CEOs should like a new Oracle Corp financial application suite called Strategic Enterprise Management to be unveiled shortly. Its primary purpose is to help management increase the company’s stock price. The applications essentially mimic some of the models used by industry analysts and securities companies to track and forecast Fortune 500 companies’ performance. The applications will link planning goals, budget targets, results and incentive plans and are intended to be used by executives as a high-level framework for deciding what businesses they should be in, what products they should sell and other long-term strategic issues. The wave of huge consolidations across industries should provide a suitable market for the suite, Oracle believes, and even somewhat grandiosely claims that the suite will prove to be the differentiator in the ERP space. We do like its simple message though. Currently individual managers are charged with doing this kind of analysis, Oracle reckons. It says that the process of doing this analysis using internal metrics and external research has been known for some time, but claims that no technology to manage these techniques has so far been available. It is the kind of work that consultants are usually contracted to carry out, but rather than bypass the Andersen’s of the world and get into their bad books, Oracle is pitching the suite as one that will still require consultants to implement. The applications are just the plumbing, it says, which probably makes it not such an attractive proposition for CEOs. Nevertheless, with Oracle still trying get ‘ins’ with the Big Six, it’s a pragmatic approach. Oracle Activa is the costing, budgeting and management software that Oracle bought from Price Waterhouse LLP last May. Oracle Balanced Scorecard – which translates vision and strategy into internal and external indicators – is the technology Oracle acquired from Graphical Information Inc last October. Both are available now. No prices were given, but we assume they don’t come cheap. Oracle value- based management (financial modeling) and strategy formulation programs, which require use of the Oracle database, are due next year.
