Humanscale provides a wide variety of ergonomic products designed to improve the efficiency and quality of work life, such as high-performance seating, monitor arms, lighting and keyboard supports. In an effort to better service its global customer base, Humanscale decided to invest in an information technology (IT) system that was affordable, easy to maintain and one that would scale to support its rapidly growing business. After evaluating SAP solutions for the mid-market, Humanscale found that the Oracle E-Business Suite offered a more affordable and comprehensive solution that best aligned with the company's size and business goals.

"Humanscale has been growing at a rate of nearly 30 percent per year, so we wanted an integrated, end-to-end IT solution that could sustain and scale with our growth for many years to come," said Humanscale Vice President of Finance Michele Gerards. "Oracle showed a great understanding for Humanscale's business challenges, delivers superior out-of-the-box functionality and offers a lower total cost of ownership compared to SAP. We have lofty IT and business goals and we are confident that our investment in Oracle will enable us to exceed all expectations."

Enhanced Sales, Customer Service and Order Fulfillment Processes
Humanscale will use Oracle Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications to centralize data and streamline customer interactions. Oracle's products cover the breadth of CRM functionality, from sales, marketing, and e-commerce, to customer service, multi-channel interaction and analytics. As a result, Humanscale will benefit from a 360-degree view of the customer order lifecycle - from acquisition to service.

With Oracle Customer Relationship Management, Humanscale expects to increase selling effectiveness by using consistent enterprise information in every phase of the sales process. The system is designed to allow more than 250 Humanscale sales representatives to identify prospects, execute upsell or cross-sell opportunities, create proposals, handle complex quotes and contracts, track order fulfillment and enable thorough customer follow-up. Additionally, Humanscale management will use Oracle's global compensation management application to connect sales incentives to business objectives in order to motivate sales representatives, resellers and partners.

"Humanscale is a sales-driven and customer-focused company and we chose Oracle because it can provide enterprise-wide visibility to our sales force that will make it easier for our customers to do business with us," said Humanscale Vice President of Operations Joe Lawler.

Humanscale also found that Oracle Applications were better suited than SAP's applications to help the company reduce fulfillment costs and order fulfillment cycle time, and improve order accuracy and on-time delivery. Humanscale anticipates using Oracle Order Management to automate the entire sales order management process, from order promising and order capture to transportation and shipment, and plans to use Oracle Order Management to capture multi-channel demand, including EDI, XML, telesales and its Web storefront.

Accelerated Implementation
Ease-of-implementation was a significant factor for Humanscale's decision to invest in Oracle. The company wanted an efficient, seamless deployment with limited customizations or costly modifications. Humanscale is implementing the Oracle E-Business Suite using Oracle Accelerators, which will guide the IT team through pre-defined business flows. Oracle Accelerator templates provide a baseline from which to implement the applications, rather than starting from scratch, and should be easily configured to match Humanscale's unique requirements.

"The faster we implement our Oracle system, the faster we can bring our products to market and create a competitive advantage," said Humanscale IT Director Pete Lohman. "With the Oracle Accelerators, we are efficiently tailoring our Oracle Applications deployment to eliminate our industry pain points and help us implement business best-practices."

Phase One of the Oracle E-Business Suite implementation began in June. Humanscale is expected to be fully operating using Oracle products by the end of this year.

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