Metamorphosis is the key to continued success. And Century Textiles, a trailblazing 122-year-old company, has proved once again that it is in synergy with the times by undertaking a forward and transformational approach in its processes to achieve higher efficiency, improved productivity and reduced manual intervention. Sarada Vishnubhatla finds out all this and more in an interaction with the company’s CFO Snehal Shah
Incorporated in 1897, Century Textiles today is a commercial giant with multiple business interests. Just under a year ago, the company adopted Oracle EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) that is powered by Deloitte to embark on a technologically advanced and proficient journey in its effort to consolidate operations. This comes as no surprise because the company has always undertaken efforts since their inception to provide higher customer satisfaction. The consolidation has begun bearing fruit since the beginning of the current financial year.
Affirms Snehal Shah, CFO, Century Textiles: “Right since its inception, Century Textile has always stood by its obligations to the state in meeting all the statutory requirements. As the organisation grew, we needed to further comply with seamless statutory reporting requirements, especially in managing multiple users working on sections of reporting and parallel processing. Our focus was on reducing manual intervention, digitizing operations and improving overall efficiency. And that is why we opted for Oracle EPM Cloud® solution for meeting these requirements, and more.”
Striking bull’s eye
Encouraged by the proof-of-concept affirmations by other major manufacturing businesses and its success with Oracle Hyperion being used for financial consolidation and planning and budgeting, Century Textiles decided to use the cloud version of Hyperion. The application has allowed it the flexibility to use as per requirement, thereby resulting in saving costs. With the help of Oracle EPM, Century Textiles began a new journey by identifying fundamental issues and then crafted a work flow ‘from the scratch’ to help make its financial closing processes, among others, more efficient.
The new process allows for multi-user approach with strong process controls, enabling automation of various processes across the closing cycle. “Oracle EPM Cloud helped us improve our reporting processes and led to reduction in manual efforts and intervention in the closing process in a mere three-month span. This way, we could automate statutory reporting besides enabling our internal MIS from a single set of solutions across the organisation,” Shah says.
Streamlining manufacturing processes
It is universal knowledge that managing finances and scaling up operations are two of the most daunting challenges for manufacturing companies. The reason being that even the slightest fluctuation in demand can wreak havoc in achieving accuracy in forecasting, allocating funds and profit margins. In this context, Century Textile’s adoption of Oracle EPM is an effort to achieve alignment in planning across the enterprise.
“As a vital arm of the economy, be it global or local, the manufacturing industry and thereby the companies so engaged need to be extremely cautious in propelling their daily operations forward and they need to work towards successful fulfilment of the demand. Oracle EPM has enabled us to respond quicker to change and in a highly effective manner because with its help we are able to develop agile forecasts in all aspects of our business. We are able to create long-range forecasts for unpredictable business dynamics using sophisticated and built-in scenario modelling,” Shah elaborates.
“Oracle EPM has allowed us to create zero-based budgets with proven and scalable solutions that provide clear visibility into cost and profit. It also promotes accountability and has helped us make smarter investment decisions,” he adds. According to the company’s officials, Oracle EPM Cloud is the ‘only complete and connected’ EPM solution that includes industry best practices, features and usability which aligns its strategy with execution. It has streamlined financial reporting, including the overall process, timelines, traceability, version control, data security and auditing, among others.
Aligning with Industry 4.0
The textile industry too is gearing up to align with Industry 4.0 akin to other industries. As such, machine manufacturers are opting for automation and data collection using sensors. The data is critical to the mill owners because it reflects the performance of their mills with regards to different parameters including efficiency, wastage and productivity. Century Textiles has been able to nail this need perfectly with the help of Oracle EPM.
“Today, the manufacturing environment is changing drastically with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and cloud computing. And we realise that growth in our industry is closely linked to the ERP system. Intelligent manufacturing requires production and management to work with it as an integrated unit. Hence, being prepared for aligning ourselves with Industry 4.0 is only natural for us. And we believe that manufacturers must view themselves as service companies instead of merely as product manufacturers,” Shah says.
“In this context, Oracle EPM offers us a powerful combination of technology and comprehensive cloud business applications such as Internet of Things (IoT), including key functionality designed specifically for industrial manufacturers,” he adds. Not only did this combination enable companies like Century Textiles to offer more compelling value-propositions to their customers but has also opened up new revenue streams. As Shah puts it, “Oracle offered us a complete vision that included a secure and integrated portfolio of solutions and delivered the same on the most current and modern cloud platform.”
USP of Oracle EPM
Oracle EPM software, according to the company’s officials, complements ERP by providing management insights besides offering operational data. If ERP is all about operating the day-to-day transactional activity in business, EPM is about managing the business itself in terms of analysing, understanding and reporting about it. Opines Shah: “In an environment of constant change, new competitors and economic uncertainty, we believe that EPM has offered us a tool to manage our business by making our processes more agile. EPM business processes which include strategic modelling, planning, consolidating and closing, reporting, and analysing performance can help our company understand the data and use it to make better business decisions.”
In today’s constantly evolving business landscape, organisations like Century Textiles need to capitalize on quick response time to their business needs. And Oracle EPM Cloud is designed to offer exactly that. According to Shah, this is the exact reason why Gartner Inc., a global leading research and advisory company, may have named Oracle a leader in cloud financial planning and analysis solutions and in cloud financial close solutions in 2018. And that is why ‘investing in Oracle EPM Cloud is an intelligent decision’ for Century Textiles.