Expert Overview
Beeper Shanower is a Functional Lead on the Oracle Consulting Services (OCS) implementation team and focuses on understanding customers’ needs and how the Oracle Permitting and Licensing software will meet those needs. Like many of the folks on the OCS team, Beeper started her career working in government and she believes that her background did well to prepare her for working alongside customers. When she’s not busy working on customer projects, Beeper enjoys the great outdoors and spending time on the water in her current home state of California.
Q: How do you feel the beginning of your career prepared you for the work you do now?
A: I started my career at the County of Ventura, CA, working in human services programs such as cash aid, food stamps, Medicaid eligibility, and more. Those programs always have tight budgets and are required to follow a lot of rules and regulations, but at the end of the day, you try to provide the best service you can because they affect people on a personal level. That is very representative of the government in general and drives the OCS team to provide as much value as we can for our customers.
Q: Can you share more about your role as a Functional Lead?
A: I spend much of my time understanding and analyzing customers’ processes, and as part of that ask a lot of questions. Sometimes the questions may seem obvious, but they need to be asked to understand nuances, to account for “secondary” use cases, and to find opportunities to improve work efficiency. So part of the questioning serves to help our understanding, but it also serves to challenge a customer’s status quo.
Q: What can customers do to prepare for an implementation with Oracle?
A: It’s not uncommon for agency staff to be apprehensive about a new system, so at the start, we describe that the system will not replace staff but aims to make them more effective at what they do. We also want customers to be prepared to collaborate; to document their current state processes and pain points; and to think about what their future state vision looks like. I once worked on a project where 18 counties with different business processes were implementing a shared system and they were successful in large part due to their collaboration and willingness to change.
Q: Tell us about a recent challenge you faced on a project?
A: At the start of a project, the customer told us “We use spreadsheets and paper charts to calculate incredibly complex fees, you aren’t going to be able to automate those”. Fees are just math calculations based on various inputs, and after some in-depth analysis and review, we were easily able to automate them in Oracle Permitting and Licensing. When we showed the customer, they were impressed that we could automate them and even said “your team understands our fees even better than we do!”.
Q: And to end our conversation on a fun note: what is one of the outdoor activities you enjoy doing?
A: I became interested in rowing relatively later in life, but I have been doing it since 2004. I’ve rowed competitively across the US and all over the world, but COVID impacted my time out on the water. While I’ve been using a rowing machine, I’m happy to be able to get back out on the water in a team boat!
Learn More
Modern cloud technology solutions can help public-sector organizations overcome many of the challenges they face. By migrating to the cloud with Oracle Permitting and Licensing, organizations can embrace innovation and push the limits of what their employees and constituents have come to expect from their government. Oracle is excited to be able to partner with government organizations on their journey to the cloud, and you can discover more Permitting and Licensing product here.