SaaS can empower businesses to emerge as leaders during crisis: Oracle

Businesses that are agile and able to adapt to change quickly will emerge as leaders during a crisis such as the on-going COVID-19. It is crucial in times of crisis that businesses continue to innovate and pivot in order to achieve their business goals, says Oracle Cloud Applications (SaaS), Japan and Asia

Pacific Senior Vice President Adrian Johnston in this interview. Noting that it is crucial in times of crisis that businesses continue to innovate and pivot in order to achieve their business goals, Johnston emphasised emerging technologies are impacting business outcomes, especially in today’s unprecedented times. “This is why many organisations are turning to software as a service (SaaS) consumption models to more easily “turn on” subscription models for their finance, operations, HR, digital supply chain and customer experience departments,” notes Johnston adding a modern suite of SaaS applications provides a complete, agile, secure, and integrated solution for an entire business. Here are excerpts 

Q: How can technology help organisations support their business continuity in today’s extraordinary business climate in the Asia Pacific region? 

A: With organisations facing business continuity, cash flow and supply chain challenges, it is more important than ever for them to have a strong foundation in place for their business systems. Whether we are talking about people, processes, security, or technology, businesses that are agile and able to adapt to change quickly will emerge as leaders during this crisis. 

It is crucial in times of crisis that businesses continue to innovate and pivot in order to achieve their business goals. Managing core processes and customer experience data on a single platform helps create operational efficiency, improves insights, enhances decision-making and enables businesses to be nimble and outpace market changes.

A modern suite of software as a service (SaaS) applications provides a complete, agile, secure, and integrated solution for an entire business, across finance and accounting, procurement, project management, supply chain, transportation management, HR, sales, customer service, marketing and more.

Q: Can you provide some examples on how SaaS solutions, including ERP, SCM, HCM and CX, are helping your customers in the region to cope with business disruptions? 

A: In recent times, many companies’ employees have had to shift their way of working from operating at their offices to working from home. This change has brought new ways of working digitally and some finance teams have experienced an easier transition than others with the help of cloud technology that is automating their business processes and allowing them to better cope with closing the books, remotely.

One such example is ‘Asia Commercial Bank’, one of the largest retail banks in Vietnam that has deployed Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Cloud to streamline all finance, procurement and project expense management processes. With this cloud solution in place, the bank has been able to accelerate its month-end close and reporting cycles by 50%. Moving to the cloud also meant it no longer had to manage these applications in its own data centre.

Another example of a successful use of technology to enable business continuity is ‘SRL Diagnostics’, one of India’s largest private-testing laboratories. This laboratory is using Oracle Service Cloud to manage a high volume of queries from their patients coming through to their website, mobile app and calls to the customer service centre. Patients can now receive results of any tests within 24 hours via various digital channels like email, etc. 

‘Save the children’, the largest operating child rights humanitarian non-profit organisation in India, is working round-the-clock to make sure that life gets a little easier for underprivileged sections of the society. The NPO is using Oracle ERP Cloud and Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud to enable seamless flow of supplies, resources, funds and procurement and make sure that there is no disruption in the relief work. 

Q: Automation is becoming a necessity for large-scale organisations to support their business continuity. How are your SaaS customers getting better benefits by leveraging emerging technologies as compared to on-premise solutions?

A: Emerging technologies are impacting business outcomes, especially in today’s unprecedented times. Highly customized, on-premise solutions are siloed and often require multiyear deployments to get things right. They simply lack the agility, speed, interoperability and simplicity required to tap into the business benefits of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital assistants and Internet of Things (IoT). This is why many organisations are turning to SaaS consumption models to more easily “turn on” subscription models for their finance, operations, HR, digital supply chain and customer experience departments. 

One such example is ‘Inland Revenue Authority’ in New Zealand which adopted Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Cloud to run all its projects and save time. Previously, its budgets were managed in spreadsheets that required a lot of manual work to fill-in or update. With the new cloud solution and easy access to emerging technologies, all the information is captured in one solution, which became single source of truth and eliminated extra manual work.

Q: How do you see technologies like AI and Machine Learning transforming the finance function from a support function to a strategic one?

A: Oracle and Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) recently published a Competitive Edge Report based on a global survey of 700 finance and operations managers, and executives across 13 countries. This research found that emerging technologies have passed the adoption tipping point. Now they are exceeding expectations and creating significant competitive advantage for organisations. Firstly, the report revealed that 85% of respondents believe AI and Machine Learning are “catalysts for change” needed for finance organisations to transform from reporting on “what” is happening in the business to “why” things are happening. 

Secondly, 83% of CFO respondents agree that AI will help them rethink outdated business processes and strategies by completely automating them. Thirdly, 74% of respondents agree intelligent automation will be critical for them to keep pace with rapidly shifting regulations.

Q: Companies are adopting new practices to achieve business continuity and smooth transitions to remote working. Can you give us some examples on how companies can stay efficient with new work from home mandates?

A: Many organisations and their HR teams are facing new and unprecedented challenges. Most have never operated with remote employees and are looking to find the best solution to make their employees’ work-from-home experience an easy and a productive one. 

SaaS human capital management (HCM) applications can help by removing functional limitations and providing high-security platforms that can support business continuity anytime, anywhere and on any device.

In an effort to help our HCM customers cope with current situation, we are also providing free access to the Workforce Health and Safety module in Oracle HCM Cloud, which helps organisations track infected employees, manage data regarding the incident etc. We think of this module as an “incident response button”, that provides HR professionals and managers with a number of ways to help take the necessary actions to help keep employees safe.

Q: Oracle acquired CrowdTwist, the cloud native customer loyalty solution last year. How will this strengthen and work for your CX?  

A: Oracle has acquired CrowdTwist, the leading cloud-native customer loyalty solution to empower brands to offer personalised customer experiences. In today’s environment, this transaction can help organisations of all sizes deliver personalised engagement and extend loyalty and reward programs. Ultimately, this helps them keep their customers.

Q: It is known that Oracle has continuously strengthened collaborative functionalities in its HCM and other SaaS solutions. Could you please explain how you can help people collaborate in a context of my earlier question? 

A: As companies are finding new ways of operating in today’s business environment, their employees need to take many steps to ensure the transition is smooth with the least disruption possible. For example, finance teams in Asia Pacific have had to shift their way of working from their offices to working from home for the first time and have to deal with the crucial task of closing their books remotely. 

Finance teams in companies that rely heavily on cloud-computing technology to automate accruals, adjustments and internal transactions could be in for a smoother close than those who use on-premise technology on virtual private networks or enter data into spreadsheets manually. This is because companies that have not adopted cloud technology are finding that virtual private networks are not optimised and built for speed, thus causing spreadsheets to incur errors more often than not.

When finance systems are delivered via a SaaS model, it provides an inherent advantage. Not only can finance teams access the system remotely, they can work via their mobile devices. They have one set of shared data, integrated workflows, and always-up-to-date technology. They also don’t need to worry about security.

Hindalco Industries Ltd., a flagship aluminium and copper manufacturing company in India, used to face multiple challenges when it came to seamless collection of data from various locations and then filing financial reports on a real-time basis. The ability to close books quickly – with quality, accuracy and in full compliance with regulatory standards is a critical challenge that can impact a company negatively, if standards are not met. To simplify their processes, Hindalco adopted Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Cloud and streamlined their financial management and regulatory reports by utilising the power of data and smart automation in a cost-effective manner.

Q: One of the key focus areas for Oracle last year was AI. Are there any meaningful business achievements and best practice cases coming from it? 

A: Embedding AI, machine learning, and smart chatbots into core applications means customers’ day-to-day business processes run more smoothly, compliance and security risks decrease, decision-making improves, and their teams have more time and mindshare for strategic thinking. 

For example, NEC, a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics company, has adopted Oracle EPM Cloud to automate previously manual processes and streamline financial data across its rapidly growing global operations. With AI and data-driven features embedded in this cloud application, NEC can now analyse all data received from overseas subsidiaries on a single platform and improve their decision-making processes. 

Unilever, a multinational consumer goods company, has adopted Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) Cloud in India to leverage AI and IoT to make data-driven decisions. As a result, the company has succeeded in better management of vehicles required for transportation and optimisation of their routes, which resulted in reduced fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. The company is also using AI to combine internal and external data, and build models that help it predict the weather or traffic patterns.