Since the launch of Oracle Accelerate nearly three years ago, Oracle has added more than 7,000 midsize applications customers and now has over 25,000 midsize customers. The company continues to build on this success by announcing new capabilities for its Oracle Accelerate Program for midsize companies, including new Accelerate Solutions, Oracle Business Accelerators, financing options and deployment methods.
In addition, Oracle Accelerate has launched a new portal, midsize.oracle.com, a resource focused on enabling customers and partners to search for geographic- and industry-specific solutions, as well as a platform for collaboration. The portal includes a Partner Marketplace, which allows customers to more easily find the right combinations of Oracle Applications and Oracle Accelerate solutions.
Other recent new capabilities include:
- New Oracle Accelerate solutions including Business Intelligence, Enterprise Performance Management and CRM On Demand
- A new HP and Oracle Consulting Accelerate Solution for Industrial Manufacturing with HP.
- An extension to Oracle Business Accelerators tool sets to include Oracle's Demantra for advanced demand planning, Oracle's Agile product lifecycle management solutions, Oracle's Siebel CRM, and Oracle Transportation Management.
- Oracle Business Accelerators for Oracle E-Business Suite are now available on Sun's 64-bit Systems running the Solaris 10 OS for eight industries in 20 countries bringing the total to over 280 Oracle Business Accelerators available in 35 countries.
- Oracle Accelerate now offers several deployment options, including hosting by Oracle On Demand, hosting by a third party, and on-premise hosting all with customizable service packages to meet the unique needs of each customer.
Asian Channels recently caught up with Rajeepan Raguneethan, senior director of Partner Solutions & Business Acceleration, Oracle Asia Pacific and Danny Ong, associate vice president of sales &country Manager of Malaysia, Ness Global Services Pte Ltd to find out more about Oracle’s Accelerate Program in the Asia Pacific.
Oracle has recently made some new announcements on a number of partner-driven programs and activities for the commercial segment (for midsize businesses). Can you please elaborate on these? What were the key drivers here? How are these announcements making an impact on your partner network in the Asia Pacific?
Rajeepan: Oracle is serious about the midsize market. We want to provide value to them. We have a 3-prong approach to addressing the needs of the midsize businesses, summed up as: Enterprise Class Applications, Implementation Simplicity and Expert Delivery Ecosystem.
The first approach is Enterprise Class Applications. Oracle’s strategy is to take enterprise class applications – the same ones that are run by world-leading companies all these years – and bring to these to our midsize customers. We are not cutting down the features or functionalities of our enterprise-class applications. Instead, we’re offering midsize customers the business functionalities they will need as their businesses grow.
Next, is Implementation Simplicity and this impacts how much faster we can deliver applications to the customers. This is key to midsize businesses. With our experience in enterprise applications for so many decades, we looked at best business practices to help midsize companies with fast and low-risk implementation. This is one of the areas where Oracle Business Accelerators stand out as it contains tools and templates with industry best practices to help our Oracle Accelerate partners to deliver solutions targeted at midsize businesses.
This brings me to our Expert Delivery Ecosystem. For midsize customers, we have trained our partners to help customers with consultancy and implementation using best-practice processes. Using Oracle Business Accelerators, our partners have cut down average implementation time down to 6 months.
To-date, I am pleased to say that Oracle has over 190,000 midsize customers and over 25,000 midsize application customers. In addition, it takes 162 average days to go live on ERP. These are quite remarkable numbers considering the typical nature of ERP implementations in the last few years.
Tell me more about the Oracle Accelerate partner program? What are the latest enhancements/modifications to this program and why?
Rajeepan: “Oracle Accelerate is our approach for helping partners in the Oracle PartnerNetwork to deliver complete, easy to own, industry-focused solutions to midsize businesses. The key to Oracle Accelerate solutions is the availability of pre-packed application bundles that can be quickly implemented by partners and provide a wide range of industry-specific functionalities. As part of Oracle Accelerate, partners are equipped with Oracle Business Accelerators (OBA), which are rapid implementation tools, templates and process flows to help the end-customers realize immediate benefit from Oracle Applications.
For example, when it comes to F&B industry customers who want to implement financial and procure-to-pay solutions, consultants can use one of Oracle Business Accelerator tools to come up with business questions and get answers from the customers. After which, the consultants use the answers to select relevant business flows. Oracle Business Accelerators are tools to help partners become successful in the midsize business segment and we have been enhancing the accelerators over the last 10 years. To my knowledge, there isn’t anyone else in the industry who can do this today. Our customers can testify to our success. For instance, Fondaco Mitratama in Indonesia, went ‘live’ in 96 days with notable inventory cost reduction while another, Tikona Digital Networks in India, went ‘live’ in 32 days even with complex localization using the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.
With Oracle Accelerate, customers can take advantage of Oracle’s enterprise applications, including integrated business flows across front office, back office and industry-specific processes.
Additionally, customers can benefit from automated upgrades, which can significantly reduce the complexity and risks associated with migrating to updated versions.
Another new development to highlight for Oracle Accelerate is that we have in September 2009 launched a portal for midsize customers: midsize.oracle.com. Customers can access information relevant to their country, industry, and business flows. There is a lot of content in there including our solution providers, case studies, etc.
What this portal means for our partners is that Oracle is driving a marketplace for our midsize customers and certified partners. It is part of Oracle’s commitment to make our partners successful in the midsize business segment. We help to support them in enablement and demand generation, win more business and give hands-on training to their consultants.
What makes the Oracle Accelerate program stand out in your opinion?
Rajeepan: “Oracle Accelerate stands out from the partners’ perspective. There is no charge to our partners and Oracle Business Accelerators are provided free – along with significant training by Oracle. Our partners are equipped to compete in the industry and succeed.
From the customers’ perspective, they get the benefits of a shorter implementation; say from a typical 9 to 12 months on a project to just 3 to 6 months. That’s a 50% reduction in total cost of ownership. All the customers need to know is that enterprise class applications can be delivered to their organizations in a short time.
Danny Ong: “I agree. Oracle’s announcement of their enhancements for Oracle Accelerate is timely because customers are looking for immediate value. They know that Oracle has good, enterprise class solutions but we need to change their perception that the ROI may take a long time to achieve. With Oracle Business Accelerators, we can make value propositions more compelling. This is definitely a welcome move.”
By Shanti Anne Morais
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