Tony Kender Blog

If you are an IT decision-maker of a midsize organization, chances are you don’t philosophically doubt the capabilities of Oracle applications. But when it’s your turn to pick an integrated enterprise application suite—in this economy—how can you be confident that one of our Accelerate solutions will be fast, affordable, and rapidly deliver the value you need?

The answer in part can be attributed to the essential role the partner plays in each and every Accelerate solution implementation. When a partner signs up to offer an Accelerate solution reviewed by Oracle, they significantly change the way they engage with customers. By offering a fixed price, fixed scope rapid implementation the partner is typically going to make less money up front than they do in a “traditional” ERP implementation.

Why would they do that?

Short projects with fixed scopes that don’t go over budget make customers happy. No customer wants to manage an over-budget and delayed project, not to mention explain the situation to executives and other stakeholders. Our partners know that happy customers are repeat buyers. If they do their job well, these partners expect that they’ll make more money in the long run—as their customers thrive. It’s your basic, “what goes around comes around” situation.

That’s a simple explanation that doesn’t fully acknowledge the experience and expertise required to adopt this business model. Recently, I was involved with a series of partner interviews for an Oracle Profit Online magazine article, “Accelerating Growth in a Down Economy”. As usual, our partners proved they have their finger on the pulse of midsize organizations.

Deb Arnold, a principal at DAZ Systems, Inc. puts it this way. “In this economy, people are more scared than usual. They are taking longer to make decisions. But traditionally when times are tough, companies that are doing ok but not growing take the opportunity to do work that they may not have had time to do—putting in additional modules, changing, or upgrading.”

The Oracle Accelerate approach is helping DAZ grow. They’ve leveraged their expertise in Manufacturing and High Tech to build a hybrid offering for clean energy companies. They have five customers for this new offering already.

Vince Vickers, SVP of Zanett Consulting expanded on how Accelerate helped them zero in on the right customers. “Accelerate allowed us to focus on specific industries. Technology is not a risk any longer. It’s a paradigm shift where you assume the technology will perform. In this economy, what is truly important is to go in, understand a customer’s specific business problem, and adapt technology to it. The reality is that clients need to understand how an IT solution is going to help them and when they are going to get value out of it.”

That reminded me of a conversation I had awhile back with Shane Moncrieff, principal at Jibe Consulting in Portland. I had asked him about how strict they were in sticking to the fixed scope of their Accelerate solution. After all, when customers see all that Oracle applications can do some get that “kid in a candy store” mentality. They want it all—now.

“We keep them laser-focused on the agreed upon scope,” Shane said. “We want them to start realizing benefits immediately. That almost guarantees satisfaction and they will bring us back in later to add capabilities.”

That takes guts—to turn down revenue now as an investment in a long-term relationship. But it’s just what you should expect from our Accelerate solution providers.

The statements and opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of Oracle Corporation.

In my last post, I made the assertion that the core tenets of Oracle Accelerate—launched when the Dow was near its all time high—may be even more relevant now that the economy is strained. My next few posts will expound on that claim.

For the most part, midsize companies have not abandoned their IT plans but instead have revised their strategies. The emphasis now is on shorter projects that cost less and have a well-defined ROI that is certain to be realized quickly.

I recently had a conversation with Fredric Paul for his blog on bMighty.com about the importance of midsize companies taking an industry—a vertical—view as they build their first enterprise applications strategies. Ignoring or postponing industry-specific needs will undoubtedly lead to a “rip and replace” scenario down the road. Such a situation might emerge due to growth or changing conditions within their industry. No midsize company can really afford to take that risk.

A vertical approach is important not just in the long term but for the initial implementation as well. Since the focus now is on short projects with rapid ROI. ERP implementations must have a well-defined scope to stay on time and on budget. And it shouldn’t take longer to define the scope than it does to implement the applications.

That’s why many of our partners take a phased approach for their Accelerate solutions. The scope of these phases varies by industry segment and company life stage. Startups with big aspirations are likely to focus the initial implementation just on consolidating all financial information in one place. That makes sense for so many reasons—regulatory compliance, reporting, and establishing efficient back office processes before products are even shipped. For established companies with multiple legacy systems in place, the initial phase may be a basic footprint of all the core applications needed to operate within their industry—maybe financial management, supply chain, inventory, warehousing, manufacturing, and order management.

Most midsize organizations can expect this initial phase to take about three months. Oracle partners employ methodologies that reflect their local vertical segment expertise and the industry best practices of Oracle Business Accelerators. This goes for both the initial phase as well as likely scenarios for subsequent phases. Their goal is to develop a long-term relationship in which they supplement each customer’s expertise and internal bandwidth as needed when they expand their Oracle applications footprint.

Always, the end goals are the same:
• Implement only what you need now
• Do it quickly so that you can realize benefits immediately
• Keep all your information in one place
• Don’t close any doors to future needs

Paul and I also discussed the various definitions for small and midsize businesses. I guess those definitions are necessary to articulate the differences between companies based on size. But to me it’s all about industry needs.

A $100 million importer of consumer goods is going to have the same complex supply chain as one that is $1 billion or more. The difference is the resources (budget and staff) each has to apply to optimizing that supply chain.

Oracle Accelerate offers the same applications to midsize companies as we do to some of the largest companies in the world. And we make it affordable and manageable by pricing our solutions appropriate to the company’s size and by delivering them via a phased approach unique to each industry segment.

"The statements and opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of Oracle Corporation.

Rumors of a global economic downturn circulated for many months before the bottom dropped out in September. Up until that point, we all hoped those rumors weren’t true or at least that the impact would be short lived.

But now, virtually every business must acknowledge the proverbial “elephant in the room”—that tough economic times have taken a seat in the board room and no one really knows when they’ll be leaving. Last year’s marketing and sales strategies—meticulously crafted and reviewed in long, iterative processes—have been thrown out the window and quickly replaced with messaging and tactics befitting a turbulent economy. We’ve all been there.

Like you, I get invited to attend a lot of seminars and webcasts. I’ve noticed that—almost overnight—the themes have changed. Gone are cheery topics focused on growth and expansion, replaced with sober subjects like cash flow and balance sheet health. It seems that now, IT projects—like all other capital expenditures—must find their way through the office of the CFO.

So…what does all this mean to midsize companies considering new enterprise applications deployments? Do they just give up? Or, does everyone just hunker down and do nothing until the storm passes and blue skies are on the horizon?

For midsize organizations, that’s not an option. Standing still is the same as giving up. They are fighting for survival and, increasingly, their IT infrastructure is what enables them to go toe-to-toe with the big guys. Their large competitors are not sitting still. Yet money is tight.—

But that’s the way it’s always been. It’s never been easy financially to start a small company and dare to grow it into a midsize or even large organization. Cash flow and balance sheet health have always been major challenges facing midsize companies. And…CIO’s and IT managers at midsize companies are well versed in having to scope projects that ultimately must get the nod from the CFO.

What’s different now?

The Holidays are a good time to catch up with customers. I’m hearing the full spectrum out there. For companies with diversified customer bases—or those in the right place at the right time—IT plans haven’t changed much. At the other end of the spectrum, some organizations have seen a major drop off in demand and are postponing projects until they know better where the economy is going.

For most of our midsize customers, it’s somewhere in between. Every capital expenditure—including those for IT—is being scrutinized over and over again. There is a greater focus on project definition and execution planning as well as accurately quantifying the anticipated benefits. For IT projects, that means controlled scope, low risk undertakings with a short timeline and tangible benefits that will be realized quickly. Customers tell me they are still getting projects through the CFO if they meet those requirements.

When I hear this, you know what I think? That’s exactly why we launched our Oracle Accelerate initiative two years ago. Growing midsize companies have always been risk averse and always focused on only undertaking capital expenditures that will show rapid rewards to the bottom line. Oracle Accelerate implementations of our enterprise applications feature low cost software with short timelines. They’re delivered by partners who’ve done it many times before so that our midsize customers have confidence that the project will come in on time and on budget. Customers start realizing benefits within a very short time—usually within 3 to 6 months. Oracle Accelerate gives the midsize company enterprise class software, quickly and inexpensively, which allows them to compete better. When the “economic dust” settles, Oracle Accelerate customers will be in a stronger position than before.

Bottom line—in many ways, nothing has changed—while in others, everything has changed. Leaders of midsize organizations have always embraced the entrepreneurial spirit and have never expected—or wanted—things to be safe and comfortable. Of course, we all look forward to better economic times but our customers will make it through this just fine.

Hello everyone. I’m Tony Kender, Senior Vice President of Oracle’s Global Accelerate Program office. This is my first post and I want to take this opportunity to recognize and celebrate the second “birthday” of our Oracle Accelerate initiative.

Oracle Accelerate solutions for midsize organizations are fixed price, fixed scope implementations of enterprise applications developed and delivered rapidly by Oracle Certified and Certified Advantage partners. We launched this program just two years ago, and we just celebrated having 200 solutions in market worldwide. Having been there from the start, I’m very proud to see the Accelerate team and our valuable partners achieve this significant milestone.

At Oracle, we recognize that midsize companies and government entities have the same complex business requirements as large entities—but without the same budget and staff resources. Consequently, midsize companies look to established, trusted partners to help them quickly build integrated enterprise technology platforms to support profitable growth.

Oracle Accelerate is a three-legged stool. First, Oracle provides applications with industry-specific capabilities so that our customers don’t have to customize. This includes our enterprise application suites— the Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and PeopleSoft Enterprise—as well as some best-of-breed solutions like Oracle’s Agile PLM, Oracle’s Demantra and Siebel CRM. Secondly, Oracle partners with documented expertise complete a review process with my team to bring an industry solution to market in a specific geography. Finally, these partners use Oracle Business Accelerators—rapid implementation tools that reflect industry best practices—to complete the project quickly within a pre-defined budget and timeline. Oracle enables its partners to provide midsize companies with the best of all worlds – industry specific, enterprise class software at a low price that is implemented quickly to realize fast time to value.

Our most recent launch included new solutions in every global region and the first Accelerate solutions for Oracle’s Demantra and Oracle CRM On Demand. The program has gone from infancy to maturity in a very short time and the momentum continues to grow.

Check out the links in the sidebar to learn more about Oracle Accelerate, and join me on mix.oracle.com to keep the conversation going. It’s time for me to go cut the cake.