I am an Oracle Customer

One thing that really annoys me even within my own usergroup is the definition of membership. Yes Fujitsu is a partner or SI. We do make money from providing products and services complimentary to those of Oracle, but we are also a customer of Oracle. In the UK alone we have hardware, linux, virtualization, databases galore, middleware and apps to run our business which is to Design, Build and Run ICT systems.

So I was delighted to be asked by Fujitsu to speak at the Oracle Customer Showcase in Tokyo on our use of Hyperion Financial Manager, a single global instance we run from the UK to manage and consulate all Fujitsu Entities at regional and Group levels.

The event was held in a major hotel, accessed by a 7 minute walk from the subway (I love the Tokyo subway) and there was no mistaking what event was taking place.

My schedule was hectic and I arrived at the venue just one hour before my session to meet with the interpreter and left straight after.

The extract for my session was

Fujitsu has successfully used Hyperion throughout its global operations for many years but in 2007 decided to consolidate to a single instance of HFM to give them faster month end accounting, local statutory reporting and a sound basis for ever increasing regulation.

This is the story of why and how they moved from 23 disparate Enterprise  installations with 350 users to the model they use today, and the benefits it gives them.

The presentation was not simulations translated but the slides were in Japanese. So I stood at the lectern using a clicker with my right hand to move on the slides, with my Fujitsu tablet in my left hand showing the slides in both languages, so I knew what they were looking at and what I was meant to be saying. Japanese uses more words so for the 35 minute presentation I spoke in total for around 14 minutes, not long for me and a lot to share. We then had a question time and they were good questions which always tells me as the presenter how well the audience has engaged.

I know users love user stories and this was one of ours. A special thanks to the Hyperion and accounting teams in Baker Street for their help in teaching me what they do everyday and to my Belfast colleague Stephen Sharkie for his alleged translation skills :-)

Celebrating NI Water

How many times have you heard about problem IT projects? If you work in IT there are always problems, challenges and hurdles to overcome, and sometimes we get so caught up in them we forget what has actually been achieved.

So I was delighted to be invited to an event to celebrate achievement with NI Water. This is an organisation that is moving away from a history in Public Sector and has been established as a Government Owned Company (GoCo) – which is a statutory trading body owned by central government but operating under company legislation.

NI Water have a substantial Oracle IT footprint including EBS (Financial, Procurement, HR/Payroll and EAM), OBIEE and Hyperion. Their SI partner is Fujitsu and when I moved to Fujitsu in Belfast in 1996 they were on 9.4.1 of EBS; in Dec 2011 they went live on R12 – one of the first organisations in Ireland to do so!

This journey has been hard, the IT projects were challenging but they were to support monumental changes to an organisation, few ever go through, so it was great to be able to step back and appreciate that.

 

The event, sponsored by NI Water and Fujitsu was held at the Silent Valley Reservoir, a fantastic location and it appears that Larry really does control both Cloud and Sun as the weather was perfect. Who would have expected a ‘no jacket’ let alone ‘no coat or umbrella’ for NI at anytime of year, AND THIS WAS OCTOBER!!

The sun was too bright!!!

Jon Paul the country lead from Oracle, and Greg McDaid from Fujitsu said a few words after Trevor Haslett and Ronan Larkin from NI Water told us how important the projects were to them. Alan Stewart, Head of Financial Systems spoke about the projects themselves and I was asked to welcome NI Water to UKOUG as new members, following Alan’s top rated presentation at our OUG Ireland Conference in March. At the end of the speeches, Moira Barratt from Fujitsu and Alistair McDonald from Oracle gave a memento of the day to everyone attending.

Alan Stewart NIW

Then it was lunch of Irish Stew and wee buns (small cakes), before a walk around the reservoir and a talk about its history. Then we drove a few miles to the Fofanny Water Treatment Plant for another tour, but you had to look hard to find it, this facility is totally underground.

I am always telling my audiences that you need to know what business you are in. IT is an enabler, and this event gave everyone, the project teams from both NI Water, Fujitsu and Oracle an excellent insight into exactly that, the business of NI Water. Everyone can be proud of their part in helping NI Water in this journey.

Learning About Customer Experience

At the IOUC Summit in January I attended a session on customer experience or CX as it is known. This is a great story, well crafted by Oracle and was its first outing. What is great is that although there are products behind it, they are talking about the business needs and great customer experience is relevant to all of us. James Haslam from UKOUG also attended and we agreed some of the concepts being explained would help us within UKOUG.This concept has grown over the last year being more and more important, it had a lot of airtime at OOW and is still being mentioned on twitter.

Why stage the Customer Experience Summit at #oow12? Find out from #Oracle's GVP, David Vap http://t.co/ouJua71A

And last week Oracle UK had their own event in London

Marisa on the UKOUG stand at CX event

I would guess there were 250 - 300 attendees and it was full capacity. What I loved about the day was the lack of actual selling. Anyway here are my tweets from the day:

• http://t.co/mDWAKHGF Marissa working hard at 0830 at oracle CX day in London #ukoug
• Just adding my contribution to the 140 million tweets a day
• Great speaker in first session on CX now about to hear from Anthony Lye #oracleLDN then Mark Hurd this afternoon #biggunsforCRM
• Great CX day. Products have been mentioned but not sold, great day of delivering knowledge
• a few hundred at the #oracleLDN event and it has been really good, now Mark Hurd will address audience a great coup for the UK Oracle team
• Entertaining, Mark Hurd announced as country leader Dermot OKelly at #oracleLDN but shows a human side to the org. Now Q&A great day
• Mark Hurd at #oracleLDN http://t.co/Ra4RP2pp session is very engaging, much better than practised slides
• Got a question for Mark Hurd anything but the US elections?
• Mark Hurd and Anthony Lye 'customers will drive product integration priorities
• Really really happy now, they are talking about the design principles of Fusion Apps

I loved the keynote speaker Colin Shaw of Beyond Philosophy, he really understood the problems and shard many insights about customer experience. One story that resonated so much with me was the hotels who provide shampoo and conditioner but by the sink not the shower. Simple to fix but rarely done.

                                                                               

There was also a great customer story from Bill Hopkins of The Trainline on how they have invested in the CX of their customers.

Antony Lye SVP CRM was the main speaker and he talked about the CX imperative

His premise is every relationship is changing. Products have been commoditised, there is no advantage through product alone, and it is very easy for people to copy your product. The ways in which you reach your customer are changing. Mobile technology and social networking has thrown a huge spanner into everything we thought of as normal. The rate of innovation, (social, mobile data, cloud) has accelerated how behaviours are rapidly changing in a world where we are always connected, always sharing, always aware. Customers want more options, more access, more influence increasingly at home, where they buy, where they work. You need to change incentives to those who deliver.

It is disruptive, fun if you take advantage, but painful if you don't? The same old approaches to CX simply don’t work.

I loved the day, I learnt, I thought about myself as a customer and a deliverer of the customer experience, but that wasn’t all…………..

Mark Hurd CEO of Oracle appeared at the end of the day. He was on the agenda and I must admit I had thought it might be a remote presence but no he was there in person and held the audience attention for 40 minutes in an unscripted Q&A. He said all questions were acceptable except for those on the US presidential election (but someone asked anyway). It was great and this is where executives should be used more. I asked a question and am sure all Oracle people held heir breath, but what I asked was for more roadmap information for acquisitions. I also congratulated them on the event, we are all Oracle’s customers and the experience we had on that day was excellent

UKOUG Partner of the Year Award

My first outing to a UKOUG event where I wasn’t part of it. Although to be honest I wouldn’t have had a big role, as a partner that would be a conflict of interest.

My first comment is the UKOUG office out did themselves the venue was excellent, the food great and the comedian funny.

It was great to see so many partners and the customer guests there and David Tweedle, VP Alliances from Oracle, proof again of the importance of our Partner Community.

Fujitsu had a table and it was a great evening. We received an award for Middleware but were unlucky  we didn’t receive awards for the other three categories we were shortlisted in, but our customers thought we deserved them and will help us encourage others to vote next year.

One disappointing thing on the night was the actual prize giving, I felt the comedian didn’t make it clear what awards he was giving out and mispronounced most of the names. You needed to go online the next day to find out all the information.

Me & Fiona

 One award I did hear was Fiona Martin who leads our Partner Forum won best dressed female, well done Fi. They should have given it to me but I can’t drink champagne so it would have been wasted.

It was an excellent night, everyone looked great and the photos can be seen on our facebook page