Key Concepts for Representing Enterprises

You represent your enterprise using key organization structures in Oracle HRMS. These structures provide the framework so you can perform legal reporting, financial control, and management reporting. You can set up these organization structures yourself, or use the Configuration Workbench.

The Configuration Workbench delivers an integrated configuration management toolset for HR systems and assists in the evaluation, configuration, deployment, and maintenance of HR applications. The workbench suggests a basic structure of organizations for your enterprise based on configuration models.

See: Configuration Models for Your Enterprise Framework

Once the basic enterprise structure is set up, you add the additional organizations and locations that exist in your enterprise. You define the internal organizations that represent your internal divisions and departments, and you define the external organizations that represent the organizations outside of your enterprise. For example, you can set up an external organization to represent the tax office for which your enterprise uses for reporting purposes.

You can use organizations to represent many levels of your enterprise, from the highest level of organization that represents the whole enterprise, to the lowest level of organization that represents a section or department.

See: Extending the Enterprise Framework

See: Organization Classifications

See: Setting Up Organizations

Business Group

The business group represents a country in which your enterprise operates. You create it as an organization in Oracle HRMS, but it does not represent a specific organization within your enterprise structure, and you do not include it in your organization hierarchies. A business group enables you to group and manage data in accordance with the rules and reporting requirements of each country, and to control access to data.

The critical factors for deciding when to use a separate business group, or an international business group, are based on the following factors:

Generally the laws are so different in each country that to be compliant, there must be a different business group for each country in which an enterprise has employees.

Operating Company

An operating company represents a division or line of business within your enterprise that is legally registered for reporting in at least one country. An operating company is a holding company, a company within a company.

Ultimate Legal Entity

The ultimate legal entity represents the enterprise, and typically, the enterprise is the highest (global) level of a business organization. The ultimate legal entity is the parent company or organization for all its subsidiaries and divisions. Oracle HRMS represents the ultimate legal entity with the GRE/Legal Entity organization classification.

Legal Entity/Employer

A legal entity represents the designated legal employer for all employment-related activities. The legal authorities in a country recognize this organization as a separate employer. In an organization hierarchy, a legal entity may report to an operating company or to the ultimate legal entity.

A legal employer is a legal entity that is responsible for employing people in a particular country. Therefore, if you employ people in a country, then you must have at least one organization classified as a legal entity and a legal employer.

The Configuration Workbench classifies an organization as a GRE/Legal Entity where your enterprise operates in a country, and classifies it as an Employer if you employ people in that country also. For example, you can have a legal entity in a country where you do business, but do not employ people in that country.

Consolidated Legal Entity

A consolidated legal entity acts on behalf of multiple operating companies that are not legally registered, or simply on behalf of the enterprise in a country. You typically use the consolidated legal entity for when you have multiple operating companies in your enterprise, but for the purposes of consolidation, you group the information into one organization. For management reporting purposes, the organizations below the consolidated legal entity in an organization hierarchy, such as, your departments and sections, can report to any organization in the enterprise. However, for legal reporting purposes, they report up to the consolidated legal entity.

For information on how to model your enterprise using the key organization structures, see: Configuration Models for Your Enterprise Framework