Opening Paragraph: When a major UK FTSE retailer undertakes one of the largest on-prem to cloud transformations attempted there will always be the risk that, however strong the delivery, issues can occur that impact customers, suppliers, and employees. This is what happened in 2018 when 7F were asked to support the post-implementation stabilisation of a major Oracle Fusion implementation.
Business Challenges: Although the client had gone ‘live’ there existed over 150 pain points that were identified in the weeks following. These ranged across major business processes, including payables, receivables, general ledger, fixed assets, projects, procurement, and reporting. These challenges were equally spread across system configuration, data, process, and set-up. The result of this impacted billing, employee frustrations month-end closure, and ease of reporting.
Why Oracle Cloud Fusion:
The customer chose Oracle Fusion for a wide range of reasons including:
- Streamlined and Integrated Processes: Oracle Fusion ERP offers a unified platform that integrates various business functions, such as Finance, Procurement, Supply Chain Management, Human Resources, and Project Management. This integration eliminates silos and enables seamless data flow and collaboration across departments, leading to streamlined processes and improved efficiency.
- Real-time Analytics and Insights: With Oracle Fusion ERP, organisations gain access to powerful analytics and reporting capabilities. Real-time data analysis allows for timely decision-making, enhanced visibility into business performance, and the ability to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement. These insights empower businesses to make data-driven decisions and optimise their operations.
- Enhanced Financial Management: Oracle Fusion ERP provides robust financial management functionalities, including general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, cash management, and financial reporting. It enables organisations to maintain accurate financial records, automate financial processes, ensure compliance with regulations, and gain comprehensive visibility into their financial performance.
- Scalability and Flexibility: Oracle Fusion ERP is designed to accommodate the evolving needs of businesses, whether they are small startups or large enterprises. It offers scalability and flexibility, allowing organisations to adapt and grow without major disruptions. The modular structure of Fusion ERP enables businesses to add or modify modules as needed, ensuring a tailored solution that aligns with their specific requirements.
Why 7F:
The reputation of 7F led them to be contacted and asked to support. This reputation had been gained by 7F through their work with a major UK hospitality company. They were given the task of curating, prioritising, and resolving these pain points as soon as practically possible. 7F quickly deployed a combination of 8 partners and associates, each handpicked with the right specialism to support the client and their specific needs. This expertise extended across accounting, process management, system integration, configuration, and technical setup.
The 7F team immediately realised the importance of the challenge and within days were on-site, identifying, scoping and triaging the pain points, building relationships with key stakeholders, and developing execution plans. In fact, the rapid deployment and focus provided by the 7F team were a stand-out feature of their deployment. Often 7F found themselves coordinating the combined efforts of multiple parties across the programme including consultants, contractors, technology vendors, and the client. In constant communication with the client, 7F were able to reassure those in the programme with clear plans and timelines.
Taking each pain point individually they methodically worked through root causes, seeking to get to the nub of issues and applied corrections whether this be process, data, or configuration related. The attitude was one of delivering permanent, sustainable fixes rather than any short-term patch. Very often these solutions required the 7F team to gain an in-depth understanding of the client’s business, recognising the ‘live’ nature of the impact and work directly alongside the client’s team charged with mitigating any consequences.
Results: Over the course of the next 9 months, over 150 pain points were steadily eliminated, ensuring that fixes were permanent and embedded, with solutions documented, and trained into the client where required. Most satisfactorily, many of these problems were unforeseen and involved some clever process, data or technical solution to be designed and implemented. Within weeks the impact of these changes started to be felt and stakeholders reassured. The result of these interventions was that the client was able to continue to operate with zero impact on their customer.
With all the pain points relieved, the customer was able to focus on reaping the full rewards of having a comprehensive cloud-based ERP.
Quotes:
7F Managing Director:
I am immensely proud of our collaboration on this project and the positive impact we have made on the customer’s finance operations. Thanks to the collective depth of knowledge and experience in our team, both from an industry and ERP system Delivery, we were able to turn this project around, removing their ongoing pain points and helping realise the true benefits of a great Cloud solution such as Oracle Fusion.
Client Finance Director:
Working with 7F was instrumental for our business and our Cloud ERP Project. The arrival of their dedicated team of partners and associates brought about a remarkable change as a result of their ability to quickly identify, scope, and triage the issues, all whilst ensuring minimal impact on our customers. Beyond resolving the pain points we faced, their expertise and guidance helped us fully leverage the advantages of a cloud-based solution. Thanks to 7F, we are now reaping the rewards of improved data accuracy, scalability, and cost savings.
Products: 7F worked across Oracle Cloud Fusion and a multitude of existing legacy systems that would continue to have interfaces with Fusion for the foreseeable future. They deployed their own tooling to support major data population challenges into Fusion which massively eased this process and helped maintain high levels of data integrity.