What it takes to successfully move to the cloud: 5 secrets our clients shared during CloudWorld 2023

It’s been little over a week since Oracle CloudWorld 2023 wrapped up in Vegas. The event was incredible, and like in years past, I continue to come away in awe of the amazing things our customers have been able to accomplish since making the leap to Oracle Cloud.

But taking that leap from on premise to the cloud can be a challenging journey because, let’s face it, change in the cloud is different.

During the event, our consulting experts and I had the honor of joining many of our clients on stage where they shared details about their journey to Oracle Cloud, including keys to success and lessons learned.

Below are five key learnings from our clients and consulting experts that I hope will help to guide you on a successful journey to the cloud.

1. Embrace key culture traits to drive successful cloud adoption

Oracle’s VP of Transformation and Strategic Services, Betsie Reynolds, really knows what it takes for organizations to successfully transition to the cloud.

During her standing-room-only session, Cloud Culture: The Hidden Secret to Successful Transformation to the Cloud, Betsie explained that moving to the cloud is not just a technology transformation; it’s a new way of working. She focused on 3 key cultural drivers that are critical to embrace to drive a successful journey to the cloud, including:  

• Collaboration: Enable collaboration beyond your immediate team to include the whole organization. Cloud is an inclusive and not siloed approach.
• Simplicity: Drive simplicity into all business processes, ask, “Why can’t we do it this way?” Use the implementation as an opportunity to transform.
• Empowerment: Empower your people to make key decisions so that you can get to the cloud quickly, and then iterate.

2. Adhere to leading practices and follow and out of box approach

In many of our client sessions, we heard numerous times about the importance of following an out-of-the-box approach and ditching customizations to achieve a smooth and successful cloud migration.

• Texas Children’s Hospital executives shared that “to move to the cloud with speed, be willing to adopt the processes as delivered in the cloud and eliminate complexity.”
• Health Care District of Palm Beach County speakers urged attendees to ask themselves, “How can we adapt existing processes to the technology to create standardization, rather than adapt the system to the processes?”
• City of Tampa’s CTO/CIO, Russell Haupert shared his success story. “We had 10 months to go live, so we collaborated with Oracle Consulting and realized that if we got rid of our 8,500 customizations and did an out-of-the-box implementation, we might be able to go live a lot faster. We followed their advice. We followed the process, and we got the results. It was just that simple.”

3. Don’t just replicate what you do today: improve and simplify

• Hertz executives talked about their methodology that they followed as they moved from Oracle E-Business Suite to Oracle Cloud. They stressed the importance of not replicating what you are doing today just because that is what historically has been done. Instead, use your implementation as an opportunity to transform and simplify business processes. Focus on improvement.
• Cleveland Clinic also suggested that an upgrade is the perfect opportunity to standardize and simplify your processes. They created a global design model that has allowed them to add in new acquisitions and new hospitals with ease, because global standardizations are in place and are now the accepted norm.
• ABC Supply’s Mike Schwarz, executive director of strategy and business, shared that one of their guiding principles was, “build a future don’t reinvent the past. Deliver an enhanced user experience and engage stakeholders throughout to ensure adoption.”

4. Focus on training and communications before, during, and after launch

Our clients shared the importance of preparing your stakeholders for making the change to the cloud through effective training and communications.

• Mike Schwarz from ABC Supply emphasized one of their biggest lessons learned for them was to focus on training early in the project.
• Russell Haupert from City of Tampa said to “Support Your People. Provide training before, during, and after implementation. Wrap your people in services and support, so they are confident to move forward.”
• Brian Mastropiero, VP of Financial Planning and Analysis at GM Financial, shared that overcommunicating by providing frequent stakeholder updates was their secret to overcoming resistance to change.

5. Find the right partner to guide your journey to the cloud

One consistent theme across all our client sessions was the importance of choosing the right partner. One that could not only guide and support a successful journey to the cloud, but also a partner that wasn’t afraid to embrace the tough conversations and push their client to change for their long-term success.

Some of the key drivers in selecting Oracle Consulting that were shared by our clients at CloudWorld, include:

• The One Oracle Experience: Oracle Consulting knows Oracle because we ARE Oracle
  • Like many of our clients that choose us as their implementation partner, Schwarz from ABC Supply, shared how the One Oracle experience was hugely beneficial to the success of their project, saying “Oracle Consulting was awesome. They knew the product inside and out because of their access to Oracle Product Development teams.”
  • During their session, Choctaw Nation, the third largest Indian nation in the US, cited the One Oracle Experience as one of their keys to success, saying “Finding a partner we trusted and then working with Oracle Product Development, Oracle Finance, Oracle University, and others, provided us with One Oracle accountability, which translated into a one badge/one team experience with Choctaw Nation.”
• Differentiated Services & IP
  • A global, multi-brand hotel & resort organization spoke about how they selected Oracle Consulting to help them migrate from Workday to Oracle HCM Cloud because of our differentiated methodology, tools, and accelerators. Using Oracle Consulting’s prebuilt Workday-to-Oracle data migration tools and integration framework, they were able to move off Workday onto Oracle HCM Cloud in 11 months.
  • Hertz was able to leverage Oracle Consulting’s Soar Data Migration framework which took a lot of the conversion work off their plates and helped them to securely and smoothly migrate data from EBS to HCM Cloud, speeding delivery and accelerating time to value.
• Deep Product Knowledge and Industry Expertise and Best practices
  • With expertise across 20+ industries Oracle Consulting comes to the table with a point of view on industry specific best practice process flows, key design decisions, and standard integration and reporting needs to help our clients get to the cloud faster.
  • Health Care District of Palm Beach County shared how they selected Oracle Consulting because of our deep healthcare industry expertise which gave them the confidence that we were the right partner to successfully drive their implementation. They credited their move to ERP, EPM, and SCM Cloud in 7 months to Oracle Consulting and urged attendees to “Find a partner you trust and follow the advice to get moving quickly and with speed, while adapting and embracing change.”

Let us help you plan a smoother path to Oracle Cloud

At Oracle Consulting, we’re the experts that other experts seek out for industry-leading practices in implementing Oracle Cloud applications. With our deep know-how and proven industry expertise from implementing countless cloud journeys, we help our customers successfully go live and thrive in the cloud.

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If you are interested in learning more about how Oracle Consulting can help you with your transformation to Oracle Cloud, either talk to your Oracle Software executive about bringing us into your discussions or reach out to us directly to start the discussion.