American Way: What have been the biggest technological lessons
in implementing this?
ELLISON: We've developed the eBusiness Suite, a complete set of
integrated software to run your entire business: marketing, sales,
service, accounting, human resources, supply chain automation, 75
major modules. The challenge isn't that the software is so
difficult to work, but to move from what you have today to the
eBusiness Suite.
We had 97 separate e-mail systems, 130 customer support systems,
130 accounting systems, and so forth, and we had to convert to a
single, unified, global system. The way we did it was to take a
portion of our business,
Latin America, and hive it off from the
rest of
Oracle, as a laboratory to test the technology.
But before we could automate anything, we had to standardize the
new processes we would need. It meant simplifying and modernizing
every procedure, rethinking how we buy, sell, and support, defining
everything precisely. We engaged senior management inside the
company, which was another challenge. People ask the wrong question
when they automate a company: Will this bunch of software allow us
to purchase things the way we buy them today? The right question
is, Will this allow us to purchase things the way we should be? The
re-engineered process combined with the automation software is what
yields the benefit.
American Way: If the benefits are so great, why are so few
companies today far advanced in integrating and automating their
entire extended enterprise, including vendor and customer
relationships?
ELLISON: If you look at the very best companies, like General
Electric, they've completely standardized on Oracle. GE Medical has
done exactly what I've described, running the whole division on the
eBusiness Suite. GE Power Systems is in the process of implementing
this. Whenever GE across the system buys anything, they use Oracle
iProcurement. I could name a long list of industry thought and
technology leaders who are going this way.