Oracle Financials Strategy

A co-worker sent me the link to an article, "Managing Your Reputation Online", that discusses the well-known fact that people google you.  I was never one to stress about people googling me, but this article may change all of that. According to this article I now need to manage my online identity.  My first thought..."how much time is this going to take?", my second thought....."will I be delayed at the airport because of my online identity?"  The good news is that there are tools available to help you manage your online identity like a "calculator" that can determine your google quotient. 


After reading this article and calculating my identity, I pondered......who the "bleep" am I really?  My conclusion, Sybil.   Seriously, I have varied interests and varied groups of friends, and only rarely, do they get to intermingle, and it's almost always on my terms.

Initially, I was stressed about having to manage my online identity, but after a few deep breaths and a quick-personality-change, my heart has quit racing.  My online identity is not Disastrous, and I haven't been Dissed...so at least I don't need to hire a pr firm for damage control.  With Bazooka Joe's help (only 3 out of the top 30 references were really ME), I'm merely Digitally Dabbling. In essence, this means I get to create a new personality to add to the mix.  Hopefully, all of those other personalities will keep quiet and let this online identity coexist...I don't really want to be known as Internet Sybil!  Stick around to see if I can keep my online reputation in check...is yours in check?

The subject of check fraud in the corporate world never seems to leave the minds of the cash and treasury professionals in the U.S.

Recently, one particular check fraud scheme, discussed on one of the AFP's forums, caught my attention. It was simple and brilliant. The scheme relied on the loophole in the basic logic of paper check clearing. I will not go into the details here, lest some impressionable minds decide to replicate it. But what is worthwhile mentioning about this scheme is that you will find it pretty much impossible to implement it if the paper check did not exist.

So, why, in the age of smart phones, VoIP and GPS (or scramjet, nanotechnology and bioengineering), do the U.S. businesses still rely so heavily on what is believed to be the invention of the ancient Romans in the first century B.C. and what seems to carry infinite fraud potential?

Popular Opinion #1: Checks are a cheap payment option.

I personally think that anything that has to be printed on paper and chauffeured around by a uniformed guard in an armored truck is likely to cost you more.

Popular Opinion #2: Electronic payments equal electronic fraud.

The talent pool dries up pretty fast if the crooks have to use something more expensive and complicated than a color scanner/copier.

Popular Opinion #3: In the electronic world, once a malevolent person gets hold of your bank account information, you are toast.

I have to tell you that your paper check is doing an equally poor job of hiding your bank account information from the wrong eyes. Moreover, how do you explain that many European companies rouutinely post their IBAN and their bank's BIC code in the open on their web-sites?

Am I, perhaps, unjustly biased against the paper check because I work for an ERP vendor? Hardly. An ERP system can spit out a paper check or make an electronic payment equally efficiently. The choice is yours.

As many of you are probably aware, OpenWorld is only about a month away.  Over the next few weeks, we'll start to blog about many of our sessions and try to keep you up to date on All Things OpenWorld. 

For starters, please join us and your EBS Financials peers by joining the E-Business Suite Financials group on OpenWorld Connect.  This will help you  network with like-minded folks that are familiar with EBS Financials.  You can post questions associated with OpenWorld, and we'll attempt to answer any questions you may have.

Hope to see you at OpenWorld and network with you on Connect!

Just thought I'd offer a quick look into Terrance's Financials R12 and Beyond presentation at Open World  As Joe mentioned in a previous post, Financials is turning 20 years old this year,  so we'll be looking back a bit, and also taking a peek into the future.  First, Terrance will talk about the origins of Release 12 - what our customers were saying that helped the release to take shape, as well as how the macro business environment pressures helped to make it what it is.  Then, he'll talk about Release 12's Global Business Architecture and how it is really a foundation for future innovation (read: Fusion).  He'll talk about our very closely related GRC and EPM suites and how they compliment our current Financial Management solution.  Finally, he'll talk a bit about the future of Oracle Financials - from the new Oracle Reports Repository which is our Web 2.0 based report sharing site, to the highlights of Release 12.1 and then just a glimpse into Fusion.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that this session has got a special guest.  We know you don't just want to hear it from us, so the CIO of a major international airline who just recently went live on Financials Release 12 will take the stage and say a few words.  Sound interesting?  We think it should be.

What do we really mean by get more with less?

Well, think back to the early 1990s when many global corporations processed and stored data in multiple instances, perhaps due to decentralized business operations or due to operations in multiple geographies. IT maintenance cost was high in supporting multiple instances that could potentially span a variety of software applications and thus requiring many different skills from a varied pool of IT staff. Not only the cost of IT was a problem but also the ability to get a single global view of data and to prove appropriate governance, risk and control was in place. 

Companies operating globally today need to be very competitive, keeping their cost low and provide their customers with consistent pricing around the world as well as a consistent interaction with their customers. This is where consolidation of ERP instances can bring tremendous benefits. Having a single instance significantly lowers your IT cost, in terms of maintenance (patching, upgrades) and getting a global view of your data. However, there are also other aspects you can consider for efficiency savings, such as streamlining your business processes and reviewing your staffing allocations (for instance centralization of functions through shared service centers). 

Come to this session to learn how three companies in three different industries each consolidated their ERP instances, streamlined their business processes and achieved great benefits. These three companies are MasterCard, Symantec and British Telecom � today all on Oracle Financials Release 11i.

So don�t miss the panel session on Consolidating ERP Instances at Oracle OpenWorld on Monday November 12, 2007 at 4:45 p.m. Remember, you get to ask your burning questions too.

ERP Instance Consolidations: the benefits can be tremendous, but they don't come for free and getting it right can be a stressful process. So is ERP Consolidation for you? How can you tell?

We have two sessions on ERP Consolidation running at Openworld this year to help you.

The panel session on Monday 12 November at 4.45pm is a great showcase for three customer stories from Mastercard, Symantec and BT (see the previous post for more details).

On Wednesday 14 November at 11.15am we will be welcoming BT back to present a case study on their ERP Consolidation project, diving into more details of what they have done, how they have done it, and what have been the end results. BT's case study is compelling because they are very clear on the reasons for this project and the benefits they expect, but you will also hear from them about the realities of the effort you need to put into the process.

In the spirit of motivating you to think about ERP Consolidations, here's my "Motivation for Consolidation" Top 5 Chart, based on some of the lessons learned at BT:

5. What Do I Get - The Buzzcocks

Know what you want to achieve. There will be some hard savings and some softer benefits that are difficult to quantify (such as customer satisfaction from 'right first time' reference data).

4. We Are The Champions - Queen

Executive sponsorship and governance are vital to keep the project on track and bring everyone together.

3. You Can't Always Get What You Want - The Rolling Stones

... 'But if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need'. Establishing shared processes will not make everyone in your organization 100% happy, each must accept some trade offs to achieve a common goal.

2. Every Day Is A Winding Road - Sheryl Crow

Everything is a work in progress as your business evolves and your consolidation program matures. Be flexible about your roadmap, and understand the size, complexity and cost of your journey.

1. You Can Get It If You Really Want - Desmond Dekker

The benefits of ERP Consolidation are achievable! Oracle has been through this transformation itself, as have many of our customers. But as the song goes... 'You must try, try and try, try and try, you'll succeed at last'.

Click on the links, listen to the samples, and get inspired! Once I got started I thought of loads more, but I'm running out of space, so I'd love to know what song would be on your soundtrack for ERP Consolidation, and why....

Day 1

I am in Boston. The team is arriving. The Oracle booth is set up on the exhibition floor of the AFP Annual Conference. Saddle up, lock and load!

Day 2

The most popular question that I hear is "Can you show me what you have for treasury?" Music to my ears. So much better than what we used to hear a few years back: "Huh? Oracle has a treasury solution?"

Day 3

It is the closing night reception and the crew is about to start ripping the carpet off the floor, but we are still giving product demos to the martini-wielding crowd! This is our fifth time exhibiting here, but the amount of interest we receive does not seem to wane.

Day 4

As I am boarding my plane at the Boston Logan airport, I notice that a gentleman in front of me has a red Oracle logo pen (as seen in the picture below) latched onto his laptop bag. This puts a BIG smile on my face.