Following IBM’s acquisition of Accelalpha at Oracle Cloud World last month, Accelalpha partner Joe Spear led a talk about his experience guiding transformations with Oracle, and shared a few examples from the Accelalpha implementation front lines.
In an aside with ERP Today, Spear explained: “Each project brings its own unique challenges and opportunities […] Whether it’s navigating complex supply chains, integrating advanced analytics, or ensuring seamless global operations, we thrive on turning these challenges into successes.”
Covering three companies across three industries: consumer packaged goods, shipbuilding, and advertising, each case had a different set of challenges to resolve with Oracle, showing once again that, as Spear told ERP Today, “no two implementations are ever the same.”
Consumer packaged goods – from Microsoft Dynamics to Oracle Cloud
A global consumer products company making computer games and toys was finding its legacy on-premise Microsoft Dynamics system was resulting in slowing processes for its distribution operations.
A lack of centralized reporting and analytics was leading to inaccurate KPI calculations, while disconnected supply chain operations were causing manual labor-intensive processes for order fulfillment and slow post-processing lead times for contract manufacturers shipping the finished goods. Moreover, the games and toys company had its global trade compliance actions siloed, creating sluggish procurement and customer service operations for inbound and outbound shipments.
Landing on Oracle as its solution of choice, the firm chose to partner with Accelalpha for the implementation and picked the following Oracle Cloud solutions to add to its stack, replacing Microsoft Dynamics: Oracle ERP, Procurement, Product Management, Supply Chain Planning and Execution, Demand Management, Supply Chain Collaboration, Sales and Operations Planning, GTM, OTM, Transportation Operation Planning, EPM, Order Management, Risk Management, and OIC.
The project was kicked off in September 2021 and two and a half years later went fully live in May 2024. Two phases took place, with Enterprise performance management (EPM) coming first, followed by all additional components in the second phase, including ERP, Supply Chain, and Global Trade Management.
Through Oracle’s Data Intelligence, dashboard and transactional reporting, the toys and games wholesaler could create standardized KPI reporting across the company.
Oracle’s contract manufacturing enabled an end-to-end supply chain solution with customer service and operations leaders given the tools to communicate with contractors.
Meanwhile, Oracle’s GTM Cloud, customer service, procurement and operations leaders can now proactively manage all compliance and potential issues up-front. Plus, with Accelalpha framing the need to Oracle, a drop-shipping solution for contract manufacturers was able to be incorporated in version 24B of Oracle’s Supply Chain Planning for the firm.
The wholesaler can now reduce transportation costs and enact more efficient purchasing looking ahead, with the cloud solution also bettering efficiency and processes such as order to cash and procure to pay.
Global shipbuilding firm unblocks ERP migration
A multi-million dollar global maritime player was facing the difficulty of managing multiple ERPs acquired through several acquisitions and lacked a standardized global process.
To name a few of the seven, the firm had legacy ERP and HR systems including Sage MAS, Ascentis, ADP and P6 Primavera.
Seeking to consolidate systems and standardize and automate processes, the shipbuilding company sought to implement Oracle ERP for financials, contracts, self-service procurement, operations management (OM) and sourcing. Oracle supply chain management (SCM) was also chosen for planning, inventory, manufacturing, maintenance and quality processes. Lastly, Oracle human capital management (HCM) was picked to manage core human resources functions, time, and absences.
However, experiencing some blockers in the process, the shipbuilding firm chose to partner with Accelalpha to assist with the implementation. For instance, the Oracle Projects suite couldn’t budget at the lowest component level or at the operation level for major manufactured assemblies. Plus, there was no easy revenue re-calculation when replacing or substituting inventory, and non-expensed inventory items with over 90 days lead time revenue were not recognized until receipt, causing delays and discrepancies.
Another example is in the Oracle manufacturing and the Time and Labour modules, which had time entry and costing discrepancies, due to a lack of native workflows between the modules.
Spear explained that Accelalpha stepped in here for the first phase of the project, providing extensions to the Oracle modules that solved these blockers. Upfront revenue recognition of long lead-time materials, a transfer and auto revenue recalculation between projects and tasks, and work order costing and payroll extensions were all designed for the Oracle Projects instance. This allowed work orders to flow into both Oracle Time and Labor and Manufacturing Cloud.
The next phases of the project are set to continue through 2025 but, with the Accelalpha partnership, this first phase could set a solid groundwork in place with the initial system consolidation.
Billion-dollar advertising company retires homegrown systems
Having expanded into multiple regions over ten years, a $2.1bn advertising company, specializing in outdoor advertising offers billboards, digital display and transit advertising services, had outgrown its in-house applications and was having to plug the gaps with manual operations.
The customer fulfillment process was disjointed across many systems, leading to long delays, and client managers were losing over ten hours per week on manual data gathering for reports. Maintenance and field operations’ schedules were created manually with no end-to-end process, meaning numerous emails and phone calls were required for validation and scheduling. Moreover, customers’ reserved services all had to be reviewed manually by multiple departments to cross-check panel setups and enable fulfillment.
Seeking to consolidate or replace as many of its legacy systems as possible, (that list including Proposal 2.0, Mobili, Quick Contract, Rate ManagerCharting [home grown SCM System], COIN [home grown Field Service] Billing, Interstate Logos Portal, Google Spreadsheets, and Tropic) the firm looked to Oracle and Accelalpha.
The Oracle solutions of choice included ERP for financials, risk management and self-service procurement, Supply Chain Management (SCM) for product and order management, inventory, and maintenance, Customer Experience (CX) for customer data and subscriptions management, configure, price, quote (CPQ), and field service, and finally Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) to tie all the systems together.
Implementing a centralized solution across its expanding US regions, Accelalpha and Oracle enabled automation for the firm’s AR invoicing, maintenance work orders reporting, and quoting submissions. Elsewhere, integrated processes ensure the removal of manual reporting, allowing the department leads to utilize Oracle Cloud’s module dashboards and KPIs.
Accelalpha implemented a CPQ solution within Oracle Fusion Cloud, so teams across departments will have visibility of a customer’s order, from start to finish. Also integrated with Oracle and Google Maps, Accelalpha’s Oracle APEX solution now ensures the company’s sales and operations teams can reserve time against a single asset via the Google Maps interface in CPQ.
Through Oracle’s service logistics solution between Oracle Field Service and Supply Chain Execution Cloud, the operations teams’ maintenance and field service schedules are now synchronized.
With this solution in place, the advertising firm could streamline its communications, eliminate manual process steps, enhance its sales and operations’ visibility and adhere to the same KPls across the board.
