Oracle pilots in RP new SME sol'n to help automate business processes By EDU H. LOPEZ Manila Bulletin, Infotech October 8, 2001 Oracle E-Business Works is a simplified, streamlined and ready-to-use E-Business suite intended for the local SMEs which aims to aid their transformation into electronic businesses, thus allowing them to conduct business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce transactions. Bernard Yu, managing director of Oracle Systems Philippines Inc., recently announced in a press conference that the Philippines has been chosen as the first country in the world to deploy the US software giant's latest e-business solution which is expected to be rolled out next month. Yu said the Filipinos should be proud of this achievement because the local team has been responsible for the localization of the software suite. Active Business Solutions, Inc. (ABS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yapster E-conglomerate Inc. is the key strategic channel partner for the Oracle E-Business Works solution and has served as the pilot site for the new Oracle solution. Abigail Yap, chief executive of Yapster e-Conglomerate, Inc. said they chose their own group of companies as the pilot site for the new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution because Yapster is also a medium-size firm as defined in the US market. "The bulk of the Philippine market is made up mostly of SMEs and with our firm's successful implementation of the new suite is a proof of concept. This is surely something that we can take to the market immediately. Thus, we are offering a clear value proposition for our customers," Yap said. ABS as the systems integrator, will provide the pre-configured Oracle EBusiness Suite for SMEs in the Philippines via the Internet as a hosted service or pre-packaged at the consumer site. Frank Prestipino, senior director for EBusiness Oracle Corporation of Asia Pacific has noted that many of the businesses today have fragmented internal systems coupled with the high cost of transforming their operations into E-business. "Companies today are also facing the problem getting into the global market, the security of transmitting data using the Internet and reducing the cost of transacting business on the Internet, with E-Business Works, Oracle will allow SMEs to quickly reap the benefits of e-business processes and enter the e-commerce world at an affordable price with low infrastructure costs," Prestipino explained. The Oracle official said one of the major benefits of the product that companies can derive is the simplification of core business processes without compromising competitiveness. "The essential processes required to run the business when a company implements Oracle E-Business Works are efficiently streamlined like purchasing, payments, orders management, inventory control, financial budgeting to catalogue management and direct links to the marketplace," Prestipino elaborates. He related that the information flows are automatically pre-configured with the system taking care of approvals, order acknowledgment and e-mail supplier payments. Moreover, Prestipino said, security of the data has also been considered in deploying Oracle E-Business Works. "All the data from all the business units is made up of one consistent set of data, secured, and accessed only by authorized persons." Oracle is leading the transformation from deploying traditional applications to delivering software as a service with two complete suites of online applications: E-Business Suite Online for big business and the award-winning Oracle Small Business Suite. The Oracle E-Business Suite Online is a complete, simple choice for any big business. Oracle delivers applications as an online service accessible from the client's desktop. Oracle gives customers the flexibility in the hosting component of the service. SMEs can automate their business processes with Oracle Small Business Suite. Small business can access some applications like payroll, web store, online bill pay, time and expense reporting, and customer relationship management. Companies are also rest assured that their data is safe in a high security data center. And because the applications are web-based, customers never need to worry about upgrades or disks and they have immediate access to the information, anytime and anywhere. Pricing for the new software solution, Oracle officials said, is still being determined as of press time.