Tetra Tech gains natural language access to complex finance data with Oracle AI
Global engineering and consulting firm uses OCI Generative AI and Autonomous AI Lakehouse to equip business teams with performance metrics on demand.
United States | Construction and Engineering
“Oracle has acted as a true innovation partner, supporting Tetra Tech with resources for proof-of-concept development, ongoing training, and issue resolution. This strong relationship has helped us confidently explore and implement new AI-enabled solutions that help us execute our strategic vision by applying data and analytics to decision-making.”
Tetra Tech is a global provider of high-end engineering, architecture, and infrastructure consulting services, with a core specialization in water-related projects. Tetra Tech consolidated more than 100 ERP systems from its various acquisitions into Oracle E-Business Suite hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Once a single repository for all finance and project management information was in place, business users wanted access to complex performance metrics on demand. Tetra Tech worked with Oracle to build an interactive analytics platform using Oracle Autonomous AI Lakehouse and OCI Generative AI. With Oracle Digital Assistant’s text, chat, and voice interfaces, finance and project teams can use conversational language to gather metrics that assess the firm’s profitability and performance. The creation of this AI chatbot helped minimize information delays, inconsistencies, and data integration complexity while speeding time to results.
Why Tetra Tech chose Oracle
With more than 25,000 employees, Tetra Tech manages approximately 100,000 projects annually in over 110 countries. After migrating its finance and project management activities to Oracle E-Business Suite on OCI, the firm sought to replace the numerous applications and services it was using to run performance analytics. While project leaders and business users already had consistent and timely data, the new tool transformed how they accessed it—providing secure access anytime, anywhere. Whether detailed metrics about a single project or consolidated data spanning multiple projects, customers, and geographic regions, data was available through a polished, user-friendly interface. Oracle collaborated with Tetra Tech staff, conducting multiple proofs of concept to develop and refine an interactive analytics platform that would deliver more accurate and actionable insights in real time. It was this hands-on approach, as well as the completeness of OCI’s AI capabilities, that led Tetra Tech to choose Oracle to advance its strategic AI ambitions.
Results
With its Oracle E-Business Suite applications hosted on Oracle Exadata Database Service on OCI, Tetra Tech benefits from cloud automation, advanced security, and fast performance. All finance and project data generated from Oracle E-Business Suite applications is centralized within Oracle Autonomous AI Lakehouse. Tetra Tech uses the Oracle APEX low-code application development framework with the lakehouse to build reports that cut across myriad data sources and Oracle Analytics, providing business teams with interactive, role-based dashboards. Oracle Digital Assistant empowers business users to access data and analytics via conversational voice or text queries, including nuanced questions that cover various business functions and performance metrics. For example, a project manager may want to know which of the projects scheduled to end in the next three months have an unbilled balance greater than 80% of the contract value. Tetra Tech uses open source large language models in Oracle Generative AI—including Cohere and Llama—to generate natural language responses to such queries.
“It has been a truly transformative experience for our business users,” says Haseeb M.A., Tetra Tech’s Chief Business Application Officer. “They tell me that their questions are answered correctly almost 100% of the time.”
Tetra Tech is also working with Oracle to enable the AI chatbot built on its analytics platform to proactively engage with users about potential risks to project performance before they escalate. For example, the chatbot could alert users to potential project budget overruns. The firm also expects to deploy AI agents that automate routine tasks, such as fixing transaction errors or streamlining time entry for field staff.
Overall, the move to Oracle Autonomous AI Lakehouse on OCI, coupled with Oracle Generative AI, has enhanced Tetra Tech’s ability to make data-driven decisions. Full visibility into project data across multiple sources has also helped the firm achieve an industry-leading DSO metric. Giving project teams a more comprehensive view of current and past project data has led to higher proposal win rates. In addition, OCI’s hyperscale capabilities make it easier for IT staff to quickly migrate the finance and project management activities of an acquisition to the firm’s Oracle platform, regardless of complexity or transaction volumes.
“Because acquisitions are so confidential, my team never knows what the next one will be,” says Haseeb M.A. “With OCI, scalability is as simple as clicking a button.”
About the customer
With a focus on water, environment, and sustainable infrastructure, Tetra Tech delivers solutions to complex problems through innovation and deep scientific expertise, holding more PhDs among its staff than its competitors.