Four Big Moves Finance

Should Make Right Now

Recapture growth and thrive in an unpredictable future
Introduction

Albert Einstein famously said, “in the middle of difficulty CFOs are making big moves to get
lies opportunity.” COVID-19 has fundamentally changed
how companies do business, whether that means adopting out in front of the competition,
a digital sales model, adapting to shifts in consumer
behavior, or dealing with a new competitor. Yet those
shifting their business models,
organizations that were prepared for change—and those leveraging mergers and
that rapidly embrace change now—can turn unprecedented
challenges into growth.
acquisitions (M&A) or divestitures
to support change, and investing
“The companies best positioned for the COVID era had
technology that allowed them to adapt quickly to changing
in automation to accelerate the
times: touchless transactions, robotics, online commerce, close and manage risk.
or the infrastructure needed to support a decentralized
workforce,” says a September 2020 article in the Wall Indeed, the global health and economic crises have
Street Journal. “Their success may define and reshape the accelerated the digitization of everything from internal
business world for some time to come.” processes, to products and services, to customer
interactions. A McKinsey & Company survey of global
CFOs are leading the charge, making big moves to get executives found that in the case of remote working,
out in front of the competition, shifting their business companies moved 40 times more quickly than they
models, leveraging mergers and acquisitions (M&A) or thought possible before the pandemic. From September
divestitures to support change, and investing in automation 2019 to July 2020, the global average share of products
to accelerate finance and manage risk. At Oracle, we’ve seen and services that were partially or fully digitized jumped
many customers succeed during the global economic crisis to 55 percent—seven years ahead of the average rate
created by COVID-19, having modernized their processes, of adoption from 2017 to 2019. In that same period, the
technology, and workforce prior to 2020. average share of customer interactions that were digital

Take FedEx Services, which has implemented more than 40

cloud applications. “By institutionalizing innovation long
before the pandemic and making it an ongoing part of the
business, we’ve had a strong foundation to fall back on,”
said Chris Wood, vice president of Business Transformation
at FedEx Services. Cloud enterprise performance
management (EPM) and cloud supply chain management
(SCM) solutions give FedEx visibility into increasingly
complex financials and global logistics.

Meanwhile, at Western Digital, the decision to move to a

unified cloud platform for finance and supply chain enabled
them to make quick pivots to remain flexible during the
pandemic. “Within days of initiating the work-from-home
directive, we had some of our tools scaling 4 to 15 times
their pre-COVID use and volume,” said the company’s
previous CIO, Steve Phillpott.

1 Four Big Moves Finance Should Make Right Now

reached 58 percent, fueled by customers’ growing need to
interact with companies online. According to the research,
respondents are three times likelier now than before the
pandemic to say that at least 80 percent of their customer Ahead of the downturn
interactions are digital. Three ways a cloud investment helped Oracle pivot

The role of finance in a

COVID economy and beyond To stay ahead of changing needs and expectations from our
Many companies have now stabilized—they were able to customers, partners, and employees, we embarked on our own
business transformation prior to 2020. This meant implementing
build and maintain resilience in response to the global
the complete suite of Oracle Cloud applications—a move that left
crisis, or have begun their recovery from the fallout. They’re
us well positioned for resiliency during the crisis.
ready to once again turn their focus to the future, and that
means being prepared to respond to whatever comes next. Our investment continues to pay off across the business. In finance
CFOs and their teams were already under pressure to build and operations, specifically, we’ve seen critical results, including:
finance teams with the skills and processes needed to
react to the pace of change. Now, they are partnering with Improved speed and accuracy in financial planning
leaders across the business as they retool their companies 1 Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM gives us the ability to perform
to make sure they’re investing in the right path forward. scenario modeling and financial consolidations faster,
enabling finance to provide real-time recommendations to
Experts, including Oracle CEO Safra Catz, agree that small business leaders and plan with accuracy. “When COVID-19
hit, we used scenario planning to identify potential
changes aren’t enough. Big, innovative moves are what will
implications to revenue streams and bookings, and where
enable companies to get out in front of the competition.
we wanted to invest sales and development resources,”
Oracle has a history of making these types of moves to said Ivgen Guner, Oracle’s executive vice president of global
invest in the future during economic downturns—from business finance.
M&A activity and spending more than $6.1B annually in
R&D, to enhancing customer and employee experiences, Global account reconciliations in 1.5 hours
2 We can reconcile our balance sheet accounts at a global
to transforming core operations by moving all of its legacy
systems to the cloud (see “Ahead of the downturn” sidebar). level, leveraging our global chart of accounts and global
reporting in Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP to reduce time,
“This is the time to really put your foot on the accelerator,”
risk, and errors. We reconcile intercompany accounts for
said Catz. “People always think it’s risky to go fast. I think
hundreds of subsidiaries in under two hours—with on-
that it’s risky to go slow.” premises ERP, this took one week.

Kyle Hawke, a former partner in McKinsey & Company’s Agility to respond to changes in supply chain demand
Corporate Business Function practice, agreed that
3 “We had already moved our operations from China to Texas
organizations must make bold decisions to withstand in response to tariff increases, and to diversify sourcing,”
disruption brought on by the pandemic. “This is a time said Giovanni Schoordijk, Oracle’s senior director of supply
chain strategy and process. “That set us up for success
to shelve any sort of incremental thinking and seek out
during COVID-19.” With Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM, his team
transformational plans that could boost revenues or reduce
has also been able to respond quickly to change: they have
costs, not by 5 percent to 10 percent, but by 30 percent the sourcing flexibility to deal with supply and workforce
to 40 percent in [certain] pockets of the business,” he constraints around the world, and can make frequent
told attendees of a recent webcast series produced by adjustments in demand planning to reflect coronavirus
the Association of International Certified Professional lockdown patterns, surge demand, and budget constraints.
Accountants (AICPA and CIMA) and Oracle. He cited
research from McKinsey & Company revealing that in the
last financial crisis, the companies that outperformed the
Read more about our transformation.
market pursued productivity improvements more often and
more frequently than others, reducing their operating costs
by three times as much as their peers to create the capacity
for growth during recovery.

2 Four Big Moves Finance Should Make Right Now

Setting the stage for “what-if” scenarios and assess how to best respond to
each one. It helps them identify the strategic levers they

finance-led growth
can pull to strengthen the balance sheet and optimize cash
forecasting. Many companies, including lululemon, are
using scenario modeling within Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM to
address uncertainties and guide decision-making.

“Huge moves require support from a very resilient, agile, Understanding costs to
innovative, and visionary finance function,” said Oracle’s
Ivgen Guner, executive vice president of global business
uncover new opportunities
finance. She’s turbocharging the role of financial planning As organizations reimagine their future, they’re
and analysis (FP&A) by investing in new finance skills and examining their most and least profitable lines of business,
technologies that empower her team to shift direction in locations, or products, so they can shift resources as
meaningful ways. That means optimizing not only planning necessary. Profitability and cost management solutions
and forecasting, but closing and reporting as well—the set help them identify areas to reduce costs and uncover
of processes that make up a complete EPM suite. investment opportunities.

Cloud EPM solutions are adding tremendous value. They Zero-based budgeting—a method where finance
offer an alternative to spreadsheets, traditional on-premises creates an annual budget based solely on costs with a
tools, and niche solutions that are insufficient when it justified need, rather than simply modifying the previous
comes to analyzing the impact of outlier events, such as year’s spending—is also key when it comes to resource
COVID-19, and rapidly aligning (and realigning) plans not allocation. It gives you an enterprisewide view and deeper
only across finance, but all lines of business. understanding of your exact spend, so you can control
costs and reprioritize as needed. Since it’s more detailed
Forward-looking finance teams are using cloud-based EPM
applications in three specific ways as they lead through
change and plan for growth.

“ Huge moves require support

from a very resilient, agile,
innovative, and visionary
finance function.”
Ivgen Guner
EVP, GLOBAL BUSINESS FINANCE, ORACLE

Modeling multiple scenarios

to visualize the future
During the Agile Finance Reimagined webcast series
hosted by AICPA-CIMA, participants were polled about
what strategies they had implemented or were considering
adopting as a result of COVID-19. The top strategy, cited by
23 percent of more than 1,000 respondents, was scenario
modeling. In uncertain times, this strategic planning
method gives finance the agility to visualize multiple

3 Four Big Moves Finance Should Make Right Now

and granular than traditional budgeting, it’s also more
accurate. This method has worked well for Oracle customers The four big moves
finance should
such as Argo Group International, which decreased its
expense ratio, a key performance indicator used in the
insurance industry, by 250 basis points.

make now
Improving communication
and reporting
Once a strategy is developed, finance needs to share In the planning process and beyond, CFOs and their teams
their plans with key business stakeholders and investors. should pay attention to four key opportunities to move their
Never has it been more critical to give those stakeholders business forward and to the technologies that can
confidence in the numbers, and to answer inevitable fuel success.
questions, such as, “Why isn’t this in line with original
forecasts?” and “Why are you doing this instead of that?”
This is where a narrative reporting tool shines, enabling
1 Embrace business model innovation
finance to combine quality corporate data with rich Rapid changes in customer behavior during COVID-19 are
narrative text for more detail and clarity. Oracle’s research making one thing clear: organizations must innovate and
on the value of EPM reveals that 90 percent of companies respond faster to survive, compete, and reignite growth.
agree that this type of qualitative commentary is critical— We’ve seen companies launch new products and services
yet most of them spend their days gathering data, with little and rethink their business models—universities are shifting
time to provide context to the numbers. Narrative reporting to online education programs, retailers are abandoning
adds accuracy and consistency to the reporting process for malls in favor of ecommerce and “off mall” locations, and
better internal and external discussions. B2B companies and associations are swapping onsite
events for virtual forums. In a poll of global participants
in the AICPA-CIMA webcast series, 46 percent of more
than 1000 respondents said they were focused on new
business models to prepare their companies for competitive
advantage in the next stage of the pandemic. Likewise,
PwC’s recent US CFO Pulse Survey found that changes to
products and services are deemed as most important for
rebuilding and enhancing revenue streams.

The next great growth industries are taking shape right

now, and the companies defining them share three
key traits.

• They’re launching services-based business models

that provide stable and recurring revenue streams.
In the fitness industry for example, many brands that
sell workout equipment have added streaming, on-
demand classes to their offerings.
• They have a relentless focus on automation and
process optimization, which allow them to pivot
quickly in response to change.
• They have a continuous commitment to delivering
customer excellence through innovation and
digital experiences.

4 Four Big Moves Finance Should Make Right Now

For FedEx Services, innovating means building on digital to capitalize on growth opportunities. Advanced cloud
transformation that was already in progress. “Never has platforms deliver process automation, powered by built-
leadership been more important—to sustain operations, in emerging technologies, and continuous updates and
maintain employee morale, and reassure customers,” said improvements. “As we’re committed to spend $6B
Wood. Since FedEx was deemed an essential business at annually in research and development, we’re constantly
the start of the COVID-19 lockdown, his team has been reshaping our innovation efforts for that vision,” says
focused on continuing to strengthen administrative and Oracle’s Guner. “We are focused on AI, machine learning,
operations support and maintaining the “Purple Promise” to autonomous capabilities, and enhancing our cloud
“make every FedEx experience outstanding.” He also wants application set of offerings.”
the company’s employees to benefit from the same kinds of
digitization and improvements that FedEx has delivered to CFOs are investing in cloud applications that
its customers. To that end, FedEx has implemented Oracle deliver benefits across the business to empower
Cloud applications across the organization, including EPM, innovation, including:
ERP, SCM, analytics, and digital assistants.
Finance: Cloud ERP and EPM solutions offer:
Now, more than ever, cloud is empowering industry
disruptors to pivot business models, resources, and talent 1. Cost management tools to move capital expenses
(CapEx) to operational expenses (OpEx), supporting
a shift from physical assets to digital assets such as
subscription models.
2. Project management tools to track development of
Broadcom scales through new products/services and keep projects on budget.

new business models 3. Revenue management tools to recognize and report

annual recurring revenue (ARR) in compliance with
accounting standards.
4. Tools to help finance model new scenarios and analyze
Leading with innovation doesn’t come without challenges. the cost and profitability of new products, services, or
When Broadcom acquired Brocade Communications Systems lines of business such as subsidiaries.
to diversify beyond its core semiconductor business, it added a 5. Native, integrated risk management tools to increase
whole new category of products—and increased complexity—to
risk intelligence across their organization.
its portfolio. This also meant tracking new revenue models, such
as the subscription services Brocade offered its customers. To
handle new challenges, Broadcom moved their PLM and revenue Supply Chain: Cloud-based product lifecycle
management systems to Oracle Cloud. management (PLM) solutions help supply chain leaders
determine what investments best align with company
Watch what happened (2:16): objectives and enable the rapid design and launch of new
products. Additionally, Internet of Things (IoT) solutions
collect data from connected devices to improve current
products and make them smarter.

Human Resources: Cloud human capital management

helps recruiters hire the right talent for new roles, such as
chief innovation officer, or for high-demand skills such
as analytics.

Customer Experience: Cloud-based CX capabilities,

including subscription management and configure, price,
and quote, allow teams to bill customers, provide self-
service tools to sign up for or change subscriptions, and
quickly configure and price new and complex products.

5 Four Big Moves Finance Should Make Right Now

 Capitalize on M&A and divestitures
2
to support your pivot
An economic crisis is an opportunity to acquire companies
at below-market prices or divest underperforming
companies—so it’s no surprise that the summer of 2020
was the busiest in decades for mergers and acquisitions.
According to Reuters, more than $1 trillion worth of
M&A transactions were made worldwide in the third
quarter alone.

M&A supports business model innovation strategies

by building on a company’s core business or expanding
a company into adjacent markets. Conversely,
organizations can strengthen their business by divesting
nonperforming assets or shifting resources in favor
of higher-value activities.

In the rush to buy and sell, however, finance must act

with precision when doing things such as identifying the
best M&A targets, spinning up new divisions, modeling
the impact of divestitures, and integrating new companies,
systems, and employees. A critical and often overlooked
question CFOs need to ask is, “How can we assimilate new CFOs are investing in cloud applications that deliver
data and processes to have a single, trustworthy source benefits across the business to empower M&A, divestitures,
of financial truth?” and subsidiaries, including:

Western Digital faced this challenge when it merged three Finance: Scenario modeling helps teams assess the
Fortune 500-sized companies—Western Digital, SanDisk, outcomes of M&A and divestitures and improve
and HGST—and their three separate ERP systems. “We planning. Enterprise data management (EDM) connects
wanted a streamlined process, something end-to-end the data structures of disparate applications from
from the point you capture the data to the point you want merging companies.
to report out the data,” said Bill Roy, a senior director at the
company. Western Digital chose to reimagine its business Cloud ERP solutions can provide an enterprisewide
in the cloud, implementing Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP rather accounting platform for financial processes, corporate
than move data from among three systems. accounting, and financial reporting—a single source
of financial truth among corporate accounting and
FP&A teams.

Supply Chain: When M&A activity is complete, cloud SCM

Read how Adventist Health uses solutions help companies optimize inventories, improve
Enterprise Data Management to warehouse utilization, and consolidate transportation
requirements. They also fuel process efficiencies across
help manage its growth strategy.
manufacturing and supply chain operations using
integrated real-time reporting, analytics, and planning
across common data.

Human Resources: Cloud-based solutions for global HR,

payroll, and benefits streamline the process of onboarding
talent from acquired companies or retiring employees from
divested companies.

6 Four Big Moves Finance Should Make Right Now

 3 Accelerate an automated close

Big moves such as moving to a digital business model,

making an acquisition, or introducing a new product or
service can cause delays and inaccuracies in your financial
close, especially if you’re still using manual finance
processes. A manual close can also prevent quick shifts
and delay marketplace success, as it slows the process
of reporting results to external stakeholders who need to
understand the health of your business.

Cloud-based solutions featuring machine learning and

intelligent process automation can help you close the
books faster, and—perhaps most critical in uncertain
times—they’re flexible enough to accommodate change,
effortlessly. Imagine that you’ve created a subsidiary as
a result of an acquisition, and suddenly, you need to do
calculations on a minority interest. The right cloud software
will have an automated calculation for this. You just turn it
on and get instant results, with no help needed from IT or
an outside consultant.

Minimal IT effort is what led SRAM, a global manufacturer

of bicycle components, to implement Oracle Cloud
EPM for financial consolidation and close. The growing Among the benefits that Oracle is seeing since
company sought touchless automation to satisfy complex implementing its cloud ERP: About 92 percent of global
requirements, including intercompany eliminations and bank transactions are now automatically reconciled; global
currency translations. intercompany balances across hundreds of legal entities are
reconciled in 90 minutes; expense allocations have been
Other features to look for in a cloud solution to improve reduced by 98 percent; accounting for open purchase order
your financial close include: accruals globally is now complete in just three hours; and,
so far, the company has reduced its manual accounting by
• Advanced analytics for enhanced insight into 35 percent with multiledger, multicurrency journals. As a
your business result of these benefits, the company can now close out its
quarter and report earnings to Wall Street in 10 days.
• Deep functionality and automation for account
reconciliation, consolidation and close, enterprise
Smith’s next goal is an automated process where the books
data management, tax reporting, narrative
continuously balance themselves. “The automatic close
reporting, and more
is where you see a continuous data flow every second of
• The ability to connect these financial tasks on a every day—to the people who populate your call centers,
single cloud platform to your compensation and benefits data, to customers
and revenue and sales,” Smith said. Oracle offers all of this
Oracle is making great progress toward its goal of an data—HR, ERP, customer, and supply chain—in a unified
automated close of its monthly financial books, having cloud with a common data model.
shortened the close by 20 percent in March 2020, even
with the finance team working from home because of the
pandemic. “We had been planning to reduce the close time
frame, but to be able to accomplish that while working
remotely is incredible,” said Maria Smith, Oracle senior
vice president and assistant corporate controller. “It was
business as usual for us on the cloud.”

7 Four Big Moves Finance Should Make Right Now

 4 Build a risk-intelligent culture
The same moves enabling growth and transformation can
also put a company’s most critical and sensitive data at risk.
Acquisitions increase a company’s data, and the expansion
of IoT, mobile, and other digital technologies create new
access points and chances for that data to be compromised.

How do you manage risk in an era of data proliferation?

It starts with a well-integrated risk management approach
to security, risk, and compliance to ensure that any
structural or business model changes won’t introduce new
risks that can negatively impact your brand’s reputation
or bottom line. It continues with creating a risk-intelligent
culture that empowers business process owners in risk
identification and prevention, and strengthens risk-based
decisions and executive oversight.

Adding new companies, subsidiaries, and business models

can provide an opportunity to centralize and automate
your security and audit. Finance leaders are realizing they
need to have a risk-intelligent culture—the gold standard
is to have this from day one, in order to protect critical
ERP or sensitive data. This means managing risks at the
beginning of a cloud ERP implementation, not afterward,
and having embedded risk-assessment activities in
financial software.
• How unified and engaged is our company in
The 2019 Sans Institute Cloud Security Survey examined
executing our control strategies? How integrated
business security readiness among several hundred
are controls across business functions? Are our risk-
companies in the United States, Asia, Europe, and
mitigation strategies and controls embedded in our
Canada. It revealed that nearly one in five companies had
business functions?
experienced a breach in the previous year. To prevent
their company from becoming a statistic, CFOs should ask
• Are we prepared? What is our strategy for continuous
themselves these key questions about risk:
monitoring? Are our controls automated and
preventative? How fast can we assess and respond to
• What are our risks? How do they factor in business
risks?
decisions and what is their potential impact on bottom
line, compliance, and reputation?
• What collaboration and communication tools are in
place? Are our employees knowledgeable about our
• What is our company’s approach to managing
strategies and risk tolerance? How efficiently can we
risks? How do we implement controls and mitigate
report on control violations?
risks and how do we identify application risks for user
access, configuration, and transactions? Do we have a
clear, enterprisewide view?

• What is our risk tolerance? How can we balance

short-term risks and long-term opportunities?

8 Four Big Moves Finance Should Make Right Now

“ We can do a lot more with fewer
people. With our standardized
8 use cases for cloud-based
approach and risk management
risk management
cloud, we would have 40 to 50
people traveling around the
world, all of the time.”
Finance leaders use cloud-based risk management solutions to
Ashwat Panchal
VICE PRESIDENT OF INTERNAL AUDIT, SKECHERS automate many routine, labor-intensive risk tasks—especially
those involving assurance, compliance, security, and fraud. Key use
cases include:

Timely and accurate identification and reporting are key

1 Accelerate security design during ERP implementations
to managing threats, and AI and the cloud are increasingly
being used to achieve these goals. With risk management
as part of your cloud ERP solution, you can eliminate 2 Automate separation of duties compliance reporting
manual, rules-based separation of duties (SoD)—the
means by which no one person has sole control over a
transaction; replace disconnected bolt-on security, risk, or 3 Continuously monitor user security
audit tools; automate advanced security and transaction
monitoring to strengthen financial controls; and streamline 4 Digitize user access certification workflows
audit workflows.

Skechers is one organization that has been successful in 5 Continuously monitor configuration changes
transforming internal audit and compliance in the cloud.
To support the footwear company’s rapid growth and keep Continuously monitor payments and other
up with new and evolving regulatory requirements, Ashwat 6 critical transactions
Panchal, Skecher’s vice president of internal audit, turned to
Oracle Risk Management. Panchal was able to ensure local 7 Digitize SOX, audit, and certification workflows
compliance, while saving the business time and money. He
accomplished this with a lean, six-person team auditing the
$4.5B company. 8 Digitize enterprise risk management workflows

“We can do a lot more with fewer people,” said Panchal.

“Without our standardized approach and risk management Learn more about these use cases.
cloud, we would have 40 to 50 people traveling around the
world, all of the time.”

9 Four Big Moves Finance Should Make Right Now

The time is now

“Use this crisis as an opportunity to innovate,” advised

Oracle’s Guner. She challenges finance leaders to get rid
of the “legacy baggage” weighing them down and adopt
change-ready cloud solutions to capitalize on the growth
and market opportunities being created.

If history is any indication, companies that adapt and

innovate today will outperform competitors for the
foreseeable future.

It’s your move.

Learn more about how finance moves forward.

10 Four Big Moves Finance Should Make Right Now

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