Bpost streamlines global operations with Oracle Cloud ERP
Belgian Post Group streamlines multinational operations and eliminates hundreds of customizations with help from Oracle Cloud ERP.
“With built-in best practices and support for global financial regulations, we can now easily onboard foreign countries or subsidiaries to our Oracle Cloud ERP financial management platform.”
Business challenges
Also known as the Belgian Post Group, bpost is a Belgium-based company that has been responsible for the delivery of national and international mail for almost 20 years. With the decline of paper mail volume over the past decade, bpost was searching for ways to stay competitive. It started an initiative to expand its business into fulfillment processing and delivering parcel mail internationally. In its effort to grow, bpost soon realized that its internal systems had to evolve as well. Its Oracle E-Business Suite had not been updated in several years and required a great deal of time and resources to maintain. With up to 400 customizations, upgrading Oracle EBS was impractical.
Furthermore, bpost needed to maintain legal compliance among its internationally acquired companies and it was challenging to bring them onto Oracle EBS. It became clear to bpost that the cost of staying with its existing system, in terms of wasted resources, was too high.
With Oracle Cloud, we totally switched our way of working. With frequent updates, we involve line-of-business leaders a lot, lot more, showing them how new capabilities will help them.
Why bpost Chose Oracle
In bpost’s vision to run all applications in the cloud by the end of 2020, Oracle Fusion ERP Cloud was chosen as the ERP provider because bpost’s users were already familiar with Oracle E-Business Suite.
Results
After its first-phase implementation, bpost found that Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP not only improved its internal processes but also transformed the way the company does business. Because of its previous heavy customizations, bpost considered an upgrade only once every 5 years and that was only when absolutely necessary. Deciding to start fresh, bpost did not migrate any of the 300-plus customizations but instead adopted the business processes that are already embedded in the cloud, enabling the company to enjoy automatic quarterly updates. Because Oracle Cloud ERP is worldwide, onboarding foreign subsidiaries is easier than ever. The company can effortlessly comply with financial regulations, such as IFRS 16, across multiple countries. With Oracle Cloud’s ease of use, bpost was able to refactor existing talent to adopt Cloud ERP successfully and reduce additional recruitment costs by 15%. Additionally, bpost realized a 23% reduction in overall technology and operational costs. With its initial implementation goal accomplished—including the general ledger and procure-to-pay—bpost is currently in its second-phase work, including order-to-cash flow. With improved performance and streamlined processes, bpost now has a solution that can grow and scale with its evolving needs.
Partners
PwC helped bpost to simplify and streamline business processes through a multiphase implementation approach.