Solutions That Fit Pakistan

Doug Hughes is Vice President – Applications Product Management for Japan and Asia Pacific at Oracle Corporation and talks about Oracle’s solutions which fit the needs of Pakistani organizations.

Q. What is Oracle’s application strategy? How has it been evolving over time with addition of new products to Oracle Applications portfolio?
Our application strategy revolves around meeting customers’ needs. We value feedback from customers to offer them choices, roadmap and value. For instance, when our customers told us that they feel as if they were being forced to update, move or change, we introduced the Oracle Lifetime Support Policy to allow the customer to stay on their existing product sets and not be driven to change.

Oracle’s strategy is to continue to provide value around products which the company has acquired over the last few years. Examples of these products are Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Applications, Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Oracle’s JD Edwards World, and Oracle’s Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Moreover, we have also introduced our Applications Unlimited Program to ensure that we continue to innovate around these products. In this way, customers can ensure that their investments in these products are protected going forward. Oracle Applications Unlimited Program also ensures that they will have future roadmap releases for their products.

Oracle has also announced its next generation business applications: Oracle Fusion Applications. Delivered as a complete suite of modular applications, Oracle Fusion Applications coexist with existing Oracle Applications. As one module, a product family or the entire suite, customers can choose to leverage the advances pioneered by Oracle at a pace that matches business needs for a new level of performance.

Q. Can you give some details about Applications Unlimited? How is it beneficial to Oracle customers in Pakistan?
Applications Unlimited is Oracle’s plan to provide continuing enhancements and ongoing support to your existing investments in Oracle Applications. Applications Unlimited provides customers with more visibility into our existing product roadmaps and help them derive continual success with their current applications by delivering dedicated, world-class development and support for years to come. And as an Oracle customer, you’re not limited to one product line. With the extensive integration that Oracle offers, you can choose from a complete portfolio of applications to meet your business objectives.

Applications Unlimited is driven by Oracle’s commitment to protecting customer’s investments. Along with the Lifetime Support Policy, Applications Unlimited is beneficial to customers because Oracle is giving customers the option to choose what is best for their business. Customers can continue to derive value from their existing applications, which we plan to continuously update, or they can upgrade to future technologies if there is a business case to do so. It is entirely the customer’s choice.

Q. How does Oracle Fusion Applications fit in Oracle Applications strategy? What are its benefits?
Designed from the ground-up, leveraging the latest technology advances and incorporating best practices gathered from Oracle’s thousands of customers, Oracle Fusion Applications are 100 percent open standards-based business applications that set a new standard for users to innovate, work and adopt technology.

Oracle Fusion Applications provide rich functional capabilities with over 100 modules in 7 different product families providing functionality for many industries and geographies – Financial Management, Procurement and Sourcing, Project and Portfolio Management, Human Capital Management, Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management, and Governance Risk and Compliance.

Oracle Fusion Apps feature embedded business intelligence that delivers the right information to make decisions within the context of the work being performed, without having to go to a separate BI system.

When customers look at Oracle Fusion Applications, our application strategy and Applications Unlimited Program in totality, they see reality, direction and a future mapped out for them. This provides a high level of assurance that their investments made now and in the recent past will be future-proof.

Q. How can businesses globally benefit from various Oracle Applications?
Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle’s Applications to achieve superior results with provision of complete choice and a secure path to benefit from the latest technology advances.

Organizations around the globe rely on Oracle Applications to drive continuous business transformation with an industry-leading portfolio of applications designed to support their business goals today, while helping them build a strong foundation to manage future demands of business.

Oracle Applications deliver complete, open, and integrated solutions with greater enterprise adaptability, productivity, and manageability that allow customers to continuously transform their enterprise, based on their timetable and business needs.

Oracle can help organizations implement an IT infrastructure designed for continuous transformation, supporting their current business goals while preparing them to seamlessly uptake the next generation of business applications.

Q. Does Oracle have industry specific solutions? How can you make your generic products like Oracle E-Business Suite work for different customers?
Oracle has been serving many industries for decades ranging from Manufacturing, Retail, Distribution, Utilities, Telecom, Banking, Insurance, Government institutions, Health, and other sectors with its broad range of products which caters to their specific needs as well as regular administrative and logistics needs such as HR and Financials.

For example, Oracle Siebel CRM has become the standard in telecom companies, financial institutions, pharmaceuticals, and more Industries while Oracle Peoplesoft Campus Solutions is the standard for education sector offering complete campus management solution.

Moreover, Oracle E-Business Suite is among our most widely deployed products which provides organizations of all sizes, across all industries and regions with a global business foundation that reduces costs and increases productivity through a portfolio of rapid value solutions, integrated business processes and industry-focused solutions.

Oracle E-Business Suite incorporates best practices from the relevant industries and encourages customers to adopt these to enhance their profitability. Oracle E-Business Suite increases efficiency and reduces back-office costs with standardized processes for shared services, productivity tools, and integrated performance management.

Oracle’s E-Business Suite HRMS unlocks the full value of organization’s workforce be enabling the management to put the right people in the right jobs, develop and reward top performers, retain key talent for the long term, and increase efficiency and operating performance throughout the organization.

A significant number of companies involved in various types of manufacturing have also deployed Process Manufacturing, Discrete Manufacturing and Flow Manufacturing modules of Oracle E-Business Suite which enables them to optimize production capacity, from raw materials through final product — regardless of manufacturing methodology. A unified data model provides them a single, accurate view of the manufacturing process, enabling them to configure customer orders, optimize subcontracting, and manage for cost, quality, and compliance.

Moreover, customers can select from a range of modules for their industry and organization specific needs to increase their efficiency and profitability.

Q. Textile industry is the largest industry in Pakistan. What solutions do you have for them?
Textile industry is the biggest contributor to Pakistan economy and the contribution can be further improved if the manufacturers can fully implement the best practices and standards based IT solutions to increase efficiency.

Many organizations in textile industry are already using Oracle E-Business Suite to reap benefits due to enhancement in efficiency and process optimization.

However, the increasingly competitive market place is posing challenges to textile industry. Particularly, apparel manufacturers and distributors that must deal with erratic consumer demands need reliable and efficient IT solutions to perform well.

Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Apparel Management delivers complete management of complex product assortments across entire product line and supply chain so that they can respond quickly to these demands and stay ahead of the competition.

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Apparel Management can automate the order entry process and catalogue management, seasonal offers, and multiple collections. Detailed product attributes such as style, size and colour are easily handled using allocations to support dynamic order priority definitions.

Q. Maintaining excellent relationships with customers and knowing what they need or will need in future is a big boost for organizations. How is Oracle helping them?
Indeed. Managing relationships with customers and serving their needs, and in some cases, making them aware of what they will eventually need in case of business growth and expansion, is a big differentiating factor among organizations, specially  in services industry.

Oracle has a range of CRM products built on open, standards-based architecture that streamlines business processes, improves data quality, and allows all your key divisions to draw from the same source of data. With Oracle CRM, your company owns the single best tool for customer success—accurate information.

The world’s most complete customer relationship management (CRM) solution, Oracle’s Siebel CRM helps organizations differentiate their businesses to achieve maximum top-and bottom-line growth. It delivers a combination of transactional, analytical, and engagement features to manage all customer-facing operations. Oracle’s Siebel CRM provides customers with an on premise solution.

Organizations moving towards the cloud who are seeking a SaaS solution should consider Oracle CRM On Demand which enables companies of all sizes – large, medium and small – to have access to the best CRM solutions in the world at an affordable price without having to maintain a large in-house IT team.

Oracle CRM On Demand provides industry-leading capabilities designed to drive revenue, save time, reduce costs, improve the customer experience, and realize unrivalled business value. Oracle CRM On Demand Release 19 provides powerful new collaboration, cloud extensibility, industry-specific, and mobile capabilities, including the personalized ability for customers and partners to access critical CRM information in the way that is easiest, from iPad to Blackberry to Outlook.

You can also watch an exclusive interview CIO Pakistan did with Doug Hughes during one of his earlier trips to Pakistan, here.