This 7-year-old solves complex business problems

By Wayne Heather, Executive Director, EPM Product Marketing, Oracle

If you think of a seven-year-old, you think of a kid that loves playing games on their iPad or gaming console, a kid learning algebra or spelling, a kid transfixed by Harry Potter or Marvel superheroes.

The 7-year-old I am thinking of is very different. This seven-year-old has got a unique ability for its age. It has helped:

• A global consumer packaged goods firm cut costs and save millions of dollars in a year
• A fitness apparel retailer plan and execute a pivot from traditional bricks and mortar to a bigger online presence
• A high-tech firm in Silicon Valley plan for the talent they needed to achieve their growth plans
• A global fast food brand reconciles thousands of transactions with its delivery partners
•  A global payments firm close their books 96% faster.

It’s probably clear by now that we are not talking about just any 7-year old. This is no ordinary child, but rather, the Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM suite. Born in the cloud on February 14, 2014, Oracle Cloud EPM was based on the success and experience from the 30+ years of delivering solutions for the office of finance as Hyperion. Re-built for the cloud, Oracle Cloud EPM has grown into the most complete EPM suite from a breadth and depth capability across all EPM processes.

During the times of this pandemic, many companies have looked to Oracle Cloud EPM to help them navigate the crisis: modelling different scenarios, planning for recovery, understanding which unsustainable costs should be cut and which profitable activities to focus on.  Companies have also looked to Cloud EPM to improve their financial close process and get insights to their true performance faster.  

Over the past 7 years, more than 5,000 customers have adopted Oracle Cloud EPM, and analysts consistently rank us as a leader.  Moreover, the pace of innovation that is delivered in Oracle Cloud EPM is unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Oracle’s Cloud EPM suite has evolved to cover all financial and operational planning needs with modules that are purpose built, fully supported, and continuously innovated. These modules deliver prebuilt best practice processes across finance, HR, sales, and IT, that our customers just configure. We've helped customers like Dropbox, McDonald’s, Avis, Lululemon, Kraft Heinz, and many more plan for their future.

Oracle’s Cloud EPM solutions for the financial close have surpassed the capabilities delivered on-premises. They cover full close orchestration, comprehensive account reconciliation, consolidation, tax provisioning, and all management and statutory reporting. Automation and embedded best practices across the whole close process is helping customers like Royal Bank of Scotland, Avis, Inspire Brands, TaylorMade, and others move closer to a continuous close—where they can move away from closing books to making business decisions to drive the business forward.

Oracle Cloud EPM is also unique in that it offers a full enterprise data management capability to help manage enterprise and reference data across EPM, ERP, and other operational systems. This functionality helps customers on-board acquisitions, rationalize ERP systems, standardize charts of accounts, standardize reporting across systems and other tasks that often are cumbersome in nature. Adventist Health, Inspire Brands, Blue Cross, and Blue Shield of Michigan have all benefitted from these capabilities.  

And, like all 7-year-olds, Oracle Cloud EPM continues to grow, improve and mature. Oracle delivers constant innovation via monthly updates with improvements and new features. These are available for users to consume immediately without having to do anything but choose to use them.

To improve, we’ve developed a thriving customer community on Cloud Customer Connect where we listen, help solve critical issues, share ideas, and ask customers for feedback to help us mature the product.

This 7^th birthday celebration is not about us. It’s about saying thank you to our loyal customers and partners that have been part of this amazing journey. Thank you for trusting us to help you achieve the things you need. Thank you for helping us improve the Oracle Cloud EPM suite. Thank you for your continued support. And we look forward to celebrating many more birthdays with you.

Learn more about Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM.