Fusion Practices
Implementing and Managing Oracle Fusion Services Seamlessly

In this era of globalization, where economies rely on crossborder transactions and free flow of international capital, applying international accounting standards becomes crucial. As such, regulatory agencies are increasingly insisting companies to comply with international standards, which calls for the requirement to report both on local GAAP as well as IFRS. For instance, in the banking and insurance sector, IFRS17 reporting will become mandatory by 2021. All global companies are being compelled to carry out a tech refresh, creating an incredible demand for new technology and services. To that end, Oracle ERP Cloud has become a popular topic among all current users of Oracle’s E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and SAP, and that’s where Fusion Practices comes into the picture. The company, through its service offerings in Oracle, Oracle Fusion, Enterprise Performance Management, Microsoft Azure Data Platform, and its related technologies, assists its clients in implementing and managing Oracle and Fusion services and solutions for businesses.

With offices in the UK, India, and the U.S., the company has accumulated an impressive portfolio of top-tier clients. Following is the conversation that CIO Applications had with the company’s leadership team—Mukesh Jain, director and head of delivery; Goutham Sridharan, lead cloud architect; Danny Warren, director of sales and delivery; and Anil Passi, founding director—to understand how the company delivers value to clients through its simplified, scalable, and customized solutions.

What are the essential services that Fusion Practices delivers?

Mukesh Jain: Fusion Practices is an eminent service provider and Oracle partner, empowering clients on a global scale with its industry-leading expertise. We deliver simplified, scalable, and customized solutions to optimize our clients’ operations with upgrades, customizations, data migration, and Oracle Cloud implementation services.

Goutham Sridharan: We provide expert lead advisory and analysis, implementation, managed service and support, migration, integration, and automation for corporate platforms. Our expertise encompasses Oracle ERP, EPM, and HCM suite in the application Space, Oracle Analytics Cloud, Azure BI in the analytics space and Azure Data Platform, Oracle PAAS, BPM, MDM, Scheduling, and Orchestration in the technology space.

What steers Fusion Practices ahead of the competition?

Goutham Sridharan: Fusion Practices was founded by Oracle ERP and data experts holding deep insights and expertise in business processes for banking, insurance, and retail. With our clients' best interests at heart, we build a synergy with them to enable and accelerate their business and IT transformations.

Mukesh Jain: We currently provide consulting service, managed service support, and implementation services for Oracle and Azure systems across on-premise and cloud estate. We have a stronghold in the Microsoft Azure Data space, and as such, we can cross integrate systems across Oracle and Azure. We recently implemented Oracle ERP on the Microsoft Azure data platform by unifying finance accounting and actuarial functions for one of our customers in the insurance sector in London.

Anil Passi: Some of our specialist expertise lies in industries such as banking and insurance delivering multi GAAP reporting, IFRS17, IFRS16, and Solvency II reporting as part of our solution, which many of the other product consultancy firms fail to offer. We have the right mix of both product and business process knowledge that enables us to achieve this.

In which market segments do you see maximum customer traction, and why?

Danny Warren: I think the obvious answer is ‘cloud'—Oracle SAAS, PAAS, OCI, and Azure Data and Business Process Automation. In terms of verticals, I would say retail, banking, and insurance.

We have kept pace with the transformation in retail and banking industry in terms of interacting with customers. This has, in turn, created new opportunities for leveraging the potential of big data and analytics, and how we can process and use that to steer ahead. It is fascinating to see how far the industry has come in such a short period. Another key area we focus on is EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) as it ties in with the solutions we already offer in Oracle ERP—both cloud and on-premise.

What are the key strategies followed by Fusion Practices to stay ahead of the competition?

Anil Passi: Our strategy is to offer a niche blend of all the necessary functions that are required for delivering an implementation/support project. This includes, but not limited to, iterative Agile4Fusion methodology for cloud implementation, automation of data migration with automated scripts and validation, training solution, and CloudTestMate (Automated Testing) with the right resources available to analyze, support, provide new ideas and enhance the clients’ current business processes.

Mukesh Jain: Our training solution can be used to train employees, partners, and customers effectively with a next-gen LMS. Frequent updates/patches in the cloud applications necessitate testing to be completed sooner for analysis and support. CloudTestMate completes the testing in a matter of hours. Our SMEs analyze the results of automatic testing and publish a management ready report via dashboard.

Please cite a case study elaborating on how Fusion Practices has enabled clients to overcome hurdles and attain desired outcomes.

Goutham Sridharan: One of the leading insurance companies in the UK was undergoing a finance transformation program covering the full set of applications and business processes from the policy admin, actuarial, and asset systems to the IFRS17, Solvency II and IFRS4 submission. As implementation partners, we delivered Azure data platform for finance and actuaries, Oracle ERP public SaaS applications, comprising Oracle Fusion Financials, procurement, and advance procurement plus associated Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence reporting to provide the latest technology to support this finance transformation.

Leveraging Oracle's and Microsoft’s enhanced cloud collaboration, all actuarial processes were automated as part of the solution, from source to Oracle Fusion Cloud, integrated through Microsoft Azure Data Factory. Consolidated financial data from a single GL system improved the user experience, planning, and budgeting processes owing to optimized budgeting decisions across different stores and brands.

Tell us about the Fusion Practices team, and how does the experience of the senior executives translate into the company’s success?

Danny Warren: Fusion Practices currently employs over 100 experts that deliver our customer success-driven transformation projects. Mukesh brings more than 20 decades of experience in the Oracle space and has recently joined us from Oracle Consulting. Working on Oracle ERP Financials since release 1, he has successfully led multiple Oracle ERP cloud implementation projects across North America, Australia, the Middle East, APAC, and Europe.

Danny has over 12 years of experience in the Oracle, and IT Transformation space and is responsible for growth, client acquisition, and our GTM strategy with support from our in-house technical and solution experts. Goutham completes the team with his rich experience in the insurance and banking industry and holds in-depth knowledge in Enterprise architecture, Oracle EPM, Oracle ERP covering a wide range of modules that include Financials, Procurement, Projects. He has implemented Oracle solutions for diversified verticals that include IT/ITES, Defense, Banking, Insurance, and Pharmaceutical.

What lies ahead for Fusion Practices?

Danny Warren: It’s a fascinating year for us at Fusion Practices in terms of growth. 2020 is a new decade, and we are growing our capabilities and increasing our line of service offerings/products we can go to market.

Anil Passi: Our relationship with Oracle and Microsoft has enabled us to carve a unique niche in the marketplace, and we intend on fine-tuning this strategy to expand our footprint into other regions and markets. That being said, we are exploring and incorporating different technologies to provide the solutions best fit for purpose. We want to be able to manage them end-to-end with the required capabilities in-house.