Establishing a resilient financial and supply chain platform has helped us adapt and respond to disruptive events. Prior to the pandemic we made the decision to architect new cloud communication and collaboration tools, including Oracle Cloud ERP, in order to scale as we integrate acquisitions. The driving strategy is to unify disparate platforms using an “always-on” data warehouse and unified cloud platform to eliminate duplicate processes, improve financial and operational visibility, and create a platform for growth. For example, we want to have the employees of acquired companies on our systems on Day 1.
Well, as it turns out, that ability to scale worked amazingly well when the pandemic hit. Within days of initiating the work-from-home directive, we had some of our tools scaling four to fifteen times their pre-COVID use and volume.
A great example of a quick pivot is that we brought eight manufacturing facilities live and using Oracle Cloud ERP and Supply Chain Management in Southeast Asia during a 30-day period while travel restrictions were in place. Normally, we’d fly hundreds of people—including myself—to the locations to train and do change management because it’s not just about adopting new software. It’s also about embracing automation, reducing complexity, and simplifying workflow. There were very few negative impacts, greatly outweighed by the benefits, of suddenly having to adopt a completely remote implementation strategy.
Continuous cloud updates deliver big benefits
Some of the biggest benefits we’re realizing with Oracle Cloud are the result of being able to easily adopt continuous updates. We’ve accepted twelve updates in just the three years we’ve been live. I have never done twelve updates in three years to an ERP system. Ever. And I’ve never known of another company that has done that with on-premise systems. That ability to do timely updates like that gives us new financial and supply chain capabilities on a much more frequent interval.
Since standardizing on cloud-enabled processes, we’ve significantly reduced our data warehouse refreshes from well over eight-plus hours to now under 20 minutes. We’re now operating in a near-real-time environment for reporting and operational capabilities.
We also now have greater visibility into global operations, which will enable intelligent track-and-trace into the transportation management system to monitor past and current location of supplies and products. By integrating Oracle Cloud SCM with our automated shop floor equipment, we’re automating more processes to increase manufacturing efficiency. I’m really excited to leverage more automated intelligence and machine learning as Oracle continuously updates their supply chain solutions.
I’ll share two more example of how we have gained the ability to pivot quickly. We used the agility of the cloud platform, and nimble access to data, to mitigate the potential negative impact of dealing with simultaneous issues relating to trade embargoes and restrictions coupled with challenges in our silicon wafer fabrication facility. Also, with all the supply chain uncertainty in the current situation, we gained the ability to more quickly and efficiently plan and reroute supplies from one supplier to another or to one location to another based on immediate priorities.