This is not an uncommon situation. In the first year following go-live, the majority of enterprises only utilize 30 to 40 percent of Oracle Fusion’s capabilities. According to a 2026 post-implementation assessment by EPIQ Infotech, with each update cycle that goes unreviewed, substantial value is lost.
Oracle is not slowing down. Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP revenue increased 22% year over year in Q4 FY2025, indicating a high level of enterprise demand for back-office capabilities offered by artificial intelligence. The gap between businesses that actively monitor Oracle ERP updates and those that merely wait for IT to notify them is growing more quickly than most leadership teams realize with the release of Release 26A for Q1 2026, which represents the largest AI agent rollout in a single quarter in Oracle Fusion’s history.
This is a crucial quarter for Oracle EBS and Fusion users who oversee finance, procurement, and reporting tasks.
What Oracle Released This Quarter: The 26A Highlights at a Glance
Oracle follows a structured quarterly update cadence, and Release 26A marks Q1 2026. This is not a minor maintenance patch. It is one of the most feature-dense single-quarter releases Oracle has shipped across the Fusion Applications suite.
On the ERP side, the updates are specific and operational. Invoice handling has been made significantly smarter, with less manual intervention required to process and route invoices. Change order automation within procurement now moves with fewer human touchpoints. Cash basis accounting support has been expanded, addressing a long-standing gap for mid-market finance teams. And perhaps most notably, Oracle has embedded banking services directly inside the ERP environment through an integration with Bank of America, removing the need for separate logins or middleware connections.
For Fusion users, these updates are mandatory and already live in your environment. The real question is whether your teams are aware they are there.
Finance Workflows: What Actually Changes on the Ground
The updates with the most immediate impact on enterprise finance teams are not buried in system documentation. They are showing up directly in the workflows that finance runs every day.
Predictive Cash Forecasting is now generally available within Oracle Cloud EPM, pulling real-time data from Accounts Receivables, Accounts Payables, and Cash Management sources inside Fusion. Finance teams can now drill through a forecast amount and trace it back to individual transactions, giving treasury and cash managers a level of visibility that previously required offline exports and manual analysis.
Beyond cash forecasting, the close cycle is also changing. AI-powered journal anomaly detection is now built into the reconciliation process, flagging inconsistencies before they create downstream reporting errors. Automated reconciliations are shortening financial close timelines and reducing dependency on batch processing and overnight report runs that have long frustrated finance teams.
For enterprises still relying on spreadsheets to bridge reporting gaps within Oracle, these updates are a direct answer to a very familiar pain point.
Procurement and Supply Chain: Approvals, Contracts, and Vendor Governance
If the finance updates in 26A are focused on speed and accuracy, the procurement and supply chain updates are focused on removing friction from governance.
Oracle released over a dozen new AI agents for supply chain in this single quarter, covering contract negotiation support, cycle count analysis, order configuration and fulfillment, and vendor checks that previously required manual review. Procurement approval workflows that once stalled waiting on a single approver can now move through automated governance checks without slowing down the purchasing team.
The Redwood user interface continues to roll out across SCM modules as well. For organisations that have struggled with adoption due to complex screens and high training requirements, the simplified Redwood experience directly reduces onboarding time and the number of errors that come from unfamiliar workflows.
For procurement leaders managing vendor risk and contract compliance, this quarter’s Oracle ERP latest features are not incremental improvements. They are targeting the exact bottlenecks that create audit exposure and delay supplier decisions.
Oracle EBS Users Are Not Exempt: The Upgrade Pressure Is Real
While Fusion users receive these updates automatically, Oracle E-Business Suite users are in a different position entirely. Oracle EBS 11i is now on Sustaining Support, which means it no longer receives new regulatory patches, security fixes, or functional updates.
Every quarter that passes without a modernisation plan is a quarter in which the feature gap between EBS and Fusion grows wider. The AI-driven automation, predictive cash forecasting, embedded analytics, and Redwood experience improvements delivered through 26A are exclusive to Fusion Cloud. EBS environments do not receive them, and each new release cycle widens that gap further.
This does not mean the path forward requires an immediate full migration. What it does require is a clear-eyed assessment of where your EBS environment stands today, which customisations are driving the most complexity, and which business functions are being held back by capabilities your current platform simply cannot deliver.
How Enterprises Should Respond: Practical Adaptation, Not Reactive Upgrades
Keeping pace with Oracle ERP updates does not require a large project or a significant budget commitment every quarter. It requires a structured habit.
Start by auditing which 26A features have been auto-enabled in your environment versus those that require opt-in configuration. Many of the most impactful updates go unnoticed simply because no one reviews the release documentation before the quarter ends. Assign internal ownership for this review, whether that sits with a business systems manager, a finance lead, or an Oracle consulting partner.
For EBS users, treat this release cycle as a signal to begin a CEMLI assessment, cataloguing your customisations and identifying which are candidates for retirement. API-led extensions are increasingly replacing heavy customisations as the preferred path to accessing new capabilities without disrupting the core system, and building this awareness now reduces risk considerably when modernisation planning begins in earnest.
Conclusion
By design, Oracle ERP improvements in 2026 will be modest, but their cumulative impact will be substantial. The teams that are most directly impacted by what ships each quarter are finance, procurement, and reporting. As such, they should actively participate in the adoption discussion rather than just being informed after the fact.
Developing a repeatable procedure around Oracle’s quarterly cycle rather than responding to it is necessary to stay current.
CyberMeru works with businesses that use Oracle EBS and Fusion to plan modernization stages at a rate that works for the company, facilitate quarterly update reviews, and evaluate preparedness for new features. It’s a good moment to hold that discussion if the releases this quarter have made you wonder about the state of your surroundings.
FAQs
1. We are running Oracle EBS and our team keeps saying we do not need to upgrade yet. How do I know when the pressure becomes real?
The moment your team starts building workarounds outside the system such as spreadsheets, manual approval emails, offline reports, your EBS has already hit its ceiling. With Oracle EBS 11i on Sustaining Support, no new security patches or functional updates are coming your way. Every quarter without a plan is a quarter the gap widens.
2. Our IT team told us Oracle pushed a quarterly update last month. Do we actually need to do anything, or does it just happen automatically?
The update installs automatically, but the new features do not switch themselves on. Several 26A capabilities, including Predictive Cash Forecasting and the new procurement AI agents, require opt-in configuration before your teams can use them. Without a quarterly review, those features simply sit there unused.
3. We have a heavily customised Oracle EBS environment. Does that make modernisation harder, or is it something partners deal with all the time?
It adds complexity, but it is rarely the blocker teams assume it to be. A CEMLI assessment helps identify which customisations still serve a real purpose and which ones are just legacy clutter. Most organisations find that list is far shorter than expected once reviewed properly.
