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IN THIS PACKAGE YOU WILL FIND:

A Biography of the Author What they said about The Oracle Opportunity The Blueprint to Succeeding as an Oracle consultant The Introduction & a Preview Chapter from the Book A synopsis of the books content Information on where to buy the book

Biography
Aidan Duffy is a career-consultant, and has been working with Oracle technologies since 1993. He has worked in technical, functional & team leading roles during his career. He has worked for major multinational clients such as Pfizer, General Electric & Canon, across the U.K. & Europe. He has been re-hired by Clients several times, having worked for one client four times, and has an excellent reputation in the European Oracle Consulting industry. Aidan holds a Bachelor of Science (Hons.) in Computing Science, and is a white paper and book author, and blogger. In his spare time he likes to keep up with developments in IT, and is a keen golfer. Aidan enjoys networking; his LinkedIn Profile can be found at http://ie.linkedin.com/in/aidanduffy. You can also check out the http://iloveoracle.com/ blog for more information on Oracle Consulting topics.

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What they said about The Oracle Opportunity The Blueprint to Succeeding as an Oracle Consultant
Aidan your Book has helped me prepare for my interview, researching the key areas that a functional consultant is accountable for. Your Book also mentions making the most of the opportunities within your current organization to extend your business or functional knowledge; I will be taking full advantage of this in the future. In addition to this there are some best practice methods that I will be keen to adopt when starting my new employment to ensure I make the correct impression. Thank you for all your help Balwinder Kler Oracle Financials Functional Analyst

This is an excellent read for anyone thinking of becoming an Oracle consultant. An excellent step-by-step guide to the ins and outs of Oracle consulting. I wish I had this knowledge before I became a consultant, it would have saved me from making many mistakes. Ken Coyne (Oracle Consultant with over 10 years of experience)

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The Oracle Opportunity

Reading this is like having the chance to spend a day with a senior consultant and being able to ask them truthfully How do I get to where you are? Nic Connor Oracle Ebusiness consultant and Recruiter

This book provides a roadmap for those wishing to become successful Oracle eBusiness consultants. If you follow these steps, you will become a respected consultant James Parker Oracle Specialist Recruiter for Ntrinsic Solutions (http://ntrinsic.net/)

The Oracle Opportunity is a great introduction to the world of freelance consulting; written with first hand-experience and real insight, it brings together a set of strategies to address the main challenges encountered by first time freelancers from preparing for an interview through to managing your time-sheets, invoicing and getting paid. Its not just for first timers either as old timers will find it useful to refresh some of their knowledge, for example on personal marketing and how that can now be applied to social media. A really useful set of tips and trade secrets. John Needham Oracle EBusiness Project Manager
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Synopsis:
Ive seen those guys and girls around the office, right? You know the consultants? The ones in the smart suits, arriving in from a flight, working the week and flying back out again early on Friday afternoon? Seems like a nice life right? Working for Big Clients; Exciting Projects; Exotic Locations; Nice Hotels; expenses. Those are the lucky ones, right? And the way they act in the office, so confident, knowing most of everything it seems, directing the project, they are the ones in control, right? So tell me, what is the difference between you and them? What EXACTLY is the difference? Its hard to say exactly what the difference is, isnt it? Is it the way they act? The way they talk? The knowledge they have built up? The contacts they have made? I am here to tell you that the difference between you and them is smaller than you imagine. So small, in fact, that in reality it only exists in your mind. The opportunity to become a consultant is closer than you think. Anyone with Oracle skills can be an Oracle consultant, and this book is the Blueprint for showing you how. This Oracle Opportunity is yours for the taking!
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Book Content
The Oracle Opportunity The Blueprint to Succeeding as an Oracle Consultant contains the following chapters:

Introduction
Chapter 1. Know What You Know What skills do you need to work an Oracle consultant? Chapter 2 Know What You Dont Know How to increase your knowledge up to consultant level using free resources Chapter 3. Build Your Skills and Professional Profile Build your skills and profile within your project, your company and the wider Oracle market Chapter 4. Identify Opportunities How to find Consulting opportunities & get to know the consulting market Chapter 5. Know the Project Life Cycle Understand a typical Oracle project lifecycle, and where you might fit in the project team Chapter 6. Prepare and Conduct a Winning Interview How to prepare for, and succeed at interviews Chapter 7. Consider and Accept an Offer Deciding if a consultancy offer is the right one for you?
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Chapter 8. Prepare for Transition into Your New Role How to leave your current boss wishing you had never left, and hit the ground running in your new role Chapter 9. Begin Your New Job: What to expect in your new job, and how to get off to a flying start. Learn who is who in the new project team Chapter 10. Prove Your Worth and Build Relationships Prove yourself early, get to know the right people, and how to interact with other team members Chapter 11. The Art of Communication Offering Your Opinion as a consultant. Knowing When to Assert Yourself and When to Back Down Chapter 12. Manage the Details Document the Work your complete and Get Paid on time Chapter 13. Build on Your Success How to make your boss beg you to stay Conclusion: Build and maintain your reputation The key to increasing your reputation as a consultant

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Introduction
The hours tick down towards Go-Live. Tomorrow morning the new system will be switched on. Billions of dollars of transactions will start to flow through the framework I have created. This is where it all begins. My program is the gateway to Oracle. The rest of the processes and the success of the project depend on me. This Client has implemented Oracle in multiple European markets, but nothing as difficult as this before. They chose to work on this market last. It was expected to be the most challenging; they were right about that. I have been stretched way beyond what I expected. I have managed a team of inexperienced people. I completed tasks I didnt think I could do. I have made many personal sacrifices. Ive put way too much of myself into this, for it to go wrong. I have learned a lot about myself. I can execute tasks and perform well under pressure, even in the white heat of a large Oracle project. At the end of tomorrow, I will present the metrics at the Go-Live meeting. I need to be able to say We had a good first day. Nothing less will be accepted. Dare I hope to say, everything got through successfully, 100% ? Despite all this though, I feel calm. I have double and triple checked everything, and tested from every possible angle. Ive used the experience gained over ten years as a consultant. I have leveraged
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the relationships Ive built up over the lifespan of the project. I am happy this will be enough. My reputation with this Client is at stake. If tomorrow goes well I will have successfully switched roles within the same Client. I have operated at a new level, way out of my comfort zone. I have proved that I can deliver any task assigned to me. I cant wait for tomorrow. I have been an Oracle consultant since 1999. Many Clients have paid me thousands of dollars to help them with Oracle. I have worked with the largest multinational Clients including Accenture, General Electric & Pfizer. I have worked in the hottest locations in the world, such as London, Prague, New York and Amsterdam. This book will tell you how to position yourself intelligently, package your experience, promote yourself to the Oracle market, & partner with the right people. Position Yourself: When I say position yourself, I mean, exactly what do you know about Oracle? Can other people understand exactly what you do? Can you explain it in a single sentence? If you are short on skills, what are you missing? How can you get those missing skills? Package your experience: You have some experience in Oracle, but can you communicate that in your resume or profile? Have you really thought hard about what you can do, and where you might fit in a project team?
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Promote yourself: A lot of consultants think promoting yourself stops when you start a new role and starts again when you finish up. They couldnt be more wrong. Promoting yourself is an everyday activity both with your current & potential new employers. Partner with the right people: As a consultant you need to partner with your client, with other consultancies and with end client staff, in order to succeed. This book will tell you how to interact with these people. It will also tell you what is expected of a consultant, and how to be retained by a client. One of my managers said the most memorable thing about me was that it was obvious that I really cared about what I was doing. I think weve gotten too far away from that in the consulting world. Some consultants have one aim in life, to maximize their billable time. I will talk about how to act with integrity, respect the Clients you are working for, and the people you are working with.

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CHAPTER 1
Know What You Know
Know what you know means being able to clearly define and communicate exactly what your skills and talents are in non-technical terms, and being able to communicate how youll apply those skills to complete the project objectives. You also need to communicate honestly about necessary or useful skills you may not yet have mastered. Though it sounds simple, this process can be challenging and many consultants miss opportunities because they fail to express what they know and why their knowledge is important. If youve ever found that you have a hard time describing what you do in a personal or professional conversation, youve experienced how difficult it can be to explain what you know the language you use will depend on your audience. When preparing for an interview, its helpful to create a list of both Oracle-specific (Project) skills and soft (People) skills, and be sure you can state how and why they are relevant in appropriate, understandable language.

What do you know?


A skill can be broadly defined as the capacity to carry out tasks often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both. In other
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The Oracle Opportunity

words, skill is the ability to use your knowledge to achieve maximum efficiency in producing a product or result. Your fundamental abilities as an Oracle consultant include both hard skills (project skills) directly related to Oracle projects as well as the soft skills (people skills) vital to successful projects, such as effective communication, team building, active listening, and negotiation. Soft skills in particular can set you apart as an effective consultant, so be sure to highlight this skill set when interviewing.

Project Skills
Its important to highlight both functional and technical knowledge when defining your Oracle-specific skills in language your audience can understand clearly. Below are a few examples of essential Oracle project skills youll want to bring up in interviews: Project Skill Gather Business Requirements Understanding Of Business processes Definition in Lay Terms Ability to learn and assess business needs and modify or develop applications (forms, scripts, reports) to meet those needs Know basics of Order-to-cash, Procureto-Pay & Record-to-Report

Basic Understanding Awareness of accounting entries behind of Accounting basic sub-ledger transactions Downstream impacts of changes Knowing how modules link together. Configuration in Order Management will affect Receivables. A change in Purchasing will affect Payables.
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The Oracle Opportunity

Project Skill SQL Coding

Definition in Lay Terms Ability to extract data, update and modify system reports, and perform various data analyses Ability to import and export data into and out of Oracle systems Ability to incorporate business requirements into applications and anticipate test scenarios accurately; create scripts to test systems, diagnose and rectify issues as they occur during test phases Ability to extend and enhance standard reports to meet specific business needs; design custom reporting solutions if necessary including report development in Oracle Discoverer Ability to seamlessly integrate Oracle data with other organizational business data; includes interpreting and converting data in multiple formats and writing import/export scripts Ability to use AIM (Applications Implementation Methodology) or other standard methodology to create clear, concise user instructions as well as accurately documenting processes and applications development

PL/SQL Programming Write Test Scripts

Design Oracle Reports

Interface Data from External Systems

Create Documentation

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People Skills
While most consultants are comfortable discussing their technical and functional knowledge, many fail to highlight their soft skills as they apply to project tasks. However, often it is exactly these interpersonal skills, which make or break a projects success, and pointing out your project abilities can give you an advantage. The ability to express these skills is vital to differentiating yourself from the other candidates. Below are a few examples of talents you may want to highlight: People Skill Business Analysis Definition Ability to communicate clearly, ask relevant questions, and actively listen to gain a thorough understanding of client-specific business processes and requirements; includes ability to accurately define As-Is system and identify all key stakeholders to determine requirements of To-Be system Communication Having enough knowledge to talk with other teams in the project, understand their concerns, and avoid actions that adversely impact them. Ability to work with non-project team members; ability to marry the project & non-project team objectives.
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The Oracle Opportunity

Team Building

Ability to build solid working relationships, foster trust and cooperation, diffuse tension, and effectively negotiate when working with multiple business units and across teams Ability to anticipate and meet ongoing business needs through building flexible, dynamic applications; ability to ask relevant questions and actively listen in diagnosing issues and provide ongoing support

Support Consulting

Oracle Consultant skills


Project teams hire consultants of two types Functional consultants / Business Analysts(B.A.s) Technical Consultants

Functional Consultants or B.A.s are the liason between the project team and the business. They gather and analyze the requirements, design, configure & test the solution, and support the business once the project has gone live. Technical Consultants allow the project to implement customized functionality; to adjust Oracle standard features to suit the business requirement. There is a third type of consultant, who has a combination of functional and technical skills. The Hybrid consultant is becoming
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The Oracle Opportunity

more valuable to projects, as there is a significant gap between a pure technical and functional consultant. Hybrid consultants bridge this gap increasing effective communication between the teams. The diagrams below displays the typical Oracle EBusiness Consultant Skillsets Its useful to review the next diagrams to see where your skill set could place you on a project team

Consultant Skills
The following diagrams illustrate the common skill-sets of functional and technical consultants. Over time a consultant may pick up skills in both areas, but the project team will generally hire a person for a Functional or Technical role.

Oracle Functional Skills


Gather Requirements Solution Design Design Communicate Deliver Analysis

Configure
Testing

Support/ Change Mgt

Fig 1.1

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The Oracle Opportunity

Functional Skills include Solution Design Solution Design is the role of the Solution Architect. This is a critical skill in delivering successful Oracle projects. A solution architect should be an experienced consultant who can recommend a project high-level approach & design. Once the approach is agreed, the solution architect keeps the project team aligned with the overall solution, from the start of the project to the finish. Gathering Business Requirements Ability to discover and assess business project needs. Once a requirements list has been created, is it decided if each requirement can be met by standard functionality, or a customization is required. Analysis The ability to analyze a problem or issue, and create a solution that is acceptable to project and business teams. Support/Change Management Supporting a system is important to ensure the customer can operate the new system, in the way intended by the project team. The Support phase happens directly after golive, and is managed by the project team initially. Once the solution is stable, the Business as Usual support team takes over.

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Testing Testing is required to be sure your solution is robust. Testing should be carried out on standard processes & customizations, and should provide a comfort factor that the solution will operate as it should. Configure Configuration of the Oracle application is setting up the system so that it meets the business requirements. Configuration should control access to the system and prevent incorrect data flows.

Technical Skills

Oracle Technical Skills


Reports Business Int. Tools SQL PL/SQL Interfaces

Conversion
XML

Workflow

Reports Fig 1.3 The application is delivered with a number of standard reports, which will meet most business requirements. Once an additional requirement has been agreed, the Technical conwww.ILoveOracle.com

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The Oracle Opportunity

sultant decides if an existing report can be modified, or if a new report is required. Interfaces An interface transmits data from one system to another. The technical consultant builds the architecture so that the required data can be successfully transmitted and understood by both the sending and receiving systems. Workflow Many of the Oracle EBusiness suite transaction flows are now controlled by a Workflow. Oracle standard workflows are designed to implement most common business flows. If a new requirement in this area is identified, the technical consultant modifies the workflow to manage the new requirement, and ensures no impact on standard transaction flow. XML XML is used in Oracle Ebusiness suite to create reports & to transmit data according to document standards. These standards specify a message architecture to describing an object, and allow more efficient communication between systems. For instance the Open Applications Group Integration Specification(OAGIS) specifies message architectures called Business Object Documents(BODs) that define the fields contained in a sales order, for example. Once an XML message meeting this sales order message architecture is created, it can be transmitted and understood by different systems in an Oracle supply chain.
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Conversion When a business is migrated to Oracle, historical data is required in the new Oracle application. This data can be defined as master data (customers, vendors etc), or transactional data (historical invoices, purchase orders). Import of these data types into the new system allows the system users to leave the old system behind. Conversion specifies what data types need to be imported, what range of each data type will be imported, how the import will be achieved, and how the results will be validated. Business Intelligence Tools BI tools allow the collection and display of correct information to a business audience. Data is typically reported, summarized, analyzed & distributed to various business users. The information provided is then used to enable business decision-making. Technical consultants provide the architecture and design the reports to meet the business requirements.

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Where to buy the The Oracle Opportunity The Blueprint to Succeeding as an Oracle Consultant
In 24 hours, Ill be opening up access to The Oracle Opportunity: Your blueprint to succeeding as an Oracle Consultant. However, to make it worth your while ANYBODY who invests the eBook also get the following bonuses TOTALLY FREE: a. Your personal copy of the The Definitive Top Thirty Tips to Make Yourself Irresistible As An Oracle Consultant b. Your personal invitation to the Oracle eBusiness Consultant Masterclass Webinar on January 2nd

Buy The Oracle Opportunity - The BluePrint to Succeeding as an Oracle Consultant

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