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Oracle ERP Cloud has the magic says Gartner

Jennene Kelly — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 21:49:43 +0000

Gartner’s new Magic Quadrant for Cloud Core Financial Management Suites for Midsize, Large and Global Enterprises research report places Oracle ERP Cloud front and centre of the $31b ERP market, best-in-show on both ‘Ability to Execute’ and ‘Completeness of Vision’ axes.

The report evaluated vendors on the capabilities of their core financial management apps, taking into account their ability to sell and support their products, and their ability to “provide a general set of access management functionalities across multiple use cases, geographies and industries” (by which, we assume, they mean measure whether the product is actually ‘cloud ERP’).

The cloud aspect is a new measure in Gartner’s stable, the reason being that this sub-segment of the ERP market is where the growth is, exceeding 25 percent per annum over the last five years, and now with three cloud-native providers among the top 10 in ERP market share.

“The market for core financial management suites has been static for many years,” said the report. “However, over the last 12 to 18 months, cloud core financial management suites have matured to such an extent that they have disrupted this static market.”

“By 2018, at least 25 percent of new core FMS deployments in large enterprises will be public cloud,” the report predicts. “By 2020, more than half of large enterprises with systems up for replacement will switch from traditional on-premises licenses to SaaS or subscription licenses.”

“This new Magic Quadrant represents the current market reality.”

Leaders

Oracle ERP Cloud
Oracle ERP Cloud was positioned highest on both axes, ‘Completeness of Vision’ and ‘Ability to Execute’.

Magic Quadrant
Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Cloud Core Financial Management Suites for Midsize, Large and Global Enterprises

Source: Gartner (June 2017)

“Oracle is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant due to its broad and deep financial management capabilities, its international capabilities, and its strategic focus on selling and marketing the solution in all geographies”, said the report.

Oracle ERP Cloud “is receiving significant investment” said the report, commenting that customers scored Oracle ERP Cloud above average for functional capabilities and customer satisfaction. Survey respondents also scored the breadth and depth of functionality highly, and several cited its embedded reporting and analytics capabilities.

“Oracle has a strong vision for financial functionality, is well-known among financial professionals and has messaging for finance that does not get lost in a broader suite story. It is increasingly effective at leveraging its PaaS offering to extend the core capabilities of Oracle ERP Cloud.”

The report also complimented Oracle’s “strong partner ecosystem” and “relationships with service providers that are well-known to CFOs and provide finance transformation services linked to deploying Oracle ERP Cloud”.

The report added that Oracle is still in the process of transitioning from an on-premises vendor to a cloud service provider, with some survey respondents reporting “issues with performance and the complexity of support processes (such as upgrades)”.

“Some clients have told Gartner that involvement from Oracle’s R&D team was required at times to address support issues, so it can be important to have the right lines of communication with Oracle R&D in place.”

Workday
Perhaps a surprise inclusion for many in the list, let alone the top quadrant, is Workday.

The cloud-native HCM solution has enjoyed significant growth, and has only recently added a core financial module into the broader HR offering.

“Workday has a proven and robust cloud platform” said the report, making “innovative use of in-memory computing to combine core financial management applications with planning and performance management capabilities in real time.”

“Workday Financial Management scored above average for functional capabilities. Survey respondents praised the flexibility of the GL architecture — especially Worktags, which allow users to easily aggregate, report and analyze financial information. Several stated that the platform had been key in enabling the transformation of their finance function.”

The report cautioned however that some survey respondents reported challenges with partners and the availability of resources.

Visionaries

Intacct
Intacct achieved leading ‘Visionary’ status in the report due to its “cloud commitment”, focus on functionality and “marketing initiatives for finance”.

The report complemented Intacct’s “scalable and functional core financial system with good flexibility and functionality in GL and analytics” but warned that some survey respondents felt that “Intacct’s fixed-asset functionality lagged the other capabilities in the suite”.

Microsoft
“Dynamics 365 for Operations Financials scored above average with Microsoft reference customers in overall functional capabilities, with flexible GL coding/analysis capabilities, good multicompany features and strong project accounting,” the report said.

Microsoft received below-average customer feedback however, with issues cited by survey respondents mainly related to being early adopters of a new cloud solution that is early in its life cycle.

FinancialForce
“FinancialForce Financial Management has strong project accounting functionality” the report said, and commented that the product’s native Salesforce architecture makes it a good option for clients already using cloud services from Salesforce.

Customer satisfaction was however below average, with some survey respondents citing “difficulty obtaining skilled resources and some issues with support”.

Acumatica
The report raised Acumatica for its “wide range of APIs…coupled with the flexibility of the xRP platform and range of partner apps”. “Acumatica Financial Management Suite is well-aligned to Gartner’s vision of postmodern ERP”.

Some Acumatica customers however cited “issues with the quality of the partner supporting their implementation.”

Acuamatica is represented in this region by MYOB Advanced, a localised version licensed to MYOB and being rapidly picked up by the MYOB enterprise partner network.

Niche Players

Epicor and SAP being listed as niche players is a little baffling. Epicor has created a web accessible version of its core solution, but it has not been optimised for use across multiple devices.

The SAP listing on the other hand refers to the Business-by-Design solution, which, while a web native solution, is somewhat lost in the investment and partner focus behind its big brother SAP S/4HANA.

Epicor Software
Gartner’s report complemented Epicor ERP for its good financial functionality for midsize organisations, including multi-company accounting, consolidation and allocations, as well as the flexibility of Epicor ERP, with customers citing “the ease with which the solution can be configured to meet their own workflow and process needs”, but criticised a client user experience “that lags the usability of some competitor solutions”.

SAP
The report congratulated SAP for Business ByDesign’s “wide range of financial functionality, good international capabilities and strength in professional services”. It also highlighted its suitability for deployment as a two-tier solution in large organisations that use SAP ERP on-premises.

“SAP Business ByDesign risks being overshadowed by SAP S/4HANA Cloud, to which SAP is devoting significant strategic effort and investment. The vendor will need to ensure that it maintains enough separation in go-to-market strategies to allow both products to grow.”

Ramco Systems
According to the report Ramco offers good functionality in all areas of financial management for midsize organisations. Reference survey respondents scored functionality above average in most areas, however there is limited awareness of the Ramco brand outside the Asia/Pacific region “and it will face strong competition from other vendors as it expands”.

Deltek
The report cited Deltek Vision’s “strong core financials and project accounting functionality for midsize, project-centric organisations” but cautioned that the usability, reporting and analytics capabilities of the product received lower survey scores from reference customers than the rest of the functionality.

Challengers

Oracle (NetSuite)
“NetSuite is a proven and established provider of cloud services,” said the report, “with a broad partner ecosystem. Reference customer survey respondents cited the maturity of the cloud platform and robustness of the NetSuite cloud service.”

The report mentioned that there is currently some confusion in the Oracle sales channel “especially in the U.S. Gartner is seeing NetSuite excluded from some financials-led deals by Oracle sales in cases where NetSuite may be a better fit than Oracle ERP Cloud”.

“Oracle is putting in place policies to address this challenge”.

NOTE: This report was produced by Gartner and is licensed for distribution complements of Oracle Corporation. Click here to download the full Magic Quadrant for Cloud Core Financial Management Suites for Midsize, Large and Global Enterprises

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Whitepaper: Best practices for ERP cloud migrations – a CFO guidebook

Jennene Kelly — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 23:28:27 +0000

“We planned our journey to the cloud in phases. The phased, incremental approach mitigated risk, making it easier to manage business change. We defined and proved out the solution, built skills and expertise, provided feedback to development about the user experience, and incrementally added new functionality.”

That’s according to Corey West, corporate controller and chief accounting officer, for Oracle. He’s quoted in a new whitepaper by the company called ‘Best practices for ERP cloud migrations – a CFO guidebook’. And he’s singing from the choir, after going through the process internally at Oracle.

“ERP cloud can help you achieve measurable business value, but realising this value isn’t a given, and safe passage to the cloud is not guaranteed.”

The vendor contends that while customer and talent-facing functions tend to get the most attention when it comes to migrating to the cloud, business leaders are remiss if they discount the benefits of moving their core systems. “In fact, digitising core operations can have a greater impact on operations efficiency and cost-reductions than anywhere else,” it says, quoting the results of a McKinsey & Company survey.

Where once cloud ERP was pooh-poohed as being too risky, it is becoming more accepted by CFOs but, Oracle warns, good results are not a sure thing.

“ERP cloud can help you achieve measurable business value, but realising this value isn’t a given, and safe passage to the cloud is not guaranteed,” the company says. “It’s important to understand how cloud implementations are different from traditional, on-premise projects.”

Many companies think of the cloud in terms of cost savings alone, and don’t often take the time to map their unique processes to the value they can gain from a move to ERP cloud. As a result, many don’t get the business value they had hoped from their cloud deployments.

That is the first of three best practice lessons that the whitepaper outlines. The top tips are peppered with nuggets on Oracle’s own learnings after implementing its cloud ERP solution as well as comments from successful client implementations.

To read the full whitepaper, download it here (no registration required).

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Cross-channel interactions improve business performance

Jennene Kelly — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 20:04:27 +0000

Almost three quarters of marketers (73 percent) rated the impact of cross-channel interactions on conversion as ‘major’, with more than half also saying that integrated engagement across channels has a significant impact on improving retention (58 percent) and on ensuring advocacy (55 percent).

These are the headline findings of the fourth annual Cross-Channel Marketing Report, which also found that more than two-thirds of marketers (68 percent) say it’s a priority for ‘all marketing to be integrated across channels’.

The research is based on a global survey of more than 400 client-side marketers carried out in July and August 2015.

But while the importance of effective cross-channel engagement is recognised, many companies are still not set up for orchestrated multichannel campaigns and are most likely to be hampered by lack of strategy and resources.

More than a third of marketers (35 percent) say their companies are ‘not really’ set up for effectively orchestrated multichannel campaigns and a further 9 percent say they are ‘not at all’ set up for this.

Just under half of marketers (49 percent) said their companies are organised for this ‘to a certain extent’, exactly the same percentage as last year. Only 5percent said they are ‘very much’ set up for orchestrated cross-channel marketing activities, fewer than last year’s 7 percent who said this was the case.

A lack of a clearly defined strategy (21 percent) and lack of resources (20 percent) are the main reasons cited for the failure to deliver well-orchestrated cross-channel interactions.

Lack of strategy has now overtaken lack of resources as the principal challenge that companies are facing. ‘A clearly defined strategy’ (29 percent) has emerged prominently this year as the single most important factor for delivering effective orchestration.

Andrea Ward, Vice President of Marketing, Oracle Marketing Cloud said: “Consumers today are constantly adopting new channels, platforms and devices that they can use to engage with brands leaving marketers behind the curve in mastering how to use these technologies to connect with their audience. The ubiquity of mobile presents one such challenge and findings reveal that brands are struggling to integrate mobile effectively into integrated, engaging campaigns.”

Linus Gregoriadis, Research Director at Econsultancy, added: “Organisations are really getting the message about how cross-channel can improve both customer experience and business performance, but are continuing to wrestle with some of the challenges, particularly strategy and resourcing. This research is a wake-up call to organisations who need to ensure that they are focusing on the data, technology and staff requirements they need to get this right.”

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Effective cloud ERP on a budget

Jennene Kelly — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 22:24:19 +0000

As the Oracle Insight team engages with fast-growing small and midsize businesses, we invariably hear this feedback: Our needs have outgrown the design and configuration of our current finance system.

Most often, their off-the-shelf enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems don’t scale, are difficult to reconfigure, and can’t address the changes to their business structure or regulatory environment. Moving from an on-premises ERP system to a cloud one typically makes sense for two reasons:

The cloud system can add new functionality, such as data analytics, dashboards, invoice scanning, collaboration tools, and automatic uploads of preferred supplier lists.
It can lower costs, freeing budget for other business priorities.

Following are examples of companies that employed smart strategies in moving to cloud ERP.

Do the most impactful first
A company we recently worked with needed to upgrade its on-premises ERP system to comply with changing reporting regulations. Three years ago, the company spent close to half a million dollars on a technical upgrade that didn’t deliver any additional functionality. The new initiative took a similar approach: Review the system capabilities for three months, do the technical implementation over the next six months, and then take two months to consider additional business requirements. Close to 30 change initiatives—some of which had been on the list for more than two years—were competing for an annual budget of about $100,000.

By taking the cloud route, the company was able to use only half of the originally earmarked implementation budget, while quickly delivering new features.

Halfway through the first phase of the project, a new chief financial officer arrived and stopped the project. She conducted a three-week finance process review that revealed the need to improve the productivity of the accounts payable team and get better visibility into its spending. It was determined that the company needed to introduce new capabilities, such as automatic invoice processing to eliminate manual retyping and e-mailing invoices, and easy-to-use dashboards to track spending.

Introducing these new capabilities into the previous system would have almost doubled the costs of the technical upgrade. The finance process review determined that the leading cloud ERP vendors could provide the additional capabilities in a phased approach geared toward delivering high-impact functionalities fast.

By taking the cloud route, the company was able to use only half of the originally earmarked implementation budget, while quickly delivering new features.

Use self-service capabilities
Another company we worked with struggled to get information out of its transactional ERP system in a timely manner. The company relied on an external managed service provider to create and amend reports, which took three full-time staffers.
While deciding to implement a cloud-based ERP system, the company revisited its existing reports and found that about 80% of them were used by fewer than three people at any given time. With the cloud service, the company chose to replicate only 20 critical reports out of 150, while managers who requested other reports could often use the self-service report tool.

The initial plan to replicate all existing reports was expected to take eight weeks, whereas the revised plan took only three weeks. In addition, the company is reallocating some of the budget for those three external support staffers to train an internal business analyst who can deliver the needed reports.

Centralise your ERP control
In our third example, a company had started moving its legacy ERP system to a private cloud hosting service provider, and supplemented it with procurement features from a different cloud ERP vendor. It had four different contracts for this arrangement: One to provide cloud storage and infrastructure hosting for the legacy system, another to provide managed services technical support, a third with the procurement ERP vendor, and a fourth with a systems integrator to provide overall system management.

The four contracts were each owned by a different company department, and it wasn’t clear how responsibility was distributed among the external service providers, the internal IT department, and the finance organization. Also, the external support staffers spent close to half of their time extracting slightly different cuts of data for reports for different users.

The company decided to unify the contracts under a single cloud ERP provider. The goal was to create a single point of oversight, significantly reduce the cost of the in-house support, and cut the external service support costs completely.

Internalise the process
The last example is a company that reduced the cost of moving to cloud ERP by minimizing the need for external change managers. It did this by ensuring that all members of the finance executive team dedicated one day a week to the project for its duration, each taking ownership of a specific stream. The head of finance operations spent 80% of his time leading the implementation.

The only way the company could succeed was by committing to not introduce any variations to the processes across its operations in the US, Europe, and Asia. Not only did this approach save the company the cost of engaging external change managers, but it also demonstrated the senior executives’ commitment to the cloud project.

ABOUT OGEN BOROZANOV//
Ognen Borozanov is Senior Director, Industry Strategy & Insight at Oracle.

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CFOs should have much to say on cloud computing

Hayden McCall — Tue, 25 Aug 2015 22:38:31 +0000

As the managers of risk, planning, and investments in a business, chief financial officers (CFO) have had two main responsibilities: manage the departmental financial function and advise the company’s other business leaders on reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

Today, CFOs can use digital technologies—big data, mobility, social media, cloud computing—to drive growth and value both within the finance function and the rest of the business.

The Move to Cloud ERP
Within the finance function, companies of all sizes are transitioning their ERP systems to the cloud. In a May 2014 Forrester Research survey, 24 percent of respondents from midsize and large enterprises said they planned to replace their ERP systems within two years; 41 percent said they planned to move to a hybrid solution within two years.

CFOs stand to gain a number of benefits from moving teir ERP systems to the cloud. The most important is that they gain a robust, modern system at a lower total cost, producing better economic value. In other words, that fits in with a CFO’s #1 priority. With the cloud, not only do CFOs save on the capital expenditures of on-premises software, but they also save on the people costs of maintaining that infrastructure.

Cloud ERP systems also offer finance organisations constant innovation, via regular, automatic upgrades that deliver the newest capabilities. And then there’s the flexibility: With on-premises software, it was difficult to grow or downsize your IT infrastructure based on business changes. Now, you can just increase or reduce the number of users on your contract. The finance function effectively becomes more agile and adaptable to change.

A Strategic Leadership Role
As different functions in a company move to the cloud, CFOs can also help other departments make better decisions. Marketing departments, for instance, are spending increased budgets on modern software that leverages data from social media. The CFO can provide valuable perspectives: Should the chief marketing officer be investing more in certain areas than others? What’s the return on investment?

Successful CFOs are also modernising their departments while partnering with the CEO and line-of-business leaders to find new growth opportunities.

These technology decisions will affect not just the CMO, but also the CFO—resulting in an outside-in effect. Moving to the cloud is about enabling the flow of information, and CFOs have a vested interest in making data available across the enterprise.

That marketing software will tie into other systems, including finance, so CFOs need to make sure they are getting a 360-degree view of the customer across all lines of business—from sales to service. The better information they have about customers as well as the company’s operations, the better they can do their job and serve the business.

A Roadmap is Key
The key to doing all of this successfully is a roadmap. Most companies aren’t upgrading all of their systems to the cloud immediately; they are addressing one function at a time. This has the potential to introduce all sorts of integration complexity, interfering with that complete view of the organisation that’s vital for a successful move to the cloud. So it is vital to have a multiyear plan for making the transition, while building the right cloud architecture. It’s just as important to stick to that plan.

With the cloud, CFOs have the opportunity to stimulate growth throughout the organisation while managing costs. By being strategic partners with the rest of the business, they can play a key role in driving the success of their organisation.

Jeffrey O. Henley is executive vice chairman of Oracle. He was previously Oracle’s chief financial officer.

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Video: Australian Finance Group Curbs Costs with Documents Cloud

Jennene Kelly — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 00:42:53 +0000

Australian Finance Group (AFG) is Australia’s largest mortgage broking group with over 2300 brokers and a loan portfolio of over $100 billion. They have recently migrated their on-premise document management system into the cloud. AFG chose Oracle Document Cloud Service as this represented a simple migration process, multi-platform (mobile, web and desktop) support, immediate access to core document management functionality, and good enterprise controls.

This continues AFG’s transition to cloud, and builds up the components that fit together to create a cohesive solution. The solution components will drive the ability for AFG to create more value in both the back-office and sales processes and curb costs. The migration also alleviates the management of another legacy application that was in need of an upgrade and internal skills refresh.

For further information contact: Oracle ERP Cloud
For further reading click here: Oracle exhibit

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Whitepaper: Winning the war for finance talent

Jennene Kelly — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 02:52:30 +0000

Quantum leaps in the volume, speed and quality of digital information that redefine business now converge in finance departments. Once tasked with keeping score, chief financial officers (CFOs) and finance teams are now leveraging data insights to change the game for their companies in The Digital Age. They take ownership of business models that identify, monitor and govern financial risks and rewards.

Increasingly, companies seek more than traditional skills in finance. Millennials who move up the ranks are expected to learn how data analysis advances objectives in sales, marketing, strategic partnerships, price negotiations and investor relations.

But to develop talent you must first attract it. Finance departments engage and nurture the right kind of talent by demonstrating commitment to growth and change rooted in digital transformation. Young professionals want to work for companies where their expertise can make a material difference inside and outside finance departments. If they feel isolated from data-driven trends sweeping through more agile companies, they may quit—or worse, quit and stay, but not do the job. Flexibility, collaboration and continuous learning win young hearts and minds more than ascent up traditional ladders.

Arming companies with finance talent ready for digital challenges requires planning and adjustment. Success hinges on multiple factors, both local and global. To get a picture of change on the ground, WSJ. Custom Studios, in collaboration with Oracle, asked CFOs at top global companies about building finance teams which have the right stuff. Their answers depict the new rules for the digital age:

1. Recruit—and pay for— different kinds of talent
2. Fill the gaps by grooming talent in-house
3. Ask the right questions
4. Share data or it has no value
5. Use technology and data insights to be a better business partner
6. Use digital technologies to attract and retain the best and the brightest

To find out more about the game plan for the digital age, please download the free whitepaper: Winning the war for finance talent

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Marketing insight: Where love and money intersect

Jennene Kelly — Fri, 03 Jul 2015 01:57:52 +0000

This balancing act has created a challenge at which Oracle Marketing Cloud, in association with the Aberdeen Group, has taken a closer look. The resulting report ‘The CMO Dilemma: Bridging the Gap Between Love and Money’ highlights the alignment of love (customer-centric marketing) and money (return on investment), and outlines how top performing CMOs are using journey management, omnichannel, and analytics to enhance customer engagement and prove ROI.

Key findings in the APAC region highlight that:

Driving customer retention and improved customer satisfaction are the Chief Marketing Officer’s (CMO) top objectives: 71 percent of marketers believe that both, retaining existing customers and increasing customer satisfaction (71percent) are their top objectives; this is followed by, building brand awareness (64percent) and customer profitability (64percent), as joint secondary objectives.
Access to and breadth of information on competitive products/services available to customers is the top pressure: 71 percent of marketers find that customer access to competitive information on products/services has changed the dynamics of buyer relationships. There is a yawning 46 percent gap between this top pressure and the next – a lack of budget to execute desired marketing campaigns (25 percent) followed by the ability to generate enough content to fuel Omni-channel customer dialogue (18 percent).
Budget restraints don’t appear to be an issue: But the majority of marketers are not satisfied with their ability to use existing data when designing marketing programs to orchestrate buyer journeys. This matters more than the size of the budget.

The findings across all regions (Europe, APAC, North America and the Middle East & Africa) indicate that:

Managing customer journeys boosts financial performance: Companies that design and incorporate a customer journey management strategy, as part of their overall activities, enjoy a greater annual improvement in the return on marketing investment metric. These marketers also increase revenue from customer referrals by a significant percentage. In addition, this strategy addresses the challenge for CMO’s in meeting the demands of consumers and board members.

The full report can be accessed here (registration required).

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Heads in the cloud as Oracle hires hundreds

Jennene Kelly — Thu, 02 Jul 2015 00:09:04 +0000

Cloud computing might deliver the ultimate remote computing experience, but people still buy from people. That much is clear as Oracle reveals it has added over 800 salespeople to its Asia Pacific (APAC) workforce. Their task? Help make Oracle the world’s largest enterprise cloud company.

The announcement comes just three months after the company launched a campaign to increase its sales workforce by 1,000 to capitalise on the growth of cloud computing across APAC.

Oracle’s fiscal fourth-quarter results announced on June 17th showed cloud revenue already above a $2.3 billion annual run rate. Oracle sold $426 million in new Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) business this quarter. That’s more than any cloud services company has ever sold in a single quarter, it said in a statement.

“We are seeing significant momentum in our cloud business in APAC as more companies embrace cloud computing,” noted Loic Le Guisquet, Oracle president, EMEA & APAC. “Cloud is transforming businesses [and] this requires not only the best technologies, but also the best people. [We’re] expanding our sales force to help guide more companies through their cloud transformations.”

The salespeople are drawn from a wide array of backgrounds, from established IT companies to newly founded start-ups. New recruits also come from line of business positions in a wide variety of industry sectors such as finance, manufacturing, telecoms and utilities,’ so they already speak and understand the same language as customers in those industries’, said Oracle.

Tim Ebbeck, regional MD for Oracle Australia said, “Cloud is helping Australian and New Zealand businesses to grow, become agile, and innovate. Our recruitment campaign has enabled us to hire employees who can help our customers in achieve their business goals.”

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The benefits of ERP in the cloud

Jennene Kelly — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 03:38:16 +0000

The adoption of enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications running in the public cloud has increased significantly in recent years. Research from Forbes and ZDNET predicts an increasing adoption of ERP public cloud applications in the next five to 10 years, leading to disruption of the traditional deployment of ERP applications. When looking at the full spectrum of ERP, ranging from customer relationship management (CRM) and human capital management (HCM) to finance and supply chain management, we see that organisations usually start to adopt cloud applications to add value to distinctive business processes such as talent recruiting and management or sales automation. What are the key drivers supporting these decisions, and what are businesses achieving by adopting ERP in the cloud?

Faster time to value: Cloud applications enable the business to implement new functionality immediately and at a lower cost than with traditional on-premise implementations. With cloud applications, IT is focused on integration and security, and the cloud services vendor can be leveraged for these tasks. On-premise implementations require significantly more IT effort, and a lot of energy is focused on maintaining the consistency of the existing, often complex, IT environment. This complexity can prevent new functionality from being rolled out and usually results in higher IT cost and longer implementation time and effort for the business.

Increased innovation: With cloud applications, the functionality is deployed in a standardized manner. This means that all customers run the same software. As customisations are not allowed, new innovations can be rolled out much faster and the experience from the user group can be shared. Further, in most cases, cloud applications have standard innovations such as analytics, collaboration tools, and mobile support readily available.

Scalability with growth: ERP cloud applications enable business leaders to act immediately if they need to scale. Typically, after a pilot period, they can evaluate success and decide in what manner and at which pace the functionality can be rolled out in the business.

ERP cloud solutions have matured rapidly in recent years. Today, even core transactional processes in finance and procurement can be supported in a way that is suitable for most organisations. This leads to greater value and opens new business opportunities as described in the following cases based on real-live customer engagements.

Globalisation strategy
A professional service organisation had grown significantly in over 20 countries. Each country had implemented an on-premise finance solution tailored to country-specific needs. This resulted in a significant lack of transparency and insight into profitability and cost across the business. This bottleneck started to affect the ability for finance to support the business. ERP in the cloud enabled a new business opportunity. It avoided a high cost IT re-implementation and enabled an easier way for the organisation to redesign existing finance processes and procedures. As a result, this organisation started to move to a global, uniform, and scalable system. Other benefits enabled include improved collaboration between finance resources in different countries and consistent management information in various dimensions (country, resource, service line) available instantly when needed.

Business expansion
A medium-sized organisation on an acquisition strategy had inherited many ERP applications with bespoke business processes. The existing ERP systems could not scale to support the business, and processes became increasingly fragmented. If this situation were to continue, there was a risk that the number of back-office and IT staff members needed would increase significantly as the organisation continued to grow. Moving to ERP cloud applications enables this organisation to have a common platform for existing and future businesses designed to support best practice processes. With this platform, IT and back-office costs were mitigated while new functionality requirements could be introduced easily.

Managing an aging ERP environment

A medium-sized public sector organisation had adopted several ERP applications over the last ten to 15 years. This environment became increasingly customized. The result was that the cost of maintaining this environment had increased over the years and upgrades were mostly executed out of technical need and not functionality driven. Given the size of the organisation and its functionality requirements, the cost of ERP in the cloud was lower than maintaining the existing applications. In addition, the cloud functionality was richer.

These use cases indicate that ERP cloud solutions have matured to the point where they are a smart strategic alternative for many organisations—especially for those whose ERP system is focused around CRM, HCM, and finance management. In other cases, the traditional ERP suite can be replaced by a hybrid ERP environment consisting of a well-secured and integrated combination of public cloud for generic ERP capabilities and private cloud for business-specific ERP capabilities.

Chris Downie is Senior Director Applications Sales Consulting at Oracle

ARTICLE SUPPLIED BY//

Oracle
W: https://cloud.oracle.com/erp-cloud

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T: 1300 362 801
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Whitepaper: Five minutes on modern finance midsize edition

Jennene Kelly — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 03:01:08 +0000

If you are a growing midsize organisation, chances are you have outgrown your entry-level accounting system. More and more companies are turning to cloud ERP systems to modernise and lay the foundation for future growth. The advantages of an ERP solution delivered ‘as a service’ include an intuitive user experience, modern functionality and the ability to conduct business anywhere via mobile devices. Cloud ERP also offers more favourable economics with subscription-based licensing and minimal need for IT support. And, reduced implementation times offer you faster time-to-value.

However, careful management of the implementation project is necessary to ensure current and ongoing success. Essential criteria to consider include data migration from existing systems, taking advantage of best practices, and using the modern capabilities built into the new cloud applications.

There are five major steps involved in a cloud ERP implementation which will ensure success in the short and longer terms. They are:

Build a plan
System design
Data conversion
Systems integration
User adoption and training

To find out more download our free whitepaper – Five minutes on modern finance midsize edition.

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Finance and HR: A marriage made in cloud heaven

Jennene Kelly — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 01:59:56 +0000

In conversations with chief financial officers, there are a number of business issues that are common across industries and geographies. One such issue—finding and retaining the best finance talent—is a topic that can dramatically impact the CFO’s effectiveness within his or her own organisation.

Over the past several years, the role of the CFO has evolved from someone who keeps the books, to a more visionary and advisory role. Modern CFOs provide the essential reports, insight, and information needed to drive strategy around the boardroom table. This requires a new skill set—much different from the traditional accounting role.

The best CFOs have learned to ask themselves the following questions:

How is the role of finance officer changing?
What sort of skills do finance professionals need today?
How do I attract and retain the best talent?
Do I have the right technology in place to keep my best and brightest engaged and intellectually challenged?

Wall Street Journal Custom Studios recently issued a report that addresses some of the above questions. Winning the War for Finance Talent: Game Plan for the Digital Age provides six recommendations on how finance leaders can improve bench strength within their own organisations.

This infographic summarises the report’s six recommendations:

Recruit—and pay for—talent armed with a greater variety of skills.
Fill talent gaps by grooming from within.
Ask the right questions when analysing data—you want answers that propel your business.
Share data with your team or it has no value.
Use technology and data insights to read your customers’ needs more accurately—making you a better business partner.
Upgrade your technology to attract and retain the best and the brightest. If you don’t, you may lose gifted people to more modern rivals.

On the last recommendation, many finance offices are looking to the cloud to not only update their technology, but improve efficiency between finance and HR. A modern ERP and HCM cloud—with built-in social capabilities, data analysis and dashboards, designed for today’s mobile workforce—can provide the technology edge that CFOs need to attract, and retain, the best talent.

Doug Hughes is VP Apps for Oracle APAC.

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