Back to Hub

Oracle’s Modern Business Experience Event: What’s On Our Mind This Week

03/20/2019 By

Spend Matters analyst Xavier Olivera and I are attending Oracle’s Modern Business Experience event this week in Las Vegas. Procurement is well represented as a component of supply chain, with over 30 breakout sessions and other activities catering to purchasing, supply management and spend management-related areas. In addition, there are numerous sessions on blockchain, the internet of things (IoT) and related subjects that overlap with procurement.

We’ll attempt to cover as much as we can from the event this week and next.

But here are some questions that we have on our mind as the festivities kick into high gear:

  • What are the latest facts/figures from Oracle in terms of cloud migration and adoption for its procurement solutions?
  • What underlying “platform” capabilities is Oracle leveraging in procurement based on general R&D within Oracle (e.g., artificial intelligence, IoT, blockchain, etc.)?
  • Where is Oracle investing from a product roadmap area, especially in sourcing, supplier management and contract management?
  • Is Oracle succeeding at influencing all of the larger procurement organizations it can to seriously consider its Cloud/Fusion solutions as part of financials migrations? Based on Q4 2018 of Spend Matters’ SolutionMap insights in the Procure-to-Pay area, Oracle is more than just a viable solution — it is one of the best on a functional basis when connected with core cloud financials.
  • What is the latest with Oracle’s systems integrator, VAR and broader procurement partner ecosystem?
  • How are Oracle customers leveraging procurement capabilities (in the cloud) in ways that take advantage of native ERP, supply chain and other connections — beyond what is possible with integration alone?
  • What is the latest with Oracle’s “App Store” and its platform-as-a-service (PaaS) integration approaches to allowing third-party solutions to plug and play into Oracle procurement products?

These are just a few of the areas we are keen to explore in Vegas this week. If there is anything else you would like us to investigate, don’t hesitate to drop a line: jbusch (at) spendmatters (dot) com.