Block relies on Oracle Cloud SCM, ERP to keep two key finance businesses humming

Block, formerly known as Square, produces and distributes millions of devices to retailers and service providers worldwide. These devices range in size and complexity from the tiny point-of-sale gizmos vendors plug into their smartphones to enterprise-grade POS terminals, as well as hardware for digital wallets.

These devices are a means of generating subscription or transaction-based revenue from the cloud-based services Block offers its customers worldwide. For that reason, it behooves the company to keep a tight lid on its manufacturing costs and close tabs on its suppliers.

Block first ran its core business on NetSuite applications before moving to the Oracle E-Business Suite of on-premises applications as it grew. It then moved to Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in 2019 to manage financial accounting and planning, and later to Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain Management (SCM) to manage disparate supply chains across some 96 countries.

Block chose Oracle because it allows the company to manage different supply chains for its various hardware devices across all its markets through a single platform. The Oracle Fusion Cloud applications help it to control costs and ensure that products are distributed in the most efficient way possible. Having a single ERP application aggregate data from all those supply chains allows the company to then centralize its profitability analyses and financial consolidations.

Block can categorize spending to understand which vendors it’s giving the most business to, providing the company with a stronger negotiating position with those vendors. And being able to visualize data and manage multiple supply chains using a single ERP helps it simplify this complexity.

By giving the company a more accurate view of exactly how much it’s spending to procure, manufacture, ship, and warehouse each piece of Square and Bitkey hardware, Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM helped Block decide to reduce its reliance on air shipments in favor of ocean shipments, which are about one-fifth the cost.

Nair credits Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM with also helping Block reduce fulfillment time to three days from five, while showing the company how much replacement stock to keep on hand in the event any of its terminals under warranty fail.

Trinamix has provided consulting services to Block for the pasts three years, helping it create the architecture and strategy for launching Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM across 96 countries. It also helped Block create a reverse auction capability that it uses to regularly solicit new bids from its suppliers.