With Oracle Cloud, lululemon improves its financial fitness
The designer and seller of athletic apparel taps Oracle Cloud EPM to tone up its financial analysis and forecasting and boost sales abroad.
“The new EPM Cloud solution has provided a more flexible, more integrated, more powerful solution for us at Lululemon”
Business challenges
Founded in Vancouver, Canada, in 1998, lululemon athletica designs and sells women’s and men’s athletic apparel and accessories—for yoga, running, cycling, training, and “most other sweaty pursuits.”
The company’s nearly 500 stores, as well as its events worldwide, serve as community hubs where customers learn, discuss, and celebrate the physical aspects of healthy living and mindfulness.
To support the company’s five-year plan, initiated in 2018, to quadruple sales generated outside of North America, lululemon’s central financial planning and analysis (FP&A) team needed to align with siloed operations worldwide and improve the company’s ability to anticipate and respond to market changes.
Why lululemon Chose Oracle
In 2019, lululemon implemented the Planning module of Oracle Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), transitioning from its on-premises Oracle Hyperion application.
The company saw Oracle Cloud EPM as a natural extension of the Oracle Hyperion foundation it had built. It also chose the Oracle Cloud application to get access to frequent updates, which the company describes as a “game-changer,” and for the superior data reporting and visualization. In addition, lululemon was drawn to the application’s built-in AI and machine learning capabilities.
Results
The strategic modeling capabilities in Oracle Cloud EPM allow lululemon to map out its annual strategic plan and integrate with its monthly reforecasts.
Strategic modeling lets lululemon create a variety of scenarios to adjust to changing industry and economic conditions, especially important during COVID-19. It can simulate long-term strategies, develop contingent scenarios, and stress-test financial models. The application provides insights into the 12-, 24-, and 36-month impact of such changes.
The configurable dashboards in Oracle Cloud EPM make it easy for executives to visualize planning and budgeting data in real time as the business outlook changes, supporting a proactive versus reactive culture.
Partners
Huron Consulting Group was lululemon’s implementation partner on its Oracle EPM rollout. “We’ve enjoyed the partnership and the dialog we’ve had with them, not just during the upgrade, but also afterward, so that our users have undergone a smooth transition to the cloud,” says Sohail Ali, lululemon senior manager, financial systems.