Oracle helps companies increase financial visibility, manage risk

Oracle Corporation, the world`s largest enterprise software company, today announced significant enhancements to Oracle Financials, an integral part of the Oracle E-Business Suite, designed to help businesses increase financial visibility and manage financial risk, while lowering the total cost of ownership.

Available immediately, the new Oracle Financials capabilities, including intelligence and risk management applications, were created in conjunction with Oracle customers to help ensure they meet their evolving needs.

Current economic and business conditions have dramatically changed demands on corporate finance departments, increasing the need to provide real-time disclosure of financial information and to actively manage financial risk. As such, companies need affordable, increasingly sophisticated financial applications that enable enterprise financial visibility, establish internal controls and increase efficiencies.

"Market conditions have far reaching impact on corporate policies, procedures, culture and perhaps most significantly on business systems, " said John Van Decker, Senior Program Director, Meta Group. "Organisations that have shown high levels of accountability are increasingly looking for financial management solutions that offer real-time visibility into global operations to understand and react to those market conditions."

The latest version of Oracle Financials offers improved business intelligence capabilities that help customers increase visibility by offering expanded role-based financial intelligence. Budgeting and planning information is integrated with actual results, leading to a better-informed organisation, armed to make intelligent business decisions based on up-to-the-minute financial information.

Other new features include a profit and loss portal and an expense management portal, both of which give business managers the ability to drill down from financial balances to supporting detailed transactions. These new portals allow executives to monitor the state of their business in real-time, to quickly find the root cause of deviations from targets and take immediate action to correct problems.

Over the past few years, the world`s economic and political landscapes have become increasingly volatile, making it difficult for companies to proactively manage their exposure to risks presented by events outside of their control, such as rapid changes in interest rates.

Oracle Risk Management was built to help companies manage the financial risks associated with global treasury operations. Oracle Risk Management provides a set of pricing and analysis tools that enable companies to manage risk. The applications helps with such complex tasks as calculating prices and sensitivities of financial instruments and analysing a portfolio of treasury deals for market risks, thereby proactively helping them mitigate against these market risks.

"We are hearing from our customers that increasing visibility and managing risk have become top priorities," said Michelle Beetar, Sales manager, Service & Commercial Industries. "By continuing to focus on our customers` needs, this latest version of Oracle Financials provides our customers with the most complete financial management solution that can help companies nimbly navigate any economic or political environment."