pack. It only surfaced because two versions of the same number were sitting side by side and refusing to match.
That reconciliation became the Data Health Diagnostic. We now run it first, on purpose, for everyone.
3
Companies, consolidated
2
Currencies, in every report
11i
Still in production
First, we show you what’s wrong. You keep the findings either way.
The Data Health Diagnostic: a fixed fee, agreed before we start. Small enough to approve without a board process, and proof that we know your system before you commit to anything more.
What we find
- Transactions posted late or after year end
- Periods left open and duplicate journals
- Board packs that no longer match the books
- Entries that depend on one person
What you keep
- A clear list of data problems and their business impact
- A plain-English register of how your system calculates revenue, cost and margin
- A scoped proposal for the build, shaped around your business
The register is yours whether or not you go further with us. Most of what it documents has never been written down anywhere in the business.
Operators, not observers.
We have sat on the other side of this pack. Before SOCG built reporting for manufacturers and distributors, it built and ran them: plants commissioned, networks rebuilt, investments structured across MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa. We know how the numbers are made because we have run the businesses that make them, and we know which of them a board actually acts on.
Management Intelligence for Legacy ERP is a service line of Salim Omar Consulting Group: 20+ years, 200+ projects, $50M+ in capital deployed across manufacturing and distribution in these markets.
Keep your system. Stop waiting for your numbers.
Start with the Diagnostic. You keep the register of how your system calculates revenue, cost and margin whether or not we build anything after it.