Mobile Metrics in a Minute - how Oracle Analytics Mobile helps transform Oracle Global Business Finance (GBF)

The COVID pandemic may have modified our business travel patterns, but it hasn’t changed our need to see up-to-date key business metrics on-the-go.  That ability is still a game-changer that provides yet another arrow in our Oracle Global Business Finance Transformation quiver.

Launched in mid 2022, Oracle Analytics mobile app was a natural evolution in our automation journey. The initiative was kicked off with the Global Oracle Analytics Challenge, in which all Global Business Finance (GBF) staff were invited to create and submit mobile workbooks which they felt would be of value to their business partners.

Over 50 workbooks were proffered from across the global organisation, covering multiple subject matters including Opportunity Pipeline, P&L, Headcount, and Quarterly Close, as well as a host of Management summaries.  The 5 best submissions received awards.

Importantly, the Challenge gave the GBF team immediate focus on, and enthusiasm for, this new tool.  It allowed us a practical opportunity to highlight best (and, in some cases, less than best!) practice right from the outset, before bad habits had a chance to form.

The starting point for most mobile workbooks is an existing desktop workbook. We quickly established that fundamental to mobile success was to focus on high level key metrics, avoiding detailed reports if possible, and targeting primarily those metrics which are likely to be dynamic. For example, prior period comparisons, whilst valuable, do not change rapidly and as such do not necessarily need to feature prominently in on-the-go updates.

Our colleagues use centrally created templates as a foundation and then modify them to meet the specific requirements of their respective business partners.  We capitalized on that as a key part of our fast-start strategy, creating a broad range of Global Standard mobile workbooks to complement the equivalent Global Standard desktop workbooks.

In addition to the speed we achieved using templates, we were able to deliver an easy-to-use experience due to the wide assortment of Oracle Analytics mobile app formatting options.  This enabled us to ensure that the analytics are as visually pleasing and easily consumable as possible – again, key attributes if one expects busy executives to readily adopt the tool.

But we are only at the beginning of our mobile analytics journey…

We are currently putting the final touches on a high level a workbook targeted at our most senior executives, which will enable them to monitor quarter-end progress anytime, anywhere.

Similarly, we are in the closing stages of migrating our highly successful Role Based Dashboards (RBDs) to Oracle Analytics mobile from Oracle Business Intelligence. These RBDs are targeted at all levels of business management and, as the name implies, are focused on specific roles within the organisation.

Critically, all this can be done in a secure manner, with our team safe in the knowledge that the mobile version of Oracle Analytics inherits the robust security of the underlying Oracle Analytics platform.

In the next 6 to 12 months, we are planning to expand our workbooks to include the existing Natural Language Query capabilities of Oracle Analytics, so users can simply  voice a query into their device by asking “What is the status of opportunity XYZ?”; “What are my bookings to date this quarter?”;  “What are my top 10 deals this quarter?” – to get an immediate update on the health of one’s business.

Clearly there is much to look forward to with the Oracle Analytics mobile app – including tons of functionality to get started with right away. Having up-to-date key business metrics right at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere is already a transformational leap forward in effectively servicing our business partners.

Learn more:

What is Oracle Analytics?

Oracle Analytics mobile app tour