Houlihan Lokey powers automation, growth with Oracle Cloud
Oracle Cloud ERP helps the global investment bank double revenue over five years while increasing accounting staff only marginally.
“Everywhere we turn, automation is allowing us to manage a much larger organization at a cost that is not changing.”
Business challenges
Global investment bank Houlihan Lokey was experiencing fast international growth. It needed a new foundation for that growth, to improve automation and permit accounting staff to spend more time working with the business. The bank also needed to manage risk more efficiently, enhance multicurrency support, and other capabilities.
Founded in 1972, Houlihan Lokey is a U.S.-based multinational independent investment bank and financial services company that provides financial advice to big public businesses, closely held companies, and governments. It advises on mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, distressed M&As, and more. The bank was the #1 U.S. M&A advisor for the past five years, according to Refinitiv.
We couldn't be more happy. Whenever we needed expertise, whether it was around taxes in Europe or digging deep into the project management module, Oracle was there to help.
Why Houlihan Lokey Chose Oracle
Houlihan Lokey tapped Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) when upgrading from a long-serving Oracle JD Edwards ERP installation. Oracle’s cloud service provides robust support for automation, strong risk management capabilities such as Sarbanes-Oxley controls, and robust integration with third-party apps. And Oracle supports international jurisdictions’ individual regulatory requirements, which can be complex and strict.
Additionally, the bank wanted to partner with an established vendor with a long track record, rather than a new startup that might become unavailable, or whose technology was not mature enough to meet the bank’s needs.
Results
With the help of Oracle software, Houlihan Lokey doubled revenue over the last five years while growing the accounting team only marginally. The organization improved margins by keeping administrative costs low.
The Oracle Cloud ERP implementation helped Houlihan Lokey’s accounting team spend more time working with the business and less time on mundane tasks. For the European team, Oracle Cloud ERP helped calculate value added taxes (VAT), manage Brexit, and work with tax authorities seeking to digitize communication.
Houlihan Lokey previously saw automation benefits under JD Edwards and is looking forward to even more with the new system. An important element of the transition was importing JD Edwards data into Oracle Cloud ERP. A Houlihan Lokey team worked long hours to import 6.5 million records to cover two years of general ledger history, and three years of transactional activities for 12,000 projects, along with reprocessing 17,000 individual client invoices and receipts. That was a big job, requiring a lot of work, but the payoff was worth it, providing a single source of financial data and eliminating the need to refer back to JD Edwards, ensuring users would have historical data in a single system.
Houlihan Lokey also implemented Oracle Fusion Cloud Risk Management and Compliance to automate manual processes and controls related to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, significantly reducing both labor and risk for the company. Automated controls save time and reduce errors.