Oracle Business Flow Accelerator Approach Enables Dramatically Reduced Implementation Time and Lower Costs

Customers Across All Industries Rely on Oracle's Pre-Defined Business Flows For Rapid, Flexible, Low-Risk Implementations

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Oct. 8, 2003 -- Oracle Corporation, the world's largest enterprise software company, today announced that Oracle Business Flow Accelerators continue to enable customers to improve business processes through rapid, flexible and low-risk implementations of the Oracle E-Business Suite. The Oracle Business Flow Accelerator implementation approach uses pre-defined business flow frameworks to deliver a predictable implementation scope up front, reducing the time and cost associated with application deployment, and mitigating the risk to customers of cost overruns.

A growing list of organizations achieving such benefits include: 1-800-flowers.com, ALSO Comsyt, Creative Technologies, CSK Corporation, Golden Gate University, London Borough of Havering, Hologic, Juniper Networks, Medical Benefits Fund, Riverdeep, Skanska and ViewSonic.

CSK Corporation

Utilizing Oracle Business Flow Accelerators, Oracle Consulting helped CSK Corporation, one of Japan's leading providers of IT-related solutions, implement key procurement business flows in only three months and within budget. Leveraging a rapid, low-risk business flow implementation service, CSK was able to deploy pre-configured supply chain flows and benefited by knowing the cost, timeline and scope of the implementation project from the start. By taking advantage of the standard flow frameworks CSK was able to replace its existing procurement processes with leading business practices to improve overall end-to-end efficiency.

"Procurement for IT equipment was originally very difficult and time-consuming, due to the high level of information management needed to compare various hardware vendors' products," said Sadayuki Nomura, executive officer of marketing & sales planning division at CSK Corporation. "With Oracle Business Flow Accelerators we were able to implement a system, in only 3 months, that enables us to catalogue products and select the optimal equipment after a thorough comparison, significantly reducing the workload on the users as well as our Information Systems Division. In addition, we can now centrally manage the procurement data of the entire organization, allowing us to understand fully our suppliers' terms and conditions, giving us the information we need to get higher-value proposals from our suppliers, and to enjoy economies of scale when placing orders."

Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks, utilized the Oracle Business Flow Accelerator implementation approach to implement a number of pre-defined, integrated E-Business Suite business flows to streamline its enterprise resource planning and improve efficiencies. Juniper, which serves the world's leading network operators including government agencies, research and education institutions and information-intensive enterprises, turned to Oracle Consulting for a low-risk, predictable and cost-effective deployment of its application infrastructure.

"Working closely with Oracle, we were able to plan the breadth of the deployment and identify the critical business problems we wanted to resolve, making sure that we first implemented a platform that was directly relevant to improving our daily operations," commented Kim Perdikou, chief information officer, Juniper Networks.

Medical Benefits Fund

One of Australia's largest health insurance providers, Medical Benefits Fund (MBF) needed a financial application solution to support its growing business and at the same time reduce operational costs and increase process efficiencies. MBF decided to adopt Oracle's standardized functionality as the foundation for its operations and chose to implement using Oracle Business Flow Accelerators.

"We had executive support for the deployment of the Oracle E-Business Suite because Oracle Consulting guaranteed aggressive timelines and a predictable budget for the implementation," said Billy Cotter, chief financial officer at Medical Benefits Fund. "With Oracle, a low-risk, time-efficient implementation didn't mean that we had to compromise application functionality. Instead, we got all of the functionality we needed and were able to standardize the ways we do business, saving time and money across the company."

Skanska

Skanska, based in Stockholm, Sweden, is one of the world's leading companies for construction-related services and project development. To improve the execution of its projects at all levels of construction engineering, from conceptualization to deployment, Skanska selected critical projects-related business processes that would enable it to manage each of its clients' ventures more efficiently. Skanska used standard BFA frameworks to automate and simplify project management and improve project intelligence, and then configured some of the processes to meet their specific business needs. By leveraging pre-configured processes and standard frameworks as a baseline, rather than starting from scratch, Skanska benefited from early testing of their new system and an accelerated implementation timeline.

"We considered consulting offerings from multiple vendors and found that Oracle was the only software provider with industry expertise to offer pre-configured business flows and implement them within a structured budget and timeframe," said Peder Sjolander, chief information officer at Skanska. "The Oracle installation was glitch-free and we now have standard, end-to-end processes to track and manage all parts of our projects, including forecasting, budgeting, time and staff."

The Oracle Business Flow Accelerator approach is available immediately. For more information, contact Oracle Direct at 1-800-633-0467.

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