It is no news that digital disruption is spreading like wildfire, but what is noteworthy is the fact that digital disruption is occurring in organisations with less than 20 employees and through to those with a workforce of more than 250,000.
It is a case of disruption or being disrupted for the chief financial officer (CFO) and it is this very context that keeps him up at night. Oracle states that according to research, CFOs are constantly looking over their shoulder for disruptive technologies that might spell trouble for their companies. The trouble is, while the CFOs are focusing on the rear-view mirror to pre-empt potential issues that may arise, they can’t be looking forward to the future to ensure they stay ahead of the game.
Oracle APAC Vice President and Head of Cloud ERP/SCM Applications Jasbir Singh during his brief visit to Sri Lanka recently shared his thoughts with Mirror Business on this area, whilst also sharing solutions offered by the global entity.
Singh states that the first element that keeps CFOs awake at night is what keeps us awake as well. 
Have we saved enough of money and assets for the future? Is one ready to expand? These are just a few of the questions he, a CFO, seeks answers for. The CFO is faced with the situation where he has to choose from the option of going ahead with his plans with a ready-made product or investing in a new system.
“Digital disruption creates pressure upwards. What takes away a CFO’s sleep is when he doesn’t have the elements to make decisions. We, at Oracle, aim to provide a platform that would enable just the same, in a timely and efficient manner,” he shared.
While technology is required to make those sound decisions, not every service provider has the ability to give enough and related information across all areas. The CFO’s decision of buying or renting a system depends on that factor.
Productivity taking the lead in the operations of any business, Singh stressed it is the CFO who is capable of making decisions fast with the help of accurate, timely and a wealth of information. He is the one who would stay ahead of the game.
The traditional manner in which a CFO operates is that he would typically wait until month end for the accounts and financial reports to take any decision. However, the modern CFO would look at how he can give more reporting time for his business whilst allocating minimal time for the processing of the information and decision-making.
“Modern applications are designed so that a CFO doesn’t need to do too much of data cleaning before reporting. He requires an information management system that is very much real time and most importantly accurate,” opined Singh.
He elaborated that they essentially look for elements such as built-in intelligence. The modern CFO is the one who looks for adaptive intelligence since the business changes based on patterns that are outside his company. And intelligence comes from structured data that exist within the organisation.
The modern CFO is also the one that empowers. The Oracle head noted that the modern CFO is the one that in order for him to reduce his final one day finance close would empower more.
“He would do so by employing a system that is robust and helps in making speedy decision- making. For that, modern systems require embedded analytics,” he noted.
The next biggest challenge is in the forecasting. One can only give projection if there is a robust internal process that captures details at the management and end-user levels. If every employee is given a system where he can capture actual data, then he is able to observe and analyse the seasonality of the
past performance and make accurate forecast.
“The system requires a robust scalable infrastructure and by moving it to the cloud is when you get the capacity. The more the data grows, the more the intelligence is absorbed, the more the accuracy. This equips the CFO and allows him to confidently make future projections,” explained Singh.
Next generation CFO
A CFO of the future is the millennial of today. That is how Oracle chooses to profile the next generation CFO. Millennials are the individuals born in the Internet era and grew up with gadgets and rely on the Internet as a source of information. They are the kind of people who thrive on information but are not that master of it. The modern CFO is the one who has access to information, quick to collaborate and have full-time visibility across all departments. Oracle stresses that the CFO of the future, who unlike the present-day CFO, will have his sleep, will be the jack of all trades but the master of one trade.
Moving towards this could and pave the way for customers to do the same, Oracle states it is no more a mere a software creator, but a service provider.
“To keep up with the emerging trends, we, at Oracle, understand that our DNA needs to change as well. We have done just that. We have moved from making a software to extending a service. There is a shift in the industry and we, at Oracle, have moved accordingly, so that we accommodate ourselves and our clients well in the disruption,”
he said.
With Oracle Cloud Software as a service, businesses are able to reimagine their processes and experiences as extended are applications that would help improve speed and ones that offer innovation of best-of-breed cloud software in a complete, secure and connected cloud suite. Embedded with Modern Best Practice processes and built-in social, mobile and analytic capabilities, Oracle Cloud applications help businesses deliver the experiences customers expect, talent to succeed and performance the market demands.
Allowing entities to come up with their own innovation agenda, Singh asserted Oracle is the only company in the world that provides a full suite of services in the cloud.
“Oracle Cloud is the industry’s broadest and most integrated public cloud. It offers best-in-class services across software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and even lets you put Oracle Cloud in your own data centre,” he said.
Singh added that the cloud solution from Oracle helps organisations drive innovation and business transformation by increasing business agility, lowering costs and reducing IT complexity.
Wanted in the world today is a platform for innovation industry leaders who are embracing digital technologies at an ever-increasing pace to create innovative business processes that disrupt their markets. However, many enterprises are still struggling to achieve the agility that’s so critical to their success. The reason is simply because it takes too long, professed Singh.
“Developing and testing new applications and setting up new environments can take weeks or even months. Just the task of maintaining the database and middleware that support all the application development and deployment environments can become so time-consuming that IT has little opportunity to update or extend the existing applications. As a result, innovation slows while the cost of supporting that innovation continues to rise,” he shared.
Meanwhile, required is a cloud-based platform solution as increasingly organisations find that by using the same to develop and deploy applications, they can eliminate the cost and complexity of managing the underlying application platforms. Businesses that use the system have reported operational savings of up to 50 percent compared to using silo technology stacks, according
to Singh.
Furthermore, simplifying the administration and management of your infrastructure, database and middleware means developers can build new applications faster and more cost-effectively. IT organisations would be able to shift focus from provisioning and maintaining environments to the strategic work of supporting and collaborating with the business. On the other hand, business users can enhance employee productivity and automate business processes, without involving IT.
Oracle Cloud Platform enables organisations to innovate faster, increase productivity and lower their costs. From collaboration to mobile development, from business intelligence and big data analytics to the Internet of things, the Oracle Cloud Platform is simply the most integrated and comprehensive cloud platform available today.
“Expansion is mandatory for success but the executing the endeavour without increasing costs and duplicating resources is the challenge. For that you need solutions that are agile.
The speed of the extending a service is a key factor in today’s age and time. Regardless of what is required, Oracle within 48 hours ensures what businesses requires are made available,” said Singh.
