Oracle Corporation has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Price Waterhouse LLP`s activity based costing, budgeting and management software called ACTIVA. As part of the agreement, Oracle will hire the majority of the current ACTIVA development team. Oracle will begin selling the product worldwide immediately. Oracle does not anticipate taking any financial charges in connection with the transaction, and the terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Price Waterhouse will receive a royalty on license sales and will be the preferred implementer of ACTIVA. This acquisition further fulfills Oracle`s mission to help companies lower costs through better processes and improve decision making through better information. ACTIVA gives executive management the tools needed to navigate and guide companies to maximise shareholder value, customer satisfaction and employee and supplier productivity," said Ray Lane, president and COO, Oracle. "This agreement also represents a new milestone in our relationship with Price Waterhouse. With their wealth of global experience in the area of advanced profitability and cost management, they are a natural choice to be preferred implementers for this product." Developed by Price Waterhouse, ACTIVA incorporates years of practical experience and the intellectual capital from Price Waterhouse`s global Financial and Cost Management Practice. ACTIVA is now available as part of Oracle(R) Applications, Oracle`s suite of more than 45 business software applications for the enterprise. "The sale of ACTIVA reinforces Price Waterhouse`s strategy of focusing our efforts on helping global companies develop and implement business solutions that best meet their individual needs," said Scott Hartz, Global Leader of Price Waterhouse`s Management Consulting Practice. "We are confident that Oracle will continue to enhance ACTIVA, allowing us to remain focused on our core competency of helping companies evaluate and implement cost management solutions." Activity based management is a proven methodology that allows companies to make informed business decisions based on relevant, accurate cost information. Businesses implementing activity based management can use ACTIVA to track the activities that drive cost and profit performance, in order to gain insights to cost behavior and the effect of volume and other constraints on activity cost. These insights can be used to make such critical business decisions as whether to make, buy or outsource; where to set optimal pricing levels; or whether to add or drop product lines, all with a full understanding of the financial impact of the decision. "ACTIVA is being used to help us implement Activity Based Management (ABM) in facilities with diverse product offerings and supply chain characteristics," said Mark R. Graupman, corporate controller, Foremost Farms USA. "With ACTIVA, we are generating product line, customer and distribution channel profit and loss statements. We have also used ABM and ACTIVA as a basis for pricing decisions. The financial information generated by ACTIVA has higher credibility with our management as it is derived from and reconciled to our Oracle General Ledger." "We have implemented ABM using ACTIVA in seven plants across four countries using a single database instance located in Minneapolis," said Norm Gaudreau, Controller for North American Division Manufacturing Operations at Thermo King, a subsidiary of Ingersoll-Rand. "The information is being actively used by manufacturing, engineering, marketing and finance management. In our view, ACTIVA is the only product capable of delivering a truly global ABM implementation."
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