Oracle OpenWorld 2020: Miranda – business model changes are driving turn to cloud

Pandemic as catalyst

How much of what Oracle is announcing in respect of cloud applications has been conditioned by the pandemic, and how much of it would it have done anyway?

“There are two things that have been impacted by the pandemic,” said Miranda. “One is we have been surprised and pleased that our design plan of being able to react quickly to change has been vindicated. The fact that it is cloud means you have much less labour on the customer side. So, our talking point about being nimble and being able to react to change and be flexible has held.

“Then there has been an acceleration of adoption in certain areas, for example in our HCM Learning Cloud. So, there, learning went from compliance to ‘how can we rapidly retrain to enable remote working?’

“And – again not a new product, but which comes under the heading of Covid-related stress – is the entirety of the supply chain and supply chain planning. There are lots of companies rethinking their supply chain to avoid single source of supply areas, and putting in more use of our tooling there. A lot of organisations are not as static as they used to be, so forward planning to avoid some of the things that have happened during the pandemic is front of mind for those customers.

“And again, because of the supply chain disruption, cash planning has been an issue, and so the forecasting and cash management part of our financials suite have seen a lot more usage and become a lot more important.”

New features roster

Alongside the keynote, Oracle is highlighting some new features in its cloud applications suite.           

It is announcing a series of new aspects of its customer data platform. The latest updates to Oracle Unity  are said to “enable B2B and B2C marketers to eliminate costly and complex customer data integration projects by providing a single platform that unifies all customer data and enables it to be quickly and easily activated within existing business processes”.   

Oracle Unity is now said to include “real-time behavioural data collection and personalisation capabilities, which enable marketers to apply machine learning to customer behavioural data to personalise customer interactions across websites, apps and point of sale”.

Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research, said in an Oracle statement: “Brands are struggling to aggregate, manage and make sense of their oceans of data spread through the business. Leading organisations seek technology vendors with decades of experience in the data business. Customers and prospects seek more than just a CDP.  They want intelligence capabilities, ecosystem and ability to scale.” 

The supplier also announced updates to Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing (Oracle Cloud SCM). These include the Oracle Logistics Digital Assistant, to which Miranda referred. This is said to provide “on-the-go access to real-time supply chain information through a conversational interface that responds quickly, improves user satisfaction, and increases business efficiencies”.

“In addition, users can now easily access order status and shipment tracking remotely without having to navigate through the Oracle Transportation Management application or understand complicated data mappings. As a result, a supply chain manager can be informed of all in-transit orders and receive timely updates on shipments from anywhere, on any mobile device.”

Another feature is an “Oracle AI Planning Advisor”, which is said to use “artificial intelligence capabilities embedded within supply chain planning to display recommendations that optimise new product introduction and enable customers to respond to current and anticipated production disruptions”.

The supplier has also announced updates to Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP and Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM (enterprise performance management). 

These include “Intelligent Process Automation”, which is said to “improve financial close and account reconciliation by using configurable and intelligent rules and patterns to automate manual tasks. Automating a large portion of reconciliations allows customers to focus on complex issues requiring human judgement”.

Digital assistance also figures under this heading, including “Project Time Entry”, which is said to predict project time entry, simplify tasks and expenses entry, and reconcile month-end processes for project professionals.

There are also new industry-specific features that support utilities, oil and gas, asset-intensive industries, and professional services.

These include “Joint Venture Management Capabilities for Utilities and Oil and Gas”, said to “support retroactive billing adjustments, partner reimbursements and partner contributions to improve the accuracy of joint venture accounting, shorten the financial close period, avoid costly billing disputes, and reduce project costs”.