Fast Finance

Recognizes a fast and effective implementation of Oracle ERP Cloud or Oracle EPM Cloud solutions.

Argo Group—Oscar Guerrero, Group Deputy Chief Financial Officer

Argo Group is an international insurance company operating through multiple subsidiaries that provides insurance services and products to clients around the world. Oscar Guerrero, group deputy chief financial officer, wanted to align finance functions across systems to support global finance and improve systems processes that would support future growth. Through strategic and innovation thinking, Guerrero recognized that Argo needed to embrace a cloud-based financial solution to align technology capabilities with industry best practices and ensure support of future domestic and international business growth. Argo went with a phased implementation approach that focused on developing a common roadmap for people, process, and technology across all financial systems and then incrementally leveraging the cloud to integrate and automate the solution across financial planning, consolidations and close, and ERP financials globally. Argo has been able to achieve improved system processes through standardization and scalability that will sustain future growth. Guerrero was an exceptional leader and change agent for Argo Group in its effort to integrate its financial systems and future-proof its business.

Frugal Finance

Recognizes dramatic cost savings using Oracle ERP Cloud and Oracle EPM Cloud solutions.

Diversey—David Feierstein, Senior Vice President, Global Head of Transformation Office

As Vice President, Global Head of Transformation Office at Diversey, in David Feierstein’s experience leading transformations, he uses Oracle Enterprise Data Management Cloud to go into newly acquired businesses that may have highly disjointed master data and make sense of it and organize it. Oracle Enterprise Data Management Cloud “interacts with all these different applications,” Feierstein explains, helping his team to “implement new systems and new processes extremely quickly by centralizing, consolidating, and organizing the master data that’s critical to make all these applications function.”

Having instituted zero-based budgeting at four businesses in three different market sectors over the past five years with Oracle EPM Cloud, Feierstein has routinely turned to Oracle applications to address three critical factors—speed, functionality, and cost. The results so far have been astounding. Feierstein says that when he implemented his technology coupled with zero-based budgeting at two leading consumer packaged goods companies, he saw a cost takeout of about 20% in 18 to 24 months at one organization and 30% in 12 months at another. With a fintech company, he realized a 15% savings in 14 months. Two of the companies even doubled revenue growth as a result of being able to redeploy those cost savings to build new markets. He anticipates a cost takeout of 15% at the global industrial cleaning company within 12 to 24 months.

Procure-to-Payday

Recognizes successful transformation of the P2P process using Oracle Procurement Cloud.

Servane Morel, Chief Financial Officer for the CIO Office

Servane Morel, CFO for the CIO Office, was an invaluable resource in helping implement Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud. In the time since migrating to Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud, her company has achieved greater levels of efficacy while reining in the cost of IT spending. The business as a whole has already realized several benefits. The automation provided by Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud has provided the finance team freedom from time-consuming manual processes, allowing them to focus on more impactful, value-added tasks.

Crystal Ball

Recognizes financial planning and analysis professionals who leverage analytics to test business models and strengthen business impact.

Michael Baker International—David Dawson, Vice President and Director of Business Intelligence

David Dawson, vice president and director of business intelligence for Michael Baker International (MBI), fearlessly embraced Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service to create a solution that revolutionized MBI’s planning process, connecting the executive vision for growth with the information needed to guide strategic planning. Dawson recognized an opportunity to redefine financial planning by leveraging Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service, which analyzes detailed workforce, project, and expense data.

As an engineering firm, MBI’s budget is determined on a project basis. At any given point, the firm has approximately 6,000 active projects across the US, with another 2,000 potential projects in the pipeline. The organization’s aging planning system—a combination of Adaptive Insights and Excel templates—could not provide the level of analysis needed. The redesigned solution uses individual employee and project data to analyze revenue and expenses for current, upcoming, and future projects, as well as MBI’s capacity to deliver the resources needed. By integrating the data from the project management, CRM, timekeeping, and expense systems, Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service provides insight that directs operational decisions such as regional capacity, forecasting, and flexing nonbillable resources.

Having just completed its first budget with Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud, MBI has seen the following business improvements:

• 17-day reduction in the amount of time spent completing the budget (51 days in 2017 to 34 in 2018)
• Reduction in the budget preparation time, from six weeks to one week
• Real-time project portfolio information—updates projects every night with information from source system—has eliminated the need for 700-plus project managers to provide estimates during the budgeting process
• Visibility into how the original budget was submitted by the operational staff and the adjustments recommended by the executive team (separately and combined)
• Streamlined creation and maintenance of reports and ad hoc analyses with Reporting Web Studio and Smart View tools

Roll with It

Recognizes significant increase in agility using the rolling forecast capability in the Oracle EPM Cloud best-in-class service delivery.

Royal Bank of Scotland—Stuart Wray, Head of Implementation Future Finance

Stuart Wray is Head of Implementation Future Finance at RBS Group, a 300-year-old institution where Wray is helping develop the finance digital strategy as a finance change agent dedicated to continuing to modernize the finance function. From its headquarters in Edinburgh, RBS serves 18.9 million customers globally. Wray and his team are committed to helping RBS leverage finance innovations and emerging technologies.

Wray’s role is to be the bridge between finance and IT to help implement emerging technologies quickly and safely. Wray is working with Oracle to implement a broad range of digital transformation initiatives, using Oracle Cloud applications to transform the internal customer experience; simplify processes, remove complexity; and drive employee engagement. These initiatives include the use of predictive capabilities to work towards a “zero-touch” rolling forecast; using chatbots to simplify expense and invoice queries; delivering compliant budgets, forecasts, and cost allocations; and establishing a system of data-driven insights and analysis. In addition, RBS is working jointly with Oracle on a blockchain pilot.

One of the areas Wray is passionate about is creating an autonomous, touchless rolling forecasting process using Oracle EPM Cloud. He has taken RBS live on Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service to model their banking books (mortgage, credit card, private banking, etc.). One of the things he is most excited about are the continuous updates that comes with a cloud model. This means that his finance team gets updates on a monthly basis and they can see the product evolve.

One of the challenges that RBS faced previously was to model scenarios quickly due to the number of spreadsheets that the bank had. Oracle EPM Cloud helped RBS improve the pace, building and delivering in excess of 30 new Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service planning models in nine months and eliminating in excess of 1,000 spreadsheets.

Better Together

Recognizes fruitful integration of Oracle ERP Cloud with another Oracle Cloud solution.

Western Digital—Donald Robertson, Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer

Western Digital (WD) is one of the most recognizable names in the computer hard disk and data storage space. It has undergone a period of exponential growth through a series of high-profile acquisitions. In a short time, it has integrated SanDisk and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies onto Oracle ERP Cloud, Oracle EPM Cloud, Oracle SCM Cloud, and Oracle Analytics Cloud. Donald Robertson, vice president, chief accounting officer, was a catalyst in making this colossal effort into a reality. Robertson and his team used finance modernization as the first step in the multiyear effort into bringing WD into the cloud. As a result of standardizing processes throughout its Oracle Cloud solutions, WD has been able to achieve some significant benefits. In the procure-to-pay realm, WD has significantly reduced the amount of time required for purchase approvals—from 16 layers of approvals to just 4 approvals. In the area of supplier management, the company has rationalized its supplier count across the three legacy companies, from 30,000 to about 17,000. Overall, they have reduced approval times by 70%, rationalized suppliers by 50%, and improved acquisition agility on a global scale.

Shared Services Superstar

Recognizes a shared services organization using Oracle Cloud for finance applications to develop digital capabilities to achieve best-in-class service delivery.

TTI, Inc.—Chris Goodman, Chief Financial Officer

TTI, Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway company, is the world’s leading specialty distributor of electromechanical and discrete components. In recent years, TTI has undergone considerable growth through acquisitions and anticipates more opportunities for further growth.

When CFO Chris Goodman joined the organization in 2017, TTI was using a 40-year-old mainframe system whose age posed significant business and security risks that threatened to undermine the company’s ability to best serve its customers. Goodman had witnessed the transformative power of the cloud in other organizations and believed it could transform things in the financial division. He decided on Oracle ERP Cloud because of its ability to streamline processes by unifying the finance operation functions of TTI’s 30-plus locations across the globe. The standardized and automated systems that are integral components of Oracle ERP Cloud ultimately helped reduce complexity and costs, while bolstering TTI’s financial reporting capability.

Top Talent

Recognizes an effective combination of Oracle ERP Cloud and Oracle HCM Cloud solutions.

MedStar Health—Patricia Grubb, Vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis

MedStar Health is a nonprofit health system based in Maryland that focuses on medical advancement through research, education, and innovation. MedStar has more than 6,000 affiliated physicians, 10 hospitals, urgent care centers, and a world-renowned research institute for medical excellence.

Patricia Grubb, VP of FP&A at MedStar, is a dedicated change agent who created a vision to bring together finance operations and workforce planning. As the executive sponsor, Grubb’s leadership and guidance was key to managing internal leadership and driving project success on time. Grubb was integral to MedStar Health in implementing Oracle Cloud and providing the nonprofit healthcare system with world-class workforce planning, reporting, and analytics through synergy of a complete cloud solution. MedStar is able to get a holistic view of its organization with a simplified, consistent user interface that has improved overall employee engagement and user adoption. By moving to Oracle Cloud, MedStar can properly analyze overall costs, forecast future revenue and expenses, and report financial health to stakeholders.

Oracle Billion-Dollar Story Honorary

Recognizes industry pioneers who use Oracle ERP Cloud and/or Oracle EPM Cloud to deliver monumental savings using techniques such as process standardization and simplification.

GE—Robert Barocas, Senior Director and Head of Cloud ERP Engineering, and the Cloud ERP Team

GE was an early adopter of Oracle ERP Cloud and their Cloud ERP Team provides advisory and implementation services within GE. They established a blueprint and leveraged a roadmap that has been implemented in GE Corporate, GE Digital, GE Additives and other shared services. The Cloud ERP Team helped expand the footprint from financials in a single country to financials, supply chain and manufacturing implementations in over two dozen countries.

Robert Barocas is Senior Director and part of the program management team that was instrumental in driving user adoption, changing user mindsets to adopt industry best practices, and moving away from customizations. Barocas and the Cloud ERP Team successfully implemented strong product governance practices to realize the benefits of an integrated cloud suite. By leveraging industry best practices provided through Oracle ERP Cloud, GE has maintained a comparatively small support footprint and quicker rollout times compared to traditional on-premises ERP applications.