About Client
The client is headquartered in New Zealand and invests in natural disaster research, education, and providing insurance to property owners for the damage caused by natural disasters like earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, hydrothermal activity, and tsunamis. They are committed to reducing the impact of natural disasters on people and communities.
Project Background
In February 2021, the client commenced a substantial business transformation project and decided to move from their 10-year-old SAP Business One (SAP B1) system to Oracle Cloud applications. The reason: SAP B1 system was an old system that no longer met its requirements. Since their current system had limited procurement functionality, they wanted to move to a new ERP solution that included SCM modules, as well.
They were using standalone time-sheet systems and all the other projects were being managed on spreadsheets, leading to increased system complexity with several manual processes and integrations. Due to these manual processes, it took them over 13 days to complete the month-end close. Therefore, in the quest to streamline and digitise their business processes, they decided to invest in a modern cloud-based FMIS (Financial Management Information Systems). With this implementation, their prime objective was to provide a more efficient self-service solution for their employees as well as customers.
Implementation
- The implementation included: Finance solution consisting of General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Cash Management, Fixed Assets and Expenses; Supply Chain solution consisting of Supplier Portal, Contracts, Purchasing and Self-Service Procurement and ERP solution included Project Financials and Project Execution, Time and Labour, Digital Assistant and Risk Management.
- We used Oracle Integration Cloud as the middleware. All the typical integrations to banks and credit card systems were in scope. The implementation also included some complex/unusual integrations for Claims Management System, BICC to Data Warehouse, Soc Siem
- Since a key part of their business is covering claims in the event of a natural disaster. They required a claims management system to manage and process all these claims. These claims were well-integrated into Accounts Payable for payment and once paid – payment status is updated to the application.
Major Achievements
- The strategic direction of the client’s IT Department was to move all on-premise applications to cloud-based solutions. We were able to fully integrate Oracle Cloud solution for ERP, SCM, and EPM into a single solution, which was a major component of this transformation.
- Oracle Cloud transformation project was successfully delivered to the client in 40 weeks, even though the majority of implementation was done remotely due to Covid-19 restrictions.
Business Benefits
- With the implementation of Oracle Cloud applications, the client now had a single source of truth for its business processes.
- By leveraging Oracle Digital Assistant, we enabled self-service capabilities in the HR and finance processes, helping improve the respective teams’ productivity and efficiency.
- The stand-alone timesheet system was replaced with Oracle Time & Labour with integration to Oracle Projects. Stakeholders now have improved visibility and control over their workforce management processes.
- The client has been able to improve their month-end close cycle time and continuous improvements are in progress to reduce it by 50%.
