AirAsia has confirmed that it will partner with Oracle to centralise and enhance its finance operations by utilising Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Cloud.

The new developments support the affordable airline business growth plans and its goal of being the leading travel technology business in Asia.

Tony Fernandes, the CEO of AirAsia Groups explains that the business has supported ASEAN connectivity ever since its beginning in 2001. Over the last 18 years, Fernandes explains that AirAsia has expanded its network and launched a number of new routes across Asia Pacific, delivering new services to meet their guest’s needs.

AirAsia now sees this is as the next stage in their journey, enhancing their existing business progress and brand reputation and transforming AirAsia into something more than just an airline. Fernandes explains that AirAsia intends to be the travel technology business for the region and part of this goal involves developing into an intelligent and connected enterprise.

AirAsia has connected with over 6,000 organisations covering multiple location and industries with this development. Oracle ERP Cloud enables businesses of all sizes to effectively make use of the most recent innovations in artificial intelligence, digital assistants, the Internet of Things and other services to enhance overall productivity, reduce costs and improve control.

Pattra Boosarawongse, the CFO of AirAsia Group explains that creating agile finance operations is a vital part of delivering a successful business, creating readily available financial information in real time, which can be used to make strategic business decisions. Boosarawongse highlights that AirAsia now operates in 25 markets across Asia, Australia, the Middle East and the US, making their operations rather complicated. Their finance team needs to be capable of managing a range of data currencies and perform transactions with suppliers in various countries.

Oracle ERP Cloud provides an opportunity for AirAsia to simplify, standardise and automate all financial operations within the group and allow their finance teams more time to focus on important tasks that will expand the business.

Summary of Benefits of Oracle to AirAsia:

Align chart of accounts and enterprise structure modelling: Oracle ERP Cloud integrates the business activities of AirAsia, enabling efficient operations and enhance decision making. The cloud solution provides the latest best practices and the implementation partner TransSys supports the standardising of business activities within finance and procurement.

Revenue accounting and integration of operational systems: Oracle ERP Cloud is combined with the current business systems at AirAsia delivering a single channel across all financial and procurement functions.

Direct cost and operation control: Oracle EPM Cloud will support AirAsia with global account reconciliation, enabling the business to define, review and produce financial and management reports.

Reliable data models for profit analysis: Oracle ERP and EPM cloud can support core business models and reporting, enabling AirAsia to enhance its decision making processes.

Mark Hurd, the CEO of Oracle believes AirAsia is leading innovation in their industry and provides a fine example of how technology can improve both costs and overall customer experience. Hurd explains that the Oracle systems will provide a valuable tool to enable continued development at AirAsia and strengthen their position within the ASEAN travel market.

The new developments support the affordable airline business growth plans and its goal of being the leading travel technology business in Asia.

Tony Fernandes, the CEO of AirAsia Groups explains that the business has supported ASEAN connectivity ever since its beginning in 2001. Over the last 18 years, Fernandes explains that AirAsia has expanded its network and launched a number of new routes across Asia Pacific, delivering new services to meet their guest’s needs.

AirAsia now sees this is as the next stage in their journey, enhancing their existing business progress and brand reputation and transforming AirAsia into something more than just an airline. Fernandes explains that AirAsia intends to be the travel technology business for the region and part of this goal involves developing into an intelligent and connected enterprise.

AirAsia has connected with over 6,000 organisations covering multiple location and industries with this development. Oracle ERP Cloud enables businesses of all sizes to effectively make use of the most recent innovations in artificial intelligence, digital assistants, the Internet of Things and other services to enhance overall productivity, reduce costs and improve control.

Pattra Boosarawongse, the CFO of AirAsia Group explains that creating agile finance operations is a vital part of delivering a successful business, creating readily available financial information in real time, which can be used to make strategic business decisions. Boosarawongse highlights that AirAsia now operates in 25 markets across Asia, Australia, the Middle East and the US, making their operations rather complicated. Their finance team needs to be capable of managing a range of data currencies and perform transactions with suppliers in various countries.

Oracle ERP Cloud provides an opportunity for AirAsia to simplify, standardise and automate all financial operations within the group and allow their finance teams more time to focus on important tasks that will expand the business.

Summary of Benefits of Oracle to AirAsia:

Align chart of accounts and enterprise structure modelling: Oracle ERP Cloud integrates the business activities of AirAsia, enabling efficient operations and enhance decision making. The cloud solution provides the latest best practices and the implementation partner TransSys supports the standardising of business activities within finance and procurement.

Revenue accounting and integration of operational systems: Oracle ERP Cloud is combined with the current business systems at AirAsia delivering a single channel across all financial and procurement functions.

Direct cost and operation control: Oracle EPM Cloud will support AirAsia with global account reconciliation, enabling the business to define, review and produce financial and management reports.

Reliable data models for profit analysis: Oracle ERP and EPM cloud can support core business models and reporting, enabling AirAsia to enhance its decision making processes.

Mark Hurd, the CEO of Oracle believes AirAsia is leading innovation in their industry and provides a fine example of how technology can improve both costs and overall customer experience. Hurd explains that the Oracle systems will provide a valuable tool to enable continued development at AirAsia and strengthen their position within the ASEAN travel market.

Oracle Corp. has confirmed it will be dismissing several hundred employees next month as the leading software developer attempts to restructure its existing cloud computing strategy.

The announcement may represent a fraction of its expansive workforce but does include a focus number of people working within the infrastructure cloud units which are intended to generate growth.

The database leader intends to cut over 350 people on May 21st in a report released with the state of California. Regional media reports that the company had recently removed a number of unspecified jobs outside of California over the last week. Oracle has faced challenges to increase its revenue during a transition towards internet-based systems and services.

Deborah Hellinger, a representative for Oracle explains that as their cloud business grows, they continually look to balance resources and restructure their development group to create the right people to deliver the most effective cloud products to customers worldwide.

Strong growth and stock prices hitting a new IPO high are clear signs that Anaplan is proving it’s connected planning services are expanding to more businesses and helping transform the way companies make strategic decisions.

Started in 2008, Anaplan offers cloud-based planning software across finance, sales, supply chain, operations and human resources. The business released its first planning product in 2011 and by the start of this year, their revenue has exceeded $240 million. Anaplan is within a market that has been valued by IDC to be in the region of $17 billion, predicted to rise to $21 billion by 2021. There are reported to be over 70 million workers that are planning software users. Anaplan has replaced many traditional systems that have been incapable of interacting with other services and has removed the manual planning that quite often is complex, expensive and lacking efficiency.

Anaplan is capable of managing large data volumes processed in real-time. The system enables thousands of users to have access to a centralised data system, incorporating all levels of data enabling better decision making.

There are a number of ways Anaplan services can be used within a business. This includes budgeting and forecasting through to modelling and pricing measurement. Anaplan planning tools can be utilised to measure sales, manage department budgets, marketing spend and handle technology project budgets.

Anaplan tends to focus on securing agreements with large enterprise accounts. As of this year, Anaplan had close to 250 accounts with an annual yearly payment of over $250,000. The enterprise market is highly lucrative for Anaplan, resulting in the average contract value being just over $200,000, significantly higher than competitor Adaptive Insights, now Workday, which stands at $27,000.

Anaplan went public last year with opening trades at just over $24 and reached a post-IPO record high of just over $40 earlier this year. Data reports have also proven to show a significant rise in overall revenues at Anaplan. During the last quarter, the average size of the 10 biggest deals at Anaplan was greater than $500,000.

The partners at Anaplan are an essential part of the company as they drive new business, particularly within the larger enterprise sector. Anaplan now employs over 1,000 consultants and it is recorded that nearly half of all deals at Anaplan involve a partner.

EY has become a major partner for Anaplan, looking closely at supporting financial services companies and improving results through the use of the Anaplan platform. Anaplan has also worked with EY to provide a dedicated cloud spend optimisation system which identifies where money is not being used appropriately on cloud solutions and provides methods of improving the process.

Anaplan has also collaborated with Deloitte to create a planning system targeting consumer packaged goods companies. The tool focuses on improving demand planning with an aim to ensure products are always available to the customer.

This year, Anaplan intends to expand its sales team and continued to expand the product portfolio.

The head of finance at Anaplan has recently highlighted what actions should be taken by finance managers when implementing machine learning into their business.

Technology has improved dramatically in recent years, with machine learning viewed as a strong market within technological change. Machine Learning has entered nearly every market worldwide and for some is a vital tool used to transform business activities by enabling significant changes in managing large volumes of data.

Although there may be more focus on the growth of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning is growing rapidly, with a number of industry examples of businesses incorporating Machine Learning into their business activity.

From social media to voice assistants, many of our systems we use are continuously implementing machine learning to understand our behaviour and personalise our online experience. Machine Learning can go even deeper, however, with revenue management systems using ML to create an algorithm to generate pricing and inventory suggestions.

More businesses are incorporating the benefit of ML, with other companies prioritising plans to incorporate ML into their business activity, particularly within the finance market.

Many finance experts believe ML can enhance financial planning and analysis, wealth management, and how finance managers can control advanced analytics within their company.

What are the opportunities in Machine Learning?

Machine Learning is highly flexible and can potentially be integrated into a range of technologies. Looking specifically at the finance market, data is by far the most critical part of the industry. ML can supply finance teams with more capability to reveal and measure business potential and associated data that allows financial managers to make more informed and insightful decisions.

A good example of ML in finance is with the wealth management technology platform Forward line. The platform is utilising both AI and ML systems to support wealth managers in organising and measuring their data, providing real-time information to make informed choices for their customers.

What to consider with Machine Learning?

Implementing new systems does involve significant investment planning. With this in mind, it is essentially a business ensures they gain the full benefits of ML.

What is the quality of your data? – Data is essential for financial businesses, but as numbers increase, data can get diluted and a little chaotic. Prior to implementing any ML system, businesses need to prioritise the process of cleaning their data and ensuring it is reliable and accurate.

Do you have data governance?

During the ‘data cleansing’ process, there will undoubtedly be inaccurate forms of data and a number of errors. Finance teams must ensure this data is repaired prior to implementing any new technology.

Ensure you understand external and unstructured data

Ensure your team understand your data and what insights it could offer for your business. ML technologies can then support this process and take it to the next level.

Prepare for connected planning in your business

As data grows and diverges across a number of business areas, it is critical to ensure teams can communicate and collaborate on the information provided. This generally involves implementing dynamic planning systems and collaborative business processes, connecting teams with each other in real time. With this in place, ML technology can create insights and communicate between multiple areas of a business.

Ensure you allow time for effective business planning

Developing a business plan is definitely something that shouldn’t be rushed. It is critical that companies establish a realistic time-frame to achieve their end goals.

There is undoubtedly an emerging trend of innovative technology and the rise of more sophisticated machines. Despite the concerns, there is unlikely any threat of machines replacing the human workforce. In reality, most systems will always require some form of input from humans. As finance organisations expand their interests in machine learning, a key factor is ensuring they understand where human input is necessary. Finance leaders need to deliver plans in how machine-learning and human activity will interact in the future.

Domo, a leading provider of cloud-based operating systems in business confirms it has received the 2019 Top Rate Business Intelligence award by TrustRadius.

Megan Headley, the VP of Research at TrustRadius explains that Domo was awarded the Top Rated Business Intelligence Software award based specifically on customer feedback. Headley believes that customers really value the robust data visualisation options and the diverse range of connectors available on the platform. The number of reviews received by Domo placed them well ahead within the Business Intelligence Tools category, with its potential to connect businesses by integrating people, data and systems, resulting in real-time decisions provided by data.
Domos’ goal is to deliver an effective operating system for businesses, connecting people, data and systems. Domo aims to empower these networks, through improving collaboration, leading to more informed decisions from any device. Domo currently works with some of the leading global businesses covering a wide range of industries including finance, manufacturing, media and retail.

Customers explain that the platform empowers end users, removes the pressure and stress for IT professionals delivering reports and creating a data warehouse without developing an extensive in-house team.

Other customers explain that Domo is very useful in creating a data-driven system for a business and for those that lack the technical experience to move further into the cloud environment.

Business Intelligence or Data Analytics is essentially aimed at delivering information to enables employees to make informed decisions. Customers believe Domo provides simplicity in consuming this information and really appreciate the value of the data provided. Domo delivers insights to make informed decisions, removing any assumptions that are made in business decisions.

TrustRadius is one of the most reputed online B2B software review platforms. Every month, over 400,000 customers use nearly 170,000 confirmed TrustRadius reviews to complete their product purchase. The TrustRadius Top-Rated Awards were launched in 2016 and have become a recognised award for B2B technology products. The awards are based completely on user feedback.