Finance leaders from Cardtronics and Allegis Group with more than three years of combined experience using Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close joined Perficient and Oracle for a panel discussion regarding their cloud journey. 

Richard Ng, Director, Financial Systems, Cardtronics, and John Oliphant, Financial Developer Lead Allegis Group, shared the stories of their organizations’ migration from Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) to Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close. In this first blog post of a four-part series, Richard and John discuss Oracle Cloud benefits.

To view the spotlight video on this topic, click on the video link below. To view the entire webinar, click here.

 

Being on the cloud, what benefits have you seen yourselves?

[Richard Ng] There are lot of benefits being on the cloud – First is data management. It has become very easy to integrate between different cloud systems and we have functionality to integrate without extracting and importing files. Another tool which is useful for us is Enterprise Data Management (EDMCS). It is a great tool for metadata management, and we can manage metadata centrally for all cloud applications.

Oracle also releases monthly patches which provides new features and keeps you up to date.

[John Oliphant] Oracle Cloud benefits for us have been similar. EDMCS is a great product, and we have lot of success with it. We make update at one place, and it flows down to our different applications.

Oracle EPM Cloud monthly updates have been a great benefit as well. We receive notifications and we can test enhancements before it is released in production.

We don’t have to deal with any on-prem vulnerabilities and apply patches as Oracle takes care of that for us. That is a huge benefit as well.

Perficient’s Perspective

Cloud applications are designed to provide a rapid return on investment, with less risk than a traditional implementation. For example, intercompany eliminations, ownership, currency translations are standard functionalities provided by Oracle which can be configured quickly for faster deployment.

Lower Total Cost of Ownership

As cloud environments are managed by Oracle, no infrastructure is required by companies to use Oracle Cloud EPM which is considerable benefit for large and small- to medium-sized companies.  Oracle provides incremental updates to the cloud environments removing the need for companies to perform upgrades.

Scalability

The flexibility of cloud, and the ease with which you can scale, allows you to move faster. When your current environment no longer meets your requirements, you can quickly add capacity at a cost that won’t break the bank. You don’t need to add more servers when more seats are required.

Frequent Upgrades and New Features

An upgrade of a legacy application is no small endeavor and it’s not uncommon for organizations to put off the upgrade decision as long as possible. The expense is a huge consideration, but the time involved is equally daunting. Major upgrades are complex and the pain of the upgrade process is all too real for those who have been through it. You cannot sustain a permanent implementation team to update on-premises applications with each release. With cloud, you don’t have to. Unlike a major release of a legacy application, cloud applications are upgraded with relative ease. For example, as Oracle adds new features and functionality to its cloud offerings, there’s limited disruption to business users. Furthermore, this ensures you have the latest security patches.

Productivity Gains

The cloud offers increased employee productivity through better information flow and collaboration capabilities and by automating routine processes. With Oracle Financial Close and Consolidation you can replace manual, spreadsheet-based financial processes with automated, centralized systems for   consolidated financial reporting.

The user interface is intuitive and easy to follow, the same user experience is extended to all Oracle solutions in the cloud making the transition from one application or module to another seamless and fluid. The modules and applications can be incrementally configured to meet the ever-changing needs of the finance organization. i.e. you can start your EPM cloud journey with a simple Consolidation solution and gradually add Close Manager, Account Reconciliations and Profitability modules as your processes mature.

Minimal IT Involvement

By migrating to Oracle Cloud, the role of your company’s IT department will change. No longer tasked with “keeping the lights on,” they’ll instead be able to focus on more strategic initiatives such as the functionality needed by the business, analyzing what modules to implement, prioritizing upcoming initiatives, and analyzing the success of the implementations.