Published on the 30/11/2016 | Written by Newsdesk

ClearView’s Oracle Cloud ERP project demonstrates advantages of digitally transformed business…

When it set out to give legacy hardware the flick, a financial services provider set itself on the path to going all in on a digital transformation which would see its ageing on premise Peoplesoft ERP system replaced with Oracle’s ERP Cloud. The process has seen ClearView Wealth Management emancipated from the shackles of running tin, while accelerating information access and use for a better-performing business.

ASX-listed ClearView provides life insurance, wealth management and financial advice solutions. It moved to Oracle ERP Cloud using KPMG implementation services over a period of five months.

In a chat with iStart, Louise Hulley, ClearView’s Head of Financial Management and Operations said that when it came time for an upgrade of legacy hardware, that impetus led to reviewing the software systems at the same time. “We realised it was probably time to update that too; while that made for a pretty big project, our IT strategy is to simplify and sharpen the focus on what the business actually does, which isn’t maintaining hardware and the rest of it.”

That made the purported advantages of a cloud solution particularly attractive. “Our existing system was PeopleSoft, which is an Oracle product [PeopleSoft was acquired by Oracle in 2004]; as a legacy system, the biggest constraint was reporting and the lack of flexibility. That meant a lot of manual intervention when pulling financials and management reports, so that aspect of getting into the cloud and Software as a Service was attractive as it would allow business support to move into partnering with the business more effectively rather than doing that manual work.”

Moving to the cloud from a history of on premise systems, she noted, presented no issues for the company. “Our executives are forward-looking, so there wasn’t any ‘convincing’ process. The logic of the cloud makes good sense, certainly from an IT perspective. Maintaining your own hardware and software, with patches and upgrades, and handling multiple vendors – there just isn’t value in that. This bundles it all into one shop, so it reduces risk and it’s backed by a very tight service level agreement.”

Like many businesses lumbered with legacy systems, which were once fit for purpose before the world moved on, Hulley explained that ClearView recognised the opportunity to transform how finance was operating.

At the heart of that is access to and use of information; from a ‘rear view mirror’ approach which provided historic facts, she explained that the company wanted to be able to use analytic tools to get a better idea of performance at the minute while improving forecasting capability.

Multiple core processes, including general ledger, accounts payable, fixed assets, and tax were implemented on the ERP Cloud platform. The resulting real-time reporting and analytics on live financial information delivers up-to- the-minute insight into profitability and performance.

“That’s what the new system provides us with. It is so much more dynamic; you can pull information rapidly in any format you like, drill into the underlying data to understand it better and get the information to those who need it, to help drive decisions with the right facts at the right time. Where the finance team was reactive, now we can access and deliver information on demand. Instead of waiting for month-end, if someone wants information now for an ad-hoc decision, they get it,” Hulley explained.

Transformation hasn’t just impacted on how the business uses information. It has also resulted in structural changes to how systems and teams operate; there are surely few people who enjoy major upgrades or the frisson of excitement which comes with the end of a financial period.

Or, as Hulley pointed out, big ERP upgrades are a thing of the past. “That’s something the modern finance team quite likes, along with the elimination of the big ‘busy times’ of half-year and year-end deadlines. We just don’t do that any longer – and that means the finance team is more involved in and working alongside the business,” she concluded.