Advice and Information for Finance Professionals

Finance Topics & Trends

How to Build the Finance Function of the Future

A little over two years ago, we launched this publication with a vision: the finance team is the co-pilot of the business. In the short years since then, the...

Finance Topics & Trends

Look to Emerging Markets for Cutting-Edge Blockchain Innovation

By Arun Khehar, SVP Applications ECEMEA, Oracle Imagine you have a life-threatening allergy to shellfish. Your threshold for exposure is so low that even trace...

Finance Topics & Trends

5 Compelling Reasons to Move from On-Premises ERP to Oracle ERP Cloud

I’m often asked why organisations should take advantage of this generational shift in computing enabled by the cloud. Of course, there’s the unleashing of...

Finance Topics & Trends

Successful Companies Have One Thing in Common: They Love Data

By John Abel, Vice President, Oracle If the business world seems to move much faster these days, that’s because it does. For a long time, change happened...

Finance Topics & Trends

Keeping Up With the Unique Needs of Higher Education

Just over a month ago, I was delighted to see this tweet from Boise State CIO and Associate Vice President Max Davis-Johnson: #BoiseState did their 3rd in 22...

Finance Topics & Trends

Learn How to Make Healthcare More Productive

Can healthcare leaders close the productivity gap? A recent survey indicates that there is a large — and growing — gap between different industries in terms of...

Finance Topics & Trends

5 Reasons to Move Retail Finance to the Cloud

By Cara Vollmer, Senior Content Strategist, Oracle Retail is facing a data-driven revolution. To be a modern retailer means embracing new business models and...

Financial Planning & Analysis

Delivering on a Vision of Fair Trade in the Cloud

Tony's Chocolonely has a vision: to produce and sell 100-percent slave-free chocolate. But delivering on that vision means keeping a watchful eye on every part...

Risk Management & Compliance

Life After GDPR: Why CEOs Need to Lead from the Top Down

By Alessandro Vallega, Security and GDPR Business Development Director, Oracle EMEA GDPR is now in effect, but companies across every industry have been under...

Finance Topics & Trends

3 Popular Bitcoin and Blockchain Myths, Debunked

When a new technology hits the market, misperceptions and myths often pop up right alongside of it. This is certainly the case with bitcoin and other...

Finance Topics & Trends

When Did Data Become So Valuable?

By Neil Sholay, Vice President of Digital, EMEA, Oracle With GDPR compliance now mandatory, European businesses are razor-focussed on their data protection...

Finance Topics & Trends

How the Cloud Helps Banks Be More Competitive

By Sarosh Khan, IBM Global Business Services The pace of change is picking up in the financial services industry. Rising interest rates are roiling financial...

Finance Topics & Trends

10 Steps to Improve Your Journey to Finance in the Cloud

By Graeme Bowmaker, EMEIA Oracle Sales Director, Fujitsu Artificial intelligence. Machine learning. Chatbots. Voice recognition. These are more than just the...

Finance Topics & Trends

Why Now is the Time for ERP in the Cloud

“The movement to cloud is an inevitable destination; this is how computing will evolve over the next several years.” So said Oracle CEO Mark Hurd at Oracle...

Finance Topics & Trends

5 Things Best-in-Class Companies Do Better, and How They Do It

By Cara Vollmer, Senior Content Strategist, Oracle Ever wonder what the best companies do to get ahead? What is it that allows them to outperform their...

Procurement

2018 Trends in Strategic Procurement

By Cara Vollmer, Senior Content Strategist, Oracle Today's enterprises have taken steps to streamline procurement—but have work to do to optimize their entire...

Risk Management & Compliance

How to Turn Financial Compliance from Pain into Gain

By Aman Desouza, Director of Product Strategy, Risk Management Cloud, Oracle Many finance professionals see compliance as similar to taking a spoonful of castor...

Success Stories

Emerging Technology: The Driving Force of Disruption

By Jarred Boone, Product Marketing Manager, ERP EPM Cloud, Oracle It's no secret that emerging technologies are changing the game in finance. Machine learning,...

Risk Management & Compliance

5 Steps to GDPR Compliance, and Why It’s Not Too Late to Prepare

GDPR may be just around the corner, but it’s not too late to take control of your data and prepare your organization. Here, we outline five simple steps that...

Finance Topics & Trends

Why Obsolete Technology Costs More Than You Think

Not too long ago, business leaders liked to say that the only constant in their world was change. That’s still true, but managing change is no longer the...

Finance Topics & Trends

How AI and Machine Learning Will Change Manufacturing

By Joakim Johansson Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are revolutionizing the way we manufacture our products and the way we make decisions....

Finance Topics & Trends

Oracle CEO Mark Hurd’s Predictions on the Future of ERP Systems

ERP is getting smarter, according to Oracle CEO Mark Hurd. With new innovations coming to finance seemingly faster every day, not keeping up is the same as...

Finance Topics & Trends

3 Steps for Moving Finance and HR to the Cloud

Did you know that 35 percent of companies have plans to create a shared finance and HR function? That’s according to research conducted by MIT Technology Review...

Finance Topics & Trends

PwC AI Predictions: Are You Ready for Finance’s Digital Future?

By Mike Baccala, PwC Assurance Innovation Leader & Ed Ponagai, PwC Finance Consulting Principal When it comes to automation and artificial intelligence (AI),...

Finance Topics & Trends

Want to be a Digital Business? Here are 5 Capabilities that Finance Needs

By Chris Germann, VP, Cloud Applications Strategy, Oracle Digital As Harvard Business Review declared in Nov. 2017, “Your strategy won’t work if you don’t...

Financial Management & Reporting

How to Start Your Move to EPM in the Cloud

By Bobby Ellis, Global Practice Lead – EPM, Datavail Last month, Oracle published its annual EPM Top Trends Report. Among the major findings: organizations are...

Risk Management & Compliance

GDPR: What should CFOs be doing about new compliance rules?

If there’s one aspect of GDPR that is likely to grab the attention of any CFO it is the potentially eye-watering fines organizations could be hit with if they...

Financial Management & Reporting

How to Move EPM to the Cloud, and Why Now is the Time

  By Jennifer Toomey, Senior Director, Cloud Business Group, Oracle What is a top motivating factor for moving enterprise performance management (EPM) to the...

Financial Management & Reporting

6 Things You Need for an Easier, Faster Financial Close

By Shyam Bansal, Fujitsu How painful is your financial close process? If you’re like many companies, it’s probably more painful than you’d like it to be....

Finance Topics & Trends

Education, Cost-Cutting, and the Future of Work

For the first time in a long time, education is high on the public agenda in the United States. Student and teacher walkouts from K12 schools across the country...

Financial Management & Reporting

Why Your ERP Needs Account Reconciliation in the Cloud

By Tim Gaumont, Director of Product Management, Oracle  Let’s face it: every finance department is being asked to do more, at a faster pace, with fewer...

Finance Topics & Trends

Finance Game Changers: 3 Reasons to Care About New Technology

By Jarred Boone, Product Marketing Manager, ERP EPM Cloud, Oracle Even with all of the hype around advanced technologies such as blockchain, AI and machine...

Finance Topics & Trends

Cloud Delivers 3.2x ROI in New Value Research

A newly published independent analysis has calculated a dramatic increase in the return on investment (ROI) for Software as a Service projects. It found that...

Finance Topics & Trends

The Future of Shared Services is Intelligent

By Arun Khehar, SVP Applications ECEMEA, Oracle Companies have always viewed shared services as cost centres and looked for ways to make them more efficient....

Risk Management & Compliance

What is GDPR? The EU General Data Protection Regulation Explained

By Alessandro Vallega, Security and GDPR Business Development Director, Oracle EMEA The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect on 25 May...

Finance Topics & Trends

How High Tech Can Profit from the Coming Productivity Boom

By Kevin Sullivan, Partner, PwC A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sitting next to Dr. Michael Mandel over dinner at Modern Finance Experience in New York....

Finance Topics & Trends

Curious Questions Asked and Answered in our Latest #OracleChat

What do crusty old bread, jumping off a cliff, King Canute have to do with financial services? They were all part of our #OracleChat conversation with Chris...

Finance Topics & Trends

Next-Generation Financials with Intelligent Process Automation

  By Sarosh Khan, Oracle ERP and Supply Chain Cloud Leader at IBM In today’s digital business world, industry leaders are facing challenges from digital...

Finance Topics & Trends

Want to Learn the Latest on Innovative Tech? COLLABORATE!

By Wincy Ip, Global User Groups, Communications and Content, Oracle Does your finance team use Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft or Hyperion? Are...

Finance Topics & Trends

Financial Services and the CFO of the Future

Back when I was still a student, my first part-time job was working as a teller for a big bank. In those days (and I’m dating myself, here) automatic teller...

Finance Topics & Trends

The End of Technology Obsolescence

They came for the money. They stayed for the innovation. That’s the key finding of our first ERP Top Trends report (a companion to the EPM Top Trends report,...

Risk Management & Compliance

GDPR: Time to See It as an Opportunity, Not a Chore

By Dee Houchen, Senior Marketing Director, ERP/EPM, Oracle When many people think of data-driven businesses, the temptation may be to think of major consumer...

Finance Topics & Trends

How Strong is the Case for Moving to EPM to the Cloud?

By Susan Rebner, Datavail It’s a question we hear quite often in our EPM practice: “When is the right time to start moving my finance functions to the cloud?”...

Financial Management & Reporting

Do You Know Your Profit Winners?

At the 2018 Modern Finance Experience in New York, Christopher Ayotte from Asurion and Brian Deegan from Peloton Group presented a compelling session about...

Finance Topics & Trends

The 9 EPM Trends You Need to Know for 2018

By Jennifer Toomey, Senior Director, Cloud Business Group, Oracle Cloud technology has reached an inflection point within the office of finance. In our fifth...

Growth, Mergers & Acquisitions

Growing by Leaps and Bounds in the Cloud

Sim International prides itself on being a full-service production house for some big players in the entertainment game. Their motto, “From first frame to...

Finance Topics & Trends

Technologies Reshaping Financial Services: Join our #OracleChat

Is cash still king? Not in my pocket! I have zero dollars in my pocket but I have… my phone! Digital currencies, digital deposits and digital...

Finance Topics & Trends

Confused About Cloud? Learn the Fundamentals

By Jarred Boone, Product Marketing Manager, ERP EPM Cloud, Oracle “Prepare for Tomorrow, Today.” That was a major theme at last month’s Modern Finance...

Risk Management & Compliance

How to Use Data Science and Machine Learning to Reduce Risk

By Emma Yu, Product Marketing Director, Oracle For all of the enthusiasm and intrigue surrounding the field of data science in the last several years, data...

Finance Topics & Trends

CFOs Poised to Lead a Cloud-Driven Productivity Boom

New research shows that the United States is on the verge of a productivity boom that could add at least $2 trillion to the gross domestic product (GDP) over...

Finance Topics & Trends

Get a Glimpse into the Future of Higher Education

My niece started university this past September at a major Canadian campus. She spent the first two weeks on her mobile phone, rearranging her schedule and...

Financial Planning & Analysis

How to Improve Costing, Planning and Reporting in Healthcare

Whether you’re a payer or provider, every healthcare organization needs to manage profit and loss—especially in this era of value-based care. If you want to...

Financial Planning & Analysis

The Ultimate Question for Financial Planning & Analysis

By Malcolm Brock, Managing Director, Brovanture Watching the recent launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket got me thinking. (Well, the part that revealed Elon...

Financial Planning & Analysis

Why Expand Planning and Budgeting Beyond Finance?

By Malcolm Brock, Managing Director, Brovanture When it comes to premium spirits, Maxxium UK is one of the United Kingdom’s most dynamic and innovative...

Finance Topics & Trends

Where Do You Sit on the Digital Index?

by Arun Khehar, SVP Applications ECEMEA, Oracle Digital technologies are poised to change the future of work. Automation—led by new technologies such as...

Finance Topics & Trends

5 Overlooked Advantages of Moving to the Cloud

By Olin West, Managing Director, KPMG Advisory Even though cloud has gone mainstream, replacing an on-premises ERP or HCM application with a cloud system can be...

Financial Management & Reporting

The Promise of Intelligent Process Automation in Finance

By Hari Sankar, Group Vice President, Product Management, Oracle True automation finally is coming to finance. Just as robots are taking over repetitive, manual...

Product News

Here's Your Chance to See the #1 ERP for Value-Based Care

If you’re a finance leader in an American healthcare organization, the odds are that you’re feeling a little starved of new technology. Recent investments...

Product News

How to Improve Collaboration Between Finance and HR

By Melissa Morgan, Oracle HCM Cloud Have you ever wondered why seemingly simple things like getting information or working across teams is so hard? You're not...

Procurement

3 Questions to Ask About Procurement in the Cloud

By Angela Wilson, CSS International There are very different business requirements between how large enterprises and small-to medium businesses (SMBs) source...

Finance Topics & Trends

Celebrating the Union of Finance and HR

A special union was celebrated in London recently. Invited guests witnessed two partners "tie the knot." Speeches praised the couple’s future partnership and...

Finance Topics & Trends

Agents of Change Show How to Win in Finance

Modern Finance Experience 2018 is in full swing—and on Day 2, we rolled out the red carpet for 10 of the brightest stars in the finance universe. The Change...

Finance Topics & Trends

New Research Unveils $2 Trillion Growth Opportunity

Two trillion dollars. That’s more than the annual GDP of most countries. And it’s how much cloud services could add to the U.S. economy over the next decade—if...

Finance Topics & Trends

Learning How to Innovate for the Future of Finance

“The greatest moments of inspiration happen when you’re in the bathtub and the water rises and flows out and you shout ‘Eureka!’” It’s not every day that you...

Product News

An Easy Way to Move from Oracle E-Business Suite to Oracle ERP Cloud

By Viktor Sahakian, Vice President, Oracle Specialized Services, Hitachi Consulting Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) has been a tried and true on-premises...

Financial Management & Reporting

Top 5 Characteristics of a Modern EPM Cloud

By Jennifer Toomey, Senior Director, Cloud Business Group, Oracle The key to surviving disruption is flexibility. Whether from external forces (such as new...

Finance Topics & Trends

Adapting for Direct to Consumer Success in the Cloud

By Brian Vonderhaar, Senior Consultant, Digital Transformation, IBM In a business climate where 52% of the Fortune 500 Companies from the year 2000 no longer...

Finance Topics & Trends

Top Exciting Reasons to Join Us In New York

We have exciting news about Modern Finance Experience 2018! Trevor Noah, comedian and host of The Daily Show, has joined the lineup of keynote speakers. You...

Finance Topics & Trends

Gaining Your Competitive Edge with Champion Innovation

With the Winter Games starting this week in PyeongChang, South Korea, it’s fun to highlight a competitive edge often forgotten: innovation.  Over the years,...

Finance Topics & Trends

Why Scalability Matters, from Sewers to the Super Bowl

Fun fact about me: I hold two U.S. patent on how to manage airline waste. On Super Bowl Sunday, as other fans are obsessing over American football, I’ll be...

Finance Topics & Trends

What Finance Can Teach the Business About Agility

By David Carney and Girija Krishnamurthy, Deloitte Consulting LLP Not long ago, when you thought of a strategically “influential” area of a business, finance...

Finance Topics & Trends

How to Lead a Culture of Continuous Change

By Steve Cox, Group Vice President, ERP and EPM Cloud Business Group, Oracle In an age when digital technologies are driving seismic disruption, most companies...

Finance Topics & Trends

How to Get Started on Continuous Change

By Steve Cox, Group Vice President, ERP and EPM Cloud Business Group, Oracle I spend a lot of time speaking with customers and conferring with my colleagues and...

Finance Topics & Trends

Oracle vs. Workday: 5 Things You Need to Know

Does this scenario sound familiar to you? You have great plans for your business, and there are myriad opportunities in front of you. You want to move quickly...

Finance Topics & Trends

5 Things Global CFOs Should Do in 2018

By Arun Khehar, Senior Vice President, Applications Business, ECEMEA, Oracle Where should CFOs focus their attention in 2018? In my conversations with customers...

Product News

Top Reasons for Finance to Care About Enterprise Data Management

By Jennifer Toomey, Senior Director, Cloud Business Group, Oracle Have you ever sat in a meeting where everyone has a different number for the same performance...

Financial Planning & Analysis

Learn How to Fuel Growth with Successful Zero-Based Budgeting

By Jennifer Toomey, Senior Director, Cloud Business Group, Oracle Today, 60% of G1000 have announced major cost takeout programs and are embarking on aggressive...

Finance Topics & Trends

How Emerging Technologies Can Help CFOs Win in the Digital Economy

It’s a question on the minds of employees around the world: is a machine going to take my job? The buzz around emerging technologies—artificial intelligence,...

Finance Topics & Trends

How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Finance

By Predrag Jakovljevic, Principal Analyst, Technology Evaluation Centres Artificial Intelligence is a divisive technology. Its potential to improve the way we...

Finance Topics & Trends

Predicting the Future of Cloud ERP

What's the future of cloud ERP? In this Q&A, Oracle’s Dee Houchen sits down with Gabriel Gheorghiu, principal of Questions Consulting, to discuss his recent...

Financial Management & Reporting

How to Evaluate Consolidation Opportunities in the Healthcare Industry

The old adage, “Doing more with less” has never been more relevant to the healthcare industry in the United States. Everybody wants to pay less for patient...

Success Stories

10 Reasons You Need to Vote in the Change Agents of Finance Awards

Ever wonder what the best finance teams out there are doing? How they’re finding the best talent, getting the most out of their analytics, or acting as true...

Risk Management & Compliance

GDPR Compliance and the Cloud: Help or Hindrance?

By Paul Flannery, Senior Director, EMEA Business Development, Oracle Organisations are currently faced with the question of how to approach the General Data...

Finance Topics & Trends

Finance Pros Struggling with New Technology

By Jim Kaitz, President & CEO, AFP There’s a technology gap emerging in the practice of finance, but it’s not exactly what you think it would be. A recently...

Discover Top Finance Trends You Need to Know for 2018

By Jennifer Toomey, Senior Director, Cloud Business Group, Oracle In 2017, financial management applications available in the cloud exploded. Today, planning,...

Finance Topics & Trends

Why Finance Needs More Intelligence of the Artificial Kind

By Steve Cox, Group VP, Oracle Cloud Business Group Finance departments have been racing around for decades to try to keep up with the increasing quantity and...

Finance Topics & Trends

Our Top 10 Stories of the Year

In publishing, as in finance, numbers count. Like any good business team, we have metrics that we measure on a regular basis: readership, newsletter...

Finance Topics & Trends

12 Reasons to Celebrate Finance in the Cloud

Like many finance and technology professionals, I enjoy numbers. So perhaps it’s no surprise that “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is one of my favorite holiday...

Growth, Mergers & Acquisitions

The World in 2050: High-Growth Economies

By Arun Khehar, SVP Applications ECEMEA, Oracle Every couple of years, PwC releases its long-term forecast for the global economy. The most recent edition, The...

Product News

IDC MarketScape Recognizes Oracle as a Cloud ERP Leader

Analyst firm IDC recently published its IDC MarketScape report for ERP in the cloud, “IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Large Enterprise ERP...

Risk Management & Compliance

Why New Data Privacy Rules are an Opportunity for Big Banks

Not so long ago, banks didn’t need to be exciting. People simply chose their bank based on how conveniently its branches were located and its reputation for...

Finance Topics & Trends

How to Find the Right Balance Between People and Machines

Is financial services a people industry? The rising popularity of artificial intelligence and process automation suggests the answer is “no.” Recent research...

Financial Management & Reporting

Top 6 Challenges of Financial Analysis with Excel

By Bobby Ellis, Global Director - EPM, Datavail There’s no question: Microsoft Excel has helped a lot of organizations get off the ground. But at a certain...

Financial Planning & Analysis

How Oracle Helps Clients Succeed at Zero-Based Budgeting

By Jennifer Toomey, Senior Director, Cloud Business Group, Oracle When food giants Heinz Co. and Kraft Foods were merged by 3G Capital, the clock on...

Growth, Mergers & Acquisitions

A Cool Way to Grow Revenue in Higher Education

What if attracting, enrolling and retaining students were as easy as this video? And, other than the cool factor, why should finance professionals care? These...

Finance Topics & Trends

The Quick Way to Compare Your ERP to the Cloud

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software has been a vital part of nearly every organization since the 1990s. In its heyday, on-premises ERP gave businesses...

Finance Topics & Trends

How to Avoid Common Pitfalls on Your Cloud Journey

By Anil Patil, Director, Oracle Center of Excellence, Enterprise Application Services, Fujitsu Enterprise organizations have recognized the numerous benefits of...

Finance Topics & Trends

What Can You Do with Blockchain? Here Are 4 Ideas to Consider

By David Haimes, Sr. Director of ERP Development, Oracle By now you’ve probably heard at least one description of what blockchain is, and that description...

Financial Planning & Analysis

3 Best Practices for Successful Zero-Based Budgeting

By Jennifer Toomey, Senior Director, Cloud Business Group, Oracle Zero-based budgeting (ZBB) is making a comeback among financial leaders as they look for ways...