ERP software is the backbone of many organizations. Oracle’s modern, connected cloud applications deliver the functionality, data analytics, security, mobile capabilities, and social collaboration tools needed to run a business efficiently. Their innovative cloud ERP is industry-leading in planning, forecasting, and financial reporting capabilities, with the simplicity of a unified cloud experience across applications.
Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Cloud and Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Cloud offer a complete, innovative, and proven solution for organizations of all sizes who want to thrive in the digital economy.
Helping customers meet industry standards and by using modern best practices, Oracle offers one cloud structure for the entire business. Oracle ERP Cloud is designed to scale as customers’ businesses grow, and it manages accounting, Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A), revenue recognition, risk management, governance, compliance, procurement, project planning, tax reporting, the financial close, and so much more.
The Oracle Cloud offers complete SaaS application suites for ERP, HCM and CX, plus best-in-class database Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from data centers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia.
An Oracle Financial Cloud Solutions Leader
Steve Cox is the group Vice-president of Oracle ERP EPM product marketing. Steve leads the go-to-market strategy for Oracle ERP Cloud and Oracle EPM Cloud solutions. Cox joined Oracle in 1997. Prior to his current role, he held various management positions within Oracle, including product marketing, consulting, and development.
Steve holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of Bath. He is the author of Modern Best Practice Explained, an ebook articulating the next generation of business processes needed by organizations embarking on digital transformation.
Delivering Industry-Leading Cloud ERP
Oracle has used their deep business experience to form one of the strongest and most complete ERP cloud portfolios on the market. Oracle is a name trusted by companies in all industries across the globe to help them get the utmost efficiency and innovation from the cloud. Their ERP Cloud solution gives customers the insights they need to make better-informed financial and resource decisions.
Oracle knows there are a range of choices for customers who are using ERP for the first time or looking to replace/upgrade their existing infrastructure—but stresses the selection should be guided by which provider can best support the evolution and growth of your business. The Oracle ERP Cloud solution provides for the needs of your business now and in the future. It is mobile, has built-in analytics, and includes secure social collaboration.
Oracle partners with customers to achieve their business goals – assembling the right team to ensure that everyone’s needs are met, identifing the technical needs for their cloud ERP, building a business case to secure C-level buy-in – including a detailed ROI forecast – and working with the customer to define what cloud ERP success looks like for their business.
They provide cloud customers with a minimum of two upgrades per year, which deliver additional features, better experiences, and new technological capabilities, whereas an on-premises solution might do an upgrade every five years or so. Thus, Oracle’s cloud customers can get to the business at hand to plan their next competitive disruption, rather than spending time planning a future software upgrade project.
Enhancing Business Processes with New Technologies
Oracle ERP and EPM Cloud offer a complete solution to streamline every part of the modern finance puzzle with solutions for: financials, revenue management, project management and finances, performance management and reporting, procurement, project portfolio management, order management, inventory, accounting, and risk management.
As a part of Oracle’s ongoing R&D and innovation efforts, Oracle will amplify its cloud applications, including ERP Cloud, with artificial intelligence and machine learning. Steve asserts, “I’m more than a little enthusiastic about the promise of our new Adaptive Intelligent Applications and the benefits they’ll have for our customers. Our competitors, of course, have a narrative around AI and machine learning, but we’re outcome-focused, working to improve business results for our customers with adaptive intelligence and many other emerging technologies.”
Leveraging insights confined within Oracle’s Data Cloud, which is a collection of more than 5+ billion consumer and business profiles, with over 45,000 attributes, Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Applications will use Oracle’s web-scale data and apply advanced data science to learn and ingest the data about an organization’s users and their behaviors. They then deliver targeted information to customers and employees. The great benefit is that the Applications will automatically offer individualized recommended actions to streamline the tasks of business users, including finance professionals.
A Vision for the Future
Oracle develops and invests substantially in R&D, bringing the latest business software innovations for customers to use as needed. Additionally, using global customer input, they’re constantly working to push the boundaries to enable customers to do more with ERP Cloud.
While describing their competitive strategy, Steve says, “I’m lucky, as I get to meet and listen to hundreds of customers both one-to-one at our focus groups and at Oracle events around the world such as Modern Finance Experience and Modern Business Experience, Cloud World and our Digital Days. I’m a voracious reader, with Forbes, Inc., WIRED, Fast Company, and HBR at the top of my list, and I’m always looking for new ideas on Medium and from the Twitter feeds of The World Economic Forum, Bain & Company, and so many blogs.”
Oracle continues to innovate their cloud solutions. They have developed their own Cloud Applications so that they can harmonize with other systems. In moving to customers to the cloud, they help them to either advance a single process such as supplier qualification, planning and budgeting, or to modernize parts of their business, such as a subsidiary. Modernizing a subsidiary with Oracle ERP Cloud and uniting it back to the overall group systems can be the first step to link their existing finance system to the cloud.
