Sakura Finetek Europe future-proofs its business with Oracle Cloud Applications
The best-in-class provider of cancer diagnostic solutions adopts Oracle Cloud Applications to standardize processes and systems and foster innovation.
“Oracle’s integrated business solutions have been an operational game changer, giving us the end-to-end platform we needed to automate our processes. In doing so, we’ve gained the freedom to focus on innovation and strive to empower pathology professionals to improve the accuracy and speed of cancer diagnosis.”
Business challenges
Sakura Finetek Europe supplies cancer diagnosis products and consumables to private and public healthcare laboratories as well as medical centers throughout Europe, Africa, India, and the Middle East.
With one in six people statistically prone to cancer, the first warning sign begins a journey filled with overwhelming uncertainty and stress for the patient and their loved ones. The speed and accuracy of diagnosis, including the fast shipment of instruments and consumables to pathology labs, is in turn vitally important in alleviating these concerns.
After increasing the number of its regional business units from 5 to 15 in a decade, Sakura Finetek Europe accumulated a network of legacy on-premises systems. These systems required a lot of manual work and were very labor intensive, causing delays and making it difficult to deliver on promises to customers.
Sakura needed to streamline its internal processes so it could direct more focus toward its goal of becoming the first company to fully automate anatomic pathology.
The Oracle Cloud Applications suite flows from demand to production, supply, and service—a fantastic improvement for our systems.
Why Sakura Finetek Europe chose Oracle
After assessing various cloud providers, Sakura Finetek Europe decided to sync with its US-based counterpart, which moved from Oracle E-Business Suite to Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning. This transition would build more cohesion between the two entities and give them greater visibility into their individual and combined performance.
The company was also impressed by Oracle’s global operations, its enormous user base, and Oracle’s continuous incorporation of best practices and customer learnings. Faced with undertaking a massive upgrade of the existing systems or investing in an integrated, future-proof replacement, Sakura ultimately selected Oracle Cloud Applications.
Sakura’s leadership decided to deploy Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM), Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing (SCM), and Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience (CX) to future-proof the business and standardize processes across the board.
Sakura optimizes front- and back-office processes across sales, supply chain, finance, and HR using Oracle Cloud Applications.
Results
After implementing Oracle Cloud Applications, Sakura Finetek Europe standardized internal workflows, simplified its business processes, and optimized service level agreements. Business units are now more aligned, with departments operating according to best practices in the industry.
Using multiple modules within Oracle Cloud SCM, Sakura centralized solution data and customer information, enabling more accurate data entry across Oracle and non-Oracle systems such as supply chain and field service solutions. The system also helped the company improve its sales forecasting, resulting in a better balance between supply and demand, reduced inventory levels, and more agile shipping of instruments and solutions to pathology laboratories.
Oracle Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ), part of the Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience (CX) suite, gave Sakura’s sales representatives a tool for configuring the appropriate solutions, generating quotes easily, and increasing customer satisfaction by eliminating traditional order validation steps. Now, once contracts are signed following the CPQ process, Oracle Subscription Management helps Sakura better manage its growing subscription business and create a customer engagement lifecycle to streamline payments and invoices and capture all the customer touchpoints.
Using Oracle Cloud ERP modules, the company gained more control over its purchasing agreements with its suppliers and logistics service providers. This improved Sakura’s ability to get products and solutions to customers quickly and cost-efficiently.
For Sakura, it was important that its internal processes mirrored its product offerings and its influence in the market. Providing cancer diagnosis solutions that are fast, accurate, reliable, and highly automated means that the internal systems in place must operate with those same criteria. With the Oracle Cloud Applications suite, the company gained those technological advantages in order to be proactive and meet the wide-ranging needs of customers, ultimately enabling pathology professionals to provide a faster, more accurate diagnosis for patients. With the integrated suite continuing to evolve across the region, including the well-received Oracle Cloud HCM, Sakura Finetek Europe is on track to achieve its goals.
Partners
Sakura selected PwC as its trusted partner to help redesign its process framework and support the implementation process. As the implementation partner, PwC was not only responsible for configuring all modules, developing interfaces and reports, and project management, but also assisting with change management and training services to meet complex business needs.
As a result, PwC presided over the end-to-end implementation, from the initial design of a European solution to the rollout to all European countries.
About the customer
Headquartered in Japan, Sakura Finetek manufactures high-quality medical diagnostic products. The European arm, Sakura Finetek Europe, is based in the Netherlands and provides pathology solutions that enable increased efficiency, quicker turnaround times, and support for pathologists so that they can make fast and accurate decisions.