Oracle Cloud powering Sri Lankan organizations to transform and innovate

Aug 10, 2018 (LBO) - Three of Sri Lanka’s most prominent companies shared how they are transforming their businesses and accelerating the adoption of the latest innovations thanks to the use of Oracle Cloud Applications, during a recent media showcase. The event, which focused on cloud-driven innovation, saw participants hearing directly from key business leaders about their experience of how modern cloud offering are helping them transform and embrace innovation as a result of being able to increase business agility, lower costs and reduce IT complexity.  Attendees also learned how Oracle Cloud — the broadest and most integrated cloud solution in the industry —enables these businesses to take advantage of innovative technologies to enable seamless expansion of their business prowess to the next level. “The speed of innovation can be daunting and rapidly shifting consumer expectations continue to change the game.  This means successfully growing a business has never been harder,” said Chandita Samaranayake, Head of Applications at Oracle – Sri Lanka, Indochina, and the Maldives. “To navigate this change and help Sri Lankan business leaders create breakthrough experiences, Oracle Cloud offers customers trusted business applications, empowering them to overcome the barriers to growth and successfully scale by delivering industry best practices,” Sri Lankan organizations drive innovation on Cloud  Leading Sri Lankan organisations including Millennium Information Technologies (MillenniumIT ESP), MAS and McLaren Group shared details of the business benefits they continue to realise, because of the transformational power of Oracle Cloud Applications.  MillenniumIT ESP  MillenniumIT ESP is one of Sri Lanka’s leading information system integrators providing a wide array of solutions, services and IT integrated products to many industries. Incorporated in the year 1996, MillenniumIT ESP has evolved, as one of the largest IT Infrastructure solution providers in Sri Lanka. The company is reputed for supporting a range of customers including all banks, telecommunication service providers, apparel manufacturers, leading conglomerates here in Sri Lanka and overseas, and has also received various excellence, innovation and performance-based awards globally.  In December 2017, Ambeon Holdings PLC – a Holding and Management company, acquired MillenniumIT ESP.  With over 3500 employees, the Ambeon Group is a medium sized conglomerate reputed for its market dominance in the areas of financial services, manufacturing, real estate and strategic investments. “Today’s businesses are faced with unprecedented changes that demand a rethink of traditional enterprise management processes and models,” said Rahal Jayawardene, Head of Technology Alliances and Innovation – Millennium Information Technologies (Pvt) Ltd.  “To be effective in this new operating environment, business leaders need to drive operations with confidence, monitor results continuously, and course correct with agility. The latest additions to Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning Cloud are empowering our organization to embrace change and take advantage by providing us with end-to-end solutions we needed without any need for customization to fully embrace Oracle’s cloud capabilities. This has enabled Millennium IT ESP to embrace industry best practices, connect disparate applications, improved productivity and decision-making to capitalize on opportunities faster than any other industry player.” MAS  MAS Holdings is a US$ 1.8bn conglomerate and one of the world’s most recognized ‘Design–to-Delivery’ solution providers in the realm of apparel and textile manufacturing. The organization is headquartered in Sri Lanka with 53 manufacturing facilities across 16 countries, and design locations placed in key style centers across the globe with over 98,000 people involved in its operation. “Human Resources (HR) teams have traditionally had to pick between simplicity and performance when selecting new technologies. To accelerate innovation, improve productivity and successfully prepare for the future of work, HR can no longer make this trade-off. Instead, they need to apply new strategies and technologies that attract, engage and retain employees,” said Ushaan Abeywickrema, General Manager – Group Human Resources. Ushaan further stated that, “We needed a global solution from a vendor with international experience that would help standardize our processes. The latest innovations within Oracle HCM Cloud have enabled us to address these challenges by providing simple, powerful solutions that can proactively anticipate and respond to changing employee and workforce needs. Oracle Applications will help optimize our talent management acquisition process, provide complete workforce insights, increase operational efficiency and make it easy for everyone to connect, collaborate, and do their job—from anywhere, on any device.” McLarens Group   McLarens Group is well-established across shipping, marine and logistics industry. It is a brand synonymous with the shipping industry of Sri Lanka. It is the partner of choice for several multinationals with commercial interests in the island. While shipping, marine services and logistics remain at the heart of the group, the company has established a lead market presence in bunkering, oil and gas services, manufacturing, lubricants trading & distribution, property development, hotel & leisure services as well as food & beverages and other strategic investments. “We evaluated multiple vendors, but felt that Oracle is uniquely positioned to help us with a comprehensive offering we needed. By upgrading to the latest Oracle Cloud applications, we will be able to increase our agility by transforming the way we consolidate all our financial details,” said Umeshi de Fonseka Group Head (General Manager) of ICT & Digital Business at McLarens Group of Companies. “Once successfully deployed we will be able to streamline processes and enjoy greater visibility to business insights and analytics, and help us make informed business decisions in a timely manner. The deployment will also increase business transformation efforts of the Group, enabling us to maintain data integrity, accuracy and consistency.”  Other Highlights: The event also gave participants an insight into Oracle’s latest product innovation ‘Oracle Soar’, the world’s first automated enterprise cloud application upgrade product that will enable Oracle customers to reduce the time and cost of cloud migration by up to 30 percent. By providing a complete set of automated tools and proven cloud transition methodologies, Mr. Samaranayake highlighted that the new “Soar to the Cloud” solution can enable customers with applications running on premises to upgrade to Oracle Cloud Applications in as little as 20 weeks. At the event, Mr. Samaranayake said Sri Lanka has witnessed tremendous growth in its cloud transformation drive over the last few years. From financial institutions to telecommunications, apparel manufacturers to blue chip companies, local businesses have come on board for faster innovation and business transformation through cloud applications. “The shift to cloud is real and it is making most enterprises re-evaluate their architecture and application landscape. Sri Lanka has made major strides towards becoming a cloud-ready nation and we are witnessing more and more organizations gradually migrating their business processes and data to the cloud.