US computer giant Oracle is helping one of the largest modern retail chains in Thailand and Malaysia increase productivity, reduce costs, and improve process governance and controls.

Lotus’s has moved its finance and procurement operations to Oracle Fusion Cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP).

Following the success and business agility that Lotus’s gained by moving to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Exadata Cloud@Customer, the retailer has expanded its collaboration with Oracle by implementing Oracle Cloud ERP.

With more than 2660 stores across Thailand and Malaysia, Lotus’s relies on technology to enhance its market competitiveness and improve customer service. It prides itself in opening stores curated for the lifestyles and needs of its customers and offering a frictionless shopping experience. To meet its growth plans and maintain its market leadership, Lotus’s needed to modernise its finance and procurement operations.

Lotus’s selected Oracle Cloud ERP as the key finance and procurement back bone application to replace its legacy financial management application. With the implementation of Oracle Cloud ERP, Lotus’s has modernised its business processes and can close its books in just three days. It has increased efficiency and productivity, improved governance and control, and gained real-time visibility of financial data with new reporting capabilities.

“With our ambition to lead the new smart retail era, where powerful technology bridges online and offline operations to offer customers a delightful and frictionless experience, our IT infrastructure plays a critical role both for our customer-facing and back-end operations,” said Thapat Soonthornnoppakun, head of information technology at Lotus’s. “Thanks to Oracle Cloud ERP, our finance and procurement operations have been standardised and automated along with better process control that brings improvement in data accuracy and process efficiency as we continue to scale.”

With Oracle Cloud ERP, Lotus’s can manage online finance and procurement operations with a better experience of working anywhere and anytime including online journal preparations and automated approval processes. It has eliminated manual paper-based processes. Furthermore, the automated reporting capabilities have reduced the time needed to close its books and increased the efficiency and capability of Lotus’s finance team.

“Digitising business processes is critical for the retail sector, which has experienced an accelerated ecommerce boom alongside rising supply chain complexities,” said Taveesak Saengthong, managing director of Oracle in Thailand. “With Oracle Cloud ERP, Lotus’s can tap into a continuous stream of innovation and advanced automation capabilities to unlock new business opportunities and achieve faster time to value.”

More than 11,000 organisations across all industries and geographies use Oracle Cloud ERP and Cloud HCM to run their businesses. Enterprise finance and operations capabilities, including financials, accounting hub, procurement, project management, enterprise performance management, risk management, subscription management, and supply chain management and manufacturing.

Oracle’s Fusion Cloud applications suite is a self-updating platform that helps organisations build, innovate, automate, adapt and leverage new business opportunities on-demand.

The Lotus’s project was implemented by Accenture, a long-time Oracle Partner Network member.

“Technology transformation is critical for helping retailers meet rapidly evolving customer preferences and deliver the services and experiences they expect,” said Patama Chantaruck, country managing director for Accenture in Thailand. “Drawing on Accenture’s technology and retail industry experience, we helped Lotus’s further expand its Oracle footprint to drive value, allowing the company to better respond to change, improve operational efficiency and optimise new business processes to support its next phase of strategic growth.”