PwC and Oracle Alliance

How the right implementation partner helps maximize the value for your Oracle Cloud implementation

  • Blog
  • 5 minute read
  • January 14, 2025

Avinash Mullick

Principal, PwC US

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For financial institutions migrating to the cloud, change management is paramount

Learn how two companies made the move with guidance from PwC

Financial institutions must contend with complexities at every stage of the cloud transformation process, from planning through migration, and adoption to final launch. Each phase presents its own data management and organizational change management challenges. At the same time, corporate culture tends to play a key role in setting the stage for implementation success or failure. Whether CFOs are facing tight timelines to effectively transform finance, fielding questions about the costs required, or need to contend with organizational resistance to change, keeping the transition on track can feel like an uphill battle.

Collaborating with experienced business and technology partners can help ensure that this transformation is executed in alignment with leading industry trends and the company’s technological, financial and business objectives. With experienced guidance, cloud migration becomes a means of leveraging modern technology capabilities to deliver business outcomes with a focus on increased adaption, improved process efficiencies and comprehensive data models that serves as a single point of truth enabling innovative performance in decision-making, reporting and reconciliation.

During an Oracle CloudWorld 2024 panel discussion, two global financial institutions shared their experiences working with PwC to modernize their financial systems using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oracle applications such as Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM).

Embracing the art of the possible

A global banking and financial services organization with more than $1 trillion under management was eager to move fast to modernize its infrastructure. However, its leaders realized that truly modernizing meant more than just deploying new tools and technologies—the organization would have to embrace change on the business side to ensure that it evolved beyond its legacy approach in implementing the new infrastructure. After struggling with one implementation partner, the bank turned to PwC to deliver the experience and results its leaders were looking for. That shift sparked increased confidence in the journey and in the value their Oracle Cloud implementations would deliver, which the company viewed as a game-changer. As part of its engagement, PwC worked with the organization to ensure that everyone involved understood “the art of the possible” and recognized how the new system would transform the business into the company it wanted to become.

One of the largest banks in the U.S. was contending with a complex set of business processes and challenges in consolidated global reporting, multi-currency issues and operational inefficiencies compounded by a complex architecture built around aging systems. The organization recognized the need for change, committed to it, and chose PwC as its implementation partner at the outset. The timeline is set to roll out in phases, beginning with the launch of a foundational release of Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP and EPM solutions that includes multiple ledgers to support their global operations and reporting unified by a new standardized chart of accounts and one language.

A partner that collaborates and challenges assumptions

Another challenge for the global bank was merging 11 different internal general ledgers that previously had been maintained autonomously. The company began a phased implementation with another partner before making the switch to PwC when it became clear that the previous partner would not be able to fulfill the task. The collaboration with PwC has raised awareness of the value of choosing an implementation partner that can push back with credible challenges where they are needed. PwC’s ability to leverage its industry-leading knowledge around Oracle infrastructure and applications ultimately fostered greater confidence in decision-making and in bringing the migration to fruition.

The goals for the bank included building the single data pipeline, which integrates source systems with their existing Oracle Finance and Risk applications and Oracle Financial Accounting Hub to support credit risk analytics, risk reporting, regulatory reporting and financial reporting so that over time, the integrated architecture can support detailed financial reporting leveraging fully reconciled granular data that bring together financial and operational metrics. Although this is a long and difficult journey, it’s also an ongoing learning process. The team has already seen some of its decisions affirmed in what is already working well: the selection of key finance and risk reports and date elements required to build a comprehensive data model was a critical success factor. Those early positive results from the company’s Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP and EPM deployments instill confidence that, regardless of differences in priorities, everyone is moving toward achieving the same goals—which is essential in any transformation that will have an impact on the entire organization.

Confidence in the experts — and in the process

As shown by these two financial institutions, a strong partnership with PwC and Oracle amplifies financial organizations’ internal resources with external expertise, ensuring that the cloud migration process rolls out with the benefit of experienced guidance. Contact us to learn how PwC can help your organization establish a robust data strategy, address data quality issues and optimize data security on Oracle Cloud.

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