Oracle Playbook

AI Excellence
Automating Operations and Unlocking
New Possibilities with Oracle Cloud
 The stakes have never been higher. Uncertainty is all around us, and it’s
becoming increasingly challenging for organizations to stay competitive and
ahead of change. In addition, the powerful and practical advances we’re seeing in
AI technology are making it essential that organizations have a strong framework
for embracing new opportunities enabled by AI.

– Just like you, Oracle faces these challenges. And while it might seem difficult to
know where to begin or how to prioritize, we’ve been down this path and have
succeeded in growing revenue while also focusing on operational excellence.
Our strategy for Even as we’ve transformed from a product-oriented to a services-oriented
company, developed the most complete cloud technology stack, opened dozens
relentlessly focusing of data centers, and made many strategic acquisitions, we’ve achieved an
industry-leading non-GAAP operating margin of more than 40%.

on our people, processes,

and systems so we can
achieve more with less

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 02

 And specifically, over the last several years, as we’ve applied Oracle’s
comprehensive AI services embedded throughout Oracle Cloud Applications
and Infrastructure, to help improve employee productivity and decision-making,
automate end-to-end processes, reduce the cost of doing business, and enhance
the experience we deliver to customers. For example, our teams spend less time
on administrative tasks—such as sifting through data, scrutinizing spreadsheets,
generating copy, and classifying text—and more time on high value activities,
such as product development and customer success.

Benefits of Oracle AI Services

Improved Automated Reduced Enhanced

productivity end-to-end business customer
processes costs experience

How have we accomplished this? We call it the Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence.
Our playbook goes way beyond technology and is our strategy for relentlessly
focusing on people, processes, and systems so we can achieve more with less.
We felt that sharing our experiences and the lessons we’ve learned might help
organizations facing similar challenges. So, here’s how we did it and how we
strive to keep leveraging Oracle’s AI portfolio to continue to create new value.

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 03

 We mentioned that we focus on three major vectors: people, processes, and
systems. Before we get into how we’re using Oracle AI internally, we want to
explain why each of these elements is so important.
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–
Our framework
for driving
business success

Processes

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 04

 People
Our people power our success, so we start by aligning each employee
with our strategy and common goals. We then organize for success and
instill a culture of continuous innovation.

Goals
This begins with getting clarity on what’s most important and aligning the work technologies. This partnership helps align our business and IT functions, and,
of every function and employee with our corporate goals. Oracle Chairman Larry in working together, these two individuals continually simplify, standardize,
Ellison and CEO Safra Catz clearly communicate, at every possible opportunity, and improve our operations, leveraging innovations delivered by Oracle Cloud
that customer success is our true north. As a result, all our teams’ goals, even for Applications and Infrastructure.
those who aren’t in product development or customer-facing roles, are centered
on helping customers achieve their objectives while driving Oracle’s continued When it comes to AI, GPOs and GSOs play a key role in determining what AI
financial success. features we’ll adopt, how we’ll leverage the new functionality, and when we go
live with new automated processes. Each quarter, as Oracle releases dozens
of new AI features across process areas, our GSOs explain how the new
Organization functionality might be used to help the GPOs achieve their goals for driving
further efficiencies, automation, and improvements within their process
We’ve established global process and solution owners within each functional areas of focus. Then, with the understanding of all the opportunities, Oracle’s
area, which provides clear accountability and focus. Global process owners GPOs prioritize new features adoption, starting with those that will have an
(GPOs) are responsible for determining the most efficient process for their area outsized impact, followed by those that will deliver smaller, but still impactful,
of focus and the best user experiences. For example, our GPO for recruiting pays improvements. As an example, in the case of the recruiting GPO, the GSO
close attention not only to the recruiting experience but also to the way that explained the benefits of the new Suggested Candidate feature and how it
process impacts the broader employee and manager experiences. could be used to help recruiters more quickly identify talent that matches hiring
manager needs. This GPO-GSO coordination helps ensure that our AI adoption is
The GPO is closely connected with the global solution owner (GSO), who is part of our broader operational strategy.
focused in the same area and responsible for increasing automation using Oracle

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 05

 Culture
The final element of the people side of the equation is culture and the improve and, potentially, completely transform the way we bring people into the
psychology that goes along with change. organization. As you can see, we never view our work as done. Rather, we view
each day as an opportunity to rethink the way we operate.
At Oracle, we’re always learning and looking for ways to improve, better serve our
customers, and become more efficient. We relentlessly question assumptions Here’s a specific example: In reviewing the recruit-to-onboard experience, we
and are always willing to disrupt ourselves. And beyond that, our culture of uncovered a lengthy approval process that was delaying hiring by weeks, and
innovation doesn’t just point to opportunities to improve—each one of us is a sometimes even months. And while approvers play a critical role, we realized that
problem solver, innovator, and part of the solution. we weren’t seeing additional value from layer upon layer of approval tiers. In fact,
it was just the opposite—we simply needed the few individuals who had to weigh
For instance, all the teams that impact a new hire’s recruit-to-onboard in on the investment. Plus, with AI, we realized we could leverage automation
experience—including HR, Legal, IT, and Real Estate and Facilities—meet on to monitor and further accelerate the process. So, to improve and streamline
a regular basis to review feedback and metrics. With CEO Safra Catz as the the experience, we reduced the number of approvers involved by 70% and
executive sponsor, there’s no question about the urgency around continuously use Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM’s quarterly updates to provide new guidance for
making it easier to recruit the talent we need and accelerating the path for new approvers, accelerate the process, and track the approvals from end to end.
hires to become productive employees. Week after week, month after month,
the teams review applicant, employee, and manager feedback. In addition, they
analyze relevant data and consider the new innovations coming out of Oracle
Cloud Applications and Infrastructure to determine the next steps we can take to

70% reduction in approvers has

accelerated the hiring process

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 06

 Processes
We continuously review our end-to-end business operations, which
underlie the experiences we deliver to stakeholders. We use a three-step
approach to help us in our ongoing evaluation of internal processes.

Streamline Delight
Our first step is to streamline the journey for our customers, employees, and Finally, we look for ways to delight those we serve so they can successfully and
partners. We start here because processes can become very complex when quickly complete their activities and also enjoy the process. People want to do
organizations look to solve every possible edge condition or include every more than just move quickly. They also want to achieve exceptional outcomes
possible team. So we begin with the person we serve in mind and the outcomes and make the best decisions.
they’re trying to achieve, and then we back into the simplest possible process for
that individual to achieve those outcomes.

Empower
Once we’ve looked at how we can streamline processes, the second step is to
empower customers, employees, and partners to complete tasks even faster,
ideally without manual intervention. To maximize efficiency and deliver the best
possible experience, we look to automate internal processes to speed things up,
reduce errors, and drive consistency and effectiveness.

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 07

 Systems Our use of Oracle Cloud Applications and Infrastructure is critical to
our success, and we focus on three guiding principles.

Centralize applications Deploy out of the box

One key to our success has been the centralization of corporate applications. As a rule, we’ve eliminated customizations and deployed the Oracle Fusion
This has made a huge difference, as it has helped us reduce complexity, costs, Cloud Applications Suite out of the box, which has enabled us to simplify how we
time, and other obstacles that would impede our agility and ability to deliver operate, reduce overhead, eliminate reliance on IT support, and quickly adopt
exceptional experiences to those we serve. In addition, this centralization on the new features released every 90 days.
Oracle’s end-to-end Fusion Cloud Applications provides a single source of truth
when it comes to data and a holistic view of our operations. Moreover, with all of Finally, every time we test a new feature or process improvement, we not only
Oracle’s key transactional data centralized in Fusion Cloud Applications, we can test the flows from end to end with our users but we watch them as they go
leverage our company-specific data to inform the AI and the insights Oracle AI through the new experience. Often, we find that what we thought might provide
provides our teams. a better experience may actually introduce a new challenge or may not be as
intuitive as assumed. As such, we use “watch parties” to ensure those we serve
find the new experiences just as streamlined, empowering, and delightful as we
Continuously innovate intended. And when it comes to AI in particular, we pay close attention to how
the technology automates our processes and guides our employees.
Having centralized, cloud-based applications enables us to improve on an
ongoing basis versus waiting years and years to upgrade to new systems and
take advantage of new functionality, including AI, across our front- and back-
office operations. With this approach, we can continuously enhance productivity,
decision-making, automation, and efficiency.

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 08

 Now, let’s get into some of the specific ways we’re leveraging Oracle AI and the
resulting benefits.

In HR, we’re using AI features in Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM to make the recruiting
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and hiring process more efficient and a better experience for all those involved.
– For candidates, we implemented Recommended Jobs. This feature provides
personalized job suggestions based on a candidate’s skills, qualifications,

Examples of experiences, and career preferences.The AI model continuously learns and improves
based on our candidate interactions, further enhance the accuracy and relevance of

how we’re using the tailored recommendations. As a result, the process is more efficient and effective
for candidates, and it’s helped us reduce recruitment time while more than doubling

Oracle AI
the number of qualified applicants for each open requisition.

Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM

Recommended Jobs
provides personalized
suggestions to candidates

The result: The process is more efficient and effective for candidates, and it’s
helped us reduce recruitment time while more than doubling the number of
qualified applicants for each open requisition.

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 09

 We’ve also shortened recruitment time by using the AI-based Suggested Additionally, we recently introduced generative AI into Oracle’s intranet to
Candidate and Similar Candidate features, which help our recruiters and hiring help improve the employee search experience. Not only can employees now
managers more quickly identify suitable candidates for job openings. We spend search the intranet using natural language queries, but they also receive natural
less time manually screening resumes, and it helps us find the best-fitting language responses that include links to helpful resources. The result? A better
candidates to hire onto the Oracle team. employee experience and 30% fewer support tickets per week.

A fourth way we’ve reduced the time it takes to fill job vacancies is by using
Oracle Cloud HCM’s AI-based Time to Hire feature. This helps recruiters

30%
and hiring managers understand bottlenecks in the process and enables
fewer support tickets with
us to recognize problematic areas more quickly, adapt or rectify issues, and AI-assisted intranet search
continuously optimize the experience.

Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM Turning to finance, we’ve long used intelligent automation built into our
Fusion Cloud ERP and EPM applications to help drive greater efficiencies, such
Time to Hire as automatically reconciling 97% of our hundreds of thousands of banking
transactions per quarter. This has been one of the keys to enabling us to close
helps fill our books and release earnings in less than 10 workdays, faster than any other
vacancies faster company on the S&P 500.

More recently in finance, we’ve implemented new AI-based features released

in Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications to help us save money, increase efficiency,
In addition, this feature provides a prediction of the time it will take to fill a new and further automate processes.
requisition based on previous similar job requisitions and the location for which
we’re recruiting, which helps our teams plan and prepare.

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 10

 For example, we use Dynamic Discounting to help optimize working capital by But the benefits go even further, helping us increase productivity for our entire
offering recommended suppliers early payment options in exchange for invoice employee base. For example, in the past, employees often spent hours on
discounts. In addition, we leverage Intelligent Account Combination Defaulting expense reporting—collecting receipts, making copies, uploading receipts,
to automate and accelerate data entry related to invoices. And we use Smart and submitting the reports. Managers then spent valuable time reviewing the
Expense Audit to automatically identify noncompliant expense reports for review reports, asking for additional information, consulting policy documents, and
by internal auditors. approving the requests. And then to top it all off, our back-office teams spent
hours reviewing the submissions.

Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP All that adds up. At Oracle, if our more than 160,000 employees each spend even
two hours per quarter on these tasks, that comes to an incredible 1.3 million
Dynamic Discounting hours a year—a huge waste of our incredible talent.
offers more options
for paying suppliers
Day 1 Day 10 Day 25

By harnessing the power of Oracle AI embedded in our applications, we’ve

helped reduce the time our finance team spends on manual and lower-value
tasks while also increasing consistency, accuracy, effectiveness, and cost savings.

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 11

 So how have we saved millions of employee and manager hours processing Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
expense reports? We leverage chatbot and AI functionality that enables and
helps our employees have a conversational experience, simply take a photo of a Saving millions of employee hours
receipt, text or email it in, and let the system automatically handle the rest.
processing expense reports
And next, we’re planning to automate the process even further so our employees
won’t even need to submit expensed items. Rather, when they use their credit
cards, the expenses will be submitted directly through Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
for approval and payment.

Beyond HR and finance, we leverage Oracle AI in the front office—for example,

in creating more accurate sales forecasts. With the AI-based Opportunity Win
Probability feature in Oracle Cloud CX, AI tells sales management the likelihood
that each deal will close, and the AI helps with providing the opportunity to
compare that data against estimates from sales representatives and, thereby,
helping drive increased sales forecast accuracy.

In addition, we recently introduced generative AI to help with the RFP process.

Leveraging Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s AI and translation services, our sales
reps use Oracle generative AI to help draft RFP responses in 23 languages. These
drafts are based on responses to winning RFPs, and they help drive greater sales
productivity and increased sales performance.

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 12

 Another area where Oracle AI is playing a key role is in customer support. And as a final example, we leverage AI features in Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM,
Our support teams handle millions of service requests (SRs) annually, and they including Demand Management, which helps us accurately predict demand even
cover thousands of products. We’ve implemented Oracle AI to both improve the as our business and the market around us are constantly changing. By helping
customer experience and increase the productivity of our support teams. For improve capturing internal and external signals, identifying demand patterns
instance, AI in Oracle Cloud CX automatically transfers SRs to the right support and changes via real-time updates, and performing simulations to project
team, to help classify and prioritize SRs for fast issue resolution and assist with business impact and prioritize needs, the AI-based Demand Management
translating support activities into the customer’s language. feature helps us enable high customer satisfaction levels while also
reducing costs.

Oracle Cloud CX And we’re not done yet. We continuously innovate and take full advantage of
the cloud application updates released every quarter. That includes leveraging
Service requests automatically new AI features rolled out every 90 days, among other new and relevant
transferred to the right support team functionality delivered through Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications.

New AI features
rolled out every 90 days

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 13

 The best AI starts with the best data, and for us as a customer of Oracle AI,
that means it’s all about our data. All our key transactional data and workloads
are already in Oracle technology. And it’s that Oracle-specific data that informs
PA R T 3 the best insights.

– In addition, as a consumer of Oracle’s complete technology stack and end-to-end

automation, we’ve enjoyed the benefit of our leading technologies—from holistic
front- and back-office applications to the most powerful database to the fastest-
The benefits growing cloud infrastructure.

we’ve achieved By moving to Oracle Cloud, we’ve connected our business from end to end,
increased employee productivity, and gained a real-time view of our business

with Oracle Cloud

through integrated analytics and interactive dashboards. This has enabled us to
plan and respond much faster to changes all around us while delivering better
experiences to our customers, employees, and partners.

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 14

 For example, with Oracle Autonomous Database, our IT team has been able to Benefits from moving to Oracle
reduce the time it spends on administrative tasks such as database management
Fusion Cloud Applications
by 80%. In addition, as we moved Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications to
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, we improved the performance of Fusion
Applications by 30%—which has meant even faster access to data, insights, Oracle Autonomous Database
and recommendations.

80%
reduction in the time IT spends on
But the benefits didn’t stop there. The system performance improvements administrative activities, such as
translated into benefits for our customers and employees as we went from 99.7% database management
service level availability to an industry-leading 99.9%. That means less downtime
a year, which, for an organization of more than 160,000, means we’ve gained
almost 1.5 million hours of employee productivity.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Oracle Cloud ERP and EPM have helped us accelerate financial planning cycles

30%
by nearly 30%, automate nearly 35% of the procure-to-pay process, manage performance improvement for Fusion
cash resources more efficiently, and optimize working capital. Applications, with industry-leading
99.9% availability

Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP

35%
of the procure-to-pay process
is automated

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 15

 As a result of moving to Oracle Cloud HCM and making other changes in HR,
we’ve saved 20,000 manager hours annually in hiring and are onboarding new
employees—more than 20,000 new faces each year—within 24 hours of their
start dates. To put that in context, before we used Oracle Cloud HCM, it could
take weeks or even months.

With Oracle Cloud SCM, we’ve reduced supply chain planning cycles by 70%,
which not only has accelerated full planning cycles but also enabled us to make
incremental changes in a matter of hours. Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM

And by leveraging Oracle Cloud CX, we’ve automated the transactions we

complete with our customers so they can get started and begin realizing value
right away. So far, more than 75% of customer transactions are fully automated.
20,000 manager hours saved
in hiring process

We’re incredibly proud of these results, especially when you consider the size
and complexity of our business. We employ more than 160,000 employees and
serve more than 400,000 customers across 175 countries. And yet, because
of our focus on people, processes, and systems and our use of Oracle Cloud Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM

70%
Applications and Infrastructure, including the AI embedded across our stack,
faster supply chain
we’re achieving what some might say is impossible. Plus, with each passing day,
planning cycles
we continue to see more and more benefits as a result of the new innovations
coming out of Oracle Cloud Applications and Infrastructure.

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 16

 While we’ve shared a lot of our AI experience in this Oracle Playbook, we know there
are many organizations that aren’t yet using AI and that decisions about where to
start and how to proceed can seem overwhelming given all the opportunity. We
PA R T 4 know because we’ve been there too.

– But the good news? With the AI embedded throughout Oracle’s technology stack,
you don’t need to change your processes or become an AI expert. Rather, just as our
GPOs do, you can simply think of AI like any other feature. And just as you do with
Tips for getting the rest of your processes and systems, consider your goals and overall strategy,
and then look at the ways you can leverage Oracle AI to drive productivity, decision-

started on your making, automation, and efficiency. It’s really as simple as choosing the AI features
that can be most impactful to help your business and starting there.

AI journey In addition, you can start small and test the AI capabilities to see what results and
guidance they provide. As an example, if you aren’t yet ready to have Oracle AI help
your employees draft their career and business goals, perhaps you might consider
leveraging it to nudge your employees and remind them to complete their goals.

Oracle AI is not only turnkey and easy to use, but it’s also not gimmicky or one size
fits all. It’s seamless, contextual, and intentional—a part of the experience that
makes all our applications feel intelligent and embedded right within the flow of
work people do every day.

What’s most important is that you get started. AI technology is moving fast, and you
don’t want to fall behind your competition. As you’ve heard from our experience, AI
can deliver tremendous benefits in helping you achieve more with less

Oracle Playbook for AI Excellence 17

With each passing day, we continue to see
more and more benefits as a result of the new
innovations coming out of our technology
–
We’ve also learned quite a bit on our journey, and, of course, we made mistakes along the way.
If you’d like to learn more about the obstacles we faced and how we overcame them, or about the
benefits we achieved and the choices we made every step of the way, please let us know. We love
to share the secrets to our story so others can achieve the same outcomes we’ve achieved, and
hopefully avoid some of the pitfalls we experienced.

Contact us

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