Ninety One demerges and transforms using Oracle Cloud

Ninety One is a global investment management firm offering active strategies across equities, fixed income, multi-asset, and alternatives to institutions, advisors, and individual investors around the world. Established in South Africa in 1991 as Investec Asset Management, the firm demerged from Investec Group in 2020 after almost three decades of organic growth and became Ninety One. Now independently listed on the London and Johannesburg Stock Exchanges, the firm focuses on ways to help clients achieve their long-term investment goals.

With the demerger, Ninety One needed its own financial systems and technology and decided that cloud native applications were the best way forward.

Ninety One wanted technology that was as close to what it had used previously before the demerger, which included Oracle Essbase for financial planning, and Oracle JD Edwards for its general ledger. The firm’s IT team was familiar with Oracle, and as a result chose to implement Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Oracle Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM).

With the demerger forcing a quick and agile move to the cloud, Ninety One implemented Oracle Cloud ERP and Oracle Cloud EPM in nine months. The move has enabled the company to quickly adapt to market conditions while also providing visibility to an ever-evolving business environment.

Ninety One implemented Oracle Cloud ERP for its core financials, including a new general ledger, account payables and receivables, cash management, and fixed assets. The company also implemented Oracle Cloud EPM for financial planning and budgeting and migrated its historic HR data to database cubes in Oracle Essbase.

Maintaining an on-premises environment was onerous from an upgrade perspective, as new features were always out of reach without massive planning and resource dedication. Oracle Cloud’s automatic quarterly updates provide new functionality for the teams to integrate into their business processes quickly and easily.

The planning capabilities in Cloud EPM have allowed Ninety One to consolidate and analyze its human capital information easily and keep it integrated with the accounting ledger, as well as overall financial forecasting and budgeting, monthly consolidation, and analytics. Narrative reporting in the Cloud EPM suite has facilitated a strong collaboration between the various processes involved in producing the annual report.

Ninety One has achieved true integration between its ERP and EPM environments, which has given the company an efficient and controlled environment to perform financial planning and close processes. Oracle Procurement Cloud has given transparency to the business as well as its suppliers, while lease accounting has automated IFRS16 reporting.

In addition, Oracle Cloud ERP and EPM provide an integrated platform to automatically load FX rates into the company’s financial system daily. The firm has also made use of Oracle Cloud Currency Reporting and has been able to leverage powerful functionalities to enable restatements, revaluations, and reporting currency ledgers.

A single cloud financial platform provides Ninety One with the ability to translate all of its balances into the primary base currency. Shareholders can review the company's performance with clear and concise reporting and have access to real-time insights to make informed business decisions.

Ninety One chose Namos Solutions for its Oracle Cloud ERP and EPM implementation. The journey was fast-paced from start to finish, but with the partner’s help, the firm implemented Oracle Cloud ERP, Oracle Cloud EPM, and Oracle Cloud Budgeting and Planning in nine months. Namos partnered with the firm to think through the enterprise structures early in the project. Beyond the implementation, Namos helped Ninety One map out a target operating model and define business needs.