• New functionalities are added in Oracle Unity, Cloud Supply Chain and Manufacturing, ERP and Human Capital Management.
• US giant is trying to solve the challenges faced by enterprises during Covid-19 and help them transform, succeed and thrive. 
• Adds AI, digital assistants and natural language processing to help organisations improve their decision-making with real-time insights, simplified business processes and drive efficiencies.

Dubai: Oracle has added new functionalities to its popular Fusion apps in a bid to offer a helping hand to enterprises and be close to them during the tough times.

“You need a partner that can work with you to transform, succeed and thrive,” Steve Miranda, Executive Vice-President for Applications Development at Oracle, said. 

Moreover, he said that having a tactical innovation in new things like voice-user interface, machine learning, AI, blockchain and IoT allow businesses not only to use technology for the sake of technology but rather technology in very specific applications that drive real business value for companies, employees and to your customers. 

“We have transformed from a product company to a service company. Oracle is the only one to have a complete cloud such as ERP, HCM, SCM, marketing, sales, service and industry solutions.  

“We have the best technology platform that we built upon and it benefits customers in a few different ways such as quarterly updates on the database, operating system, security patches and Gen 2 datacentre,” he said.

Rondy Ng, Senior Vice-President of Applications Development at Oracle, said that 2020 has been one of the most challenging years to run a business, putting added pressure on finance teams to balance short-term challenges with longer-term strategic initiatives.

“Our newest innovations rapidly adapt to the current economic climate, drive new business models, and improve strategic decision-making; all designed to help our customers define their future,” he said.

The features added are in Oracle Unity, Cloud Supply Chain and Manufacturing, Enterprise Resource Planning and Enterprise Performance Management, and Human Capital Management.

No slowdown in investment strategies

Despite the pandemic and the economic slowdown, Juergen Lindner, Oracle’s Senior Vice-President of Marketing for SaaS, said that there was no slowdown from Oracle in investment strategies.

“Our Cloud ERP had grown 33 per cent year on year in the first quarter of the fiscal year. We have partnered with customers in the difficult times of the year very differently. Instead of just being a technology partner, we being a real business partner, partnered through tough times as well,” he said.

Moreover, he said that Oracle offered free software and thought differently about commercial terms if any financial hardships happened. 

“Certain sectors such as travel and tourism, hospitality have been hit hard by the pandemic and other sectors such as video conferencing, logistics, home shopping and home fitness equipment have seen dramatic spikes in their business,” he said.

By adding artificial intelligence, digital assistants and natural language processing, Oracle is helping organisations, big and small, improve their decision-making with real-time insights, simplified business processes and drive efficiencies.

“We have been in close contact with our customers during Covid and employee expectations have been evolving. During this time, what employees want is a better experience when working remotely,” Emily He, Senior Vice-President for Human Capital Management Cloud Business Group at Oracle, said.

Lending ears to customers’ need

What we are trying to solve is the challenges faced by HR teams, He said and delivering a set of functionalities that make the employees feel that they are guided, connected with the company and also make it easier for HR professionals to work remotely and deliver best practices to their employees. 

Moreover, she said the new features improve the employee experience, enable career mobility, enhance data accuracy for HR and enable leaders to prioritise the diversity of their workforce.

“We have seen strong growth for HCM since moving to the cloud. Almost 100 per cent of our requirements are sourced from customers. Our customers are very much involved with us and help us to identify the requirements,” she said.

Covid has pushed HR to the forefront in leading the changes in the workforce as they [HR] are the heroes of these times, she said.

Lindner said that customers have not slowdown in their investments and implementations.

For example, he said that DP World had 160 separate ERP systems across 44 countries and getting all consolidated into Oracle ERP under one roof is quite a big achievement.

“Our vision has been always to automate the finance functions as much as possible. McKinsey has said that 89 per cent of the finance functions are highly automatable. Finance leaders are increasingly turning to automation and analytics to improve process efficiency and identify opportunities.

“We already have a very sound offering in the market and some of the investments have been around intelligent process automation and we are leapfrogging in RPA with more of a machine learning-based detection of the processes that can be automated,” he said.

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