Providence, a not-for-profit health system operating in the Western United States, has improved its ability to adapt, scale, and manage its workforce of over 117,000 caregivers—in addition to over 1,000 caregivers at its global healthcare engineering, operations, and innovation center in India—by consolidating business systems on Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite. With a single integrated suite to manage its finance, HR, and supply chain processes in the cloud, Providence has enabled its workforce to focus on providing high-quality, compassionate patient care by reducing costs, improving productivity, and enhancing the caregiver experience.

With a mission to serve all, especially the poor and vulnerable, Providence has grown into a $28 billion operation that includes 51 hospitals and more than 1,000 clinics. In support of its 165-year legacy of investing in its communities, Providence and its affiliates invested nearly $2.1 billion in community benefit programs in 2022, including free and discounted, low-cost (charity care) and uncompensated and subsidized care. As Providence grew through numerous mergers and acquisitions, its finance, HR, and supply chain departments were working in a dozen disparate systems resulting in variation with processes and policies. Activities were manual, with limited controls, making it cumbersome to get insight into spend and in some cases, no automated workflow in place hindering productivity. To eliminate this complexity and improve efficiency and the overall caregiver experience, Providence selected Oracle Fusion Applications to standardize and streamline its business processes and policies.

“This program has propelled us forward in the health care industry, eliminated our technical debt, and aligns with our strategy to simplify our processes and technology, modernize through a cloud SaaS solution, and innovate with AI,” said B.J. Moore, chief information officer and executive vice president of real estate operations and strategy, Providence. “With Oracle Fusion Applications, we have automated processes to improve accuracy and efficiency where our caregivers are working in one seamless digital platform they can access from anywhere, anytime, from any device. This well-positions us for rapid innovation and influencing the industry with maximizing the capabilities of advanced technologies such as generative AI.”

With Oracle Fusion Applications, Providence leveraged the cloud to break down organizational silos, standardize and automate processes, and manage finance, HR, and supply chain data on a single integrated cloud platform. With quarterly update cycles, Providence has access to new features and technologies developed by Oracle.

“This implementation has been truly monumental to our organization. We deployed our integrated ERP platform during one of the most challenging times in history. The healthcare industry was thrown into the core of an unprecedented crisis—the COVID-19 pandemic—where resources were scarce, and labor and supply costs were rising. Transitioning to Oracle’s integrated ERP solution enabled us to save both time and money by redesigning and aligning complex processes.” said Frances Chao, group vice president of enterprise business applications, Providence. “Oracle Fusion Applications Suite replaced siloed legacy systems that hindered our ability to scale rapidly and has optimized our operational efficiency. By automating and streamlining processes such as accounting, recruiting, and inventory management with Oracle, we’ve minimized manual and repetitive tasks, enabling our resources to focus on value-added activities.”

Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) provided Providence with the technical foundation to support the creation of a single chart of accounts structure, standardize transaction processing and reporting, centralize governance requests, streamline accounting processes, and optimize time-to-close. To further increase efficiencies, Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM) helped Providence increase self-service capabilities, expedite recruiting and onboarding processes, enhance internal development resources, and optimize payroll processes. To accelerate adoption, Providence leveraged Oracle Guided Learning for on-demand learning. Finally, Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing (SCM) helped Providence transform supply chain process by implementing automated workflows and approvals, improving contract compliance, streamlining and electronically enabling procurement and accounts payable processes, and optimizing inventory management.

“Health care workers tirelessly dedicate themselves to the wellness of others and the last thing they should worry about is navigating complex business applications,” said Steve Miranda, executive vice president of applications development, Oracle. “By eliminating manual tasks and automating business processes on one integrated platform, Oracle Fusion Applications Suite helps Providence’s health care professionals devote their time and energy to providing compassionate care and making a positive impact on their patients’ lives.”