An Upgrade-Powered
Transformation
Continued
One major component of France Telecom’s new convergence program is the standardization of its French and Polish divisions on Oracle E-Business Suite Financials. Although France Telecom Group’s network covers 220 countries and territories worldwide, France and Poland alone account for 60 percent of the group’s revenues, making a strong case for those divisions to upgrade to the latest version of Oracle Financials before others.
Poland was the first division to standardize on Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i in 2006. Before then, the Poland division used disparate systems and processes to gather and analyze financial data. By centralizing operations and migrating to Oracle, the division was able to cut its costs by one-third, while improving information quality and month-end close time. More recently, the company upgraded to Oracle Financials in its shared services center in France, making France Telecom one of the earliest adopters of the software. Oracle designed Oracle Financials to support global businesses such as France Telecom that operate in multiple countries and leverage shared services for finance and other back-office processes.
Chief Accounting Officer Jacques de Galzain played a key role in making the decision to implement the newest version of Oracle Financials in France. “We had the choice between staying on version 11i for our French shared services operation or upgrading to version 12, but we decided to go with version 12 because of its flexible architecture, its global accounting functionality, and its support for shared services,” he says. Galzain is responsible for financial reporting and compliance and oversees a staff of 1,400 people, 900 of whom work in the accounting group’s French shared services center. With the implementation of Oracle Financials, he sought to improve the quality of financial information at France Telecom, while improving the efficiency and cost of those services across the group. “We think version 12 is more integrated, and there are some functionalities that better support the European way of accounting,” he adds.
Not only is the information available more quickly, but it is more consistent—a huge benefit in an industry that survives on its ability to use data for innovation. “We have only one set of figures for accounting and for the company, which is a big advantage in this world today,” says Galzain. “That advantage has enabled us to become one of the fastest companies to publish its financial reports on European stock exchanges today.” Still, the accounting chief at France Telecom is pushing his team to do even better. “Now that we’ve standardized on Oracle, one of the goals I’ve given my team is to be able to close the books faster at the end of the month, from six days now to three or four days.” That’s impressive, given that the French shared services operation processes 50 percent of the telco’s €52.5 billion in annual revenue.
Galzain’s ability to manage his accounting team at a high level of efficiency means that the company can reallocate resources toward achieving its biggest goal—serving its customers more effectively. In fact, Galzain is determined to free up the equivalent of 10 percent of his workforce to work on customer functions outside of his organization. “Innovation is key when we seek to grow our business with new services and content—that’s what will help us stay ahead of the market. When you think about innovation in the back office, that’s a bit different. We try to be proactive by promoting information quality and improving the cost and quality of accounting services—all that helps the company’s customer-oriented focus.”
For More Information
Oracle E-Business Suite
Oracle Financials
The Global Capabilities of Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12
Anne Ozzimo is senior product marketing director for Oracle Financials.
