Announcing the 2017 ODTUG Innovation Award Nominations

If you are an ODTUG member (Associate or Full), you should have received an email with a members only link to vote for your favorite innovation. If you are an ODTUG member but did not receive the email with the voting link, please email taylor@odtug.com. 

Thank you to all the individuals who nominated these exceptionally outstanding individuals and their innovative projects. The winner of the 2017 ODTUG Innovation Award will be announced at the ODTUG Kscope17 General Session.

 

2017 Nominations: 

Innovate Tax

Nominee Name: Ian Ward
Project URL: https://www.innovatetax.com/products/tact
Innovation: 
Innovate Tax have developed a real-time tax analytical tool built entirely on Oracle APEX. The traditional approach to tax analytics by the Big 4 companies is to analyze the historical tax data after the month-end close. This means it is often too late to correct any issues or manual adjustments if needed, making it both time consuming and not easily audited. Our Tax Compliance Manager tool has been built to check each transaction when it is entered so that the tax department can literally check transactions within 15 seconds of it being entered. Using APEX, we can drill down the transactions and the tax department can now have a never before seen tool that gives them total visibility and access. They can call the person incorrectly processing invoices and tell them to stop, and send them the problematic transactions with instructions on how to resolve them, which is done at source.

This new approach means that transactional issues are found immediately, resolved immediately with all corrections now flowing from the sub ledgers, and there is now a full audit trail. The users are being educated on the mistakes they make, which has resulted in a reduction of the number of issues by over 90% in just three months! On top of the real-time analytics, we also have deep dive analytics for checking more historical data. With the adoption of real-time reporting being taken up by more and more tax authorities around the world, our Tax Compliance Manager Tool is set to make a huge difference.

Additional information about the project and/or team members: Ian is primarily self-taught on the APEX suite and has focused on providing a solution that works on the Oracle tools rather than the client needing to invest in further software or hardware. Ian has lead the development of the project.

 

SpringBoard

Nominee Name: Anand Diraviyam
Project URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3W1YXbbKHE
SpringBoard Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovUbVRHqY-o
Innovation: 
In the relocation industry, a trend toward limited benefits/lump sum programs rather than full service relocation benefits has developed in recent years. A few years ago, small technology start-up companies began to emerge that provided an online tool for the administration of these benefits. Aires understood that there was a need for such a tool, but we did not want to rush a tool to market. 

A major limitation of the tools that were brought to market was their lack of knowledge of the relocation industry. These companies based their revenue model on referral fees from providers without providing any assistance when employees had questions regarding their tool. Suppliers of relocation services (such as household goods shipment, temporary housing, rental assistance partners, etc.) were not vetted based upon quality of the service or the cost to the employee.

We created a task force to develop the best technology tool to meet this need and to identify gaps in tools currently in existence. We knew we needed to pair a user-friendly system interface with our traditional relocation industry experience. In the second quarter of 2016, Aires introduced SpringBoard℠, a different type of experience for assignees receiving a lump sum. 

This new tool, created by working with professionals specializing in the end-user experience, ensures supplier quality by using only Aires-vetted suppliers and providing previous user ranking data. It also provides access to an Aires Relocation Specialist who can make recommendations and provide assistance if needed. In short, it combines traditional relocation benefits and supply chain management with forward-looking technology.

NOTE: Oracle Technology Used: Oracle ADF, Oracle EE database, Oracle WebLogic Application Server, Oracle MAF

 

EPM Java API Utility

Nominee Name: Enrique Marron
Project URL:  
Innovation: 
Oracle Hyperion EPM modules access data in many different ways, as well as being co-dependent. Some of these dependencies are a Windows operating system, Microsoft Office, a web browser, and various desktop clients. This solution removes users from that equation completely! 

This utility unlocks all users from today’s boundaries of EPM data retrieval and ad hoc analysis.

This unique solution will allow all users to remain true to the core functionality of their EPM data, tools, and utilities that they most likely use today to perform retrievals: a grid-like presentation-style (i.e. row and column format User Interface - UI). The developed code leverages the commonly exposed EPM Java APIs.

The benefits users could receive from this work are:
- Essbase Java API
- Operating System Agnostic exposure to EPM data
- Easy and fast ad hoc analytic data retrieval ability
- User interface and user experience in a desired and familiar format
- Common core ad hoc options

 
APEX Nitro

Nominee Name: Vincent Morneau
Project URL: https://github.com/OraOpenSource/apex-nitro
Innovation: 
APEX Nitro makes coding faster and easier by hosting and distributing static files more efficiently within an APEX application.

Why APEX Nitro?
- Synchronizes your APEX app files from your computer
- Synchronizes your devices together
- Merges your files into one
- Minifies your files for faster execution time
- Uploads your files to APEX
- Allows you to use Sass or LESS
- Handles JavaScript and CSS errors

This project is innovative because it leverages the many benefits of Node.js and brings them to a regular APEX developer.

NOTE: This project just entered BETA. It will be unveiled to the public during ODTUG Kscope17 lightning talks.

 

RBM & Budget

Nominee Name: Leo Joseph
Download PDF: http://www.odtug.com/d/do/6694
Innovation:
Using EPM, we created a framework for results based management for the UN. This framework enables the organisation for results based management and automates all of the cost and Integration.

In this hyperion Implementation, We have managed to create a results based management framework using hyperion planning. Since the budget model for most UN organizations are almost the same, this model can be used for any other UN organizations.

- Create expected results, performance indicators and activities in EPM.
- Prepare Personnel and Non-personnel budget by allocating the budget to the activities.
- Interface the budget and the activities from EPM to PS Finance. The activities is chart field in PS Finance and is a needed field for booking expense.
- Interface actuals from PS Finance at activity level, thereby enable monitoring of budget planned per activity(source EPM), expenses made(from PS Finance), and the results achieved(using the RBM structure).
- Post budget approval, and during the operational year, make subsequent budget adjustments in EPM and process changes to ERP. EPM is the always the source of truth for budgetary information.
- Approval of budget using custom built approval functions.
- At the end of year 1, automated rollover of available budget from year 1 to year 2.
- Automated means of integration of personnel information from PSHR to EPM.
- Automated means of calculating personnel budget based on the attributes(grade, effective dates and other attributes).
- Actuals data integration between PS Finance and EPM and automated reconciliation system.
- Prepare EPM data mart for reporting in OBIEE with data federation capabilities.

 

Western Alliance Bank – Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service Implementation

Nominee Name: Mazen Manasseh 
Project URL: https://www.oracle.com/applications/erp/change-agent-awards/index.html?elqTrackId=b968def402ae498989ee8334bb44b11e&elqaid=39177&elqat=2
Innovation: 
Western Alliance Bank is a current Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) customer and effectively uses PBCS for a good ‘top-of-the-house’ profitability view of each business (earnings per share, profit margin, credit quality, and so on). But, examining those numbers inevitably leads to more questions about what affects them: How many people are involved in servicing a loan? At what level are those people? Where are they located?” In order to drill down to the required detail to answer those questions, Western Alliance Bank needed “an application that could pull together information from different sources, model it, and distribute it via powerful dashboard visualizations.” Western Alliance Bank licensed Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service (BICS) in order to enable financial reporting and analysis on Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service as well as critical ERP data.

Oracle and Perficient partnered on the Western Alliance Bank opportunity not only because of Perficient’s proven assistance supporting the Oracle BI Cloud sales process, but also our track record of delivering successful and referenceable BICS projects quickly and on budget. 

To address their financial reporting needs, Western Alliance Bank considered three other technologies in addition to Oracle BICS, including Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, and SAS Analytics. The customer requested a POC (proof of concept) using their own data to ensure that the selected technology platform would meet their specific requirements. Perficient collaborated with Western Alliance Bank on obtaining samples of their data, created a custom data model and POC, which included Oracle Data Visualization. When the finance team viewed the demo with their data they concluded that the custom BICS POC met all their success criteria for the future state solution.

Perficient presented Western Alliance Bank with a proposal leveraging our Quick Start Services for BICS, a repeatable solution designed to accelerate the deployment of BICS with the goal to allow the finance team to get up-to-date and facilitated access to crucial financial data in a matter of weeks, while lowering the total cost of ownership.

Western Alliance Bank chose Oracle BICS and Perficient’s professional services, over the other technology providers, for the following key reasons: 

1. Custom-built POC Successful and fully functional custom-built POC demonstrated the features and functionality of BICS capabilities and Perficient’s solution expertise. All functional and technical concerns raised during the sales cycle were addressed.
2. Cloud Client Reference — Perficient provided Western Alliance Bank a secondary reference to a BICS/Perficient client. 
3. Low TCO — The low total cost of ownership of Oracle licenses and Perficient’s professional services resulted in a very competitive proposal. 

In 10 weeks, Perficient implemented BICS for Western Alliance Bank and enabled automated integration with Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service. In addition, the BICS reporting data model that Perficient implemented enabled the finance team to drill down from high-level financial summaries sourced from Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service to transaction level reporting from the ERP system. 

The project goal was to deliver a reliable, scalable and easily extensible foundation that enabled financial planners to perform modern and dynamic analytics on BICS. Perficient succeeded by controlling the scope of the project and keeping the customer focused on high priority deliverables for a first phase. As a result, the project was delivered on time and within budget. With training, Perficient insured that the customer’s financial business team is able to maintain and extend the delivered solution with very minimal reliance on IT. It was crucial that the finance team was capable of owning the BICS platform which lead to greater operational efficiency. Perficient continues to support Western Alliance Bank, even after the completion of the project and to provide guidance whenever needed

The Oracle Customer Success team has scheduled a video shoot with Western Alliance Bank in July 2017. This video will be available for OOW 2017.

Customer Quote:
“Perficient was an excellent partner in the successful implementation of Oracle BICS at Western Alliance. With an aggressive timeframe in setting up our initial data models and visualizations, the project was completed on time and on budget.  More importantly, Perficient did an excellent job educating our analysts for future development. This step was critical in preparing us for a successful rollout of BICS to the rest of our organization.” — Andrew Boucher, VP FP&A, Western Alliance Bancorporation

Additional information about the project and/or team members: Mazen Manasseh was the lead project manager on the BICS implementation at Western Alliance Bank. Given the success of this project, Oracle has subsequently leveraged Western Alliance Bank at numerous client events.


Ohio National Financial Services - PBCS Implementation

Nominee Name: John Taylor
Innovation: 
For over 100 years, Ohio National Financial Services has been a leading provider of insurance and financial support. This year (2017) they made the favorable decision to replace their outdated homegrown budgeting and process system and move forward with implementing Oracle’s Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS). Ohio National had been using their homegrown system since the early 2000’s and it was becoming difficult to use to satisfy their varying business requirements.  

The Ohio National leadership team was on-board early in the PBCS selection process when demonstrations proved how this planning application easily supported the enterprise-wide planning, budgeting, and forecasting systems that the company needed. The implementation of PBCS used several innovative factors in pursuance of Ohio National’s requirements for a successful solution.  

Most notably, PBCS has allowed Ohio National the ability to have a Cloud based solution for annual budgeting, quarterly forecasting, and long-term comprehensive multi-year planning that can be submitted, reviewed, and reported in one centralized location. This solution is traversing capital expenditures, employee level expenses, cost center expenses, and product activity for revenue and expenses. Before implementing PBCS, Ohio National had been limited to performing single years of planning and several hours of staging processes to procure the planning data into reporting cubes. Now, in mere seconds, the Ohio National team with the use of PBCS can accomplish these same tasks. Additionally, by enabling the SmartView add-in with PBCS, users have the capability of Excel for their reporting needs. 

The Essbase dimensionality in PBCS has given Ohio National the resourcefulness needed to achieve multiple views of organization reporting by Functional and Management structures. Additionally, it allows them to complete reporting on a basis of External GAAP, Statutory, Management GAAP, and Product Reserves.

The PBCS application at Ohio National is utilizing EPM Automate batch scripts to integrate with multiple data sources that is allowing seamless reporting and planning that requires minimal manual intervention.  This includes multi-column data imports via PBCS’s Data Management ETL tool for payroll data.  

Cloud to Cloud data integrations transpire with the Oracle Fusion Financials ERP system allowing GL Balances to be transmitted to PBCS in a matter of minutes with the added capability of being able to run daily, on an hourly basis.

The PBCS capabilities are also being utilized for the Ohio National Expense Allocation process to capture employee position level task drivers and to calculate these task drivers into weighted averages for the external expense allocation module.  PBCS is using a series of EPM Automate batch scripts together with PBCS to provide the expense drivers and expense data to the external expense allocation module in addition to allowing for the import of the allocation results back into PBCS once the external system process is finalized.

The implementation of PBCS with the utilization of features and flexible deployment options such as EPM Automate, integration to Oracle Fusion Financials ERP, the Essbase Dimensionality and Data Management ETL  at Ohio National Financial Services has allowed for this company to secure a solution for their planning and budgeting needs with functionality that expands beyond finance across the enterprise.

Additional information about the project and/or team members: John Taylor, Senior EPM Consultant, Vertical Edge Consulting Group, is a Hyperion Consultant with over 6 years of experience working with the Hyperion suite of products and has a specific emphasis on the Essbase and Hyperion Planning products.

 
Orthofix – ARCS/FCCS Early Adopter

Nominee Name: Matt Hopkins 
Project URL: http://www.perficient.com/insights/webinars/on-demand-webinars/2017/orthofix-improves-its-financial-close-and-consolidations-with-oracle-cloud-arcs-and-fccs
Innovation: 
Orthofix is a global manufacturer of medical devices. Headquartered in Lewisville, Texas, they have four divisions in over 50 countries and have more than 900 employees. They run their business operations on the Oracle E-business Suite (EBS) and have a global implementation of Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management, Enterprise Edition (FDMEE) and Oracle Hyperion Financial Management (HFM).  Orthofix is growing rapidly and needed to streamline their close process, automate as much functionality as possible and allow their personnel to focus on key close and reconciliation needs.  In addition, they were interested in providing executive management with more insight into the close and reconciliation status, which was not an option leveraging the existing systems or processes.   

Many Orthofix departments, each with multiple entities and varying degrees of involvement in the close and reconciliation process, led to non-standardized processes across the organization. The tracking of the reconciliation and close was difficult and Orthofix was not able to accurately determine where they were in the process. Due to these disparate processes, the employees were spending more time compiling and processing the reconciliations and close than they were analyzing the related data.  

Orthofix wanted to improve their financial close and account reconciliation process. For this initiative, they required a robust solution that satisfied their needs without a long implementation or an increase their on-premises hardware requirements and IT maintenance.  They evaluated Oracle Hyperion, including the Financial Close Manager portion of Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud Service (FCCS) and Account Reconciliation Cloud Service (ARCS) as well as a competitive offering from Blackline.

Perficient partnered with Oracle to present a compelling solution offering that met their needs in a rapid timeline.  Additionally, they were attracted to the low maintenance of no Orthofix sponsored patching or upgrades.  Based on the functionality provided and Perficient’s expertise in Hyperion Cloud solutions, Orthofix selected Perficient and Oracle Hyperion for their implementation.  The project work began in November 2016 and was delivered before the end of the year on time and under budget.

CUSTOMER RESULTS
Orthofix wanted a clearly defined close process with the ability to check status and bottlenecks at all points in the close cycle. The Close Manager component of FCCS provided a system to meet this need. With the FCCS implementation, Orthofix defined tasks for close activities assigned to specific users. Each task has due dates and workflow notifications, which inform users of tasks that are due. As a result, users are more efficient instead of waiting for an email or call regarding a task.  Dashboard reporting helps identify where the bottlenecks are in the close processes. With the ability to embed a group of tasks as part of a schedule, FCCS allowed Orthofix to maintain Prepared by Client tasks for their external audit.

A measure of success for the ARCS implementation was the quality of financial balances available to users for reconciliation. Data integration components available with ARCS assured Orthofix that the balances are always current in an automated fashion. Orthofix wanted to minimize the time spent by finance community on repeatable tasks that had more to do with organizing and coordinating than with reconciliations and analysis. During a typical reconciliation cycle, finance users would spend a part of their time going through accounts that have not had any activity. ARCS provides automated rules to close such reconciliations automatically saving the users time.  

Webcast can viewed here:  http://www.perficient.com/insights/webinars/on-demand-webinars/2017/orthofix-improves-its-financial-close-and-consolidations-with-oracle-cloud-arcs-and-fccs

Additional information about the project and/or team members: Orthofix is one of Oracle's first clients to 'Go Live' on both ARCS/FCCS.


PBCS for Healthcare Providers – Repeatable Solution Offering

Nominee Name: Don Ford
Project URL:  https://cloudmarketplace.oracle.com/marketplace/content?contentId=17200883
Innovation: 
Perficient has an established track record for helping healthcare organizations plan and forecast effectively by managing uncertainty, volatility, and risk.  With an ever growing amount of government involvement and regulation, financial planning is more complex than ever as organizations seek to maintain profitability. As organizations evaluate their internal systems they often find ineffective approaches and inadequate systems that are not up to the task.  We have assisted numerous organizations identify their challenges and obstacles and put in place proven processes and systems to help them achieve this goal. 

To meet these challenges, Perficient has developed an accelerated solution for healthcare that utilizes Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service. The Fast Forward solution provides an agile rapid deployment methodology that supports the accelerated delivery process without sacrificing quality. The solution is designed to provide a rapid return on investment, with less risk than a traditional implementation because it leverages our deep experience in healthcare.  

CASE STUDIES
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center -
The original requirement at Moffitt was to allow their organization to shift their focus from a single annual budget, and instead put emphasis on a quarterly forecast. This paradigm shift and major process change was a step that Moffitt was at first reluctant to take, but with Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service they gained the confidence to make the move to a quarterly forecast and retire the annual budget process.

University of Texas Health Science Center Tyler -
For UTHSCT, Perficient was able to extract their salary roster (full employee roster) from PeopleSoft and integrate it with Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service via Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management, Enterprise Edition (FDMEE).  From there, we can project key aspects of workforce planning like salary increases, taxes, promotions, and merit adjustments, which are instrumental to accurately budgeting and forecasting expenses

Joerns Healthcare -
The implementation of Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service allowed Joerns to utilize a self-service model for both inbound and outbound data integrations using Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management, Enterprise Edition (FDMEE). Location security was setup to provide team mangers visibility into data that was only pertinent to them.

Additional information about the project and/or team members: Partner developed repeatable solution offerings can be a key point of differentiation within specific industries, such as healthcare.


CPI Card Groups Journey to Oracle Cloud

Nominee Name: Hanny Shanar
Project URL: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160916005457/en/Perficient-CPI-Card-Group-Partner-Migrations-Oracle
Innovation: 
CPI Card Group has embarked on a strategic initiative to transform and grow their business. They continue to grow organically, as well as by acquisition, to diversify their business. CPI realized that they need best of breed applications in place to support this growth. CPI was operating various siloed point solutions on an aging infrastructure that did not provide the value needed to support this growth.

Their challenges included:
• Limited institutional knowledge of current applications
• Siloed applications with no integrations
• Aging hardware causing performance issues
• Limited IT staff to manage hardware
• No Virtualization
• No Backup and restore procedures in place
• Disaster recovery plans consisted of keeping our fingers crossed
• Manual Excel Workbooks
• Older version of applications
• Previous upgrades have been very painful

SOLUTION
CPI Card Group kicked off a strategic cloud initiative to push on premise applications into an integrated cloud platform. They went through a thorough evaluation of various software vendors to ensure they choose the right platform. Oracle was selected as the partner of choice, primarily because of the depth and breadth of its Cloud offerings. The Oracle Cloud platform would be instrumental in helping drive the system change needed to support their future growth potential. They immediately saw the value in the cloud and have been able to realize a positive ROI.

Current Cloud Applications:
• Oracle Sales Cloud
• Human Capital Management (HMC) Cloud
• Business Intelligence Cloud Service (BICS)
• Planning & Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS)
• Financial Consolidation & Close Cloud Service (FCCS)
Future Cloud Initiatives:
• Cloud ERP
• Enterprise Planning & Budgeting Cloud Service (EPBCS)

RESULTS
CPI’s cloud benefits included:
• Rapid implementation providing data necessary to help drive the business
• Ability to focus on how apps are used to help drive value to the business
• Positive ROI by re-assigning resources to more value add tasks
• No infrastructure investment
• Scheduled and automated updates by Oracle
• Easy application creation, configuration and user interface
• Pre-built out-of-box content
• Dashboarding capabilities

Additional Links:
CPI and BICS: http://video.oracle.com/detail/videos/most-recent/video/4868392771001/cpi-card-plans-for-the-future-with-oracle-bi-cloud-service?autoStart=true&page=104

CPI Datasheet: https://cloudmarketplace.oracle.com/marketplace/content?contentId=17201592

Additional information about the project and/or team members: CPI Card Group has been cionsidered to be paradigm pioneer given their aggressive cloud strategy.

 

Sherwin-Williams Project Financial Planning (PFP)

Nominee Name:  The Sherwin-Williams Company
Innovation: 
The elegance of the Sherwin-Williams Project Financial Planning (PFP) application is in its simplicity – providing the ability to analyze, forecast, budget, and create long range plans. The PFP application gives the control of creating projects to the end user and links it directly to the metadata project structure, whether it is updating a project attribute, or giving the user the ability to move a project in the hierarchy using smart lists. The innovation occurs where our custom PFP application leverages out of the box Oracle Hyperion Planning functionality to do really cool things, such as generating and managing the logic for internal rate of return and project ranking. 

Oracle Data Relationship Management (DRM) is used to maintain organizational hierarchies in the PFP application and keep it in sync with all of the other Planning/Essbase apps. But perhaps the most innovative part of the project is the data integration with Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management, Enterprise Edition (FDMEE).

The FDMEE build is a completely scalable solution that was implemented for just 1 of 5 BUs in this phase, but will easily scale for the remaining BUs in the future: 

- Using a combination of FDMEE Jython scripting and the Universal Data Adapter, FDMEE allows for an on-demand refresh of actuals from Oracle EBS, including AP/PO subledger data.

- Cost Center and Project dimension mapping is automatically updated via FDMEE Jython scripting based on changes made by the end user in the PFP application. This also serves as a quick check to identify issues in PFP application. For example, each Project Number may be assigned to one and only one Cost Center. If it is accidentally assigned to more than one, it gets automatically mapped to suspense and logged as an issue so that the user can make corrections in Planning.

- FDMEE also dynamically filters source data for a BU's specific divisions based on metadata changes made in DRM/Planning, i.e. when cost centers are moved to a different division in DRM.

- Out of the box, FDMEE loads text-based accounts in Planning but only for a flat file source. However, we figured out a way to load text-based accounts directly from a relational FCA system where projects are managed. FDMEE also seamlessly syncs text-based accounts and project attributes between the PFP BSO and ASO plan types.

- A different process is used to calculate the delta between Oracle EBS actuals and the existing consolidation cube, so that project spend is in sync across PFP and the separate cubes used for financial analysis. The diff amount is stored in a single member, but FDMEE drill through detail is used to see the breakdown of actuals vs. difference.

- A similar FDMEE process is used to extract the currency translation adjustment (CTA) that is calculated in the PFP ASO plan type and include it in the total project spend that is loaded to the PFP BSO plan type. Again, FDMEE drill through is used to allow the user to easily see the breakdown of actuals vs. CTA.

- In general, the FDMEE drill through for PFP is a huge timesaver for the end user because it eliminates the need to switch to EBS or the FCA source system in order to drill down further to transactional and supplemental detail. Everything the user needs to see is just one click away.

Additional information about the project and/or team members: Project Lead: Beth Archacki, Architect: Chandra Ippil, Developer: Bishnu Gautam
Planning – Glen Allen, Tracy McMullen, Kevin Whalen Integration – Pete Puskar PM – Haranadh Kancherla

 

Rogers Group Inc.

Nominee Name: Dawna Roberts
Project URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=KMebMTFK000
Innovation: 
Sofbang and Oracle joined forces to help Rogers Group (RGI) pave the way to more profitable highway construction by combining AuraPlayer and Oracle Mobile Cloud Service into a platform for mobile app development, but also solved a longstanding EBS issue. 

Road construction is a low-margin business with a seemingly low barrier to entry – get a paver, a dump truck and go bid on jobs.  In reality, its best practitioners like Nashville based Rogers Group, are learning how to run their roadway projects with data-driven efficiency by using available cloud services to grease the wheels of information as it moves through the business.  With a goal to complete every job within its estimated framework and to that end, Rogers is using Oracle Mobile Cloud service to open a new connection between their ERP system and the people who run the job in the field.   Until recently, the foremen worked in spreadsheets – filling in employee hours and equipment used on the project and then put them in Google Docs for the back office to pick up, print and enter the data into their financial software.  Next, they would update the Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) which could delay getting the information back to the field for up to a week.   Wanting to take the data they already had contained in their EBS system, Rogers was looking for one database system with instant, mobile jobsite reporting without having to introduce another system or forcing people to log into EBS on a PC.  

Oracle Platinum Partner and leading solutions provider for the Oracle Cloud Platform, worked with RGI to develop a mobile app using MAF and extending Oracle DB on their existing system.  By applying our Designed for Change methodology – a winning combination of agile development with reduced costs and risks used Oracle’s cutting edge Mobile Cloud Service (MCS) and a solution from AuraPlayer – Sofbang was able to extend EBS to mobile without redevelopment.  By utilizing Auraplayer’s technology - that “wraps” exiting application as a webservice to be ‘mobile ready” without changing code – Sofbang was able to unlock RGI’s EBS back-office system to the world of mobile by “plugging-in” the AuraPlayer services into MCS.  The solution fully supports the offline capabilities of MCS, where data is automatically synced back to the EBS system.  By utilizing this winning combination of technology and a top notch implementation partner, Rogers has increased efficiency and accuracy in maintaining business records, as well as provided the ability to see data and reports in real time.

With the success of the MCS implementation, Rogers is now looking to take the current platform and taking their other on-prem applications to the next level of mobility -  applications such as their Diary module that allows their foreman and Construction Managers to enter the daily progress of the job.  The Internet of Things (IOT) is also allowing them to think to the future as well.  RGI wants to leverage their MCS investments and attach them to fitness devices to track their field worker’s vitals to ensure that they are not succumbing to health issues in the field such as heat stress, dehydration etc. Rogers also wants to add censors onto their trucks and equipment that will send notifications the Project Managers and foreman on the jobsite when they arrive/leave providing valuable real-time access to equipment and materials shipping as well as the ETA.   Finally, Rogers plans to utilize MCS and use drones to upload real-time image captures/video progress from the jobsite to the Construction Managers and clients.

Additional information about the project and/or team members:

Forbes Article: https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2017/03/16/four-ways-cloud-is-paving-the-way-to-more-profitable-highway-construction/amp/

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=KMebMTFK000

 

 

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