Finance is now leading digital transformation at many companies and enabling the broader business to make decisions based on integrated data from across the organization. The CFO is also assisting the business leaders to develop future-proof strategies and take advantage of current business opportunities.
Any organization that is relying on a financial system that just barely works is bound to hit some serious roadblocks as the internal dynamics of any business change every day.
Whether you use spreadsheets to manage finance or an enterprise performance management (EPM) system, you need to be able to manage change. Read our guide today to gain insights from Accelalpha on the four steps financial planning and analysis (FP&A) professionals should start with.
Each day, people around the world all have the same desire. They want everything faster, with fewer clicks. They want more self-service options and digital choices, because everyone is now an experienced online customer. Shaped by their interactions with consumer brands like Amazon and Netflix, decision-makers feel the same way about their B2B transactions, too.
Even if they don’t use these precise words, it all boils down to the same thing: They want a better customer experience, with seamless transactions, automated service and always-on features that stay one step ahead of their needs. They want more control in every single channel. And COVID-19 intensified those demands. From remote work to telemedicine to online grocery shopping, technology adoption patterns have vaulted years ahead in a matter of months.
At Accelalpha, we help companies meet those expectations. By solving the most common customer pain points in the most effective ways possible. By eliminating friction, we make it easier for your customers to do business with you. And that drives satisfaction, loyalty and revenues.
We have developed a five-step process to start those changes immediately. But first, it is helpful to understand how business processes can improve:
One of the most important trends is that customers want more control. Many prefer to handle solutions and transactions on their own, digitally. That means that customers should be able to log in, research products and services, purchase software licenses, configure products and renew subscriptions easily.
Oracle CX applications make this possible, including Commerce Cloud, Subscription Management Cloud and CPQ Cloud.
CPQ Cloud is one of our favorite examples of how to give customers the control they want over their accounts. It solves a common pain point: Customers constantly ask for ways to configure products more easily.
Even though sales has been in the cloud for more than a decade, there is still room for significant improvement in digital selling. Reps are still spending up to 5.5 hours a week on CRM data entry1. Moreover, the average organization estimates that 22% of all its contact data is inaccurate in some way2. This poor data quality directly impacts the bottom line, according to 88% of companies, resulting in a loss of as much as 12% of revenue2.
And external sellers, including resellers and dealers, need help too.
Gartner reports that only 29% of sales organizations are fully optimized and says their sales-force automation processes directly correlate with revenue growth and customer retention3. Some 44% describe themselves as still growing into technology3. They say that the system is used regularly, and the sales organization couldn’t operate without it, but there’s plenty more to be done. Companies say they’re expecting to add advanced analytics/business intelligence platforms (25%), chatbots (22%) and predictive opportunity scoring (19%)3.
Oracle also offers a broader range of industry-specific solutions, and its AI-based predictive forecasting product stands out. Additionally, through integration with Oracle CX Marketing, cold deals can be immediately fed to the marketing tool for automated nurturing and remarketing processes.
At Accelalpha, we believe that CX Sales has the deepest and broadest functionality in the market. It can increase a sales rep’s productivity and effectiveness, slash administrative time and set actionable, motivating quotas–all while making customers’ lives easier.
Service is far behind other sales functions and has only been fully cloud-based for the last few years. With many companies still struggling to bring multiple applications under a single efficient umbrella, there are still many gaps to fill.
B2B customers know they could be getting better service. According to a survey conducted by Forrester, 77% of customers say the most important thing a company can do is provide good service, acknowledging that their time is valuable4. And 82% want multiple ways to communicate4.
Their concerns are the same as those in consumer customer-service experiences. People don’t like having to repeat their issues over and over as they climb up the service chain. And when they switch to a different communication channel, 71% expect the next person they interact with to know about their previous attempts to resolve the issue5. Increasingly, it is how they make purchasing decisions, with 78% saying the quality of service is a determining factor in repeat purchases, and 86% willing to pay a higher price if it means a better experience6.
Oracle Service Cloud is an omnichannel solution that captures a 360-degree customer view, effectively solving these problems. It simplifies the service experience and helps differentiate an organization’s service experience.
Taken together, improving these three areas will make it easier to do business with companies for all stakeholders–customers, prospects and sales. These changes reduce errors and aggravation and let customers control much more of the process. To find new ways to bring all these areas together for a more seamless experience, we suggest companies start by:
To learn more about how Accelalpha can sharpen and differentiate your customer experience please get in touch.
2020 was a year that no one would have predicted, or for that matter, ever imagined. While we all hope 2021 is a better year, there will be lasting impacts on businesses, from how companies manage their supply chains to how they will operate in a world with less face-to-face interaction in areas such as sales.
We do believe 2020 was a pivotal year in moving companies forward in embracing cloud-based solutions to help them manage integral parts of their business. As we look to the new year, Accelalpha’s experts have made predictions on business and technology trends that will define 2021. We would love to hear your thoughts on these and learn about any trends that you have identified.
“Covid-19 has drastically changed the way B2B buyers and sellers interact, limiting face-to-face time and driving a heavier reliance on digital commerce. In 2021, we believe that many B2B companies will invest in self-service capabilities to empower their customers and differentiate themselves in the marketplace.”
“The pandemic has raised the need for enterprise digitalization and a centralized platform to manage data for decision making. Many organizations will undertake ERP upgrades or move to ERP Cloud with the focus on having seamlessly integrated systems & easy access to data analytics!”
“2021 will be the year of IoT in Logistics. IoT devices will be leveraged heavily by companies to enable shipment tracking that monitors freight conditions such as temperature and humidity. “
“In 2021, we will see an increased adoption of logistics cloud solutions as organizations seek greater supply chain flexibility and agility. Companies will be more focused on logistics “what-if” scenario modeling to reduce costs and plan for the unexpected. “
“The logistics and supply chain market will have a big area of focus regarding retailers and e-commerce companies. More than ever, brick and mortar will need to make aggressive strategic moves in their supply chain and logistic networks to keep their operations alive for another 2-3 years. The leadership, culture, and mindset of CIOs and CFOs will need to evolve to transform companies with the right technology platform and emerging technological advancements.”
“The volume of shipping needs for organizations has increased in markets across wholesale and retail. As a result, there has been a boom within the logistics industry, leading to higher costs for shippers. In 2021, organizations will look for opportunities to invest in strategic initiatives that reduce logistics costs and global trade compliance risk yet still offer fast service, supply flow, and support for positioning products close to their customers.”
“In 2021, there will be a push to create no-touch AI and Machine Learning based forecasts. These system-generated forecasts will substantially reduce the time of manually adjusting calculations for operations and strategic plans. However, businesses will still rely on Financial Analyst (FA) generated numbers until AI forecasting is more accurate in comparison.”
If you’d like to learn more about our solutions or have a question, contact us now.
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The fact is, if you are a supply chain professional in the 2020s then there are only two possibilities regarding your business. Either your business has just completed a total technology transformation, or you are about to embark on one.
That’s it. There is no third path. Any other choice is a choice for obsolescence in an increasingly disruptive world.
Covid-19 has stormed through the marketplace and laid bare the discrepancies among business processes and the gaps between supply and demand.
And before Covid-19 there were trade wars, and there was Brexit, and there were hurricanes, and there were fires. Basically, the last five years brought disaster after disaster – disruption after disruption – and most businesses held things together with scotch tape and crossed fingers because supply chains were considered cost centers that needed to be managed as efficiently as possible.
But then Covid-19 arrived and it made it clear that 2020 would be different; 2020 would be a clutch year. In fact, according to Fortune, so far this year, 94% of Fortune 1000 companies have reported a disruption to their supply chain. The fact is, the way business has been getting done cannot continue, and any discrepancies between manufacturers and customers needs to be mollified. Supply chains have to mature. They have to evolve from being cost centers to being business differentiators.
For over a decade now, Oracle has been building a cloud-based, seamless, end-to-end supply chain solutions that place customers at the center. And as an Oracle Certified Cloud Excellence Implementer, Accelalpha has performed numerous successful implementations of their software. If a person were to look at companies that are the most successful today, they would find that the most successful ones are the same ones that spent that last five years transforming their industries by relying on modern cloud-based solutions to become more adaptable and resilient to change.
Accelalpha played a large role in getting some of these companies to a new level of maturity. As a leader in solving critical business challenges through a unique combination of industry insight, cloud application depth and an unmatched level of implementation experience and industry domain expertise, Accelalpha partnered with Fortune 1000 clients across a range of industries and worked collaboratively with our clients to develop holistic solutions tailored to their unique needs.
In the fall of 2020, we interviewed key practitioners of the Accelalpha team as well as technologists from our technology partner, Oracle, to discuss what resiliency means to them and what the path toward resiliency looks like. Here is what we learned:
According to Alfonso Ibanez, Accelalpha’s Logistics WMS Practice Partner, resilience can be defined as how well a company is prepared to manage unexpected events and how efficiently a supply chain can react and adjust their processes to keep orders fulfilled without affecting end customers. “If you can fulfill a customer’s request during any unexpected event, then you have resilience!”
Oracle technologists have a similar definition. Jeff Stiles, VP of Product Marketing states, “Supply chain resiliency is defined by the ability to adapt – the ability to flexibly source, more accurately sense demand and align supply chain execution with shorter planning cycles.”
All interviewees agree that in the pre-Covid-19 world supply chain leaders may have nodded in agreement with this definition, but rarely acted on it.
“It was only sophisticated organizations or those who had been burned and knew first-hand that a Plan B was critical that were making this investment,” says Derek Gittoes, VP of SCM Product Strategy at Oracle.
Once it became clear that supply chains had to pivot quickly to meet a rapidly changing operating environment, businesses began investing in updating their technologies to cloud based solutions that could make them nimbler and more reactive. But, a supply chain is big and it impacts a lot of things, so where should a business begin?
According to Srini Rajagopal, Senior Director of Logistics Product Strategy at Oracle, ”Companies should look at the supply chain from when a product is manufactured all the way through settlement. They should look at storage and transportation costs and see how those can be reduced.”
“Covid-19 was a tipping point. Today – resiliency is black or white. Either you go for it or you shut down your business in two or three years,” says Alfonso Ibanez. “Culture, leadership, the desire to want to make the change. If the CIO and CFO are not on board then it will never happen.”
Culture and especially leadership are a big part of getting started on a resilience journey – and leadership begins with the courage of decision makers to make the change. Jeff Stiles, VP of Product Marketing at Oracle stated it clearly, “Leadership is needed, and so is courage – including the courage to establish common processes where it makes sense. I say courage because everybody thinks they are unique. Customers tell us that standardizing their business practices is a key to being able to quickly adapt to changing business and market conditions.
According to Manoj Turlapati, Logistics Practice Partner at Accelalpha, “You need to look at culture and make sure everyone on the team understands what the overall goal is for organization and that if the organization benefits from the evolution everyone does. It is a key part of change management.”
In addition to accepting the need for change and presenting ideas to the organization, according to Trevor Hildebrand, Accelalpha VP of Consulting Services, what is required is “a thorough review of current processes and an evaluation of existing technologies and tools to help understand where the gaps are from a technology tool perspective and filling those gaps with the right solution.”
Summing up the ideas from our practitioners and technologists – here is the Accelalpha path for businesses undertaking a transformation journey:
Make no mistake – there are plenty of pitfalls. However, almost all of them have to do with change management and the depth of domain and technology expertise.
Most supply chains have been doing things a certain way for thirty years or they have bespoke solutions for standard problems. By working with a partner who is aware of industry best practices and knows how to leverage technology a lot of the customizations that create havoc when things go wrong can be bypassed.
“The best partners can design road maps for your business. They can point out the opportunities. They know how to adapt the best industry standards. There’s a lot of change management involved in updating a supply chain and a good partner can help navigate that,” says Ibanez.
“Partners bring intellectual capital to a project,” says Stiles. “Ultimately, Oracle is a service provider. We build software. Partners are key at actually mapping success and solutions. They are responsible for that. They differentiate based on their capabilities to deliver and their competencies, knowledge, and experience in industries and domains.”
“Evaluate the people,” recommends Gittoes. “What is the experience of the people your partner would bring? Have they done this kind of work before? You are buying experience, and people who knew what the pitfalls are, are the ones you want. Taking shortcuts to save a few dollars means you’ll pay for it twice. Why pay for it twice?”
At Accelalpha our management team is made up of supply chain industry experts with decades of experience in their respective fields. Many of our consultants boast an average of more than 10 years of industry experience with multiple full cycle project implementations under their belt. We are committed to helping clients achieve supply chain resiliency and this is the first in a series of articles and webinars where we will be informing and educating the industry on how to navigate this journey successfully.
Signup below to be notified about our upcoming webinar on supply chain resiliency in 2021.
We are excited to welcome Rahul Sharma as the Practice Director for Accelalpha’s Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solution. He brings over 15 years of combined consulting experience leading business process re-engineering across various industries. With Rahul overseeing Accelalpha’s EPM team, we are now able to provide world class EPM support.
“More than ever, businesses are evaluating the best ways to standardize processes, drive productivity, and move away from their manual operations. To thrive in increasingly complex operating environments, organizations need financial systems that support greater insight and more rapid closes. Accelalpha’s new EPM practice provides next generation EPM solutions that leverage advanced tools such as AI, machine learning, and more,” commented Rahul Sharma, EPM Practice Director.
Rahul has led and worked in various areas of business process digitization and analytics for Fortune 500 companies in the manufacturing, oil, IT, retail, and life science industries. He has honed his expertise streamlining complicated business processes, leading multifaceted engagements, and enabling organizational transformation through analytic roadmap strategies. His areas of focus are Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Planning (FP&A), Global Reporting, Master Data Management, Data Governance, and Business Intelligence.
To learn more about our EPM Practice
Bellevue, Washington – Accelalpha, a premier consulting firm that solves critical business challenges and drives improved business performance through insight and technology, has been honored by Great Place to Work® and Fortune as one of the 2020 Best Small and Medium Workplaces™. The rankings are based on confidential survey feedback representing more than 189,000 employees working at small- and medium-sized businesses in the United States.
Great Place to Work®, a global people analytics and company culture research firm, evaluated more than 60 elements of team members’ experience on the job. These included the extent to which employees trust leaders, the respect with which people are treated, the fairness of workplace decisions and how much camaraderie there is among teams.
The rankings reward companies that best include all employees, no matter who they are or what they do for the organization. Accelalpha also earned the designation as a Great Place to Work-Certified™ Company in 2020.
“Our inclusion on this list further recognizes our focus and investment in building a strong culture based on employee ownership and commitment,” said Nat Ganesh, CEO of Accelalpha. “That commitment translates to a highly satisfied client base and projects that deliver their desired impact. Additionally, we are dedicated to continuing our investment in building Accelalpha, our team and our culture – and to ensuring that we are a trusted partner of choice for our clients.”
93% of employees at Accelalpha say it is a great place to work compared to 59% of employees at a typical U.S.-based company.
Source: Great Place to Work® 2019 U.S. National Employee Engagement Study.
About Accelalpha: Accelalpha is a leader in solving critical business challenges by seamlessly blending industry insights, specialized domain expertise and cloud application depth to help companies build supply chain resiliency, optimize sales and commerce, modernize procurement processes and realize the benefits of the cloud. As a longtime strategic partner of Oracle, we work collaboratively with our clients across a range of industries including high-tech, retail, food and beverage, life sciences, manufacturing and wholesale to develop holistic solutions tailored to their unique needs. Our rigorous, business outcome-focused approach to developing solutions allows us to deliver tangible results in a shorter time frame. The result is a highly satisfied and referenceable client base.
About Great Place to Work: Great Place to Work® is the global authority on workplace culture. They help organizations quantify their culture and produce better business results by creating a high-trust work experience for all employees. Emprising®, their culture management platform, empowers leaders with the surveys, real-time reporting, and insights they need to make data-driven people decisions. They recognize Great Place to Work-Certified™ companies and the Best Workplaces™ in the U.S. and more than 60 countries, including the 100 Best Companies to Work For® list published annually in Fortune.
For More Information
Contact: Matt Christianson
Phone: + 1 (360) 609-6779
Email: matt.christianson@accelalpha.com
Lavonne Williams from our Logistics Team has been recognized on the Oracle Cloud Customer Connect Hall of Fame. The platform recognizes members who contribute to the Oracle community by sharing knowledge and assisting peers. Spotlight members are selected based on their contributions to the community including answering questions and sharing their own experiences.
You can check out Lavonne’s Member Spotlight below and view the full Hall of Fame here!
Lavonne Williams is a Solution Architect at Accelalpha, where she is responsible for the overall design and successful implementation of customer transportation needs. She commented, “This role can be a challenge, but in such a fun way – solving a unique logistics puzzle on each project.” Lavonne worked as a Logistics Planner and in the Logistics IT Departments in previous positions, which gives her a unique perspective when working with customers. “My past experience has really helped me in my ability to understand customer needs from a functional perspective and translate them into a structure we can build in OTM.”
Lavonne recognizes and appreciates the value in Customer Connect: “I joined the community as soon as I learned about it. I love having a place to research questions, share ideas and overall feel integrated with the OTM community. I enjoy that the community has a variety of members ranging from partners to customers to Oracle team members. It makes for an interesting variety of solutions and suggestions.”
Lavonne is most proud of her idea ‘allowing users to approve multiple invoices at once’ becoming reality. She explained, “This is something that will benefit many end users by offering a great time savings versus having to process one by one for approval.”
More About Lavonne
When not immersed in solving OTM logistics challenges, Lavonne embraces a different type of challenge – She can be found jumping off a cliff to swing in Switzerland, skydiving in Florida, swimming with Manta rays at night in Hawaii, bungee jumping off of a crane in Amsterdam or just having an adventure camping near home. Lavonne loves anything that gets her outdoors and active!”
The US OTM SIG event that was held in Philly was a great success! Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) Special Interest Group (SIG) is a part of the larger OAUG. The community, OTM SIG, has a special interest in coming together to share best practices, success techniques and lessons learned. They primarily communicate the wants and needs of the group to influence OTM/GTM product direction through yearly conferences and regular webinars.
A special thanks goes out to all of our employees and clients who attended the event and spoke for us, we appreciate all your hard work! Here are the following presentation snapshots that occurred during the event.
Session: Oracle Global Trade Management Cloud Migration
Abstract: More and more companies are looking to the cloud to help realize lower total cost of ownership, increased performance and reduced overhead for upgrades. Zebra Technologies realized these potential benefits and made the strategic decision to move to the cloud. Venkatesh Iyer, Senior Information Systems Manager, and Likian Meens, IT Business Advisor discussed their journey to the cloud, including the benefits realized, new functionality introduced and the unique strategy of migrating directly from 6.3.7 to Cloud 19A, without an on-premise upgrade!
Category: Business Value
Speaker: Venkatesh Iyer | Senior Information Systems Manager
Company: Zebra Technologies
Session: Milk-Runs “Literally” – Deriving Process Efficiencies Through Oracle Fleet Management
Abstract: Last year, we started our journey to address the issues of manual, disparate processes, lack of visibility, lack of central data repository for capturing fleet metrics. Using Oracle Transportation Management and Fleet Management has enabled us to standardize our milk-run processes across multiple locations. Every company has a different approach on addressing challenges. We looked at the three-step approach that Darigold followed to transform our fleet operations from manual processes to automated manageable processes and providing visibility to our operational strengths and opportunities.
Date: Tuesday, August 6th, 2019
Category: Business Value
Speaker: Sarah Woods | TMS Lead
Company: Darigold
Session: Successful Migration from Amber Road to GTM Cloud and the Benefits
Abstract: Trade compliance for the global enterprise has never been more challenging than it is today. Keysight technologies showed how the company has achieved significant benefits by replacing their legacy on-premise trade compliance application with Oracle GTM Cloud. Some examples of benefits achieved are: reduced cost of ownership, improved user experience, elimination of painful upgrades, and improved performance. Keysight’s GTM Cloud implementation is complex, enterprise-wide, and is used to manage compliance, content, and customs. It includes integration with AES, EU reporting, brokers, Oracle EBS, and a number of Keysight boundary applications.
Category: Business Value
Speaker: Rich Barboza | Back Office IT Solutions Manager
Company: Keysight Technologies
Session: OTM-GTM Solution Supporting US and LATAM
Abstract: The current Global Trade environment demands companies to stay on top of ever-changing regulations and continually reduce risk. More and more companies are looking to rapidly deploy an automation solution to achieve these goals. For those companies already utilizing Oracle Transportation Management, deployment of Global Trade Management is the most logical, and cost-effective, solution. BLK discussed the company’s journey building their Transportation and Trade System to support operations within the United States and Latin America as a scalable solution designed to easily deploy future capabilities. Miguel Gutierrez, BLK´s CEO, and Luis Martinez-Leon, BLK´s Chief Commitment Officer & President, outlined BLK’s successful GTM Cloud implementation in the existing OTM environment, discussing implementation successes, challenges and benefits realized.
Category: Business Value
Speaker: Miguel Gutierrez | Chairman & CEO
Company: BLK Global Logistic
Session: Performance in the Cloud – Cummins GTM Performance Journey
Abstract: Performance within any environment is critical to a successful implementation and a successful solution. This is even more important when the solution is on the cloud. While GTM Cloud provides significant benefits, it also poses a unique challenge when managing performance. Performance tuning within the cloud requires an in-depth understanding of configurations are available and what approaches need to be considered when migrating or implementing on the cloud. Sree Subramanian, Logistics IT Manager, outlined Cummins’s experience in performance tuning to support their Item Classification Automation and extensive Restricted Party Screening, screening over 8.5 million parties a day. He discussed the initial challenges, performance tuning approach and future roadmap.
Category: Functional
Speaker: Sree Subramanian | IT Manager, Logistics IT
Company: Cummins
