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Oracle CFO Summit Showcases Strategies for Capitalizing on the Economic Downturn
Although the world’s economies may be in for a protracted downturn, savvy companies will continue to invest in strategic IT and business-process optimization projects to give themselves a competitive advantage when better times return. That was a key take-away from Oracle’s fourth annual CFO Summit, held November 5-6, 2008, in Chicago.
The event, titled “Preparing for Better Times: CFO Strategies for Managing Through the Downturn,” brought together leading economists, academics, and CFOs from across the nation to discuss how to protect the bottom line through the current economic downturn, while still investing strategically in globalization, M&A, technology innovations, as well as, other business levers to drive competitive advantage when better times return.
Keynoting at the CFO Summit was renowned economist Martin Feldstein, chairman emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan. Feldstein told attendees that current economic problems could continue for at least another 18 months, despite billions of dollars worth of financial bailouts by governments around the world to address financial and credit volatility.
According to Oracle Chairman Jeff Henley, the current crisis offers a perfect opportunity for companies to push through politically sensitive internal initiatives that can reduce IT complexity and costs today, while creating a single, integrated platform to understand your business better and roll out new products and services much more quickly to customers when the economy recovers.
“Having been a CFO through several major downturns, I’m a firm believer that sometimes a crisis can provide you with an opportunity to transform your organization in ways that wouldn’t be possible during good times, because the circumstances demand that you create leaner, more efficient operations,” Henley told summit attendees. “That’s what happened to Oracle in the late 1990s, when our operating margins were under pressure. In 1998, we embarked on an initiative to consolidate 52 application instances into a single global instance, rationalize our data centers from 40 to 2, and standardize our processes worldwide. By the time Oracle had emerged from the dot-com bust in 2003, we had more than doubled our operating margins and created a strong, integrated platform to support our M&A and organic growth strategies.”
Chicago-based Exelon also understands the importance of continuing to invest in technology transformation initiatives during the current downturn. The $19 billion electric utility recently launched an ambitious project to create a more efficient, integrated financial platform by standardizing on Oracle Hyperion and PeopleSoft solutions. Exelon Senior Vice President and CIO Daniel Hill told CFOs present at the event that Exelon remains committed to that effort, despite the extreme volatility of natural gas prices and the U.S. credit crunch.
“Despite current market uncertainties, we can’t afford to stop investing in initiatives like our finance transformation program that will help us navigate through volatile business cycles, make prudent investments in our operations, and return value to investors,” he explained.
Read more about the smart IT strategies that companies are adopting to gain a competitive advantage in today’s uncertain economic environment.
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