A credit data point is a single piece of credit information, such as the number of late payments or DSO days (days sales outstanding), which Oracle Credit Management uses during credit analysis.

Credit Management pulls various credit data points from a multitude of sources to assess the creditworthiness of your customers and prospects. Sources include:

• Seeded data points

  Credit Management provides almost 200 data points that you can include in credit reviews. These data points are pulled from other applications in the E-Business Suite, such as Oracle Receivables and Oracle Order Management. See the Oracle Credit Management Data Points appendix in the Oracle Credit Management User Guide.

• Dun & Bradstreet data points

  You can purchase credit information from Dun & Bradstreet and include D&B data points in credit reviews. See: Maintaining Customer Data and Adding Dun & Bradstreet Data Points to a Checklist.

• User-defined data points

  • Internal

    You can define additional data points and associate a PL/SQL package and function to derive a value for that data point.

  • External

    You can include data points from other sources from outside the E-Business Suite, such as credit bureaus that are not currently integrated with Credit Management.

    Attention: During a credit review, Credit Management will not automatically populate values for external data points upon case folder creation. Because these data points are missing when the case folder is created, the Credit Management workflow will fail and a credit analyst must manually enter the missing data point values.

  See: Defining Additional Data Points.

Defining Additional Data Points

When setting up your credit review tools (credit checklist and scoring model), you indicate which data points to include for credit analysis. Later, during a credit review, Oracle Credit Management pulls the data points specified on the credit checklist and analyzes the collected information based on the scoring model parameters.

Credit Management provides you with an inventory of almost 200 seeded data points on which to base credit reviews and decisions. Data points from other E-Business Suite applications, such as Oracle Order Management and Oracle Lease Management, are also provided for your use.

But what if the seeded inventory of data points does not cover your business requirements? You can extend the menu of available data points within Credit Management by defining your own data points to be selected during checklist and scoring model definition. To do this, use the Additional Data Points page off the Policy Management tab.

When defining new data points, you can:

• Add existing or user-defined PL/SQL packages and functions to automatically derive a value upon case folder creation. This ensures that the entire credit review process remains automated.

  Caution: Carefully consider your business process before leaving the Package and Function fields empty. If you choose not to have Credit Management automatically derive a data point's value, then the value will be missing upon case folder creation. In this case, the workflow will fail and a credit analyst must manually add the data point value.

  If a data point has an associated function, then the data point value is not updatable in the case folder.

  For PL/SQL guidelines, see: Guidelines for Deriving Data Point Values.

  Attention: Please consider the following points while adding PL/SQL functions.

  1. Do not include PL/SQL package or function names in an ADP unless the package function exists in the database and is valid and operational. If an invalid package name is included, it will not create the case folders.

  2. If you define a PL/SQL function for an ADP, make sure that the function will complete normally and successfully for all customers or scenarios. Make sure that you handle all ORA-1403 or ORA-1422 (no data found/too many rows) issues which return null or zero values inside your package.

  3. All ADPs are executed for all customers on all case folders. While you may not use the ADP in all cases, it should calculate or handle exceptions for cases where it cannot compute a value.

• Define hierarchical relationships between data points by selecting a parent data point.

  Hierarchical relationships can involve one parent and many children, or multiple levels of children.

  For example, during a credit review of a customer who is applying for a new lease agreement for a tractor, you will probably want to include in the credit analysis the tractor's rental fee. In this case, the asset is the parent data point, and its child data point is the rental fee. If the rental fee is different depending on the lease term (0-12 months vs. 13-48 months), then the lease term becomes a child of the rental fee data point.

  Note: During checklist definition, child data points are not available for selection. If a parent data point is required, then its child data points are also required.

• Specify a data point category. A data point category acts as a filter to classify your user-defined data points. For example, you might want to organize data points by external source, such as by credit bureau name.

  To implement categories, you must first define them using the OCM_USER_DATA_POINT_CATEGORIES lookup. See: Defining Lookups.

• Indicate if a data point is scorable.

  If a data point is scorable, then you can define ranges and scores for that data point during scoring model definition.

  Suggestion: If a data point is associated with a PL/SQL function that returns multiple values, then this data point is not scorable.

Frequently Asked Questions

When defining an additional data point, is there any impact if I do not assign a PL/SQL function?

If no package is associated then the value will be defaulted to NULL, and your credit analysts must manually enter values in the case folder. This means that upon case folder creation, the workflow will fail and the credit review will be routed to the Credit Scheduler for assignment to a credit analyst.

What happens if an assigned PL/SQL function fails during case folder creation?

The workflow process will fail and the case folder will be routed to the Credit Scheduler for assignment to a credit analyst.

How can a credit review include data points in a foreign currency?

Set the AR: Default Credit Management Currency profile option to identify the currency in which you want to conduct your credit reviews. Credit Management checks this profile option, then converts foreign currency data points into the stated currency. See: Profile Options and Profile Option Categories Overview.

You must also define multi-currency credit exposure usage rules. See: Defining Credit Usage Rules Sets.