January 23rd, 2017
Elire at Oracle CloudWorld 2017!
Last week Team Elire was able to attend Oracle CloudWorld in NYC. The team enjoyed a full day of customer focused keynotes and live demo sessions, as well as networking activities. Here’s a recap of what you missed!
The Marketplace
The team found the Oracle Keynotes to be informative and data driven to show how the ecosystem is changing with the workforce becoming younger and more demanding, which is influencing companies buying habits. The global economy is growing, but not at the same rate in each region or country. IT Growth tends to follow GDP growth, but only 3% of GDP is IT related, and it’s mostly coming from China. Top Cloud companies like Oracle, Amazon, and SalesForce have experience 44% growth, while IT budgets are not growing. Executives are focusing on moving their IT budgets from maintenance to innovation, which is creating an appetite for cloud solutions. As much as 85% of CEO’s think their investment in Cloud will increase.
The Competition
In terms of Cloud companies, Oracle is ahead of the curve with security and patches. From an HCM Cloud perspective, the focus for Oracle has been on the employee self-service framework, peer collaboration, and managers having real-time access to tools and analytics geared around employee data. Currently Hybrid environments are the norm (a combination of on-premise applications with some Oracle Cloud solutions), however, more customers are going to 100% Cloud as the application availability and maturity rises.
The Customers
General Electric (GE) has taken their full financials and moved to the cloud with 22 modules total. Seven modules have went live in the US and Canada within four and a half months, with Phase two being 13 modules in five countries. Kraft Heinz is currently using on premise ERP and implementing Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS).
Two case studies were also presented. The first was Irving Materials, a Midwest construction company was an existing Oracle 11i customer. They decided to move to cloud because of maintenance. They had a tough time handling patches and upgrading themselves, so moving to cloud was the right move for them – along with the flexibility needed for rapid growth through acquisitions. Prior to moving to cloud they needed 4-6 hours for running financials reports, now it only takes minutes.
The second case study was on Bluebird bio, a Gene Therapy Biopharma company out of Cambridge, MA. They chose Oracle to help scale, their global presence, user experience, budget, and quick implementation timeline. Bluebird started with Oracle HCM, PBCS, and then contracts. They were also able to integrate with lost of third party solutions like using ADP. After their initial implementations, they have also added most of the ERP suite excluding Accounts Receivable.
Implementation Success Tips
Successful clients shared their tips and tricks for having a successful adoption of Cloud technologies. The main points are:
- Go Enterprise Where you can
- Engage vendors early to interface with your third party applications
- Phases, phases, phases
- Change management is essential. Have a plan for your users
- Leverage best practices
- Celebrate milestones
- Leverage your Oracle relationships in addition to My Oracle Support
- Utilize niche implementation partners rather than using one – utilize partners specialized in Contracts, HCM, etc.
- Send users to online training after Go Live – start early and add additional training if needed
For more information on Oracle CloudWorld 2017, check out the event website: https://go.oracle.com/cloudworldnewyork
Interested in a demo or more information on the Oracle Cloud suite of applications? Email [email protected] to set up a time to speak with our experts.
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