Clough accelerates its reporting and analytics using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Established in 1919 in Perth, Australia, Clough is a pioneer in the engineering and construction industry. Its services span all key phases on the asset lifecycle—engineering, construction, commissioning, asset services, and decommissioning. The company has a global workforce of over 2,500 people across Australia, Asia Pacific, North America and the UK.

As a multinational corporation, Clough needed a system that met the business requirement globally. For example, one of the core challenges Clough faced was how to cope with multicurrency reporting across geographies and fiscals. The company also wanted granularity in data reporting from Oracle E-Business Suite to save time. Clough’s use of legacy BI apps resulted in incremental loads, which meant that reporting was typically a day late.

The pandemic also gave rise to supply chain issues across the construction industry. This scenario was highlighted by material delays and resourcing challenges. Clough wanted to overcome these hurdles by deploying the latest technology that would deliver meaningful reporting capabilities to strengthen its procurement strategy.

As a longtime Oracle customer, Clough wanted to upgrade and modernize its Oracle products. As an Oracle E-Business Suite on-premises customer since 2014, the company wanted to migrate the enterprise application, data warehousing, and reporting to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

One of the main factors that led Clough to first select Oracle products is scalability. Glenda Salgado, group corporate support services manager says, “As a project-based business, we wanted a system that could scale up and down as required.”

Choosing Oracle also allowed Salgado and her team to meet global operational standards while performing efficiently, without worrying about skills shortages when an employee leaves the company.

The availability of prebuilt Oracle products such as Autonomous Database, Analytics Cloud, and OCI GoldenGate, combined with the help of Oracle Cloud Lift Services, not only provided a smooth migration, but also enabled Clough to make better decisions, reduce costs, and improve business outcomes.

Clough moved Oracle E-Business Suite workloads to OCI for better stability, security, and performance. It used Oracle Autonomous Database for analytics and data warehousing to eliminate complex database administration, such as provisioning, tuning, and patching. 

Clough also tapped OCI GoldenGate to move data from E-Business Suite to Autonomous Data Warehouse for reporting. This has paid rich dividends for users. Nightly incremental loads that always failed over and real-time refreshes are a thing of the past.

“Clough is unique in the sense that the responsibility for Oracle E-Business Suite and the products don't actually sit under our IT team; they sit under finance,” says Salgado.

By seamlessly migrating from Oracle BI Apps to Oracle Analytics Cloud, she and her team can generate real-time reports independently in 3 to 4 hours, versus 20 hours in the past—achieving a 75% to 85% cost reduction in generating new reports.

In addition to financial reporting, Oracle Analytics Cloud gives the company confidence to develop a wide range of KPIs to monitor performance and to assist auditors. Dashboards allow the company to report across multiple data sources, which was impossible before. “Now, I can sit in our Houston office, and get the same performance as if I were sitting in the Perth office,” says Salgado.  

As a multinational company, Clough also deals with various currencies. With Oracle, it not only handles all foreign exchange in real time but also manages various transactions, including different taxes such as VAT in the UK and GST in Australia.

As reporting becomes more comprehensive and easier, employees have more time for value-added tasks. Enhanced reporting capabilities has opened the doors for statistical analysis, which helps Clough better serve clients and approach work proactively.

By taking advantage of Oracle Cloud Lift Services, Clough was able to migrate more smoothly and reduce its overall project risk.

Clough selected DXC to help with the migration from E-Business Suite to OCI while simultaneously upgrading EBS. The project was completed within only six months due to the strong collaboration among Clough and its project partners.

“I really can’t speak more highly of the efforts of DXC and Oracle Cloud Lift Services that worked together,” Salgado says. “Moving to OCI is a great success story.”