By Doug Kehring, Executive Vice President, Corporate Operations, Oracle
The pandemic has forced many businesses to make substantial changes to their operations – and make them quickly. In every industry, company leaders have had to rethink their strategies and business processes as the shift toward digital technologies and ecommerce has greatly accelerated.
I recently had the chance to talk with Jon Steinberg, founder of Cheddar, a video news network that covers innovative technologies and businesses, about the big moves that CFOs are making to return their companies to growth. One of those moves that is in their toolbox is mergers and acquisitions—an area in which Oracle has quite a lot of experience.
I began leading Oracle’s M&A practice not long after the dotcom bust, when a lot of great companies had very attractive valuations. We recognized that it was a great time to do acquisitions. Over the next 15 years, we acquired about 140 companies—and those acquisitions, combined with our organic investments, have enabled us to develop the world’s most comprehensive and innovative set of cloud technologies to help enterprise customers transform their businesses.
Executing acquisitions well and generating customer and shareholder value from them comes down to four key criteria:
In addition to M&A, Jon and I discussed research conducted by Oracle, McKinsey, and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) on how finance teams can best respond to the challenges of the pandemic (the answer might surprise you), why incremental change won’t lead to transformation, and how Oracle has been able to dramatically improve its business processes in a very short time frame.
You can watch the conversation here. In the coming weeks, Oracle is sponsoring discussions between Jon and other business leaders about their strategies. On this page, you will find those videos when they are available as well as new research from MIT Technology Review and information on the four big moves that finance needs to make now.