Oracle Playbook

Operational
Excellence
How we’re using Oracle Cloud
to power our own financial success
 Our strategy for relentlessly focusing
on our people, processes, and systems
so we can achieve more with less

Just like you, we at Oracle face tremendous economic, market, How? We call it the Oracle Playbook, our strategy for
talent, and other challenges. And while it might seem incredibly relentlessly focusing on our people, processes, and systems
difficult, over the past 20 years we have continuously succeeded so we can achieve more with less. This strategy, enhanced by
in reducing costs while growing revenue. our all-in move to Oracle Cloud Applications and Oracle Cloud
Infrastructure, enables us to achieve new efficiencies, benefit
Even as we’ve developed the industry’s most complete technology from greater intelligence, become more agile, and deliver
stack, opened dozens of data centers (more than any other cloud better experiences.
provider), and acquired hundreds of companies, we’ve been
able to increase efficiency, improve our customer experience, For example, thanks to our move to Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM
and achieve an industry-leading non-GAAP operating margin and related process improvements, we can now onboard new
of more than 40%. employees in less than 24 hours. Our move to Oracle Fusion
Cloud ERP and EPM has allowed us to close our books and
release earnings faster than any other company on the S&P
We’ve been able to achieve an industry-leading 500, and our move to Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM has enabled

40%
non-GAAP operating us to slash our supply chain planning cycles. More on these
margin of more than and other results later.

Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 02

 How have we done this?
As mentioned earlier, the core of the Oracle Playbook is a laser focus on three major vectors: people,
processes, and systems. Each area is absolutely critical.
PA RT 1

–
Our framework
for driving
business success

Processes

Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 03

 People
Pe e
Our people power our success, so we start by aligning each
team member with our strategy. We establish common goals,
and then we instill a culture of continuous innovation.

Goals Organization
When we align our teams with our goals, we align directly with the top. Another critical element is how we organize our teams. We have
Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison and CEO Safra Catz clearly communicate, established global process and solution owners within each functional
at every possible opportunity, that customer success is our North Star. area, dictating clear accountability and focus areas.
As a result, all our teams’ goals are lined up to help customers achieve
their goals while driving Oracle’s continued financial success. Of course, Global process owners (GPOs) determine the most efficient process
each line of business has its own specific KPIs, but the important point for their focus area, but that’s not all. For example, our GPO for
here is that our teams also take a broader view, beyond their own metrics, recruiting pays close attention not only to the recruiting experience
tracking their impact on our customer experience and financial health. but also to the way it affects the broader employee and manager
experiences. In addition, that GPO is closely connected with the global
solution owner (GSO) in the same area. GPOs and GSOs across Oracle
continually work together to simplify, standardize, automate (where
possible), and improve operations using Oracle Cloud Applications
and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 04

 Culture
The final element is building a culture of innovation, understanding the An example of how this approach has helped us
psychology that goes along with change.
change the customer buying experience is our
At Oracle, we prepare our people for continuous change and to always updated approvals process.
be looking for ways to challenge the status quo. For example, the global
teams responsible for the customer buying experience—including sales While Oracle’s approvers play a critical role, they should
operations, legal, finance, and corporate systems—meet regularly to only review orders that present risk to our company.
review feedback and metrics. With Safra Catz as the executive sponsor, Also, we don’t need multiple layers of review.
there’s no question about the urgency of continuously making it
easier to do business with Oracle and improving sales rep productivity.
Week after week, the teams review customer and employee input, To accelerate the process, improve
analyze data, and consider new innovations coming out of Oracle the customer experience, and boost
Cloud Applications and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to determine which our own operational efficiency,
improvements we can make now and gather more ideas for how we can
disrupt the way we operate.
we’ve reduced the number
of order approvers by 20%
Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 05
 Processes
P es
We continuously review the end-to-end business
processes that underlie the experiences we deliver
to our customers, employees, and partners.

Streamline Delight
Our first step is to streamline the journey for those we serve, including Finally, we look for ways to delight customers and employees so they
customers and employees, and we back into the simplest possible can both successfully complete their activities and processes quickly
process for each party. and also enjoy the experience. People want to move quickly, but they
also want to achieve exceptional outcomes. One example of how we
help them do this is providing proactive guidance and easily accessible
information or assistance throughout each process.
Empower
Then we focus on how we can empower employees and customers to
complete tasks even faster—without manual intervention. It’s not enough
to have a simple process. To maximize efficiency and deliver the best
possible experience, we realized we needed to remove people from our
internal processes. People slow processes, introduce errors, and behave
in inconsistent ways.

Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 06

 Systems Our use of Oracle Cloud Applications and Oracle Cloud
Infrastructure is critical to our success. This involves
three principles.

Centralize applications Deploy out of the box

Centralizing corporate applications has been key to our success. This As we moved our processes to the cloud, we leveraged the best practices
has helped us reduce complexity, costs, and obstacles that impeded and functionality already built into Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications. As
our agility and ability to deliver exceptional customer and employee a rule, we eliminated customizations, which has enabled us to reduce
experiences. As such, whenever we acquire a business, we aim to overhead and IT support. Without customizations, we quickly adopt the
quickly integrate it into our centralized systems. new features released every 90 days through our cloud applications. This
has helped us future-proof our processes and operations as product
updates and advancements become available.
Continuously innovate
In addition, the use of Oracle Cloud Applications and Oracle Cloud
Infrastructure has been critical to our success. We leverage end-to-
end automation and embedded AI to create seamless and exceptional
experiences, and we use the innovation that is continuously released
from Oracle Cloud to improve on an ongoing basis.

Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 07

 One simple example is our improvement of the
expense report process.
In the past, employees might spend hours collecting receipts, making So what exactly did we do? We started by reducing expense categories
copies, uploading receipts, and submitting the reports. Managers and eliminating unnecessary requests for information. And then, as we
then spent valuable time reviewing the reports, asking for additional explored the functionality of our Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications, we
information, consulting policy documents, and approving the requests. determined that we could leverage automation to classify key corporate
And then to top it all off, our back-office teams spent hours reviewing card transactions, such as payments for accommodations, airfare, car
the submissions. rental, and fuel, further reducing the amount of information employees
need to provide. Within months of our initial go-live, we determined we
If more than 160,000 employees each spend even two hours per quarter could further improve and accelerate the process by leveraging Oracle
on these tasks, that comes to an incredible 1.3 million hours a year—a Fusion Cloud Applications updates, including chatbot functionality, so our
huge waste of our incredible talent. To fix this, our global process owner employees can simply take a photo of a receipt, text or email it in, and let
for expenses is always looking for ways to improve this process. For the system automatically handle the rest.
example, when we were moving to the cloud, she took the opportunity
to reassess the experience and brainstorm ways we might further The result: less employee time spent on administrative tasks, more
streamline, empower, and delight. time innovating and focusing on our customers.

Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 08

PA RT 2

– We’ve discussed our playbook for operational excellence, but

we haven’t hit on our reasons for moving to Oracle Cloud.
Our path to Our reasoning was simple: We wanted to achieve the same benefits as our

cloud success customers from Oracle’s end-to-end automation, touchless transaction

processing, intelligent recommendations, conversational user interfaces,
and continuous innovation. We also wanted to benefit from our own cloud
infrastructure to improve the performance, security, and reliability of all our
systems across all our operations.

When it came to defining our path to the cloud, we considered two migration
approaches: a big bang approach that would have been a complete move
to the cloud all at once and a coexistence model with a phased move to the
cloud and where cloud and on-premises technologies would coexist. After
carefully considering both options, we adopted a coexistence strategy to
minimize disruption and manage risk, and we prioritized implementations
based on our business needs and priorities.

Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 09

Establish a foundation Build on the foundation Optimize the business from end to end
Like building a house, we decided to start by establishing Next, we moved to Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM to enable We then built on that success by moving to Oracle
a strong foundation and a single data model. For us us to plan, manage, and optimize global people processes Fusion Cloud ERP, EPM, SCM, and Customer
that meant standardizing on a global chart of accounts with one common data source. With our people on Experience (CX). Throughout that journey, we
for financial consolidation and reporting, and we did that the cloud application, we could make better decisions, determined our roadmap based on an analysis of benefits
with Oracle Accounting Hub, part of the Oracle Fusion personalize the employee experience, create approval versus risks and velocity versus value. And even as we
Cloud Applications Suite. workflows using the HR hierarchy, and leverage the highly made these moves one after another, we benefited
configurable workflows to scale and localize as needed. from new innovations by adopting quarterly application
The rollout of Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM delivered updates after each go-live.
benefits for our employees and managers, as well as for
our HR and IT teams, enabling all of them to be more
productive and focus on higher-value activities.

Continuously innovating with quarterly updates

Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 10

 Customers often ask: 01 Because we’ve been able to automate so many activities with our

How do you manage the hundreds cloud applications and infrastructure, our IT teams have become
much more productive. The automation has enabled them to shift
of new features that are released their focus from running and maintaining our systems to helping us

every 90 days? There are three continuously improve and innovate.

secrets to our success. 02 Our GPOs and GSOs have a standard process for jointly reviewing
the new features and determining which ones we should adopt
immediately and which ones we should adopt later on in line with
modifications to our people and/or processes.

03 Because we generally adopt our solutions out of the box, we’re

able to simplify testing, focusing only on key flows and new features
versus testing entire processes and multiple use cases.

Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 11

 Among the broad benefits of our move to the cloud, we connected our business
from end to end, automated many operational processes, increased employee
productivity, and gained a real-time view of our business. This has enabled us to
PA RT 3 anticipate and respond faster to changes while delivering better experiences to

–
our customers.

The benefits
we have
achieved with
Oracle Cloud

Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 12

 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

30%
performance improvement
for Fusion Applications, with
industry-leading 99.9% availability

With Oracle Autonomous Database, our IT team is saving significant In addition, as we moved Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications to Oracle
time—80% in fact—on administrative tasks, such as database Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), we improved the performance of the
management. As a result, the team now has more time to focus on applications by 30%—that is, application workloads process 30%
innovation and continuous improvement. faster than before—which means even faster access to data, insights,
and recommendations. The move to OCI also improved service-level
availability, from 99.7% to an industry-leading 99.9%. That means less
downtime and, yes, you guessed it, improved efficiency and productivity.

Oracle Autonomous Database We are incredibly proud of these results, especially when you consider the

80%
reduction in the time IT size and complexity of our business. Our more than 160,000 employees
spends on administrative serve more than 400,000 customers across 175 countries.
activities, such as
database management Because of our focus on people, processes, and systems, grounded in our
use of Oracle Cloud Applications and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, we’re
achieving what some might say is impossible.

Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 13

 Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP and EPM

<10
to close our books and release
earnings, faster than any other
company on the S&P 500
workdays

As we mentioned, we’re closing our books and releasing earnings much employees with inquiries that come up in their day-to-day work and to
faster than before—now in less than 10 workdays. That’s nearly 60% faster reduce the amount of time required to complete administrative tasks, like
than the average for companies on the S&P 500. we did in the expense report example. Less time spent on low-value activities
means more time innovating and focusing on customers.
About 97% of our hundreds of thousands of banking transactions per
quarter are automatically reconciled as our Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP Our move to Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM has not only allowed us to reduce
system identifies, deciphers, and automatically matches the transactions our supply chain planning cycles—so far by 70%—but it has also enabled
passing through our bank accounts. Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM has us to make incremental changes in a matter of hours. For example, when
allowed us to automate 94% of our balance sheet reconciliations, of which COVID-19 struck, we were able to quickly and frequently adjust demand plans
25%—and climbing—automatically reconcile with no human touch. So in response to global lockdowns, demand fluctuations, and budget changes.
while other organizations continue to spend their time looking back and
manually reconciling, matching, and creating reports, our team is looking
forward and helping us steer our business. That’s a game changer. Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM

70%
As we also touched on, we’re onboarding new employees—more than faster supply chain
20,000 new faces each year—in less than 24 hours, whereas it used planning cycles
to take weeks or longer before we adopted Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM.
Meanwhile, we’re using the application suite’s AI capabilities to assist

Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 14

 –
PA RT 4
Hearst has grown from their foundation in newspapers and magazines, such as

– the San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, and Cosmopolitan, to include ownership of,
or interests in, more than 360 businesses. Consistent with the Oracle Playbook
Hearst is using Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications and the AI embedded in the

Oracle application suites to bring consistency to their business processes, improve data
analysis, find new opportunities to manage spending, accelerate the onboarding

customers are of acquisitions, and improve their employee experience.

“One of the things that we realized early on was that

leveraging our this is a different type of relationship with a software
playbook to company. It wasn’t just selling software to us. It was
about developing a long-term relationship.”
achieve Debra Robinson, SVP and CIO of Oracle Technology and Operations at Hearst

their goals

Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 15

 –
Securitas is a leading provider of physical security services, protecting millions
of people across 47 countries. In 2019, the company began using Oracle Fusion
Cloud ERP, EPM, SCM, and HCM, plus OCI, to improve various aspects of the
business, consistent with the Oracle Playbook. For example, with Oracle Fusion
Cloud HCM, Securitas has reduced the time it takes to hire a new employee by
70%, and with Oracle’s ERP/EPM solutions, reports that once took three weeks
to complete now take two minutes. All these improvements mean Securitas
team members can focus more time on their mission of protecting customers
rather than dealing with administrative tasks. Plus, Securitas leaders can make
better decisions much faster.

“In the old world, we were putting things

together and it took weeks, if not months,
to get to answers. The game changer was,
now I see everything.”
Rod Musser, EVP of Human Resources at Securitas

Oracle Playbook for Operational Excellence 16

With each passing day, we’re realizing more and
more benefits from the innovations coming out
of our technology.
–
But we have also learned quite a bit on our journey, and of course we made mistakes along the way.
We love to share our story so others can achieve the same outcomes and avoid some of the pitfalls
we ran into. If you’d like to learn more about the obstacles we faced and how we overcame them or
about the benefits we achieved and the choices we made every step of the way, please let us know.
Simply email Leah Yomtovian, SVP of corporate operations strategy, at [email protected].

Contact us

CONNECT WITH US

Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates. This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof are subject to change without
notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including
implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document, and
Copyright © 2023, Oracle and/or its affiliates. This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof are subject to change without
notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including
no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document, and
no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission.
means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission.

Oracle, Java, MySQL and NetSuite are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Oracle®, Java, MySQL, and NetSuite are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.