Profource evolves its business and boosts client base with Oracle Cloud
The consulting company secures its reputation as a leader in European professional services after becoming an early adopter of Oracle Cloud.
“For us, there was no alternative than Oracle. We wanted to stay ahead of the game, ahead of our competition, and ahead of the customers that we serve. We want to be there first. We want to show them the way—lead by example, basically.”
Business challenges
Profource is a Dutch Oracle Platinum Partner that provides expert support for finance, HR, procurement, and project administration businesses transitioning to Oracle and NetSuite applications. The consulting firm helps these organizations assess ways to maximize their performance and works with them to achieve their vision. Profource is an early adopter of Oracle products, a champion of cloud innovation, and one of the largest Oracle Applications service providers in Europe.
When Vincent Traas, managing director, joined Profource in 2013, the company was using Oracle E-Business Suite for financials and Excel for project management. At the time, the company had no core HR management system in place. Between the on-premises application and Excel, there was no holistic view into the business. Always striving to be at the cutting edge of technology, Profource became one of the first adopters of Oracle Fusion Applications—though at the time they were hosted on-premises. The company gained functionality and adopted best practices, yet required a large IT staff to keep the systems up and running.
The consulting firm could have remained on legacy systems and maintained business as usual because Oracle Cloud Applications were new at the time. However, the professional services firm was committed to a 100% cloud vision. Partnering with Oracle made the decision to continue evolving the business an easy one.
Additionally, the professional services industry was rapidly evolving. Profource needed to be at the forefront of change in order to remain a leader in an increasingly competitive market. It wanted to offer clients the best cloud consultancy experience with firsthand experience in deploying finance, HR, and supporting business operations to the cloud.
We have to be on top of our game all the time. Oracle comes up with a new version of the application every quarter. You really have to keep up your game to make sure that you rapidly start enjoying all the innovations that the technology brings you. We have reduced cost and complexity, we manage our business in real time, and we keep on demonstrating to our customers the unique advantages of Oracle Cloud deployments.
Why Profource chose Oracle
Aside from its commitment to adopting emerging technologies to stay ahead of the competition, Profource wanted to implement Oracle’s next-generation applications to improve its own financial, procurement, HR, and sales processes. So, Profource became one of the first customers to deploy Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP, Procurement, and Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM—later adding Oracle Project Management and Oracle Sales.
Results
After migrating to Oracle Cloud Applications, the company saw substantial process efficiencies. Using Oracle Cloud ERP, the company reduced the days necessary to close a financial period by 20%. With Oracle Cloud Talent Management, Profource cut performance review times by 50% and also enhanced the visibility of the talent pool so that managers could select staff for customer projects based on performance history and skill sets.
Adopting Oracle Project Management has enabled the firm to rapidly match expert consultants to the right client, ensuring optimal staff planning for complex software deployment projects.
With Oracle Cloud HCM, managers now have access to real-time insights into the resumes, talents, experience, performance history, employment costs, and availability of all staff. “The latest addition to our Oracle Cloud HCM suite was Recruiting, which really guarantees that the whole candidate journey—from onboarding to resignation or retirement—is done entirely within Oracle Cloud. We have the whole HR process, including succession planning, in Oracle now. And recruiting is key for our type of organization, since we need to recruit top talent continuously,” says Traas.
Profource exceeded its goal of improving employee experience by delivering a seamless, secure, anytime, and anywhere user experience for its consultants. For example, employees can instantly update their time sheets using mobile devices.
Ultimately, Profource proved that it was worth the risk to be an early cloud adopter. The firm strengthened its reputation as a cloud innovator and increased business opportunities by demonstrating to customers, from an expert user perspective, how Oracle products work seamlessly together.