Our technology makes acquisitions easy

Oracle's CIO and senior VP Mark Sunday has revealed how the company's strategy to simplify its processes has enabled it to acquire and assimilate businesses.

Thirteen years ago, Oracle carried out a major business transformation project which involved simplifying, standardising and centralising its processes. The aim was to achieve operational excellence and efficiencies.

"It's made it so easy for us [to acquire businesses]. So when we acquire a company, it will just come in. You will be assimilated – resistance is futile," Sunday told the UK Oracle User Group Conference in Birmingham in his opening keynote.

The number of ERP systems from more than 70

Oracle reduced the number of ERP systems from more than 70, and consolidating 40 data centres to just two. It standardised by moving completely to a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephony environment, and centralised its financial division organisationally as so then as geographically.

By standardising on global, single instances of systems in Austin, Texas – the company has a single instance of E-Business Suite, Siebel and business intelligence, for instance – Sunday said that it led to shared service and self-service opportunities.

This standardisation has led to "dramatic" savings. For instance, in spite of the demand for bandwidth growing exponentially in recent years, Oracle has been able to keep its telecoms costs flat by standardising its telecommunications network – equal to more than a hundred million dollars in savings.

The strategy

Sunday used Oracle's acquisition of Sun for instance the strategy. The company ripped out Sun's existing infrastructure and replaced it with Oracle's network and telecommunication standards.

With the legal integration of Sun in February 2010, Oracle at the time needed to integrate Sun-specific applications with Oracle. This involved expanding its existing ERP to include modules just as value chain management, product lifecycle management and supply chain business intelligence.

Today, efficiency is a basic tenet of business survival. The boardroom IT conversation is no longer restricted to cutting costs-it's about investing in innovation to efficiently drive business and organisational success.

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